Imre Kertész: Fiasco

“Did you get any work done?” the old boy’s wife enquired after she had returned from the bistro where, as a waitress, she earned her bread (and occasionally the old boy’s as well) (if fate so willed it) (and it certainly did so will it more than once).

“Of course,” the old boy replied.

“Did you make any progress?”

“I pushed on a bit,” said the old boy.

“What do want for dinner?”

“I don’t know. What’s the choice?”

His wife told him.

“All the same to me,” the old boy decided.

A little later the old boy and his wife sat in front of the filing cabinet to eat their dinner (with due regard, naturally, to the circumstances that have already been touched upon) (thus when we say that the old boy and his wife sat in front of the filing cabinet to eat their dinner, this should be understood to mean that although the filing cabinet was facing them, in reality they were seated at the table, to be more precise, the table, the only real table in the flat) (and eating).

The old boy’s wife had got into the habit during dinner of relating what had happened to her in the bistro.

They would be making stock check soon; the managers were afraid that shrinkages would show up (not without reason, as they pilfered far too much) (and most unprofessionally at that, most notably the Old Biddy) (the chief administrator, to give her her official title) (though certain members of staff were no better) (but then there was much greater opportunity for the managers) (most notably the Old Biddy — the chief administrator, to give her her official title — who wanted to make up all the shrinkages through the tap beer and, more especially, the lunch menus) (what in the waitresses’ jargon was dubbed “pap”) (“pap” being the meals consumed mainly by children whose parents, not wanting, or possibly not being in a position, to cook for them, paid a weekly sum to the bistro for the lunch menu, or “pap” in the jargon) (although, as the old boy’s wife never omitted to remark, she had yet to meet the parent who checked up on what their children ate, or whether they even ate at all) (despite which the children did put on weight and, in time, would indisputably grow up into adults, who quite possibly would condemn their own children to lunch menus for want of time to fuss about with household chores) (that being the way of the world, what one major but highly suspect mind called eternal recurrence) (about which, as about many other things, he was mistaken, let it be noted): in short, veiled hints and open insinuations were already being expressed on the matter of the prospective stock check.

“Apart from which,” the old boy’s wife added, “blood is being spilt over the shift rota.”

The point was that the old boy’s wife always worked the morning shift.

The bistro, on the other hand, stayed open until late at night (during which late-night hours the bistro was frequented by an army of customers who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings).

In accordance with the worthy, fair-play rule of equal opportunity, which was also enshrined in law as a labour right, the bistro’s employees shared alike the clientele for the lunch menu in the mornings and afternoons (pap-eaters in the jargon), as tight-fisted as their time was rushed, and the late-night clientele who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings.

Nevertheless, the old boy’s wife, at her own request, as confirmed by signature, only ever worked in the mornings (so that the old boy would also be able to work in the twenty-eight square metres during the mornings) (and also because she could not abide the late-night clientele who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings but at the same time mostly drank themselves stupid or to the point of causing a nuisance).

Thus the late-night shift hours (as well as the by no means inconsiderable benefits that went with them) to which the old boy’s wife would have been entitled on the worthy, fair-play rule of equal opportunity, which was also enshrined in law as a labour right, were almost automatically assigned to a certain colleague called Mrs. Boda; however, most likely as a result of long habitude and also, perhaps, the greater inclination that human nature shows toward what, no doubt, is — if we may put it this way — a more instinctive attitude to legal practice than the worthy rules of fair play (even when also enshrined in law as a labour right), this certain colleague called Mrs. Boda (whose first name was Ilona) had already long regarded the benefits that had been assigned to her not as assigned benefits but entitlements.

One must take all that into account in imagining the effect produced by the announcement made by the old boy’s wife that very day that from now on she too wanted to work in the evenings.

“Why?” the old boy asked.

“Because as things are I hardly earn anything, and now you are not going to earn anything because you have to write a book.”

“That’s true,” said the old boy.

That evening the old boy declared, “I’m off for a walk.”

“Don’t be too long,” said his wife.

“All right. I need to think a bit.”

“There was something else I meant to tell you.”

“What was that?” The old boy paused.

“It’s slipped my mind for the moment.”

“Next time write it down so you won’t forget.”

“It would be nice if we could go away somewhere.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” the old boy said, nodding.

On returning from his walk (his contemplative walk, as he called it), the old boy asked:

“Did anyone call?”

“Who would have called?”

“True,” the old boy conceded.

“That tin-eared, clap-ridden, belly-dancing bitch of a whore …” the old boy intoned, unhurriedly and syllable by syllable, while carefully shaping the softened wad between his fingers as he crammed it into his ear, thereby placing himself beyond reach of Oglütz, the Slough of Deceit — the entire world in effect.

… Yes, if I had been consistent I might never have finished my novel. But now I had finished it none the less, and it was inconsistent of me to be surprised that it stood ready. But that was how it was. I’m not suggesting I was unaware that, if I were to write a novel, then sooner or later a novel would come out of that, since over long years I had striven for nothing else than that. So as far as being aware is concerned, it’s not a question of my being unaware; it’s just that I forgot to prepare myself for it. I was too preoccupied with writing the novel to reckon on the consequences. So there it lay before me, more than two hundred and fifty pages, and this pile, this object, was now demanding certain actions on my part. I had no idea how to get a novel published; I was totally unfamiliar with the business, I knew nobody; as yet no prose work of mine, as it is customary to call it, had been published. First of all, I had to get it typed, then I stuffed it into the one and only press-stud file I possessed, which I had acquired by not altogether innocent means during a visit to my mother at the head office of the export company where the old lady supplemented her pension by doing shorthand and typewriting for four hours a day. Then, with the file under my arm, I called on a publisher I knew was in the business of publishing novels by, as it was phrased, contemporary Hungarian authors, among others. I knocked on a door marked Secretariat and enquired of one of the ladies working there, who emanated that mysterious, so hard to define aura of being in charge, whether I might leave a novel with her. On her giving a positive response, I handed the file over to her and watched her place it among a stack of other files on a table at the back of the room. After that I made my way straight to the open-air swimming pool …