Fiasco

Dismissal

Köves awoke to a sound of ringing, or to be more specific, to having to open the door: it seemed that the impatient ringing, which kept on repeating, at times for protracted periods, at times in fitful bursts, must have pulled him out of bed before he had truly woken up, otherwise he would hardly have gone to open the door, given that there was no reason for anyone to be looking for him there.

He was mistaken, though: at the door stood a postman who happened to be looking for ‘a certain Köves.”

“That’s me,” Köves said, astonished.

“There’s a registered letter for you,” said the postman, and in his voice Köves picked out a slight hint of reproof, as if receiving registered mail in this place was not exactly one of the most commendable affairs, though it could have been that it was just the postman’s way of taking him to task for the repeated futile ringing on the bell. “Sign for it here.” He held out a ledger in front of Köves, obviously a delivery receipt book, and Köves was about to reach into his inside pocket when he became conscious of how he was standing there, in front of the postman: probably tousled, his face rumpled from sleep, in someone else’s pyjamas — anyone might think he had idled away the morning, though that was his intention, of course.

“I’ll get a pen right away,” he muttered disconcertedly, but the postman — without uttering a word, as if he were only doing what he had been counting on from the outset — was already offering his own ready-to-hand pencil as if, merely for the sake of making his point, in the end he had delayed doing so up till now in order to make Köves feel ashamed.

In his room, Köves immediately opened the letter: it informed him that the editorial office of the newspaper on which he had been functioning up to that point as a journalist was hereby giving him notice of dismissal, and although, in compliance with the provisions of such and such a labour law, his salary would be paid to him for a further fortnight—“which may be collected at our cashier’s desk during business hours on any working day”—they would be making no claims on his services from today’s date onwards.

Köves read through the letter with a mixture of confusion, anger, and anxiety. How was this? Did life here begin with a person being dismissed from his job? Nothing of the kind, for of course Köves had not been working recently for the paper that had dismissed him; secondly, as far as that was concerned, he could, as it happens, have worked — now that he had been given the boot Köves felt truly drawn to this opportunity which had barely been dangled before him before it was being denied. And what if it was not his opportunity? How could he find out? The answer could only be given by experience; but then it was no longer an opportunity, but life — his own life. If he thought about it, Köves was not in the least attracted to journalism; it was possible, indeed highly probable, that he wasn’t suited to the profession. Journalism — he felt deep inside — was a lie, or at least preposterous folly; and although Köves was not at all so bumptious as to consider himself the sort of fellow who was incapable of telling a lie, nevertheless — or so he believed — he was not capable of being up to every lie at all times: some of them were beyond his strength, others beyond his ability, or, as Köves would have preferred to put it, his talent. On the other hand, undoubtedly, he was clever with words, and it seemed that this was appreciated by people here — naturally after their own fashion; besides which — even though, of course, he was not there in order to be a journalist, or to cultivate any other idiotic profession — he had to have something to live off of, and journalism, leaving the lying to one side, was a cushy job which gave one a fair amount of spare time. Whatever the case might be, Köves decided in the end, his imagination could not latch on to anything other than what was on offer; the letter had turned him into a journalist, and more specifically a journalist who had been dismissed, so he had to follow up on that clue — and Köves was by now racing into the bathroom (the hot water — an unpleasant surprise for him, even though he somehow expected it — did not work) and at once started dressing in order to get to the editorial office as quickly as possible.

Köves’s victories

As he hurriedly stepped out of the entrance, Köves literally tripped over a dog — one of those diminutive, long-bodied, short-legged, shiny-nosed creatures, a dachshund — which yelped loudly in pain, but instead of barking at Köves, sniffed around his shoes with a friendly wagging of the tail and even reared up to place its front paws on Köves’s trouser legs and look up at him with bright eyes and outstretched pink, curly-tipped tongue, such that Köves, by way of propitiating the animal, scratched the base of its ears without breaking his stride. He then turned in order to press on ahead, only to almost bump into a white-haired, ruddy-cheeked, slightly tubby gentleman, dressed with slightly shabby gentility, who was holding a dog collar and leash in his hands.

“A dog owner too?” he hailed Köves with a friendly smile, and although Köves was in a hurry, the oddity of this encounter, or perhaps the even odder idea that he might be a dog-owner, pulled him up short for a moment.

“No, not likely!” he quickly responded.

“Still, you must like animals: the dog can sense that straight away,” the elderly gentleman said with unruffled affability.

“Of course,” Köves said, “But if you would excuse me,” he added, “I have to dash.”

“Do you live here, in the house?” The stout fellow, without showing any change to the amiability of his features, now cast a quick, sharp glance at Köves.

“Not long,” Köves now replied, practically standing on one leg, and the old gentleman must have noticed the impatience:

“Then we shall no doubt have the pleasure another time.” He finally let Köves go, in his old, somewhat porously woody-sounding voice and with an old-fashioned wave of the hand.

Köves rushed for a tramcar; it was getting on for noon, so he might have missed the “business hours” mentioned in the dismissal letter; he found the stop easily, though it was not exactly in the place he had looked for it, the former traffic island now being just a pile of grey paving stones that had been thrown on top of one another, from which direction came the intermittent bursts of hammering of sluggishly moving road workers, but as to whether the road had been torn apart by bombs, or ripped up to form a barricade that was now being repaired, or was just being widened, Köves was in no position to know. The tram — a makeshift assembly all three cars of which carried the stamp of different eras, as if, for want of better, they had been hastily dragged out of the dusty gloom of various depots — was a long time coming, and quite a crowd formed on the pavement around Köves, on top of which Köves, who supposed he ought to let a heavily built woman loaded with all kinds of bags and baggage get on before him, then — obviously in his surprise — did not resist the determined pressure of an elbow and, after that, a blatant shove accompanied by a curse, all of a sudden found that he had been left behind: it was not so much the strength but, presumably, more the will that he lacked, or, to be more specific, the disposition needed to will things, the necessary sense of desperation from which deeds might have sprung, and that — for all the difficulties, despite legs and elbows and countervailing wills — helped him up onto the second tram car.

He had to face further difficulties at the entrance to the newspaper office: the doorkeeper, a customs man with holstered gun, was under no circumstances willing to let him in without an entry pass (Köves would hardly have said he was surprised, deep down he had expected there would be some sort of obstacle like this, except he had been thinking of later on, already imagining himself caught up in easygoing simple-mindedness at the cashier’s desk), which would be issued to him in the porter’s cubicle a few paces away. Here, though, light was thrown on Köves’s complete inexperience in not exactly immaterial questions regarding his own situation, being unable to give a straight answer to a single one of the porter’s questions, nor as to where he was from, or for whom he was looking, or actually even who he was, in point of fact.

“A journalist?” he was asked.

“Yes,” Köves declared. “I’d like to pick up what’s owed to me,” he explained.

“There’s a fee due?”

“Something like that,” Köves said. “In actual fact, my salary,” he added, before he could be caught out misrepresenting the truth.”

“Your salary?” The porter looked up at him disbelievingly from behind his desk, upon which lay a telephone, entry passes, and a list of names of some kind. “You mean you haven’t picked up your pay packet yet?”

“No, you see …,” Köves began, but the porter interrupted him:

“Are you attached to the paper?”

“Oh yes!” Köves hastened to assure him.

“Then where’s your permanent entry card?” came the next, loaded question, which would have done service in a cross-examination; a minute may have elapsed while Köves deliberated on his answer:

“I have been abroad for a while.” This statement seemed to have an unexpected effect on the porter.

“Abroad? In other words, you handed it in for that time being,” he said, now for the first time in the helpful tone of voice that, in Köves’s view, a porter ought to speak. “May I see your ID, please?” he added with a practically apologetic look on his face for this intrusive yet manifestly inescapable request, pencil in hand to fill out the entry card without delay on the basis of the ID.

Resettling on it forthwith was not so much a look of suspicion as of crude and somehow hurt rejection when he glanced at Köves’s ID:

“I can’t accept a temporary entry permit.” He pushed it away from himself toward Köves, who, far from treating it as a fait accompli that he himself, along with his papers, had been pushed aside so to say, did not pick it up, so that it remained at the edge of the table.

“I have no other papers at present,” he tried to convince the porter, a scraggy little man, whose limbs on show above the desk were intact but whom, possibly due to something peculiar, whether in his features or his movements — he would have been unable to account for precisely why — Köves had from the very first moment taken to be disabled, and what was more: a war invalid — a totally arbitrary figment, as if one could only become disabled in a war. And in order to give authentic evidence of what he was saying, a brainwave so to say — fortunately he had stuffed it in his pocket before leaving home — Köves now produced and showed the porter the dismissal notice he had received that morning: “Here you are,” he said, “You can see that I’m not lying: I am attached to the paper, I am a journalist, and I want to pick up my pay.”

But all the porter said as his narrow, hard-mouthed expression ran over the letter was:

“I see!” in an unmistakable tone as he set the letter down on the table edge, alongside Köves’s other piece of paper, with an even more unmistakable gesture. With that he had already turned to the next enquirer, for in the meantime several people, men and women, who were seeking admission into the building, had gathered in the small room: Köves had so far not even noticed them, at most feeling the pressure of some sort of silent weight on his back, even though in truth no one actually touched him, and it was only from the relieved looks on their faces that he understood how long they had already been waiting for him to be silenced and an end be brought to the fruitless struggle.

Now, though, wheels could turn, business resume; the porter was positively demonstrative in assisting all those who, unlike Köves, could lay claim to an entry permit, greeting some of them as old acquaintances, for others dialling a number on his telephone, while with yet others there was no need for even that, because they already featured on a list of names of those who were already expected somewhere upstairs. A cheerful activity, a kind of tacit agreement, developed around Köves and, as it were, against him — an impression hardly based on the facts of the matter, but more likely just on the undoubtedly exquisite sensitivity that Köves was displaying at that moment. Although no one paid any attention to him any longer, he nevertheless felt that all eyes were fixed on him, and the filling-in of each new permit seemed as if it were not an entry into the building so much as serving solely for his — Köves’s — further humiliation. At all events, there could be no doubting that without the necessary will, and the appropriate expression of that will, just like he failed to get on to the tram, he was also not going to get into the newspaper office. The trouble being that in this respect Köves now found himself somewhat perplexed: he did not know what he was supposed to wish for. As regards what common sense would have made him wish, which was to enter the newspaper office in order to pick up his pay packet, Köves no longer wanted that; indeed, it had probably slipped his mind, and to the extent that he still wished to enter the newspaper office, it was purely in order to triumph over the porter and teach him a lesson. But even that he was only able to wish for if, so to speak, he puckered his brow, because what he really wished for was something quite different, and that would have been a breakthrough into another realm, a break with all sanity: Köves wished quite simply to strike the porter’s face, and to feel with his fists how the sometime face was pounded into a slushy, shapeless mush — and meanwhile he merely beat himself up, as it were, for he was well aware that he wasn’t going to do it, not out of compassion or discipline, nor even fear, but just because he was simply incapable of striking anyone in the face.

This anger which he felt, not so much for the porter as for himself, not to mention a confused urge, possibly vanity, not to abandon the arena without protest, without a trace, as if he had never been there — that, and not a purposeful rage, is what eventually exploded from Köves by the time the last of the applicants had gone, and before any newer ones had arrived:

“Right, so don’t let me in, but then don’t quote me the rules as being your authority, but your own rancour! This is my ID, there is no other, and you’d be amazed to know where I was given it and by whom! But now I’ll take it back to them and report that you won’t accept it — that you won’t accept the ID papers they have issued!” he yelled, and he was astonished to hear his own voice almost screeching as he carried on: “In any event I have to receive my pay, and if by no other way, then they will send it via the postal service! Which, of course, simply incurs unnecessary added work and costs for the firm, but then don’t worry! They’ll learn who lay behind it: you, and your overstepping of your official sphere of authority!” With that he snatched up his papers from the table, and he had already placed a hand on the doorknob when the porter’s voice caught up with him:

“Not so fast!” at which, slowly and reluctantly, Köves turned round: so was this how one achieved one’s aim here, by gambling away all one’s hopes?

“Just let me see that ID!” the porter urged, the features even surlier than before but now seeming as if they were covering up a certain hesitation. He looked in turn at Köves and the ID, as if he were comparing them, though of course no photograph of Köves was to be seen on the document; his hand also moved to reach for the telephone, but then he had second thoughts and instead suddenly snatched up his pencil to fill out Köves’s entry permit in big, clumsy lettering, then quickly ripped the form off the pad; not one word was exchanged, they no longer even looked at each other, as Köves took the paper from him and hastened out of the room.

Continuation (a further victory)

Going up in the elevator — a continually circulating, endless chain of open boxes: a rosary, no: a paternoster, the name by which lifts of this kinds were commonly known suddenly occurred to him — Köves felt dull and tired, his heart was hammering, his eyelids kept on listlessly closing as if the victory he had just had gained had drained all his strength, although of course he was still in want of sleep and had also forgotten to eat breakfast. Was it always going to be like this? Would he always have to squeeze from himself such violent, self-tormenting passions each and every time he wished to move ahead? How was he going to control his emotions, and especially his sense of direction; after all, where was he actually headed? Which way was ahead? Still, Köves could not deny that his wretched victory — the wretchedness being precisely the fact that he felt it was a victory — had warmed his heart like a satin caress, nor was he able to suppress the quiet song of a vague satisfaction as though, within himself, he had stumbled upon hitherto unsuspected blind forces. He even forget to step out at the appropriate floor — as Köves was apprised by a notice board hanging in the vestibule, the cashier’s desk was located on one of the lower floors of the building — he suddenly realized that he was being warned by a sign that he should alight or remain calm in the head of the elevator shaft, where the elevator would switch over and begin its descent; Köves preferred to alight.

It looked as though, instead of the cashier’s desk, he had dropped in on the editorial office (if it was so hard to gain admission to the building, one would think they could take care that a person actually went about his business and could not wander around wherever he felt like, Köves supposed, with a measure of the scornful satisfaction of someone who has found a chink in a logic which went so far as to glory in its perfection. He found himself in an immensely long corridor illuminated by flickering strip lighting; from behind doors, which were in many cases wide open, could be heard the clacking of typewriters, snatches of voices, whether or excited or dictating articles, and a piercing ringing of telephones. His nostrils caught a whiff of the smell of fresh printer’s proofs, and Köves, clearly through tiredness, was overcome by an indefinable feeling, a dizziness, like someone visiting the scene of a recurrent nightmare. People passed him or came hurrying the other way; Köves looked at them curiously: some were wearing boots which still practically reeked of a caking of soil and dung; others, wearing shoddy suits and bearing expressions which were sombre, troubled, or determined, looked lost as they clutched sheets of paper between fingers below the nails of which an indelible oily grubbiness had infiltrated; he encountered no more than a few lanky, balding, bespectacled, stubble-chinned, hurried men with nervously twitching eyes, most of them in shirtsleeves, a cigarette stub in the corner of the mouth, whom Köves took to be actual journalists. Toward the end of the corridor, he saw a door marked Editor in Chief Secretary’s Office; on pressing down the door handle, he found himself in a light, airy room at the back of which someone was typing; near Köves a plump, blonde woman was seated behind a writing desk. Her haughty little double chin, well-groomed appearance, and trim clothing were the exact opposite of everything Köves had seen there up to this point, and, catching the whiff of an up-market perfume, he inhaled deeply, for the last time he had smelled anything similar was during his stay abroad. In response to the secretary’s question as to what had brought him there, Köves without more ado announced that he wanted to speak with the editor in chief.

“Who shall I say is asking?” the secretary asked.

“Köves,” said Köves, and the secretary leafed through a notebook.

“You’re not down here,” she said eventually.

“No, I’m not,” Köves acknowledged, “But I still want to speak with him.”

“What does it concern?” the secretary asked, to which Köves reacted, perhaps not entirely without acerbity:

“I’ve been given notice to quit.”

“I see,” said the secretary, exactly the same, though not in exactly same way, as the porter, looking at Köves not reprovingly but more with a degree of interest. “You’re the one who has come home from abroad. We know about you,” and at that, while the expression of curiosity on her face was extinguished just as incomprehensibly as it had lit up, she let Köves know that she would first have to come to an agreement with the editor in chief by phone, then the editor in chief would set a time point for an appointment, which he would inform her of, and about which she in turn would notify Köves — by telephone, if he had a telephone, and if he didn’t, by mail.

“That way it’s going to take a long time for my turn to come round,” Köves considered.

“It could be,” the secretary admitted, “but that’s the way it works,” adding that the editor in chief, unfortunately, was busy at the present moment.

“Doing what?” Köves asked, and the look that the secretary gave him was as if he had not arrived from abroad so much as straight from the madhouse.

“He’s working,” she said, “and he instructed me that he was not to be disturbed by anyone.”

“I’m sure he’ll make an exception for me,” Köves reckoned, heading straight for a padded door — and if this careful insulation and the shining brass studs around it had left him in any doubt, the imposing plate which adorned the door’s padding also enlightened him: Editor in Chief — at which the secretary shot out from behind her desk as if she had been stung by a bee:

“You can’t be thinking of going in, surely?!” she yelled.

“Too right I am,” said Köves, and kept on going, if not quite uninterruptedly, because he first had to get round the secretary, who now bobbed up between him and the door so as to block his path.

“Leave this instant,” she shouted. “Clear off from here!” Evidently she had completely lost her cool. “Do you hear me?!” and it seemed as though Köves had indeed not heard her, because although he took care not to tread on the secretary’s toes, he marched straight ahead with the secretary continually retreating from him (surely she’s not going to grapple with me or pull out a weapon, Köves niggled to himself). “Even columnists are not allowed to go in unannounced … not even the managing editor!” the secretary carried on, now with her arms outstretched as if to embrace Köves, although she was only defending the door with this desperate and, of course, useless gesture, as in the meantime the derrière she had thrust out behind her was almost touching the padding on the door. Köves was then again a witness to a turnaround that was the reward, so it seemed — always, or just at those rare, unpredictable moments of indecision, an operational glitch as it were — for extreme, indeed downright threatening stubbornness. Because on the drawn, quivering face of the secretary, who was by now practically crucifying herself on the door, there now appeared a hesitant look, then a smile of pained cordiality, and as if it had not been she who had shouted, indeed yelled at him just beforehand, in a sweet tone, albeit one still husky with agitation, she advised Köves:

“Take a seat for a minute, I’ll announce you right away,” at which she had already slipped behind the padded door, behind which — Köves noticed — stood a second door.

So he sat down. Something suddenly made him feel uneasy, and Köves puzzled out that it was the stillness: a typewriter which had been ceaselessly clattering in the background had fallen silent, and having only registered it in the way that one would, say, the rustling of tree boughs or the pitter-patter of rainfall in natural surroundings, which is to say he had not noticed it at all until now it had fallen silent. A tiny, high-pitched voice struck his ears from the same place; it seemed to be the sound of stifled female giggling, and he was just about to turn round when the secretary returned, and this time with the bland, official smile in place, as if nothing had happened between the two of them, she advised him:

“Be so kind as to go through,” and at that moment, though perhaps somewhat less busily than before, the typewriter struck up its clattering again.

Continuation (a yet further victory)

As he stepped through the double door, Köves at first saw virtually nothing, and even later only a little; in the daylight that streamed in through the wide window, literally stabbing and unremittingly pricking his eyes, which already stinging from lack of sleep, all he could see behind an enormous writing desk was a compact lacuna, a dark form hewn out of the light as it were, that was nevertheless arranged in accordance with the forms of a human trunk, shoulders, neck, and head — obviously the editor in chief. The shadow was now augmented by an appendage, his outstretched arm, but due to the deceptive perspective caused by the light, Köves could not tell offhand where it was pointing.

“Take a seat,” he heard a voice which had a pleasantly deep ring but was slightly husky, maybe due to overuse or maybe heavy smoking. Since he saw just one chair on that side of the table, Köves sat down on it, although this chair was still facing the light, indeed, given that he was in a lower position through being seated, the source of the light was now apparent in the upper part of the window: the sun itself — albeit along with the editor in chief as well, of course. And because he had no idea where he should begin, what came to his lips straight away, even though, when it came down to it, there was nothing but the truth in its indecisiveness, was:

“I had to see you.”

“Very sensible of you,” could be heard from behind the writing desk. A tiny flame flickered then shortly after Köves heard this from behind a rising light cloud of blue-tinged smoke which within seconds had scattered in the light:

“My door is open to all,” and on hearing this firmly resonant declaration the whole obstacle race that Köves had run in order to get to this room melted into thin air, like the cigarette smoke just before, and Köves was surprised to find something melting inside him into an obscure sense of gratitude which suddenly filled him with confidence.

It also coloured his voice:

“Because I’ve been given notice of dismissal”—an apology, almost a smile was hidden in that, as when men talk over among themselves some nonsense which has occurred.

“I know,” Köves heard. “How can I be of assistance?”

“I’ve lost my bread and butter,” Köves explained.

“Your bread and butter?” came back, somewhat shocked, at least to Köves’s ears.

“What I mean is that I don’t have anything to live off of.” However much Köves might be embarrassed by his own words, it seemed he would have to speak clearly if he wished to be understood.

“I see, so that’s what this is about.” Now it seemed as if there was a touch of underlying impatience in the voice.

“Yes,” said Köves. “I have to make a living, after all.”

“Naturally, you have to make a living; we all have to make a living.” The head moved about while it was speaking, so that Köves was now slowly able to make out the outline of a jutting chin and a forceful, imperious nose. “But then, ultimately it’s not a matter of prime importance.”

“It becomes a matter of prime importance if you have nothing to live off of,” said Köves.

“Everyone in our country makes a living,” and now Köves sensed in the voice something final, brooking no denial, as if he had been put in his place. “As far as your dismissal goes,” the editor in chief went on, now with a somewhat more expansive intonation, “we weighed it up meticulously. To tell you the truth, we can’t really see how we could make use of you. Although,” and here the voice seemed to hesitate, but then continued all the same, “I won’t deny that we received a serious recommendation on your behalf.”

“From where?” the question seemed to slip out of Köves, but no doubt over-hastily, because it received no answer.

“We are not familiar with your work,” the editor in chief continued. “Besides, so I hear, you have spent a lengthy spell abroad; you may not even be acquainted with the line our paper takes.”

“But then,” said Köves, “it’s not just a matter of the line. With a paper,” Köves became quite animated, “other types of work can be found.”

“You’re making me curious,” he heard the editor in chief say, a remark that — not exactly hostile, but not too friendly either — again unsettled Köves. “What are you thinking of?”

“What indeed?” Köves tried to collect his thoughts as a suspicion was aroused in him that he was walking into a trap. “I can formulate proper grammatical sentences. I’m skilled at rounding out a story and supplying a punch line … maybe,” he added with a modest, self-deprecating smile, as if he wished to avoid the appearance of bragging, “well anyway, perhaps I also have some style.”

“So.” The word rang curtly, but Köves was unable to pick out any expression on the face haloed by the incoming rays from behind. “So in your view,” the voice established rather than enquired, “a journalist’s work consists of constructing proper grammatical sentences and rounding suitably pointed stories …”

“At all events,” a strange defiance awoke now in Köves as in someone who knows he is right and has to defend his standpoint: “At all events journalism can’t exist without that,” and, without having a clue why, a recollection of how the pianist had talked that night about his numbers suddenly flashed across his mind.

“So.” This now sounded even more curt and more assertive than before. Then, after a brief pause, Köves heard the following question, slow and precisely articulated:

“And you have no credo … no persuasion?” and Köves suddenly felt like someone sizing up the depths of a chasm — and quite irrationally, too, since if he were going to jump, he would do better to jump with his eyes closed.

“None,” he said. And then he almost shouted once again into the deafening silence which followed that word: “None!.. How could I have any persuasion when I have never once been persuaded about anything at all! Life is not a source of faith, after all, life is … I don’t know what, but life is something else …”

He was soon interrupted:

“You’re not familiar with the life we lead.”

“I’d like to work, and then I shall get to know it,” Köves said, in a low voice now, almost longingly.

“Well, work!” came back the exhortation.

“But I’ve been dismissed,” Köves complained, despondently.

“You don’t have to be with us to work,” the voice exhorted further.

“But I don’t know how to do anything else.” Köves bowed his head, sensing he was behaving like a beggar.

“You’ll learn: our factories are waiting with open gates for anyone who wishes to work!” chimed the voice, and Köves lifted his head again: the recognition, like a judgement, filled him with a calm, dull weariness, but in it he somehow regained his keen sense of pride.

“So, that’s what you intend for me,” he said slowly, almost whispering, searching in vain with his groping gaze for the purchase of any sort of face, as long as it was visible in the light.

“We don’t intend anything at all for you,” came back from over there. “That’s just your misconception: it’s up to you to find your alternatives.” Then, seeming to make do with that for his lecturing, the editor in chief’s voice turned warmer, almost congenial: “Work, get to know life, open up your eyes and ears, accumulate experiences. Don’t imagine we have given up on you and your talent. This door,” the arm swung straight out and pointed to somewhere behind Köves, obviously the door, “This door, you’ll see, will open to you yet again.”

“That may be.” Köves jumped up: with his loss of hope (if there had been any) came that of his patience, his patience for everything which, being neither a constraint on him nor his freedom, was no longer of interest. “That may be, but I won’t be stepping through it!” After which he was again outside in the corridor, he himself didn’t quite know how, and with the abatement of his excitement while the paternoster sank downwards with him, obviously either for no reason, or just as a reaction to the excitements he had endured, but so unexpectedly he was almost frightened by it, he was veritably overwhelmed by a sense of relief, like some indescribable happiness. Everything had happened differently from the way he had wanted, and yet — probably only through being in the sort of worked-up state which cancels shades — he nevertheless felt he had got what he wanted. As if he had stood his ground for something, defended something — but what? The word occurred to Köves: honour. But then, he asked himself in perplexed amazement, like someone stumbling over an unforeseen obstacle, what was his honour?

South Seas

At the cashier’s desk Köves was paid out what was owed him without a word — a laughable amount, although of course he had not yet informed himself about the prices, so his grumbling might just have been a sudden onrush of an employee’s instincts, the eternal craving which always feels that whatever is tossed at it is a tidbit, swallows it with an unappeased muttering, and then is already opening his mouth wide for the next morsel, never asking whether even the previous one had been earned: as far as Köves was concerned, he had not put in a stroke of work for it, and as a matter of fact they had only made a payment to him so that he would not be in their way for two weeks, nor be able to pester them with his petty worries even that long, while they saw to it that they should also stamp his entry permit, for without that he would never be able to step out of the front entrance; and on getting out onto the corridor he passed a man who, Köves remembered, had happened to be picking up some money immediately before him at the cashier’s desk and was just in the process of counting the bank notes yet again, for he too was visibly not very satisfied with the amount. As Köves went past, without raising his head, the man asked:

“They’ve kicked you out too?”

“Yep,” said Köves.

“But why?” the man asked, though apparently more abstractedly than out of genuine curiosity, as he stuffed the money into his pocket.

“I don’t know.” Köves shrugged his shoulders, perhaps a bit irritated, feeling sick and tired of his own affairs. “I wasn’t even here,” he threw out so as not to look grudging with his words.

“Aha!” said the other, a young man of roughly the same build as Köves, and now they trudged together down the long corridor toward the paternoster. “They sent you off into the country, and by the time you returned,

the notice of dismissal was waiting for you, right?”

“Right,” Köves admitted.

“That’s what they usually do,” the other nodded. “We got out of it rather well,” he added, as he and Köves stepped together into one of the descending boxes, which carried on sinking with them as its load.

“Why?” A spark of interest was kindled in Köves. “Have they kicked you out as well?”

“Darn right!” said the other.

“And why was that?” Köves asked.

“My face doesn’t fit.” Now it was his turn to shrug shoulders, just like Köves before. They were now in the entrance lobby. They handed in their permits to the customs man, then stepped out onto the street; the sunlight, the traffic, even the scanty, small-town bustle worked on Köves, with his all-accommodating and equalizing indifference, rather like an act of kindness. “These recent changes …,” the previous voice caught his ear, and Köves snatched up his head in surprise: he had already forgotten that he was not alone.

“What changes?” he asked, more just out of politeness, as he had a shrewd idea in advance that the answer would be exactly what it was:

“Can anyone know?”

“No, they can’t.” Köves nodded, feeling that he was taking part with obligatory automatism in some ceremony then in fashion.

But then something came to mind, this time a genuine question, touching on the heart of the matter, which he really ought to have addressed to himself but which he posed to the other all the same:

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“What?” Köves’s new acquaintance nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going to have lunch,” and the self-explanatory announcement somehow resonated with Köves and cheered him up, like someone who, after a lengthy exile, feels he is slowly starting to return to the world of human society. “Come with me, if you can spare the time,” Köves’s new acquaintance went on. Köves could now see that he had dark hair, a bulging forehead, and a coarse yet, on the whole, still pleasant face which seemed almost to crack when he laughed, as if a boy were suddenly sticking out his head among the prematurely hardened features. “We’ll go to the South Seas, you can always get something there,” and if before he had merely cheered up, Köves now unreservedly rejoiced, because he gathered that what was in question was a restaurant, and he realized that this was the very longing which was lurking in him: to sit down in a restaurant and to eat and drink his fill without a care, even if it were to be for the last time in his life, with a good friend.

“Is it far?” he showed his impatience.

“Haven’t you been in the South Seas before?” his new friend was genuinely astounded. “Well then, it’s time you got to know it,” at which they set off.

Washing of waves

A full belly, his thirst quenched with alcohol, even if it was weak, third-rate beer, the dense fug and the snatches of voices which would be cast up out of the constant buzz in the South Seas lulled Köves so completely that it was as if he were rocking on the backs of waves, at a detached remoteness from all the more solid certainties which were showing only indistinctly from a distance. When he had drifted in through the old-fashioned, glazed revolving door, it suddenly seemed to Köves that he was both acquainted with the place — a vast barn of a room, divided up into two or maybe more interconnecting spaces — and then again not, but at all events time had not passed by even the South Seas without leaving its mark: the velvet drapery showed signs of wear, a solitary piano on the podium, forlorn and shrouded in a cover — the whole thing gave the overall picture of a diner and coffee bar, gambling den and daytime refuge which had started to go downhill, where his new friend, Sziklai — on hearing the name something flashed through Köves’s mind, nothing more than a vague memory in a world where the vagueness of memories vies with that of the present — plainly felt completely at home, so Köves relinquished all initiative to him as being someone who wanted, for the time being at any rate, release from a burden that could hardly be dragged a step further: himself. He was again overcome by tiredness, so he only registered events from the periphery of his consciousness as it were. His steps were initially hurried and then more hesitant as they penetrated the interior of the place, no doubt its hub, so to speak — Köves had that impression. They were looking for someone; then the waitress who hastened to meet them, neither young nor old, and who was given a tragic air by the two deep furrows which ran from her nose to her chin, in diametric contrast to her words and the casual gesture with which she pointed to an empty table covered by a tablecloth of a somewhat suspect shade.

“My editor friends should park their carcasses there,” she said, from which it appeared that she already knew Sziklai well. Then there was their strange dialogue: Sziklai ordered fried fillet of pork for the two of them, at which the waitress asked:

“Do the gentlemen like half-cooked gristle?” Sziklai thereupon ordered Wiener schnitzel, at which the waitress, closing her eyes and pursing her lips, asked him:

“Tell me, in all honesty, when and where did you last see a Wiener schnitzel?” At this, Sziklai, seemingly exasperated, started to pick a quarrel:

“But it’s here, on the menu!” he shouted.

“Of course it’s there,” the waitress retorted. “What kind of a menu would it look like without Wiener schnitzel?”

It struck Köves that they were playing some kind of legpulling parlour game with each other, to which distant shouts and the waitress’s sudden impatience put an end. “Enough!” she said. “Our charming guests are already being kept waiting at other tables. You’ll get potato hot-pot!”

And with that she was off, while Sziklai, his features suddenly cracking and the boyish smile surfacing among them, enlightened Köves:

“That’s Alice, the waitress,” which Köves cheerfully noted. That cheerfulness switched over to frank enthusiasm when it turned out that the potato hot-pot was actually not potato hot-pot, and under the mixture of potatoes and eggs Köves’s probing fork prodded a fine slice of meat, whereupon he was just about to open his mouth when Sziklai intimated by vigorous head-shaking that he ought to keep his mouth shut (clearly they were being accorded a privilege of some kind). “You can always count on Alice,” was all Köves was able to get out of Sziklai.

That was not the case with the other fidgeting, gesticulating or, to the contrary, sluggish or even mutely absorbed customers hovering near at hand or farther away in the sweltering half-light, about whom Sziklai seemed to know everything, with Köves taking in only a fraction of what he said about them. Regarding a fat, balding man, whose sickly-coloured face, despite the occasional mopping with a handkerchief as big as a bedsheet, was constantly glistening with perspiration and whose table seemed to be a sort of focal point, at which people arrived in a hurry, then settled for a while before jumping up again, whereas others stayed there for longer exchanges of ideas, a person whom Sziklai himself also greeted (the bald man cordially returned the nod), Köves found out that he was the “Uncrowned,” and although who gave him that nickname was unclear, its import was easy to explain because he was the uncrowned king there, with half the coffee bar working just for him, Sziklai recounted.

“How come?” Köves enquired.

“Because,” said Sziklai, “the chap was actually pensioned off as unfit for service.” And when Köves asked what kind of service he had been engaged in previously, Sziklai responded: “What do you think, then?” and although Köves didn’t think anything, being simply too lazy to think anything at all, nevertheless, pretending to take the hint, he dropped in an “Aha!”, and it seemed that was precisely the answer expected from him. Now, he continued, “taking into consideration his previous merits” (and here Sziklai gave Köves a meaningful wink), the Uncrowned was granted permission to vend scarves and shawls to peasant women at provincial markets, as well as to take photographs of peasants and sell them the pictures. The permit was originally made out in the Uncrowned’s name, authorizing him alone to sell and to take photographs. But then, for one thing, there was so much to do — peasants, normally the most mistrustful of people, Sziklai related, virtually turn into kids the moment someone wants to take a family photograph of them, so much so that it could happen there wasn’t even any film in the camera (given that it wasn’t always possible to obtain film in the shops), so they clicked the machine with an empty cartridge, took the deposit that had been agreed on, and of course the peasants subsequently never received the pictures that had been “taken,” while the name and address given by the photographer, naturally, proved false — so much work that one man couldn’t possibly get through it, besides which the Uncrowned was a severe diabetic and had heart disease. Also, there were plenty of people who needed “papers,” said Sziklai. That was how they would come to be working for the Uncrowned: one way or another, he would obtain an official document for them, which stated that they were working for a non-profit company. That way they would not be open to charges of workshyness or sponging, nor could he be called to account for giving employment to what was maybe a nationwide network of agents. Because of course nobody, not even the Uncrowned, could give employment to any agents, could they; agents, on the other hand, could never work as agents without appropriate papers which certified they were not in fact agents, so they were therefore dependant on each other, said Sziklai, and the Uncrowned was respected not just as a boss but as their benefactor.

“What about him over there?” Köves gestured with his head toward a farther-off table by the street-side window, where he saw a silver-maned man, whose rugged face with its marked unruly features seemed to vouch for extraordinary passions that were held in check only with great difficulty. He wore spectacles with double lenses, the outer of which were dark-tinted and could be flipped up (as Köves could tell because they happened to be flipped up), and he seemed to be immersed in some occupation that could not be made out from where they were — Köves would not have been surprised if it were to turn out he was writing a musical score or painting miniature pictures. Sziklai’s face, however, burst almost into splinters when his gaze swung across in the direction Köves was indicating:

“Pumpadour,” he laughed. In his free time he, too, was one of the Uncrowned’s employees. To paint the dye onto the fabric intended for peasant women they used a spray device driven, or pumped, by a treadle, and that work is usually done by Pumpadour, which is the name given him by the Uncrowned, who incidentally appreciates the joke and is a fan of the theatre, and by way of a full-time job Pumpadour worked for the theatre across the street as one of the extras (Köves was almost surprised, this being the first he had heard that the town had a theatre), beside which he also took on repairing clocks and watches. No doubt that’s what he was doing right then, repairing someone’s watch, though while on the subject it often occurs that once he’s taken a watch to bits he’s never able to put it together again, and all the customer gets back is the dial, the metal case, and a heap of tiny springs and cogs, carefully wrapped in a sheet of paper, despite which he’s never short of work, because the way he shakes a watch, puts it to his ear, opens its lid to take a look at the clockwork through those double-lensed spectacles — that inspires people with confidence time after time, not to speak of the low prices he charges.

All Köves could learn about a blonde woman — a striking figure, the way she propped her face, interesting after its own fashion, with the chin resting on her folded hands, staring with an empty gaze at nothing, an untouched glass of spirits on the table — was the name by which she was known in the South Seas: “the Transcendental Concubine,” whereas it was Sziklai who drew his attention to a grey-templed, suntanned, conspicuously elegant gentleman, remarking that Uncle André was “the Chloroformist.”

“How’s that?” Köves laughed, and Sziklai related that once upon a time, when foreign countries still had links by international railways, Uncle André used to strike up acquaintances with rich ladies travelling first class, then by night press a wad of cotton wool, doused with chloroform, over their faces and then rob them; according to Sziklai, even now Uncle André knew by heart the timetable of all the express trains on the continent (if express trains were still running, that is, and the old timetables were still valid), even though he personally had been “withdrawn from service” on several occasions, indeed for long years at a time. As to what he did nowadays “to maintain standards,” all Sziklai knew was:

“It’s a mystery.” To which he added shortly afterwards: “Women, you can bet it’s women: that’s all it can be.”

There were, of course, other customers, respectable people, about whom there was nothing to tell, and others about whom there was, though Köves just listened without really taking it in, and he was not even convinced that he was hearing what he did hear: he both believed it and he didn’t — ephemeral glimmers in a continually ebbing and rearranging wash of waves of voices, images and impressions, and people would have no doubt misconstrued his absent-mindedness, which was in truth a discovery, admittedly a somewhat gloomy, somewhat melancholic discovery, yet nevertheless sweet, like the taste of long-gone happiness, but all of a sudden he found he was being slapped on the shoulder by someone and urged “Chin up!”

“We’ll get by somehow,” said Sziklai looking pensively at Köves. “There are two ways,” he went on: “the short and narrow, which leads nowhere, then the long and roundabout way, which leads to who knows where, but at least one has the sense of moving ahead. You should bear that in mind,” he added promptly with a touch of care-laden anxiety.

“Why?” Köves asked, grumpily, like someone whose tranquillity is being threatened, yet with the faint smile of someone who has not yet given up all hope.

“Because,” said Sziklai, “I reckon it’s amusing and could be put to good use in a piece.”

“What sort of piece?” Köves reluctantly posed the question, perhaps hoping that by posing it he would be able to elude it.

“That’s precisely the point,” said Sziklai. “I reckon a piece should be written,” and Köves started to regain his senses, though only slowly, like a poison administered drop by drop.

“What kind of piece?” he inquired.

“That still needs to be thought over,” said Sziklai, although it appeared that he may well have already thought it over, because he carried on at once: “A stage play would be gratifying, but tricky; the cloven hoof would be glaringly obvious straight away. I reckon it needs to be a light comedy: that’s what will bring success.”

“Success?” Köves questioned, hesitantly, as if he were getting his mouth round a strange, near-unpronounceable word in a foreign language.

“Of course,” Sziklai looked at him impatiently. “One has to make a success of something. Success is the only way out.”

“Out of what?” Köves asked, and for a moment Sziklai scanned his face mistrustfully as if he were searching for some secret.

“What a weird sense of humour you have,” he eventually said, evidently brightening up, like someone who had come to some conclusion: “but you have a sense of humour. I don’t, or at least it limps along when it’s written down on paper. But on the other hand,” he continued, his eyes constantly on Köves, and Köves became more and more ill at ease, because he sensed a demand in Sziklai’s gaze, if nothing else, then at least for his attention: “On the other hand, I’ve been reading up on dramatics for some time. You can study it, you know,” Sziklai gave a dismissive wave, “it’s a load of baloney, only on my own I’m getting nowhere with the dialogues. I don’t even have a really good idea,” he went on, with the tension increasingly getting the upper hand over Köves, an ominous presentiment that he was gradually being sucked into something, a plan perhaps, that was being hatched far away from him yet still was going to claim his energies: “Old bean,” he heard Sziklai’s triumphant cry, “we’re saved: we’ll write a light comedy!” to which Köves said:

“Fine.” Then, as if in self-defence, “But not now,” and they agreed on that. First they needed to sort out their affairs; Sziklai signalled to Alice and, despite Köves’s protests, he paid the bill, adding a big tip to the sum.

“What’s this? Robbed a bank, have we, sirs?” the waitress asked as she buried the money in her apron.

“Marvellous character.” Sziklai followed her with his eye, as if he were already seeing everything in the light of the light comedy to come, but then his face clouded over. “It’s just such a pity,” he added, regretfully.

“Why?” Köves enquired, at which Sziklai peered searchingly around:

“I can’t see him here right now,” he eventually said.

“Who do you mean?” Köves enquired.

“Her … how should I put it, her guy,” said Sziklai.

“Who’s that?” For reasons he was unclear about himself, this time Köves would have been interested to be enlightened — Alice seemed to have caught his attention to some extent, but all Sziklai would say, evasively, was:

“There’s lot of stories about him. And then,” a melancholic insight appeared on Sziklai’s face, “Alice is only a waitress, after all, and waitresses always need someone who can live off them.”

“I see,” said Köves. “Yes, I’ve heard about that sort of thing; the usual story, in other words,” at which they made their way outside, with Sziklai nodding a greeting to a table here and there as they crossed the place. On the street, they shook hands and agreed that one evening they would, as Sziklai put it, “find each other” in the South Seas; indeed, they could leave messages for one another with Alice, now that Köves knew her, and as soon as their affairs were settled they would make a start on the light comedy.

“Until then, rack your brains for a good idea,” Sziklai said by way of a parting shot, and with an easy smile, which may have been directed at the sunshine and the prospect of gratifying a sudden wish for solitude, Köves responded:

“I’ll try.”