Imre Kertész: Detective Story

Turning the page:

The idea of suicide surfaces, regular as clockwork, as the evening draws in. That is when it is the most alluring. As the sun goes down, a woman’s seductive power, and like some tropical sap it gets under my skin, softens up my muscles, loosens the innards, draws my head toward my guts, thaws the bones, fills me with a sickly-sweet disgust, to give in to which is a nauseating pleasure. One thing I can direct against it is my uneasy love for my mother.

Then too the lack of means. Father’s revolver: but he keeps that in the safe. I let slip the chance to acquire one of my own; of late it has become fairly difficult. Yet that’s the most advantageous on account of its practicality, its cleanness, and the unutterably simple blast, after which I imagine there would be a profound stillness, then nothing more. Everything else involves work and fuss. Hanging: having to choose a rope and a good place on the ceiling, then tying the noose and trying it out — not to speak of having to kick the chair away from under one! Then the cracking — and here I can’t shrug off the spectacle, the inevitable lack of consideration that I would be showing to those I love. My poor mother! … Or jumping out onto the Grand Boulevard. But then the fall, the time it would take before hitting the ground, the sight of the asphalt rushing up to my eyes with a single jolt, and then the scream! Drugs sicken me.

Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long.

Turning the page:

Under certain circumstances suicide is not acceptable. It shows a lack of respect for the wretched, so to say.

Is that so? Something about these lines, I must admit, always brings a prickle to my eyes. Enrique was still young, very young. He had to have a reason for everything, even for living. That type is still a child, not yet a fully grown man. All the same, on account of lines like that I felt it was intolerable that Enrique’s diary should lie moldering in some archive. Even now it is a solace to me that I purchased it.

Turning the page:

I’ve had a bellyful of my life. Break with this inaction, emerge from the stillness! … Yes, muteness is truth; but a truth that is mute, and the ones who speak will be right.

I have to speak. More: to act. To make an attempt at leading a life that I shall try to make worth the trouble of living it.

Turning the page:

The accident yesterday: before my eyes a white automobile slammed into a motorbike rider. The shriek. The female pillion passenger was laid out by the curb. People stood around. Her blood slowly puddled on the roadway.

This morning the lame woman who sells newspapers … She has a daughter, a delightful child, quite clearly the newspaper woman’s only hope in life. She spends more than she can afford on clothing her, showers her with sweets. This morning the little girl ran away from her and came to a stop farther off in the traffic. The mother called, in vain: the girl teased her from afar, thumbing her nose, pulling faces. The lame newspaper woman kept coaxing her: “Come here, my child, there’s a nice girl. Eat your chocolate!” Finally the child sidled up to her. As soon as she was within reach, the newspaper woman grabbed her and started hitting her — with the tenacity of the wretched and the mercilessness of those who have had their hopes made a mockery of.

I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!

Leafing on:

I met R. in the street.

Leafing on:

I had a chat with R. A possible friendship? Odd that at university we hardly noticed each other.

Leafing on:

R. came over. He confessed that at the university he hated me, taking me for a rich and carefree playboy. We had a good laugh. R. is poor. He has been attending university on a scholarship and has to work during the vacations. We then both spoke our minds. He thinks the same way about it all as me, but his bitterness is even more extreme — maybe even a touch too much. But then that is understandable, as he is making a bigger sacrifice to study, and now everything seems to be in vain. He admitted that he is very scared. He is constantly haunted by that feeling, yet he is ready for anything. It’s curious: I’m not afraid, yet I am cautious all the same. He says he must do something: true, it may not free him from his fear, but it would tie him to something for good. I asked him if he was planning anything, or maybe was already working for certain somebodies. (The stupid expressions that one finds oneself getting into!) He did not give a definite answer but smiled ambiguously. He too does not trust me. It rankled me.

R. was not much to Mother’s liking, incidentally. I asked her why. “He has strange eyes,” she said. What kind of reason is that! I had a good laugh and kissed her.

Leafing on:

R. came by. I told him that I might possibly be game to take part in something that made sense. He promised nothing. All the same, I somehow felt relieved to have finally broken my oppressive silence and caution. Now at least someone knows about me: I am no longer so much on my own. I must win his confidence. I am sure he is up to something.

I shall stop for now. I’m closing the diary. I’m sitting and musing — musing about Enrique, that child who was so thirsty for life, action, friendship, and love.

And I’m musing about R., in whom he sensed an unexpected possibility of friendship.

By then we were already well acquainted with R. He was Ramón; Maria’s remark precluded any other possibility. It was Ramón, yes: Ramón G., also known as Steeleyes.

How should I characterize him? Imagine, if you will, a leech, but a leech that is capable of ardor — and there you have Ramón. He was always sucking someone’s blood, tenaciously, persistently, devotedly. He had a special talent for making people talk. Damned if I know how he did it. But anyone he sank his sucker into started speaking almost immediately, as if some kind of serum had been inoculated into their body, along with his saliva. Guys like him seem to have one ploy: they somehow manage to arouse a person’s interest — then they immediately clam up. From then on they just keep quiet. Oh, and they always have time, of course. Those types look like lost souls who can be saved only by the victims, with their small talk and their advice, often with their money and, sometimes, their body. In regard to the latter, as far as Ramón was concerned it was just about the same to him whether it was a woman or a man. Indeed, he had a particular partiality for both at once, though it would be wrong to say that he insisted on that at any price. Ramón was modest and always had a feel for opportunities. When he had got his fill of someone’s blood, he would detach himself from that person and attach himself to another. At these times, however, he would recall the savor of all his previous prey, and the new victim would nearly always be delighted to learn that Ramón’s circle of acquaintances — which in each and every case would partly overlap with theirs — consisted of cretins, moral deadbeats, or contemptible lowlifes. Then the victims would gush words to present the opposite picture of themselves. Ramón would keep quiet. He encouraged them with his silence, egged them on with his understanding, tickled them with his humility or his admiration, set them on a pedestal above himself through his own abasement. And he would observe this victim, fixing his stern, totally reflective, lifeless, and slightly crazed eyes with greedy attentiveness on his victim, while his mind meanwhile was already working on the next.

Ramón was a good-looking young man, tall, gaunt, with dark hair, who looked good in the casual sportswear in which he was usually clothed.