Imre Kertész: Fatelessness

That left nothing for my stepmother’s sister to do, however. She is a lot older than my stepmother and doesn’t look like a sibling at all: diminutive, plump, and with a face like an astonished doll. She prattled on endlessly, sobbed, and hugged everyone. I had trouble freeing myself from her springy, powder-scented bosom. When she sat down, all the flesh on her body flopped onto her stumpy thighs. And not to forget my grandpa, he remained standing beside my grandma’s sofa, listening to her grumbles with a patient, impassive expression on his face. To begin with, she was in tears on account of my father, but then after a while her own troubles started to displace that worry to the back of her mind. Her head ached, and she moaned about the rushing and roaring that her high blood pressure produced in her ears. Grandpa was well used to this by now; he didn’t even bother to respond, but neither did he budge from her side throughout. I didn’t hear him speak so much as once, yet whenever I glanced that way I would always see him there, in the same corner, which gradually lapsed into gloom as the afternoon wore on, until just a patch of subdued, yellowish light filtered through onto his bare forehead and the curve of his nose, while the pits of his eyes and the lower part of his face were sunk in shadow. Only from a tiny glint in the eyes could one tell that he was nonetheless following, unnoticed, everything that moved in the room.

On top of that, one of my stepmother’s cousins also came by with her husband. I addressed him as Uncle Willie, since that is his name. He has a slight limp, for which he wears a shoe with a built-up sole on one foot; on the other hand, he has this to thank for the privilege of not having to go off to a labor camp. His head is pear-shaped, broad, bulging, and bald on top, but narrowing at the cheeks and toward the chin. His views are listened to with respect in the family because before setting up a betting shop he had been in journalism. True to form, he at once wanted to pass on some interesting pieces of news that he had learned “from a confidential source” that he characterized as “absolutely reliable.” He seated himself in an armchair, his gammy leg stretched stiffly out in front, and, rubbing his hands together with a dry rasp, informed us that before long “a decisive shift in our position is to be anticipated,” since “secret negotiations” over us had been entered into “between the Germans and the Allied powers, through neutral intermediaries.” The way Uncle Willie explained it, even the Germans “had by now come to recognize that their position on the battlefronts is hopeless.” He was of the opinion that we, “the Jews of Budapest,” were “coming in handy” for them in their efforts “to wring advantages, at our expense, out of the Allies,” who of course would do all they could for us; at which point he mentioned what he regarded as “an important factor,” which he was familiar with from his days as a journalist, and that was what he referred to as “world opinion,” the way he put it being that the latter had been “shocked” by what was happening to us. It was a hard bargain, of course, he went on, and that is precisely what explained the current severity of measures against us; but then these were merely natural consequences of “the bigger game, in which we are actually pawns in an international blackmailing gambit of breath-taking scale”; he also said, however, that, being well aware of “what goes on behind the scenes,” he looked on all this as essentially no more than “a spectacular bluff ” that was designed to drive the price higher, and he asked us to be just a bit patient while “events unfold.” Whereupon Father asked him if any of this might be expected by tomorrow, or was he also to regard his own call-up as “mere bluff,” indeed, should he maybe not even bother going off to the labor camp tomorrow. That rattled Uncle Willie a bit. “Ahem, no, of course not,” he answered. But he did say that he was quite confident my father would soon be back home. “We are now at the twelfth hour,” was how he put it, rubbing his hands all the more. To that he also added, “If I had ever been so sure about any of my tips as I am about this one, I wouldn’t be stone broke now!” He was about to continue but my stepmother and her mama had just finished with the knapsack, and my father got up from his seat to test its weight.

The last person to arrive was my stepmother’s oldest brother, Uncle Lajos. He fulfills some terribly important function in our family, though I’d be hard put to define exactly what that was. He immediately wanted to talk in private with my father. From what I could observe, that irked my father, and though phrasing it very tactfully, he suggested they get it over with quickly. Uncle Lajos then unexpectedly drew me into service. He said he would like “a little word” with me. He hauled me off to a secluded corner of the room and pinned me up against a cupboard, face-to-face with him. He started off by saying that, as I knew, my father would “be leaving us” tomorrow. I said I knew that. Next he wanted to know whether I was going to miss his being here. Though a bit annoyed by the question, I answered, “Naturally.” Feeling this was in some way not quite enough, I immediately supplemented it with, “A lot.” With that he merely nodded profusely for a while, a pained expression on his face.

Next, though, I learned a couple of intriguing and surprising things from him. For instance, that the time of my life that he said was “the happy, carefree years of childhood” had now drawn to a close for me with today’s sadness. No doubt I had not yet considered it like that, he said. I admitted that I hadn’t. All the same, he carried on, no doubt his words did not come as any great surprise to me. They didn’t, I said. He then brought to my attention that with my father’s departure my stepmother would be left without support, and although the family “would keep an eye on us,” from now on I was going to be her mainstay. To be sure, he said, I would be discovering all too soon “what worry and self-denial are.” It was obvious that from now on my lot could not go on as well as it had up till now, and he did not wish to make any secret about that, as he was talking to me “man-to-man.” “You too,” he said, “are now a part of the shared Jewish fate,” and he then went on to elaborate on that, remarking that this fate was one of “unbroken persecution that has lasted for millennia,” which the Jews “have to accept with fortitude and self-sacrificing forbearance,” since God has meted it out to them for their past sins, so for that very reason from Him alone could mercy be expected, but until then He in turn expects of us that, in this grave situation, we all stand our ground on the place He has marked out for us “in accordance with our strengths and abilities.” I, for instance, I was informed, would have to hold my own as head of the family in the future. He inquired whether I sensed the strength and readiness within myself to do that. Though I did not quite follow the train of thought that had led up to this, particularly what he said about the Jews, their sins, and their God, I still grasped somehow what he was driving at. So I said, “Yes.” He seemed contented. Good lad, he said. He always knew I was a clever boy, endowed with “profound feelings and a deep sense of responsibility,” which in the midst of so many afflictions, to some degree, represented a solace for him, as was clear from what he had said. Grasping my chin with his fingers, the uppers of which were covered in tufts of hair and the undersides slightly moist with sweat, he now tipped my face upward, and in a quiet, slightly trembling voice said the following: “Your father is preparing to set off on a long journey. Have you prayed for him?” There was a hint of severity in his gaze, and it may have been this that awakened in me a keen sense of negligence toward my father, because, to be sure, I would never have thought of that of my own accord. Now that he had aroused it within me, however, I suddenly began to feel it as a burden, like some kind of debt, and in order to free myself of that I confessed, “No, I haven’t.” “Come with me,” he said.