Imre Kertész - Fatelessness

All in all, I can report, the day came and went. The order eventually came through, at round about four o’clock, exactly as the policeman had promised. It said that we were to make our way to the “higher authority” for purposes of showing our documents, so the policeman informed us. He, for his part, must have been notified by telephone because prior to that we had heard bustling noises, indicative of a change of some sort, coming from his room: repeated, peremptory ringing of the apparatus, then he in turn sought to be put through to somewhere to dispatch a few terse pieces of business. The policeman also volunteered that although they had communicated nothing absolutely specific to him either, in his view it could be no more than some kind of cursory formality, at least in cases that were as clear-cut and incontestable in the eyes of the law as, for instance, ours were.

Columns, drawn up in ranks of three abreast, set off back toward the city from all the border posts in the area simultaneously, as I was able to establish while we were en route, for at the bridge and at one turnoff or crossroad or another we would meet up with other groups that were similarly made up of a smaller or larger bunch of yellow-star men and one or two — indeed in one case three — policemen. I spotted the policeman with the bicycle too, accompanying one of those groups. I also noticed that on each occasion the policemen invariably greeted one another with the same certain, so to say businesslike briskness, as though they had reckoned on these encounters in advance, and only then did I grasp more clearly the significance of our own policeman’s previous phone transactions: it seems that was how they had been able to synchronize the time-points with one another. Finally, it hit me that I was marching in the middle of what was by now a quite sizable column, with our procession flanked on both sides, at sporadic intervals, by policemen.

We proceeded in this manner, spread over the entire road, for quite a long while. It was a fine, clear, summery afternoon, the streets thronged with a motley multitude, as they always are at this hour, but I only saw all this in a haze. I also lost my sense of bearings rather quickly, since we mostly traversed streets and avenues with which I was not all that familiar. Then too my attention was rather taken up and quickly sapped by the ever-growing sea of people, the traffic and, above all, the kind of laboredness that goes together with the progress of a closed column in such circumstances. All I remember of the entire long trek, in fact, was the kind of hasty, hesitant, almost furtive curiosity of the public on the sidewalks at the sight of our procession (this was initially amusing, but after a time I no longer paid much notice to it) — oh, and a subsequent, somewhat disturbing moment. We happened to be going along some broad, tremendously busy avenue in the suburbs, with the honking, unbearably noisy din of traffic all around us, when at one point, I don’t know how, a streetcar managed to become wedged in our column, not far in front of me as it happened. We were obliged to come to a halt while it passed through, and it was then that I became alive to the sudden flash of a piece of yellow clothing up ahead, in the cloud of dust, noise, and vehicle exhaust fumes: it was “Traveler.” A single long leap, and he was off to the side, lost somewhere in the seething eddy of machines and humanity. I was totally dumbfounded; somehow it did not tally with his conduct at the customs post, as I saw it. But there was also something else that I felt, a sense of happy surprise I might call it, at the simplicity of an action; indeed, I saw one or two enterprising spirits then immediately make a break for it in his wake, right up ahead. I myself took a look around, though more for the fun of it, if I may put it that way, since I saw no other reason to bolt, though I believe there would have been time to do so; nevertheless, my sense of honor proved the stronger. The policemen took immediate action after that, and the ranks again closed around me.

We went on for a while longer, after which everything happened very quickly, unexpectedly, and in a slightly astonishing fashion. We turned off somewhere and, as best I could see, we had arrived, because the road carried on between the wide-open wings of a gateway. I then noticed that from the gate onward a different set of men stepped into the places of the policemen on our flanks, in much the same uniforms as soldiers but with multicolored feathers in their peaked caps: these were gendarmes. They led us on into a maze of gray buildings, ever farther inward, before we suddenly debouched onto a huge open space strewn with white gravel — some sort of barracks parade ground, as I saw it. I immediately glimpsed a tall figure of commanding appearance striding directly toward us from the building opposite. He was wearing high boots and a tight-fitting uniform jacket with gold buttons and a diagonal leather strap over his chest. In one of his hands I saw he had a thin crop, rather like the ones used by horse riders, which he was continually tapping against the lacquered polish of his boot uppers. A minute later, with us by then waiting in stationary ranks, I was also able to make out that he was handsome in his fashion, fit, and all in all with something of the movie star about him, given his manly features and narrow brown moustache, fashionably clipped, which went very well with his sun-bronzed face. When he got nearer, a command from the gendarmes snapped us all to attention. All that has stayed with me after that are two almost simultaneous impressions: the stentorian voice of the riding-crop wielder, akin to that of a market stall-keeper, which came as such a shock after his otherwise immaculate appearance that maybe this is why I did not take in much of what he actually said. What I did grasp, however, was that he did not intend to conduct the “investigation”—that was the term he used — into our cases until the next day, upon which he turned toward the gendarmes, ordering them, in a bellow that filled the entire square, to take “the whole Jewish rabble” off to the place that, in his view, they actually belonged — the stables, that is to say — and lock them in for the night. My second impression was the immediately ensuing indecipherable babble of commands, the bellowed orders with which the abruptly reanimated gendarmes herded us away. I didn’t even know offhand which way I was supposed to turn, and all I remember is that in the thick of it I felt a bit like laughing, in part out of astonishment and confusion, a sense of having been dropped slap in the middle of some crazy play in which I was not entirely acquainted with my role, in part because of a fleeting thought that just then flashed across my mind, which was my stepmother’s face when it finally dawned on her that it would be pointless to count on seeing me for supper this evening.

On the train, it was water that was missed most of all. Food supplies, taking everything into account, appeared to be sufficient for a substantial period; but then there was nothing to drink with them, which was disagreeable, that’s for sure. Those on the train immediately declared that the initial spasms of thirst soon pass. Eventually we would almost forget about it, after which it would reemerge, only by then it would allow no one to forget it, they explained. The length of time that someone could last out, for all that, should the need arise, taking into account the hot weather and assuming he was healthy, did not lose too much water as sweat, and ate no meat or spicy food, if at all possible, was six or seven days, according to those in the know. As things were, they reassured us, there was still time; it all depended on how long the journey was going to last, they added.