Imre Kertész: Fatelessness

I had to accompany him over to the room on the courtyard side. There we prayed, surrounded by a few shabby pieces of furniture that were no longer in use. Uncle Lajos first placed a little, round black cap with a silky sheen on the back of his head at the spot where his thinning gray hair formed a tiny bald patch. I too had to bring along my cap from the hall. Next he produced a black-bound, red-bordered little book from the inner pocket of his jacket and his spectacles from the breast pocket. He then launched into reading out the prayer, while I had to repeat after him the same portion of text he had preceded me with. It went well at first, but I soon began to flag in the effort, and besides, I was a bit put out by not understanding a single word of what we were saying to God, since I had to recite to Him in Hebrew, a language unknown to me. In order somehow to be able to keep up, I was therefore increasingly obliged to watch Uncle Lajos’s lip movements, so in actual fact out of the whole business all that remained with me of what we mumbled was the sight of those moistly wriggling, fleshy lips and the incomprehensible gabble of a foreign tongue. Oh, and a scene that I could see through the window, over Uncle Lajos’s shoulder: right at that moment the older sister from upstairs scurried home along the outside corridor, on the far side of the courtyard, a floor above ours. I think I got a bit mixed up over the text as well. Still, when the prayer had come to an end Uncle Lajos seemed to be pleased, and the expression on his face was such that even I was almost convinced we had really accomplished something in Father’s cause. When it comes down to it, of course, this was certainly better than it had been before with the weight of that nagging sensation.

We returned to the room on the street side. Evening had drawn in. We closed the windows, with the blackout paper stuck over the panes, on the indigo-hued, humid spring evening. That entirely confined us within the room. The hubbub was by now tiring, and the cigarette smoke also started to sting my eyes. I was driven to yawning a lot. My stepmother’s mama set the table. She had brought our supper herself, in her capacious handbag. She had even managed to procure some meat on the black market. She had made a point of relating that earlier, on arrival. My father even promptly paid for it from his leather wallet. We were already eating when, without warning, Uncle Steiner and Uncle Fleischmann also dropped by. They too wanted to take leave of Father. Uncle Steiner launched right away into a “don’t anyone mind us.” He said: “I’m Steiner. Please, don’t get up.” As ever, he was in fraying slippers, his rounded paunch poking out from under his unbuttoned waistcoat, the perennial stub of a foul-smelling cigar in his mouth. He had a big, ruddy head, the childlike parting of the hair giving him a distinctly odd impression. Uncle Fleischmann was utterly unnoticeable beside him, being a diminutive man of immaculate appearance, with white hair, ashen skin, owlish spectacles, and a perpetual slightly worried air on his face. He bowed mutely at Uncle Steiner’s side, wringing his hands as if in apology for Uncle Steiner, or so it seemed, though I’m not sure about that. The two old codgers are inseparable, even though they are forever bickering, because there is no topic on which they can agree. They shook hands in turn with my father. Uncle Steiner even patted him on the back, calling him “Old boy,” and then going on to crack his old quip: “Chin down! Don’t lose our disheartenment!” He also said — and even Uncle Fleischmann nodded furiously along with this — that they would continue to look out for me and the “young lady” (as he called my stepmother). He blinked his button eyes, then pulled my father to his paunch and embraced him. After they had gone everything was drowned by the clatter of cutlery, the hum of conversation, and the fumes of the food and the thick tobacco smoke. By now all that got through to me, separating themselves out from the surrounding fog as it were, were disconnected scraps of some face or gesture, especially the tremulous, bony, yellow head of my stepmother’s mama as she served each plate; the two palms of Uncle Lajos’s hands raised in protest as he refused the meat, since it was pork and his faith forbade it; the pudgy cheeks, lively jaw, and moist eyes of my stepmother’s older sister; then Uncle Willie’s bald cranium unexpectedly looming pinkish in the cone of the light’s rays, and fragments of his latest blithe anatomization; on top of which, I also recollect Uncle Lajos’s solemn words, received in dead silence, in which he invoked God’s assistance in the matter of “our being able, before long, to gather together again at the family table, each and every one of us, in peace and love and good health.” I barely saw anything of my father, and all that I made out of my stepmother was that a great deal of attention and consideration were being paid toward her— almost more than toward my father — and that at one point she complained of a headache, so several of them pressed her as to whether she would like a tablet or a compress, but she didn’t want either. Then again, every now and then, I couldn’t help noticing my grandmother and how much she got in the way, how she had to be guided back to the sofa time and time again, her umpteen complaints, and her blind eyes, which through the thick, steamed-up, tear-smudged lenses of her glasses looked just like two peculiar, perspiring insects. A moment came when everyone got up from the table. The final farewells ensued. My grandmother and grandfather left separately though, somewhat before my stepmother’s family. What stayed with me as maybe the strangest experience of that entire evening was Grandfather’s sole act to draw attention to himself when he pressed his tiny, sharply defined bird’s head for no more than an instant, but really fiercely, almost crazily, to the breast of my father’s jacket. His entire body was racked by a spasm. He then hastened quickly to the door, leading my grandmother by the elbow. Everyone parted to let them through. After that I too was embraced by several people and felt the sticky marks of lips on my face. Finally, there was a sudden hush after all of them left.

Then it was time for me too to say good-bye to Father. Or maybe more for him to say good-bye to me. Hard to say. I don’t even clearly remember the circumstances; my father must have gone outside with the guests, because for a while I was left on my own at the table, covered as it was with the remains of the supper, and I only came to with a start on Father’s return. He was alone. He wanted to say good-bye. There won’t be time for that at dawn tomorrow, as he put it. He too recited much the same sorts of things about my responsibility and my growing up as I had already heard before that afternoon from Uncle Lajos, only without God and not so nicely phrased, and much more briefly. He also mentioned my mother, suggesting that she might try now “to lure me away from home to herself.” I could see that notion troubled him greatly. The two of them had battled for a long time over my custody until the court eventually ruled in my father’s favor, so I found it quite understandable that he would not wish to lose his rights in regard to me now merely as a result of his unfortunate situation. Still, he appealed to my judgment, rather than the law, and to the difference between my stepmother, who had “created a cozy family home” for me, and my mother, who had “deserted” me. I started to prick up my ears at this, because on that particular detail I had heard a different story from my mother: according to her, Father had been at fault. That is why she had felt driven to choose another husband, Uncle “Dini” (or Dénes, to be more correct), who had incidentally gone off just last week, likewise to labor camp. In truth, though, I had never managed to figure out anything more precise, and even this time my father immediately reverted to my stepmother, remarking that I had her to thank for getting out of the boarding school, and that my place “is here, by her side.” He said a lot more about her, and by now I had a shrewd idea why my stepmother was not present for these words: they would no doubt have embarrassed her. They began to be a bit wearisome for me, however. I no longer remember now what I promised Father. The next thing was that, all at once, I found myself enfolded between his arms, his hug catching me off guard and somehow unprepared after all he had said. I don’t know if my tears stemmed from that or simply from exhaustion, or maybe even because, ever since the first exhortation that I had received that morning from my stepmother, I had somehow been preparing all along to shed them unfailingly; whatever the reason, it was nevertheless good that this was indeed what happened, and I sensed that it also gratified Father to see them. After that he sent me off to bed. By then I was dead tired anyway. All the same, I thought, at least we were able to send him off to the labor camp, poor man, with memories of a nice day.