Imre Kertész: Detective Story

Well, you make head or tail of that. We tried. We put it together, took it apart, then pieced it together again and worked our way through it afresh.

Question: From whom did Enrique get the envelopes? Figueras didn’t know, and frankly neither did we, even though we were watching every step Enrique made.

Furthermore: Why didn’t Enrique simply hand the envelopes over to his father himself? We had only one possible explanation: Enrique was not supposed to see his father’s role — or maybe even his involvement — in the network, and he was not supposed to know that the envelopes were going to him. If that were so, then perhaps Federigo Salinas was pulling all the strings in the background and we had stumbled on one of the Uprising’s top men, if not its clandestine leader. Rodriguez, for one, was quite sure of this possibility. The work excited him; his leopard eyes smoldered and kept coming to rest on the statuette that adorned his desk.

You can’t do a good job without method, however. We had to crack the first question above all.

The answer to that, though, could only come from Enrique.

“Enrique Salinas,” said Diaz. “You, Martens, will make the arrest. But not at his home. Grab him anywhere else. And don’t make a fuss about it.”

Well, I didn’t. I snatched him on the street with my men the next day, around eleven o’clock, when he was on his way back from B. We waited for him to park his car in the garage, then take the elevator to his apartment. Obviously, he would have let his mother know he was back; a bit later he popped down to the street for something. We simply bundled him into the limousine in the traffic. We have specialists for that. By the time he realized what was happening, he was sitting between us, one wrist handcuffed to me, the other to my man.

“What do you want? Who are you?” he asked.

We kept quiet, as is our practice.

“The police? The Corps?” he had another go, then he shut up. He held his peace when we got out and led him across the Headquarters’ forbidding inner courtyards, and he held his peace as we took him down the long series of corridors where detainees were pressing hands and foreheads to the walls, with alert guards at their backs. That was our practice. That too was part of preparing the ground.

He held his peace above all when Diaz set about questioning him. Diaz was gentle with him, and I don’t mean with that diabolical meekness of his — he was unusually gentle. On this occasion he personally took over the interrogation, and he did not want there to be any fanfare.

“We have a few questions for you. We are proceeding on the assumption that you personally are innocent. If you give us satisfactory answers, you can go home afterward,” said Diaz.

Enrique, however, did not answer a single question. I knew that he must be quaking inwardly, he had to be, but his expression remained set, like a clenched fist. And he held his peace, resolutely held his peace.

“Listen,” Diaz asked him, “you do appreciate where you are, don’t you? We don’t make a habit of pussyfooting around. We can conduct this conversation in a very different way.”

Enrique, however, held his peace. He stubbornly held his peace, with stupid determination. Rodriguez and I just sat there, condemned to inactivity. At that time I didn’t understand what Diaz was up to, didn’t understand him at all. Could he have miscalculated, just this once? Had he perhaps applied the wrong technique?

Now I am less inclined to think so. Now I can see more clearly what sort of stakes Diaz was playing for. But well, I was still a new boy, as I have said, and I didn’t yet have a view of what went on behind the scenes; I was taken in by what happened before my eyes. Now I am not so sure that Diaz really wanted Enrique to talk. If he had really wanted it so much, then he would not have proceeded on the assumption that Enrique was innocent. Or at least he would not have said that to his face. He was too good a detective to do that, was Diaz, far too good.

“Well?” he inquired mildly, facing Enrique, one buttock perched on the desk, as per habit.

Enrique, however, held his peace. After waiting a bit, Diaz leaned forward. In fact he was mild-mannered even now, mild-mannered and patient. Only I could truly see how much he was. Enrique most likely could have had no conception at all; most likely all he sensed was that his nose had started to bleed.

“Well?” Diaz asked.

And then a strange thing happened. As Diaz was leaning toward him, Enrique spat a huge gob of phlegm in his face. A strange thing, that was. And not just strange: dilettante, I would have to say. Yes, that’s what I would have to say. No one spits in Diaz’s face. Not that Diaz doesn’t give people a thousand reasons to do so; it’s just that it’s both futile and risky, and one doesn’t run risks for something futile. It takes a profound bitterness, at the very least, or a profound ignorance. Whichever the case, no one who has any interest in living, real living, spits in Diaz’s face. During my career nothing like that ever happened again.

To be brief, an uneasy foreboding for Enrique sprang up that was subsequently never to leave me. He alarmed me because all of a sudden I sensed that he was innocent. He was innocent, and his innocence was intransigent, like a virginity that has been violated. It was a lousy feeling, made all the lousier by the fact that I had no one to speak to about it.

I noticed that it was also bothering Diaz. Not that Diaz said anything; he slipped off the desk and absentmindedly mopped his face. He then strode up and down the room a few times, hands clasped behind his back. As I have said, that was his habit when he was thinking. He harrumphed a few times. He finally came to a standstill behind Enrique and placed a hand on his head.

“What a big meathead you are, dear boy,” he said. “A very big meathead.” At this point, Rodriguez, whose impatient fingers had been fiddling with his model the whole time, finally got up from his place.

Minutes passed, long minutes, and then he brought him back from next door. I was looking at Diaz. It’s interesting that this time Diaz did not perch on the desk. Diaz was looking sideways at something, I don’t know what.

“Well?” he asked.

But Enrique gave no answer. He couldn’t. He was asleep, or whatever.

Then Diaz looked at him.

“Meathead!” he said to Rodriguez. “What in God’s name did you do to the kid!”

So that was how it stood. We could not expect a statement from Enrique anytime soon — certainly not without hospital treatment. Diaz had made no allowance for this possibility. Or so it seemed. Now I would not care to take an oath on that. At the time, though, being a new boy, I was still taken in by what happened before my eyes, as I said. Diaz knew his men, and he knew very well what he wanted. It would have been hard for anyone to surprise him, although that didn’t occur to me at the time.

He did not reproach Rodriguez for what he had done. Diaz wasn’t one for idle words. He was a man of hard facts, and what had happened was now a fact. He had to keep moving ahead, always ahead. There was truth in Diaz’s logic, yes: our line of work is like that. Once you’ve started, the only way back is to go forward.

“Salinas ought to be brought in,” said Rodriguez.

“Right.” Diaz nodded.

“Should I bring him in?” Rodriguez offered.

“No,” Diaz gestured.

As the two of them were speaking, they took no notice of me. I just sat and listened. My head was aching, aching horribly. Maybe it showed.

“He’ll skip town,” Rodriguez worried.

“Where to?” Diaz riposted.

“How should I know! That sort always has somewhere!” Rodriguez fretted. “Give me the slip at the very last moment, the rotten bourgeois.”