Imre Kertész - Fatelessness

Then there was also an odd little guy with a very distinctive nose, a large rucksack, dressed in “plus fours” and huge walking boots; even his yellow star somehow seemed larger than usual. He was more of a worrier, moaning especially to everyone about his “bad luck.” I more or less registered his case, since it was a simple story and he went over it repeatedly. He was meant to be visiting his “very sick” mother in the Csepel district, as he related it. He had procured a special permit from the authorities; he had it on him and showed it around. The permit was valid for today up till 2:00 p.m. Something had come up, however, a matter that, he said, “could not be put off”—“for business reasons,” he added. There had been others in the office, however, so it had taken a very long time before it was his turn. He was by then beginning to think the whole trip was in jeopardy, as he put it. Still, he had hurriedly boarded a streetcar in order to get to the bus terminus, in accordance with his original plan. On the way, though, he had checked the likely duration of the return journey against the permitted deadline and worked out that it would, indeed, be rather risky to set off. But then at the bus terminus he had seen that the noon bus was still waiting there, at which, so we were informed, he thought, “What a lot of trouble I’ve gone to for that little bit of paper!… Besides which,” he added, “poor Mama is waiting.” He remarked that the old lady was a big concern for him and his wife. They had long ago pleaded with her to move in with them, into the city, but his mama had kept on flatly refusing until it was too late. He shook his head a lot, being of the opinion that, in his view, the old lady was hanging on to her house “at all costs.” “Yet it doesn’t even have any amenities,” he noted. But then, he went on, she was his mother, so he had to be tolerant. On top of which, he added, she was now both ill and elderly. He had felt “he might never be able to forgive himself,” he said, if he were to pass up this one opportunity. As a result, he had got onto the bus after all. At that point he fell silent for a minute. He raised, then slowly lowered, his hands in a gesture of helplessness, while a thousand tiny quizzical wrinkles formed on his brow, giving him something of the look of a sad, trapped rodent. “What do you think?” he then asked the others. Might something unpleasant come of the business? Would it be taken into consideration that his overstepping of the permitted deadline had not been his fault? And what, he wondered, must his mama be thinking, whom he had informed about the visit, not to speak of his wife and two small children at home if he failed to get back by two o’clock? Mainly from the direction in which his gaze was pointed, it seemed, as far as I could tell, that he was expecting an opinion or rejoinder on these questions from the aforesaid man with the distinguished bearing, the “Expert.” The latter, however, I could see, was not paying much attention; his hand just then was holding a cigarette that he had taken out shortly before, the tip of which he was now tapping on the lid of a gleaming silver case with embossed lettering and engraved lines. I saw from his face that he was absorbed, lost in some distant reflection, giving every sign that he had heard nothing at all of the entire story. At that point, then, the man reverted to his bad luck; if he had reached the terminus just five minutes later, he would not have caught the noon bus, for if he had not found that one still there, he would not have waited for the next, and consequently, assuming this was all through “the difference of just five minutes,” then “he would now not be sitting here but at home,” he explained over and over again.

Then too I still recall the man with the seal’s face: portly, stocky, with a black moustache and gold-rimmed eyeglasses, who was continually seeking “to have a word” with the policeman. Nor did it escape my attention that he always strove to have a go at this separately, a little bit away from the rest, preferably in a corner or by the door. “Constable,” I would hear his strangled, rasping voice at these times, “may I have a word with you?” Or: “Please, constable… just a word, if I may…” In the end, on one occasion the policeman actually asked what he wanted. He then appeared to hesitate, first mistrustfully flashing his spectacles around rapidly. Even though this time they were in the corner of the room quite close to me, I could pick out nothing at all from the ensuing muffled muttering: he was apparently proposing something. A bit later a treacly smile of a more confidential nature also materialized on his features. At the same time, he began to lean just a little closer, until bit by bit, he was right over toward the policeman. In the meantime, as all this was going on, I also observed him make a strange movement. I did not get an entirely clear impression of the thing; at first I thought he was preparing to slip his hand into his inside pocket for something. It even occurred to me, from the evident significance of the movement, that he might be wishing to show an important paper, some remarkable or special document. Only I waited in vain for what might emerge, because in the end he did not complete the movement. All the same, he did not exactly abandon it either, but rather became stalled in it, forgot about it, suddenly somehow aborted it, I might say, just at the climactic moment. As it was, in the end his hand merely fumbled, brushed, and scrabbled for a moment in the general area of his chest, like some big, sparsely haired spider or, even more, some kind of smaller sea monster that was, as it were, seeking the crevice that would allow it to scuttle under the jacket. While that was going on, he himself kept talking, with that particular smile frozen to his face. All this lasted maybe several seconds. After that all I saw was the policeman putting an end to the conversation there and then, very brusquely and with conspicuous decisiveness, even to some extent indignantly, as far as I could see; although I really didn’t get much of what it was all about, his behavior struck me too as somehow fishy, in some not readily definable way.

As for the other faces and incidents, I no longer recall much. In any case, as time went by any observations of this kind that I made became increasingly vague. All I can really say is that the policeman continued to be very considerate toward us boys; with the adults, on the other hand, or so I observed, it seemed as if he was just a touch less cordial. By the afternoon, though, he too looked exhausted. By then he would often cool off among us or in his room, paying no attention to any buses that went by in the meantime. I also heard him repeatedly trying the telephone, and every now and then he would even announce the outcome: “Still nothing,” but with an almost plainly visible expression of dissatisfaction on his face. There was another incident that I also recall. It happened earlier on, sometime after noon, with one of his pals, another policeman who came by on a bicycle. First of all, he propped the latter against the wall where we were; they then carefully closeted themselves in our policeman’s room. It was a long time before they emerged. On parting, there was a lengthy shaking of hands in the doorway. They said nothing, but the way they kept nodding their heads and exchanging glances was something I’d sometimes seen with tradesmen in the old days, back in my father’s office, after they’d chewed over the hard times and the sluggishness of business. I realized, of course, that this was not very likely to be the case with policemen, but still, that is the memory their faces conjured up in my mind, that same familiar, somewhat harassed dejection, that same forced sense of resignation so to say, over the immutable order of things. But I was starting to grow tired; all I remember of the remaining time thereafter is that I felt hot, was bored, and even grew a bit drowsy.