Imre Kertész - Fatelessness

There are some strange places in Buchenwald. It is possible to get to one of those neat, green barracks behind a barbed-wire fence that, to all intents and purposes, as a denizen of the Little Camp, you had hitherto only been able to admire from afar. Now, though, you find out that inside— that is to say, inside this one at least — is a corridor so suspiciously clean that it sparkles and glitters. Doors open off the corridor, real, proper, white-painted doors, behind one of which is a warm, bright room in which there is a bed already empty and made-up, as if it had been waiting for your personal arrival. On the bed is a crimson quilt. Your body sinks into a plumped-up straw mattress. Between these, a cool, white layer — no, you were not mistaken, as you may convince yourself: a layer of bedsheet, to be sure. Under the nape of your neck too you feel an unwonted, far from unpleasant pressure coming from a well-stuffed straw pillow, on it a white pillowcase. The Pfleger even double-folds the blanket in which he brought you and lays it by your feet, so it too, apparently, is at your disposal, in the event that you might possibly be dissatisfied with the room’s temperature. Then he sits down on the edge of your bed, some sort of card and a pencil in his hands, and asks you your name. “ Vier-und-sechzig, neun, ein-und-zwanzig ,” I told him. He writes that down but keeps on pushing, for it may take a while before you understand that he wants to know your name, “Name,” and then a further while, as indeed happened in my case, before, after some rooting around among your memories, you hit upon it. He made me repeat it three or even four times until he finally seemed to understand. He then showed me what he had written, and at the top of some sort of ruled fever chart I read: “ Kevisztjerz .” He asked if that was “ dobro yesz? — Gut? ” I replied “ Gut ,” at which he put the card on a table and left.

Well, since you clearly have time, you can take a look around you, inspect things, get your bearings a little. For example, you can establish — if it had not previously struck you — that there are others in the room. You only have to look at them to hazard the not particularly difficult guess that they too must all be sick. You may work out that this tint, this impression caressing your eyes, is actually the all-pervasive dark red color of some gleamingly lacquered material of the floorboards, and that even the quilts on each and every bed have been selected to be of that same shade. Numerically, there are roughly a dozen of them. All of them are single beds, and the only tiered bunk is this one here, on the floor-level of which I myself am lying, with a partition wall of white-painted laths on my right, along with its twin in front of me, by the partition wall across the way. You may be mystified by all the unused space, the big, comfortable gaps, a good yard wide, in the even line of beds, and marvel at the luxury should you happen to notice that, here and there, the odd one is actually empty. You can discover a very neat window, split into lots of small squares, that provides the light, and on your pillowcase you may catch sight of a light brown seal in the form of a hook-beaked eagle, the “Waffen SS” lettering of which you will doubtless discern later on. Little point in trying to scan the faces, though, in search of a sign, some manifestation, of the event of your arrival, which after all, you might suppose, might surely count to some degree as a novelty, to see in them some interest, disappointment, jubilation, annoyance, anything at all, even a cursory flash of curiosity; yet the hush is unquestionably the strangest of all the impressions you will be able to experience, should you somehow chance to be washed up here, becoming all the more uncomfortable, all the more disconcerting, and in some respects, I would say, all the more puzzling the longer it lasts. Within the square of free space enclosed by the beds, you may also spy a smaller, white-covered table, then over by the wall opposite a larger one with a few backed chairs around it, and by the door a big, highly wrought, steadily crackling iron stove, with a glittering-black full coal scuttle beside it.

Then you may well begin to scratch your head as to what, in fact, you are to make of all this, this room, this joke with the quilt, the beds, the stillness. One thing or another may cross your mind; you may attempt to remember, deduce, have recourse to your experience, pick and choose. It could be, you may meditate as I did, that this too may perhaps be one of those places that we heard about in Auschwitz where those being cared for are well looked after with milk and butter until finally, for instance, they have all their internal organs extracted, one by one, for instruction, for the benefit of science. But then, you have to concede, that is no more than one hypothesis of course, one among many other possibilities; besides which, anyway I had seen no trace of milk, let alone butter. Come to think of it, it occurred to me, over there it would long ago have been soup time by now, whereas here I had not detected any sign, sound, or smell at all of even that. Still, I was struck by a thought, a somewhat dubious thought perhaps, but then who would be in a position to judge what is possible and credible, who could exhaust, indeed even sift through, all the innumerable multitude of notions, escapades, games, tricks, and plausible considerations that, were you to summon up your entire knowledge, might be set in motion, implemented, effortlessly converted from a world of the imagination into reality in a concentration camp. Suppose, then, I deliberated, that one is brought into a room exactly like this one, for example. They lie you down, let’s say, in a bed with an eiderdown exactly like this. They nurse you, take care of you, do everything to please you — all except for not giving you anything to eat, let’s say. It could even be, if you prefer, that the manner in which you starve to death might be observed, for instance; after all, no doubt there is something of interest in that in its own right, maybe even a higher-minded benefit — why not? I had to concede. Whichever angle I viewed it from, the notion seemed all the more viable and useful, and therefore must plainly have already occurred to someone of greater competence than me, I reckoned. I turned my scrutiny to my neighbor, the patient about a yard or so away to the left. He was a trifle elderly, his pate rather bald, and he had managed to preserve some of the features of a former face, even a bit of flesh here and there. Despite that, I noticed his ears had suspiciously begun to take on something of the appearance of the waxy leaves of artificial flowers, and I was only too familiar with that jaundiced tint of the nose tip and the areas around the eyes. He was flat on his back, his quilt rising and falling feebly; he seemed to be asleep. Notwithstanding that, by way of a trial, I whispered over to ask whether he spoke any Hungarian. Nothing: he did not appear to understand or even hear anything. I had already turned away and was about to carry on spinning my thoughts when my ears suddenly caught a whispered but clearly comprehensible “ Igen … yes.” It was him, no doubt about that, although he had neither opened his eyes nor shifted position. For my part, I was so oddly cheered, I have no idea why, that for a few minutes I completely forgot what it was I had wanted from him. I asked, “Where are you from?”—to which he replied, after another seemingly endless pause: “Budapest.” “When?” I inquired and, after further patience, learned “In November…” Only then did I finally ask, “Does one get anything to eat round here?” His answer to that, again only after the requisite period had elapsed that it seems he needed, for whatever reason, was, “No…” I was about to ask…