Imre Kertész - Fiasco

Consequently, Köves lived in a constant torment of uncertainty: almost every day he would produce a piece of writing, longer or shorter, which, as best he could, would be fashioned along the lines set by the senior staffer in respect of its syntax and an outwardly meaningful obscurity, or rather he would keep on amending it until in the end he himself did not understand it, for as long as he was able to understand it even he could see it was meaningless and therefore could not be good, or to be more accurate, could not serve its purpose — a purpose about which Köves was the least clearly aware of all, of course, though by the time it had been completed Köves would be unable to decide whether or not it was suitable, because he would not understand his piece of writing, and even less what purpose it served. So that when, one afternoon, the press chief, who had just returned to the office, whence he had left post-haste roughly an hour before — averring to the typist in passing that if anything urgent or of especially high priority were to come up, he could be contacted at the office of the current chairman of the Supervisory Committee, where he would be holding important talks — stopped behind Köves’s back, casting his eyes over him just as he was toiling on that day’s composition, Köves was startled like someone for whom the moment of truth had just struck. And when the press chief placed a hand on his shoulder and said to him, albeit in an undeniably amiable tone:

“Would you be so good as to step into my room for a minute?”

Köves got up from his desk like someone who, after much anguish, was almost relieved that he was finally going to hear sentence passed.

The press chief gestured obligingly that he should take a seat on the chair in front of his desk, but before complying with the tacit request, Köves, like a dying man who, with his last ounce of strength, is still thinking of his obligations on this earth, placed that day’s piece of writing on the press chief’s desk.

The press chief literally started back.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“A totally new manufacturing process,” Köves kicked off in a slightly lugubrious tone, “that …”

But the press chief immediately cut him short:

“Come off it!…” sweeping Köves’s creation into one of his desk drawers. Then on seeing the look of amazement on Köves’s face, an effortless little smile appeared in the general area of the moustache and, leaning forward slightly over his table, and in a voice that was lowered in friendly fashion as it were, he asked Köves with a conspiratorial wink:

“A new manufacturing process? Who’s interested in such nonsense?!” leaving Köves, who on the spur of the moment didn’t know what he should do with his face, the naked, uncontrollable thing which was constantly seeking to bring about his ruin (he would have best preferred to hide it in one of his pockets, or under his clothes, and then surreptitiously throw it away on the street, as one does when getting rid of a shameful, inconvenient belonging), broke into a faltering smile, but at any rate drew his eyebrows gloomily into a frown ready to be scandalized, as it were.

Yet the press chief now leaned back in his chair, adjusted his necktie, then with just a trace of a long-suffering smile and, his head tilted slightly to the side, came out with:

“I’d like to read out a poem to you.”

“A poem?” Köves was astonished.

Then, as if to intensify Köves’s surprise still further:

“My own,” the press chief smiled as he produced a folded sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, which once again was freshly adorned with a small white-petalled bloom, and slowly — to no little horror on Köves’s part — began to unfold it.

One morning, perhaps more midmorning, Köves stepped out of the front door and set off with a whistle, though there was no reason for that, the weather being overcast, with a cool wind blowing, and over the streets rose a cloud of dust (constant, yet at first glance it came merely from construction sites, with their proliferation of ruins, scaffolding, and obstacles of every kind) mingled with pungent smells, as though possibly (it was not out of the question) heralding the approach of autumn, conjuring up in Köves romantic images of bygone (perhaps never-were) real autumns of reds and yellows and crackling hearths, and awakening a whimsical longing for a light, soft, yet warm overcoat into the upturned collar of which, in one of those familiar acts, he might bury his chin — but anyway he set off with a whistle to his workplace, the Ministry for Production. To tell the truth, that morning Köves was not going to be exactly on time (the previous evening, he and Sziklai had spent a little too long weaving the still-nascent plot of their prospective light comedy, so in order to clear his head Köves had gone by foot across the city, which by then was sunk into a muffled night-time hush broken only, now and again, by an unexpected noise of scuttling, creaking, murmuring, or groaning, as if of audible scraps of a restless collective dream of those asleep behind the darkened windows, as a result of which he had got to bed late and simply overslept, though in view of the intimate relationship that had been built up with the press chief Köves could consider himself — unquestionably with good reason — as being in the rather privileged position of someone who would not get his head chopped off right away if he took certain liberties, provided he did not overdo it, of course. For notwithstanding the fact that Köves had barely an inkling about poetry (apart from an obviously critical year in his distant childhood, he had never written, or even read, any poems), the press chief seemed to trust in his judgement, because, after the first occasion, he read out his poems to him on a more or less regular basis; indeed, the previous afternoon there had also been a short story, or as the press chief himself styled it: “more of a prose ballad.” No question, Köves’s judgement was usually favourable: insofar as he was able to discern, the press chief’s poems were mostly lyrical verse, and Köves generally did not understand much of their content, since they were either too short, so that they had ended by the time he had started to pay any attention, or else too long, so that by the time he was able to form an opinion about them the press chief’s singsong voice and the sonorous rhymes would have lulled him into a pleasant, half-sleeping trance, as a result of which it was with a clear conscience that he was able to praise their allusiveness, their melancholic mood, their enigmatic atmosphere, and so forth. Even so, it struck Köves that there was a regular, one might say maniacal, recurrence of certain images in the course of these poems, for instance, the “fleshy calyx” of, as a rule, a “carmine” blossom which “thirstily imbibes” a dewdrop or raindrop “quivering” on it, or the fountain the jets of which “shoot” on high, sometimes irresistibly, sometimes like a rainbow, and goodness knows how else though always, at the end of a poem replete with rain, dew, drizzle, and every other conceivable kind of moisture. Undeniably, the task of listening to and, above all, discussing (or to be more accurate, praising) the poems represented extra work for Köves (the press chief would normally call him into his room “for a little chat” at the end of the regular working day, when they could not be disturbed by either the senior staffer, or the typist, and there was little likelihood of things that unexpectedly had to be attended to intervening), while on the other hand the press chief’s confidence, which, whether justified or not, was in any event seemingly unqualified, inspired Köves too with courage, so that he would now set his diligent compositions down on the press chief’s desk with a surer gesture, even if the consequent fate of those written works continued to remain a mystery to him, perhaps (he reflected once, with a touch of superior cheerfulness) the day would come when new recruits following in his footsteps would be edified by them, in just the same way that he had learned from the senior staffer.