Imre Kertész - Fatelessness

I know of (because I saw, heard of, or experienced them for myself) three means of escape in a concentration camp. I personally availed myself of the first, though perhaps, I admit, the most modest of the three — but then, there is a corner of one’s nature that, as indeed I came to learn, is a person’s accepted and inalienable possession. The fact is, one’s imagination remains unfettered even in captivity. I contrived, for instance, that while my hands were busy with a spade or mattock — sparingly, carefully paced, always restricted to just the movements that were absolutely necessary — I myself was simply absent. Still, even the imagination is not completely unbounded, or at least is unbounded only within limits, I have found. After all, with the same effort I could equally have been anywhere — Calcutta, Florida, the loveliest places in the world. Yet that would not have been serious enough, all the same, for me that was not credible, if I may put it that way, so as a result I usually found myself merely back home. True, make no mistake about it, I was no less audacious in doing that than I would have been with, say, Calcutta; only here I hit upon something, a certain modesty and, I might say, a kind of work that compensated and thereby, as it were, promptly authenticated the effort. I soon realized, for example, that I had not been living properly, had not made good use of my days back home; there was much for me to regret, far too much. Thus, I could not help recalling, there had been dishes that I had been fussy about, had picked at then pushed aside, simply because I didn’t like them, and right at the present moment I regarded that as an irreparable omission. Then there was the whole senseless tug-of-war between my father and mother over me. When I get back home, I reflected, just like that, with this simple, self-explanatory turn of phrase, not even so much as pausing over it, like someone who can be interested in nothing but the issues that ensued from this all-surpassingly natural fact — when I get back home I shall put a stop to that at any rate, there has to be a truce, I decided. Then there were matters back home over which I had fretted, indeed— however silly it may sound — had been scared of, such as certain subjects in the curriculum, the teachers of those subjects, being quizzed on them and maybe coming to grief in my answers, and lastly my father when I reported the outcome to him: now I would summon up these fears purely for the diversion of picturing them to myself, living through them again, and smiling over them. But my favorite pastime was always, however often, to visualize an entire, unbroken day back home, from the morning right through the evening if possible, while still, as before, keeping it purely on the modest scale. After all, it would have taken an effort for me to conjure up even some kind of special or perfect day, but then I normally only envisaged a rotten day, with an early rising, school, anxiety, a lousy lunch, the many opportunities they had offered back then that I had missed, rejected, or indeed completely overlooked, and I can tell you that now, here in the concentration camp, I set them all right to the greatest possible perfection. I had already heard, and now I can also attest: the confines of prison walls cannot impose boundaries on the flights of one’s fantasy. The only snag was that if they meanwhile went so far as to make me forget even my hands, the nonetheless still all-too-present reality might reassume its rights very swiftly, with the most cogent and explicit of all rationales.

Around that time, there were occasions at the camp when it happened that the roll at the morning Appell did not tally — like the other day in Block 6, next to us. Everyone was perfectly well aware what might have occurred, since reveille in a concentration camp does not awaken anyone who can no longer be awakened, and there are such cases. But then that is the second method of escape, and who has not felt that temptation, if only the once, a single time at least; who could remain unfalteringly steadfast, most especially in the morning, when one awakes to — no, has dawn on one — yet another new day in the environs of an already noisy tent, neighbors already making preparations to go: I, for one, could not, and I would undoubtedly have made an attempt, had Bandi Citrom not prevented me from doing so time after time. Coffee is not so important in the end, and anyway you will be there for Appell , you think to yourself, as indeed did I. Naturally, you do not stay in your bunk — no one is that infantile after all — but get up, properly, honorably, just like the rest, but then… you know of a place, an absolutely safe nook, you would stake a hundred to one on it. You had picked it out, spotted it, or it caught your eye yesterday or maybe even longer ago, quite by chance, without any plan or premeditation, doing no more than vaguely intimating it to yourself. Now it comes to mind. You might squeeze beneath the lowest boxes, for example. Or seek out that hundred-percent-sure crevice, hollow, niche, or nook, then cover yourself well with straw, litter, blankets. All the time with the thought continually in your head that you are going to attend Appell . Yes, there was a time, I tell you, when I understood that well, very well indeed. The bolder ones may even suppose that a single person will somehow pass unnoticed; there might be a miscount, for example — people are only human after all: a single shortfall, just today, just this morning, is not necessarily going to be conspicuous, and anyway, by the evening the numbers will add up, you’ll make sure of that; the even more reckless, that there is no way or means by which anyone will ever be able to find them in that safe place. But those who are really determined will not think even of that, as they simply consider — and there have been times when I too supposed the same — that an hour or so’s good sleep, in the end, is worth any risk, any price.

But then there is not much chance of them getting that much, for in the morning everything unrolls swiftly. Look! A search party is already forming up in great haste, the Lagerältester in black, freshly shaven, fragrant, with dashing moustache at its head, the German Kapo close behind, and behind him a couple of senior block inmates and Stubendiensts, with clubs, bludgeons, and hooked sticks all grasped at the ready, and they turn straight into Block 6. From inside a clamor, pandemonium, and just a couple of minutes later— listen to that! — the triumphant, strident jubilation of those who have found the trail. A sort of squeaking is mingled into that, ever feebler and eventually stilling altogether, and before long the hunters themselves emerge. That thing they are lugging along out of the tent — from here it looks by now like no more than a motionless pile of inanimate objects, a tangle of rags — is tossed down at the very end of the row and left lying there: I do my best not to look over. Yet a shattered detail, a contour, lineament, or distinctive feature that can be made out even so, would draw, compel me to look across, and I did indeed recognize it as the man who had bad luck. After which: “ Arbeitskommandos antreten! ”—and we can depend on it that the soldiers are going to be stricter today.

Finally, the third, the literal, and true mode of escape can also come into play, it seems; there was a single instance of this too in our camp, a one-off occasion. There were three escapees, all three Latvians, seasoned prisoners, well equipped with German and local knowledge, sure of themselves — that was the whispered rumor doing the rounds, and I can tell you that after the initial realization and secret glee — even, here and there, awe — at the expense of our guards and a nascent burst of enthusiasm as we contemplated emulating the example and weighed up the chances, we were also pretty incensed about them, every one of us, by that night, around two or three a.m., when we were still standing (though tottering would be the more accurate word for it) at Appell in punishment for their action. The evening of the next day, on marching back, I again had to do my best not to look over to the right. Three chairs were placed there, and on them were seated three men, or men of sorts. Precisely what kind of sight they may have presented, and what may have been inscribed in clumsy big letters on the paper sign hanging from their necks — I felt it simpler not to ask about all that (I got to know anyway, because it was a topic of conversation in the camp for a long time after: “ Hurrah! Ich bin wieder da! ”—or in other words, “Hooray, I’m back again today!”), apart from which I also saw another piece of gimcrackery, a stand which reminded me a bit of the carpet-beating racks in the courtyards of apartment blocks back home, on which there were three ropes tied in nooses — and thus, I realized, a gallows. Naturally, there could be no question of supper, but right away “ Appell! ” and then: “ Das ganze Lager: Ach tung!” [20] “Attention, everyone in the camp!” as the Lagerältester in person, up front, bellowed at the top of his lungs. The customary punishment squad assembled, then, after a further wait, the representatives of the military authorities made their appearance, after which everything went ahead in due form, if I may put it that way — fortunately, up front near the washroom, far from where we were, not that I watched anyway. My attention was drawn rather to my left, from where all at once came a sound, a muttering, some sort of song. In the row I saw a slightly tremulous head on a scraggy, forward-stretched neck — little more, in fact, than a nose and a huge, moist eye that, right at that moment, was somehow swimming in a crazy light: the rabbi. Soon I also picked out his words, particularly after others in the row had slowly taken them up from him — all the Finns, for instance, but many others as well. Indeed, though I don’t know what the mechanism was, it somehow passed across to nearby groups, the other blocks, spreading and gaining ground as it were, because there too I observed a growing number of lips in motion and shoulders, necks, and heads cautiously, almost imperceptibly, yet distinctly rocking back and forth. Meanwhile the muttering was just about audible here, in the center of the row, with a continual “Yitgaddal ve-yitkaddash” [21] “Magnified and sanctified [be his great Name…].” being sounded over and over again, like some murmur issuing from the ground below, and even I knew that this was the so-called “Kaddish,” the Jews’ prayer of mourning for the dead. It is quite possible that this too was sheer stubbornness, the final, sole, and perhaps, I could not help realizing, in some ways slightly forced, I might almost say prescribed and in a certain sense fixed, so to say imposed, and, at the same time, useless mode of stubbornness (for it altered nothing up at the front: apart from the last few twitches of the hanged men, nothing moved, nothing wavered at these words); yet all the same, I could not help somehow understanding the emotion in which the rabbi’s expression seemed almost to dissolve, and even his nostrils quivered so strangely. As if it was only now that the long-awaited moment were here, that moment of victory of whose coming he had spoken, I recollected, back in the brickyard. Indeed, for the very first time, I too was now seized, I don’t know why, by a certain sense of loss, even a touch of envy; for the first time, I now somewhat regretted that I was unable to pray, if only a few sentences, in the language of the Jews.