Imre Kertész - Fiasco

In a word, I was scared. As a prison guard, I was terrified of the prisoners. Or rather, I was terrified of coming into contact with prisoners in the capacity of a prison guard. It seemed unavoidable, though, since that was why I had been stuck in the post. The hormonally challenged, dog-breathed major’s question as to whether I hated the enemy kept resurfacing like a nightmarish dream, and I was seized by fear a thousand times over that they would delegate some miserable authority to me and force me to live up in practice to the word I had given. (How many times I regretted it now!) Because I naturally, or perhaps I should say: instinctively, took as my starting point the idea that a prisoner was just a prisoner, and wrong can only be lying in wait for those who exercise authority over them. On the course, naturally, I heard umpteen times over that the basis of the administration of justice was the law, so the prisoners were transgressors of the law, whom the law had sentenced to imprisonment for their wrongs. I also saw that one or another of the pretend prison guards among my companions jumped at this sort of reasoning, as if the fact that they were facing criminals directly threw light on their business; extreme necessity might have compelled even me to try my hand at the method, but it has always been my experience that it is pointless for me to pursue my luck down this path. For whatever reason, I completely lack the propensity to act as a judge over others, and I have had the feeling there is no crime on earth which could adequately justify, at least in my eyes, the job of prison guard.

That, then, was the belief with which I entered service as a prison guard in a prison.

But they must have spotted something about me that, with due care (or cowardice, if you prefer), I myself undoubtedly hurried to get spotted at every turn, because in the end I was assigned to duties against which even my eerie sense of familiarity could have found nothing to object. You know, the six-storey chasm of the military prison is a canyon whose nether regions have been turned upside down: the sixth floor was a secure area, blocked off from the stairwell by grey-painted iron walls, its inmates, unlike those on the lower floors, wearing an outfit of coarse cloth or striped prison duds, their supervision (what luck!) entrusted solely to a handful of old-hand career NCOs specially trained for the purpose, who, like wood lice, only felt truly at home in the gloom of the prison, not to speak of the nearest drinking den. Moving down, each floor loses a bit of the general bleakness, so that the second floor was no more than a sort of purgatory, inhabited solely by prisoners who worked on the outside, along with those who had the privilege of working in the internal units like the kitchen, the laundry, and the tailor’s, cobbler’s, and repair shops, such as the cooks, the barbers, and the clerks in various offices, while the prisoner doctors and pharmacist had a comfortable cell there; here was the surgery and hairdresser, and this floor also provided access to the legal block, with its lawyers, and the corridor leading to the court — named, so I was told, as in every prison in the world, “the Bridge of Sighs.”

Well, that was where I was assigned to duties, and I have to say I didn’t have to overexert myself. I went on my shift in the morning, and that was roughly also the end of the day’s work. The large cell spaces were practically all empty, their inmates did whatever they had to do, each in his particular workplace. During the evening hours, I would open and lock doors, more in the manner of an obliging lackey than a surly prison guard, for the groups of prisoners returning from their work, perhaps, needless to say, neglecting to carry out the virtually mandatory frisking. After the evening meal, I would settle down for a bit of a chin-wag in the medics’ cell, then count the prisoners and report the number by internal telephone to the duty officers at the main gate; after lights out, I too would stretch out on my iron bed and sleep peacefully until reveille the next morning, if allowed to. In our prison, you see, I was the decent guard. If you get really bored some day, ask me to tell you about all the things I did for the poor prisoners. Heaps, if that is any saving grace. For some I even smuggled letters in and out — only for the most reliable ones, of course, as that was a fairly risky enterprise. During the day, too, I would occasionally poke my nose outside my room to run an eye over the prisoners waiting along the wall to cross “the Bridge of Sighs” for some reason, and if I spotted signs of dejection or exhaustion in any of them, I would call him out and take him to the toilets so he got a chance to move around and at least rest for a few minutes, and there’s no denying it, I greatly enjoyed playing the role of mysterious Providence’s local vicar, who suddenly bestows on a prisoner, hey presto! the thrill of a good deed as unexpected as it was suspiciously unjustified.

That is how I lived, then, resentful about my fate having discarded me there, yet as comfortable as could be in that discardedness, with twenty-four hours on duty alternating with twenty-four hours off, and I supposed that army service would eventually be over and the duties come to an end.

Looking back on it, I can find no explanation for that eerie sense of familiarity. If I try to summon it up, it’s as if I were trying to inspect the life of a stranger with whom I never had anything to do, and about whom I would prefer, if possible, to hear nothing more. The snag, though, is that he is constantly being talked about, and the person doing the talking is me. Do you remember our first conversation in the South Seas? You asked then the question, What was man was fit for? You were right, I too see that now: that really is the question, and an exceedingly awkward question at that, I sense.

One morning when I went on duty, I was greeted by my fellow guard — a swarthy, stocky, short-legged, and, to all appearances, spruce manikin, except that the prison-guard vocation had taken up residence in him, squatting there like a hideous reptile — with the information that one of the prisoners in solitary confinement was refusing food. I should note that several cells for solitary confinement were installed even on this purgatory-like floor, on side corridors off the ends of the main aisle, though they were not used, as in the nether regions on higher floors, for prolonged seclusion, let alone punishment; at most, unfortunates would spend the first few days of their detention there until they had got through their first questioning by the examining magistrate and been assigned to a shared cell. There was therefore a speedy turnover in their inmates, so by the time I had registered a face, the next time it would be another looking at me when I opened up or, like it or not, checked through the spyhole. Of all my prison-guard duties, I found that shameful procedure perhaps the most difficult of all to accustom myself to — and if I’m complaining, just imagine what the person whom I was obliged to use it against would say! The very first time — I remember I was still in training for the job on the course — I had to be literally ordered to do it. My heart was in my mouth, I was so frightened of the spectacle that would unfold before me. In the end, it was different from what I had expected; not horrible, but perhaps something even worse: forlorn. Through the hole I could see a cell: a bunk, a toilet bowl without seat, a wash-basin — oh, and of course the man who had to live there. Later on, I tried to look at this as if it were not me looking but a prison guard, but of course it was not long before I had to resign myself to only being able to look as a prison guard, but in particular a prison guard who, sadly, just happened to be me. In no way could I accustom myself to that damned spyhole, through which it was possible to watch the prisoner in his cell at any time, possibly even the most inappropriate moment. It was explained to me that that was precisely the purpose: to be able to inspect the prisoner, check that he was not sick or harming himself or to catch him red-handed doing something prohibited. It was just that I had no wish catch anyone red-handed, and there was nothing at all that I wanted to inspect which might be repugnant or would displease me — I had no wish to know what a person gets up to behind the door, if he happens to have been locked up in a solitary cell. It was not hard to guess, of course: he is scared and bored, and from certain signs that were eventually distilled, almost involuntarily, as a conclusion within me, I observed, to my astonishment, that even if the prison guard did not enter the cell from time to time, it seemed for some prisoners that this would only fulfil their sense of abandonment. I devised several obvious techniques, such as stamping as I made my way along the corridor, so they could hear that I was coming (which was against the rules: the ape-faced chief warden used to slip felt overshoes onto his boots and approach the coolers like a hyena which had been famished for months; before entering a cell, instead of knocking, I would fumble for a long time with the key on the iron door, as though I was having trouble finding the lock; and although the doors, fitted as they were, with sordid expediency, with a sort of drop-down window hatch, through which the unfortunates were given their food, I always opened the door, so that they would get some air, the noise of rattling dishes, a somewhat cheering glimpse of busy comings-and-goings. As I say, in our prison I counted as one of the better guards.