Imre Kertész: Detective Story

“Provided we stay outside both circles,” she said, as if intoning it.

“That’s right.” He nodded staunchly. “That of the persecutors and that of the persecuted.”

“Is it that simple, Federigo?” she inquired. The query was unexpected and was not in keeping with the rules of the game. Salinas shot a quick, suspicious glance at his wife. He had to think.

“No,” came the cautious reply. “Obviously, the circles are expanding all the time.”

“Like the eddies of a whirlpool,” she said.

“If you like,” he gracefully conceded. He waited. Nothing happened. Maria contented herself with the simile. Salinas could relax. “It’s all a matter of timing,” he remarked.

“And the pace of events,” she said.

“Naturally.” He nodded. They had again sorted out their differences. That was how they played the game nowadays, every evening: a delicate game it was, requiring them to heed the rules.

“I’m suffocating!” Maria said unexpectedly.

“No, just choking,” Salinas comforted her. “As am I, as is everybody.” He suddenly became nervous, this time genuinely nervous. “Don’t look at your watch,” he entreated his wife. “He’ll be back home.”

They then fell silent. Each sank into an armchair. Salinas blew fragrant smoke rings. He stretched out his long, muscular legs, his black patent-leather shoes gleaming in the twilight. He undid the buttons of his impeccable suit jacket and loosened his fashionable necktie.

Maria was sitting with a straight back, hands resting in her lap.

They waited. They were waiting for Enrique, both of them — for the Enrique whom we had already entered into our records and for whom they were anxiously longing as for their destiny.

…

Enrique’s diary lies before me. I am leafing through it. I have long ago cracked his in-places-indecipherable lines; I’m familiar with their content. The diary was confiscated in the course of a house search, and I purchased it after Enrique’s death. I have brought it with me even in here. No particular difficulties were raised; I told them I would like to write my memoirs, and I needed the note-book for that. They went through it, as is only proper, but then handed it over. I have it really soft in here, I can’t complain. There’s no two ways about it: with us, requests like that were unlikely to have been honored, as the wiseguys who make the rules are in the habit of phrasing it. I told them that it was my diary, and in a sense I wasn’t lying: after all, I had bought it.

It’s good that I have it with me. It was smart of me to buy it. Even now I don’t know what on earth possessed me to do that. I acquired it simply because I felt it couldn’t possibly end up anywhere else; it had to be with me. So I purchased it from the head of our confidential archives, who handles deposited documents of this sort. I readily came to an understanding with him, because I knew his weakness, and it so happened I could be of assistance to him in the matter. In the matter of certain top-notch brands of liquor. At the time shortages had sprung up as a result of humdrum disputes about reciprocal customs tariffs and foreign-exchange considerations — no doubt you all recall those dry months. He didn’t want a lot: I would have been willing to put up even five times as much for Enrique’s diary. Fortunately, he wasn’t to know that. He then did the necessary paperwork.

Surprised, are you? Why? I can tell much stranger tales than that one. If I were to get going, there’d be no end to them — all manner of things happened in our setup. After all, the people working for the Corps are only human. People everywhere are only human, and of all sorts, what is more.

Enrique began keeping the diary when the university was closed. After Victory Day, in other words. Opening it at random:

To give an account of my days is impossible. To give an account of my plans: I have none. To give an account of my life: I’m not living.

They have smashed my hopes, smashed my future, smashed everything, the scum!

Leafing further on:

I exist. Is this a life still? No, just vegetating. It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence.

That, I have to confess, is a little over my head. I know nothing about philosophy. It may sound odd, but sometimes I have the same trouble with Enrique as I do with Diaz: I can’t follow him. He too gave me a headache — a different sort of headache, of course, utterly different.

I turn the page:

Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.

I took a stroll in the city. It was infernally hot. The usual evening hubbub around me. Lovers on the pavements, hurrying to cinemas and other places of amusement as if nothing had happened, nothing. Living their nonexistent lives. Or do they exist, and it’s me who doesn’t? Every other guy in the street seemed to have lost something. There are these police types everywhere, eavesdropping, sniffing around, and they think nobody is paying any attention to them. They’re right too: people don’t pay them any attention. All it has taken is a few months, and already they have grown accustomed to them.

I dropped in on a café, flopped down on the terrace. I was boiling with anger, the heat, and impotence. A packed terrace, a waxwork gallery of the petty bourgeoisie. People chattering on about business, fashion, and entertainment. One woman was cackling interminably in a shrill voice. The perfumes of the ladies mingled with the soft, glutinous smell of bloated, greasy bodies. To my right was a swarthy fellow, his oily, short-cropped black hair combed back in the American style, his chubby cheeks swollen at the base of the ears as if he had mumps, and he was wearing black-rimmed spectacles. His lips were continually in motion and smacking, as if he were talking to himself or sucking a sweet. But then I noticed that he was trying to achieve a compromise, a modus vivendi, with an oversize set of dentures. He had his wife with him, a faded beauty. They were joined later on by a bald guy, likewise with his wife, and a drab young man who was evidently Baldy’s son. I shamelessly eavesdropped. The son considered it timely to remark that it had been a hot day, to which False Teeth responded: “Never mind what it was like. The main thing is we’ve got through it.” Then he unexpectedly declared: “In any case, we all check out six feet under.” I jerked up my head in astonishment: could he possibly be aware of where he was living? But no, I satisfied myself that it was only the choppers that had made him such a skeptic. The lower and upper rows of teeth were like two camel’s hooves (though come to think of it, camels don’t have hooves) that had been crammed into his mouth in an absurd and mad fit, and now he had to go around with them forever, out of some sense of obstinacy and grim determination. His wife, the faded beauty, babbled on incessantly in an effortlessly prissy voice. She joyfully reported that a new consignment was in, and listed all the things that could now be obtained at the market. Baldy’s wife also chimed in, then Baldy himself. They agreed that life was getting better as the consolidation was taking hold. They were pleased to establish that distinct signs of life were detectable in the business sphere. Conditions were improving — that was Baldy’s view. A mood of optimism sprang up. They ordered another round of refreshers. With the greatest of pleasure I would have tossed a bomb among them.

Turning the page:

It’s not been possible to talk to the guys since the university was closed on account of the ructions. I know they’re up to something, though; I know they meet somewhere. I went out to the beach on the Blue Coast. There they were; I knew it. I tried to speak with C., but he laughed it off. He said they had come out to have a swim. They don’t trust me. It’s all because of my father, simply because I’m his son and I happened to be born into his fortune. Excluded from everywhere. How humiliating!