Imre Kertész - Fiasco

If you don’t mind, I won’t supply any further details.

Yet what a filthy dream I woke up to once! I am standing in a room by a desk, behind which is seated an obese, hormonally challenged bonehead, with matted hair, rotting teeth, bags under his eyes, and a sneer on his face: a major, and what he wants is for me to put my signature at the bottom of a piece of paper and accept a post as a prison guard in the central military prison.

So …

I tell him — because what else can I say? — “I’m not suitable.” And what do you think the jackass with the overactive glands and the rotten-toothed grin replies? “No one is born to be a prison guard”—that’s what he says, by way of encouragement. Look at it this way, others had signed up, meaning the rest of them, my fellow squaddies, because the whole platoon had been singled out for the job. “But I’m a man of intellect and culture,” I try once more. (You don’t by any chance know why precisely that phrase should have come to my mind?) To that he says: “Do you like the people?” I ask you, what answer are you supposed to give to that, if life is sweet to you, even if you happen not to like the people, since who on earth could have room for enough love to go round an entire people, and anyway the sonofabitch isn’t asking you to sign up as a god, just as a prison guard. So I say, “Yes.” “Do you hate the enemy?” is the next question, and again, what answer are you supposed to give to that, even if you have not seen hide nor hair of the enemy, and as to hating, it’s at most just this major you hate, and even him (human nature being what it is, its attention soon distracted and quick to forget) only in passing. “Right then, sign here!” he says, and he stabs a disgusting, stubby, flat-nailed, nicotine-stained index finger at the piece of paper. So, I take the pen from him and sign where he is indicating.

I’m trying to think why. Whichever way I look at it, I can see only one real reason: time. Yes, and this is something you may find a little curious, but only because, as I say, you are not familiar with the colours of life and don’t know that what we later on view as an event of major significance always appears initially in the guise of little curiosities, but it was mainly due to time that I signed. In the end, no pressing reason came to mind, and I couldn’t just stand there for an eternity, pen in hand. You might say there was no need for me to take it in my hand. Well, yes, but then the whole thing seemed so unreal that I did not feel my signature was any more real. I personally was completely shut out of the moment, if I may put it that way: I took no part in it, my existence went to sleep, or was paralyzed inside me, or at any rate it gave no twinge of unease to warn me of the importance of the decision. And anyway, was it a decision at all, or at least my decision? After all, it wasn’t me who chose the situation in which I had to make a choice, moreover a choice between two things, neither of which I wished to choose: I didn’t wish to become a prison guard, of course, but nor did I wish to be punished, for although it’s true that no one threatened punishment, that is something one takes for granted from the outset and is usually not far wrong about. Then again, there were a few incidental factors which played a part: I have the sort of nature which prefers to try to please people rather than pick a fight, so I would have to say that I was also driven to some extent by courtesy, but maybe also, in some way, by curiosity to see what a prison here is like, though in such a way that I was safe. So you see, any number of reasons relating to the spirit of frivolity and eerie familiarity that I have already mentioned were being impressed on me by my surroundings.

This is sounding as though I were making excuses, when I am merely bearing you out, for I stepped onto the path of grace — or at least what you call grace.

Not long after that, I found myself in the prison. I shall never forget my first impression: solid wooden doors lining a cool stone corridor; alongside the walls, widely separated, men standing with hands held behind their backs, foreheads pressed to the wall. They were clothed in worn-out military fatigues, without insignia, belt, or indication of rank. Armed guards were standing about at both ends of the corridor. Every now and then, a soldier hurries the length of the corridor; his glinting boots, coloured collar-patches, pistol jiggling on his butt, his supreme indifference, a true provocation. Otherwise, endless time and perpetual, suffocating stillness. And a particular odour; there is no better term for it than a prison stench.

I landed there, then, and it was not long before I was looking around with an eerie sense of familiarity. What else could I have done? I am being careful not to portray as simple what was apparently simple: for instance, you won’t hear a word from me about force of habit, or anything else which presents the reality as reality just because it is the reality; not for a second did I consider it as being natural to be there, and on the other hand not a second could pass that I did not consider as being natural, since I was there, after all. So, nothing struck me straight away: I saw no torture chambers, nobody starving to death. Admittedly, there were some nights when executions took place in the courtyard but, for one thing, I didn’t see them, for another, they were wrapped in a shroud of legality: death sentences passed by a court of law. There was generally an explanation for everything. Nothing went beyond the bounds and scale that, so it seems, I was able to accept. The military prison wasn’t the worst of prisons either; its inmates had either been sentenced for ordinary transgressions or breaches of service regulations, or they were waiting to be sentenced, unlike “over there,” as people, somewhat enigmatic expressions on their faces, referred to the customs service’s prison, which was separated from ours by an impenetrable wall.

Enough of this, though! It’s starting to sound as if I wanted to describe the circumstances — or in other words, again offer excuses — and as if the circumstances could be described anyway. They can’t. I long, long ago resigned myself to the fact that I shall never know where I am living and what laws I am governed by; that I am reliant on my sensory organs and my most immediate experiences, though even they can be deceptive, indeed maybe them most of all.

It’s funny, but before anything else I had to attend a school, a sort of course, where, along with my fellow squaddies, I was given instruction in what a prison guard had to do. I recollect the smile I had when I took my place on this course: it was the smile of the damned, of one who was, by then, ready for anything in the spirit of the contract, with the scrutiny of that bitter smile being the only reservation.

But I had not expected what happened next. What did I expect? I don’t know exactly; how could I? Essentially something along the lines that they, in their own crafty way (about which again I can have had no precise notion), would put my brains, my soul, even my body to work; would instruct and bully me, din into me, some crude, savage, and blind consciousness; in short, prepare me for my sinister job. Instead of which, what do I hear? You’ll never believe it: they are perpetually going on about the law, about rights and duties, regulations, records, procedures, official channels, health regulations, and so on and so forth. And don’t think this was done disingenuously, with a hideous, hand-wringing grin on their faces: not a bit of it! With the straightest imaginable expression, not one word out of place, not one collusive wink. I couldn’t get over it: Could this be their method? They pitch me in among prisoners, then leave me to myself? Are they relying on my duties to transform me, to break me in? Well, I thought to myself, if they have picked me out for their ends (and of course it was useless to rack my brains as to what sort of mystery could have guided that choice: some sort of educational intention, perhaps, or — and after a while this seemed the likeliest to me — merely blind, impersonal chance), they must also know what they’re expecting from me; but then, it suddenly occurred to me, did I myself know?