Imre Kertész - Fiasco

“Don’t forget, gentlemen, that a ‘moral duty’ may be a moral duty, but that doesn’t make it a legal concept,” he reminded the rest of the table with a subtle, clever smile.

It seemed his words had little effect, however, as the discussion had irretrievably shifted solely to the moral plane and carried on that way, with references to “Tiny’s sufferings,” and in response with great insistence initially, to the “innocent band” and the “legal contractual relationship” but later on with the counter-accusation of “blackmail,” and in the midst of the ensuing general uproar Köves’s ear also picked out the word “revenge”—to his uneasy surprise, most likely out of the mouth of the baggy-eyed saxophone player, who, together with the blue-chinned musician (who still reeked of hair oil), as Köves was somewhat bewildered to notice, was most vocal in springing to the pianist’s defence. Köves would hardly have ventured (nor of course did he wish to) to remind them of that long-bygone, rather unfortunate conversation that he’d had with them when he had been enquiring about Tiny.

Yet the fact that the pianist had an opinion of his own about his own affair, and moreover one that differed from everyone else’s, Köves only got to learn at last late one evening, with the coffeehouse almost empty except for some musicians on their day off, a few incorrigible regulars, along with Köves himself, of course, who were still loitering around the place (Sziklai was not in the South Seas that day as the Firefighters’ Platform happened to be presenting their new show out of town), when the musician, grasping a half-emptied small glass of cognac to which the Uncrowned had treated him quite a while earlier, strolled over to Köves’s table and asked:

“May I?” at which Köves of course was delighted to invite him to take a seat, having not seen him in the coffeehouse, it now occurred to him, in point of fact for days on end, although it was precisely during these days that the passions raging around his figure had been at their most ferocious pitch, as if the absence of the subject of the disputes not only did not disturb the disputants but was considered to be practically a condition for the disputes to proceed undisturbed.

“What do they know?!” the pianist said to Köves with an indulgently disdainful smile, gesturing vaguely with his head at the virtually empty tables around the place, and went on to tell him that they had made him carry out farm work — digging potatoes, feeding pigs. “I had to get up at the same time as I used to go to bed … I could tell you stories, but what’s the point?” he continued. “I have a sound constitution, I stuck it out.” In time, they got to know at HQ that he was a professional musician, and the officers had ordered him to play something. They had procured a violin for him to start with — that being the commander’s favourite instrument: he wanted to hear his much-loved songs on the violin, and had become truly furious at him for not knowing how to play that instrument, even doubting whether he could be a musician at all if he couldn’t. In the end, they had procured a piano (in reality, an out-of-tune upright pianino), and he had to play on that. By way of a reward he would be given a helping of special rations and exemptions from some tasks, as well as having poured into him the sour local vino, on which the officers used to get smashed. Later on, he was also allowed to play at village dances, then there was an occasion when he had to accompany a third-rate scratch Gypsy band, sawing away on their beat-up fiddles and wheezing through their clarinets — one could just imagine how that sounded. He had cursed the day when he admitted to being a musician a hundred times over; even feeding the pigs was more respectable work than that.

“And now I’m supposed to start all over again?” the pianist smiled hesitantly, dubiously. “There was a time,” he mused, “when if I could not play for two days running, I would be itching, raring to go so badly I would almost go nuts. And now?… I’d be happy not to see a piano. I’ve burned out, old chum. Here,” and with the tip of a crooked middle finger, looking almost as though he were intently listening inwardly, he cautiously tapped on his chest as though on a closed gate that he had already been asking to be let in through for quite some time in vain, “There’s no more music inside here …,” and it was useless for Köves to reassure him that, once he had rested himself and got back to a normal life, he would see, the inclination would return, the musician mournfully shook his head in doubt.

In recent days, the South Seas regulars had also been preoccupied by another case, likewise the subject of widespread debate among themselves, though this time engendering merriment rather than dissension. Köves learned from Sziklai why it was he had not seen Pumpadour around at all recently, and the Transcendental Concubine only rarely, and even then not with the customary schnapps glasses, but totally sober, her vaguely dreamy gaze now replaced by a slightly crabbed look, like someone who has been rudely wakened from a prolonged sleep by cold reality, and who was always in a hurry, always laden with parcels and shopping bags, which had never been the case before.

“She bakes and cooks,” Sziklai chuckled.

“How’s that?” Köves marvelled, and Sziklai, who — at least “until events took a tragic turn”—now knew everything “first-hand,” from Pumpadour himself, for whom Sziklai had of late been securing regular appearances with the Firefighters’ Platform, told Köves that “things have started to look up for her,” with Pumpadour suddenly deciding to ask the Transcendental to marry him, and she, bridling at the idea, in a nonexistent world, of becoming the nonexistent wife of a nonexistent person, who was not even an actor but a repairer of clocks, though more a repairer of lighters than of clocks, became so infuriated that she declared she never wanted to see Pumpadour again. Time passed, but the Transcendental showed herself to be unbending, declaring roundly to Sziklai, who “tried to mediate,” that she “simply didn’t understand how our relationship could have degenerated to this,” whereas Pumpadour complained to Sziklai that the woman was his “last fling,” and that if he did not win her hand, “life would have no meaning.” In the end, he had written her a letter asking her for “just one final meeting.” The woman had consented, promising to pay a visit at the specified time, while for the occasion Pumpadour cobbled together a device out of all sorts of wires, an acid of some kind and an ordinary battery and taped this tightly to his body under his jacket — the device being intended to blow up and “kill both of them” the moment they embraced. Either he miscalculated, or the device was not foolproof, or maybe a combination of the two: perhaps the Transcendental disentangled herself from the hug before Pumpadour was able to activate the device, or maybe the batch was too weak, or the tightness of grip, “the two bodies clinging together,” that Pumpadour had reckoned on for a detonation was missing — but in fact Pumpadour alone experienced the explosion, the outcome of which, apart from the scare, was nothing more serious than some bruising and burns to the chest. The Transcendental had immediately run to call a doctor and ambulance, while Pumpadour, overacting as ever, Sziklai said, had fainted, was carried off to hospital, and although his injuries had healed quickly, had meanwhile been discovered to have stomach ulcers, so now the Transcendental visited him regularly, taking in his meals for him, since he had been put on a special diet.

“How’s it all going to end?” Köves cheered up, and Sziklai, likewise laughing, suggested: