Fiasco

Köves returns. Changes. The drowning man

One fine day, Köves turned up again at the South Seas; he had not been there for a long time, he had been in the army, because the same post as the dismissal letter from the ministry had also brought a demand that he immediately discharge his deferred military service, at which the army had sniffed him in and swallowed him up, until the day came when even it could stomach him no longer and one morning — it happened to be during the solemn moments when general orders are read out — he dropped full length on the floor, almost knocking over a chair and two fellow squaddies in the process, then showed no inclination to return to his senses, despite being disciplined, punished, taken to task, and pilloried, so he was finally carted off to hospital, where he was surrounded by suspicious doctors who cross-questioned him, took samples of his blood, tapped his limbs, thrust a needle into his spine, and — just at the point when he was fearing he would be unmasked, with the attendant, none too promising consequences — abruptly and most unceremoniously, so he barely had time even to be surprised, though there was plenty of reason for that, he was discharged, because one of the checks had shown that one of his thighs was an inch thinner than the other and, even though Köves was unaware of it, he was probably suffering from muscular dystrophy. Sziklai’s face split into a thousand pieces from laughter when Köves told him the whole story:

“They could hardly wait to get rid of you, old chap!” he slapped Köves on the thigh in question and put the fortunate outcome of the affair “solely down to the changes.”

“What changes?” Köves was amazed, being up to date on nothing since he had been recently preoccupied with rather different matters.

Yet Sziklai did not appear to be much better informed than him:

“Can anyone know?!” he almost reproached Köves for his tactlessness, and it had been so long since Köves had heard the question that, for the first time since he had been discharged from hospital and the army, he was almost seized by a feeling of having found his way back home.

“In any event, one can sense winds of change,” Sziklai went on, half rising from his seat to scan round the coffeehouse, as though searching for someone. “Just look over there.” He nodded before long toward one of the distant tables. “Do you know the gentleman who is ensconced at the head of the table?” The aging, stout man with the prominent chin and vigorous nose whom Köves glimpsed in the direction indicated, and whom, under other circumstances, might have struck Köves as imperious, was very likely someone he had seen before somewhere; nevertheless he had to wait until Sziklai enlightened him:

“Don’t tell me you no longer recognize our all-powerful editor in chief?” At which, suddenly cottoning on, Köves was veritably flooded with grievances which had by now melted into distant, as good as forgivably sunny memories of a long, long bygone age, and now he fancied he also recognized the two thickset, balding men seated on either side of the editor in chief: they seemed to be identical people from the factory, though he was far from certain about that and, with the table standing so far away in a gloomy room, there was every chance he was mistaken.

“He was sacked,” Sziklai grinned.

“Sacked?…,” Köves was astonished.

“No kidding: times are like that now.” Sziklai again settled comfortably on his chair. They had even sought him out, he related, offering him a job back on the newspaper, as a columnist at that, because it turned out that what they had done to him was not just against the law but flew in the face of common sense, as Sziklai had been one of the most outstanding people they had.

“They woke up to it a little too late,” Sziklai said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’d be crazy to go back to being a reporter when I’ve settled down so brilliantly with the fire brigade.” But no doubt they would take Köves back, he hastened to add; he had already put out feelers along those lines, and …

Köves, though, writhed on his seat as if he had been suddenly stabbed:

“I’m not going back to the paper!” he protested as though tormented by bad dreams.

“So you already have a job, then?” Sziklai enquired.

“I’m not going to get a job!” Köves declared so adamantly and, with such a cold repugnance, that it was as if he were not speaking for himself but maybe on behalf of someone else with far more important, far more pressing things to attend to than to fritter away his irreplaceable time in any mere job.

“And what do you intend to live off of?” Sziklai was curious.

“I don’t know,” Köves declared, this time in a tone of grave concern: he appeared only now to have woken up to his hard and seemingly extreme decision, as if he had not taken it himself but rather had been impelled by some external force, and at that moment one had the impression that he himself was, perhaps, even less prepared for the implications of this than was Sziklai, who assessed these things from a practical standpoint and considered that Köves could make a living without having a job. In his opinion, they would just be happy that Köves did not “come forward with any claims against them,” in return for which they would clearly offer — Sziklai “would have a thing or two to say about that too”—to take him on as a special correspondent: if Köves was smart and industrious, he might be able to “place an article with them” every week.

“Besides which,” Sziklai smiled, “the Firefighters’ Platform is naturally waiting for you with open arms, old chap,” and he related to a happily dumbfounded Köves that while Köves had been away in the army, he, Sziklai, had not been “loafing about” either. It may have taken time, and it was not without its difficulties, but he had managed to get “the managers” to understand that rather than using their own amateur-dramatic society, the job of gaining the fire brigade mass appeal would be done much more effectively and successfully by well-known professional actors who were beloved by all, insofar as he could persuade them to place their talents in the service of the fire brigade, at least for one night. Now, one could not expect professional actors “to play any old role,” so that meant professional writers needed to be won over, like the actors, to the idea of placing their skills at the fire brigade’s disposal and each put together an evening of entertainment which, at a professional level, skilfully and effectively blending tragedy and comedy, was drawn from the subject matter of firefighting, or at least somehow touching on it. Consequently, since they were talking about professionals, it would not do to forget about the customary fees which would be owed them; indeed, it would do no harm — given that they had to be won over to a line of duties which was out of the ordinary, not to say special — to offer something a touch over the customary. That was how the Firefighters’ Platform had come into existence: a small touring company which played in towns and villages alike, and every other month presented a new programme, generally consisting of a compering role and “sketches.”

“The compere’s lines are always written by me,” Sziklai pointed out with an obdurate expression on his face, as though Köves might have some idea of denying him, “and I always write one of the sketches, as does my boss, the deputy commander … seeing as how he has lately discovered the inner writer in himself … you know how it is,” he winked at Köves, “… and from now on you will write one of them, and then we could even do yet another one as co-authors, under a pen name, though we’ll actually write all three of them together, of course, old chap.” Provided he could make do with little, then, Köves would be able to make a living from sketches and newspaper articles — that is, until the light comedy was completed, of course, when they would be dealing with success and never again be tormented by financial concerns, Sziklai spurred him on before raising an arm to ask Alice over to their table, more than likely wishing to anoint their high hopes with a higher-class hooch, except that in Alice’s place a greasy-faced, flat-footed, paunchy waiter waddled over, for one fine day, to the great sorrow of all the South Seas’ regulars, Alice had vanished from the coffeehouse.

“Where to?…,” Köves was astonished, but he asked Sziklai, and later others too, in vain. She had handed in her notice one day and just vanished, and her post had not been filled since: obviously at the back of it was that dubious, disagreeable, and freakish character, likewise not seen since, on whom Alice had wrongheadedly squandered her time, her attractions, and, no doubt, her earnings as well — that was about all he managed to find out, though when he probed a bit more thoroughly it immediately became clear that this was all just speculation, the only certainty being that Alice was no longer in the South Seas.

Another face that, although once so familiar, had been missing even longer now, rather like Köves, turned up again out of the blue. This face had changed, everyone agreed on that: it had become longer and yet somehow wizened, a bit decrepit, but it was still the same face that, even so, looked down on the others from a towering height from over a bow tie of uncertain colour: it was Tiny, the pianist, and his appearance, as Köves was able to observe with wonderment, was by no means greeted with joy on all sides, more with a certain amount of embarrassment. There was a rumbling in the South Seas, rather like the rumble of a wave suddenly dashing on a rocky channel, and that was how backs and heads moved, rising and falling in alternation on the wave, though only a few people — at the musicians’ table, for example — stood up to welcome him, and rather hesitantly at that, with a cautious, somehow crooked smile on their faces, whereas others carried on their momentarily interrupted conversations as if nothing had happened, particularly a large male group, all in black tails underneath which each wore a red silk cummerbund: the members of the Tango String Band, until all at once there was a scraping of a chair being pushed back, though with a noise more befitting a throne than a mere chair, and from it, with the assistance of nimble hands placed under the elbow, the Uncrowned staggered to his feet, threw his stubby arms apart, and with much puffing and blowing, sweating profusely, embraced the stupefied musician (or to be more precise, leapt at his neck), and however strange the spectacle offered by the embrace of these two portly men — the smaller one and the giant — the South Seas regulars were nonetheless able to regard the Uncrowned’s act as constituting some sort of solemn proclamation, so to speak, an authorisation, indeed invitation, because, as if waiting for a signal, all at once now almost everyone jumped up, so that they too might hug the pianist or shake his hand, or at least touch the hem of his jacket, pass him from hand to hand, to celebrate and ask him about his sufferings.

Later on, though, he became the centre of endless, heated debates: Köves could only wonder at how much excitement, emotion, and passion which, lacking a specific object, must have been seething hitherto in the South Seas, nebulously like cigarette smoke, for it now all to condense suddenly around, as it were, the magnetic personality of Tiny, the pianist, and coil around, bubble like a maelstrom in the form of sharp reproofs, embittered outbursts, indeed veiled accusations and barely concealed mutual threats. There were cases where, with arguments running low, or when people tired of reasoned argument, they simply hurled short slogans tersely from table to table (by then the musicians had split between two tables, with Tiny’s supporters at one and their opponents, the Tango String Band to the fore of course, at the other, though there were some who sat today at one and next day at the other, indeed, even some who did not take a seat at all, but scampered between the two tables, perhaps unable to make up their minds, perhaps mediating conciliatorily or, on the contrary, further fuelling the antagonisms, who could tell) — battle cries like, for instance, “Tiny to the piano!” which would elicit the response, “You can’t blackmail us!” even though Tiny had no wish to sit down at the piano, so there could be no question of any blackmail either, as gradually became evident to Köves at any rate. The hefty disputes, the most serious arguments, of course, were aired at the Uncrowned’s table, and Köves, who caught only snatches of what was said, gathered it was about whether Tiny, who as a result of the changes everyone knew about — or, to be more correct, that no one at all knew about precisely, and yet were still obvious to everyone — had, from one day to the next, been released from the agricultural labour to which he had been carted off, and whose carting-off moreover was judged as “lacking any legal foundation,” notwithstanding which he had not been given back his job (“the piano he was hauled away from”); so, whether Tiny should be satisfied with whatever work he could get, and resign himself to possibly having to play in some out-of-the-way dive or not compromise and hold out — through the courts if need be”—to regain his original position, currently being usurped by the Tango String Band.

Or rather, an elderly, leather-jacketed marketeer raised his index finger — among the Uncrowned’s dyers, marketeers, photographers, and all sorts of other employees, as it now turned out there were also some advocates and barristers, though nowadays, of course, they were not pursuing their original occupations — or rather, the leather-jacketed marketeer corrected them with a pedantic smile:

“Gentlemen, let’s not throw hasty expressions around: instead of “usurpers” we would do better to accept … let’s say the formulation “those currently having legal title,” because that objectively reflects the facts,” which met with prompt agreement from the leader of the Tango String Band, a man with burning eyes, whose oily black hair was plastered sleekly to his brow. The Tango String Band, he explained with his burning eyes, and with his bony, yellow hands scything the air, the fingers spatula-shaped through constantly gripping his string instrument, nails clipped to the quick — and he could safely assert that all the members of the band shared this view, could only be delighted that the unmerited vilification of a “fellow musician,” and what was more “a fellow musician of such great attainments,” had been ended, but might he be permitted to ask why “an innocent band was now being mucked about as live scapegoats” when their only “sin” was that, certainly, “they were tied by a legal contractual relationship to the nightclub,” and, certainly, did not intend to break that contract until it had “legally” expired. To which one comment was that, if the Tango String Band really were so delighted about an artist, “without exaggeration, a great artist,” regaining his freedom, then instead of continually protesting about a “legal contractual relationship,” they should consider it “their moral duty” to give up their position to the person to whom it “rightfully belongs.” Out of the general tumult unleashed by these words the index finger rose up once more, and its owner, the elderly marketeer, made the observation that although he would not like to be looked on by anybody as the sort of person who was “indifferent in respect of moral questions,” nevertheless he did not think it appropriate to shift discussion onto “a solely moral plane” because:

“Don’t forget, gentlemen, that a ‘moral duty’ may be a moral duty, but that doesn’t make it a legal concept,” he reminded the rest of the table with a subtle, clever smile.

It seemed his words had little effect, however, as the discussion had irretrievably shifted solely to the moral plane and carried on that way, with references to “Tiny’s sufferings,” and in response with great insistence initially, to the “innocent band” and the “legal contractual relationship” but later on with the counter-accusation of “blackmail,” and in the midst of the ensuing general uproar Köves’s ear also picked out the word “revenge”—to his uneasy surprise, most likely out of the mouth of the baggy-eyed saxophone player, who, together with the blue-chinned musician (who still reeked of hair oil), as Köves was somewhat bewildered to notice, was most vocal in springing to the pianist’s defence. Köves would hardly have ventured (nor of course did he wish to) to remind them of that long-bygone, rather unfortunate conversation that he’d had with them when he had been enquiring about Tiny.

Yet the fact that the pianist had an opinion of his own about his own affair, and moreover one that differed from everyone else’s, Köves only got to learn at last late one evening, with the coffeehouse almost empty except for some musicians on their day off, a few incorrigible regulars, along with Köves himself, of course, who were still loitering around the place (Sziklai was not in the South Seas that day as the Firefighters’ Platform happened to be presenting their new show out of town), when the musician, grasping a half-emptied small glass of cognac to which the Uncrowned had treated him quite a while earlier, strolled over to Köves’s table and asked:

“May I?” at which Köves of course was delighted to invite him to take a seat, having not seen him in the coffeehouse, it now occurred to him, in point of fact for days on end, although it was precisely during these days that the passions raging around his figure had been at their most ferocious pitch, as if the absence of the subject of the disputes not only did not disturb the disputants but was considered to be practically a condition for the disputes to proceed undisturbed.

“What do they know?!” the pianist said to Köves with an indulgently disdainful smile, gesturing vaguely with his head at the virtually empty tables around the place, and went on to tell him that they had made him carry out farm work — digging potatoes, feeding pigs. “I had to get up at the same time as I used to go to bed … I could tell you stories, but what’s the point?” he continued. “I have a sound constitution, I stuck it out.” In time, they got to know at HQ that he was a professional musician, and the officers had ordered him to play something. They had procured a violin for him to start with — that being the commander’s favourite instrument: he wanted to hear his much-loved songs on the violin, and had become truly furious at him for not knowing how to play that instrument, even doubting whether he could be a musician at all if he couldn’t. In the end, they had procured a piano (in reality, an out-of-tune upright pianino), and he had to play on that. By way of a reward he would be given a helping of special rations and exemptions from some tasks, as well as having poured into him the sour local vino, on which the officers used to get smashed. Later on, he was also allowed to play at village dances, then there was an occasion when he had to accompany a third-rate scratch Gypsy band, sawing away on their beat-up fiddles and wheezing through their clarinets — one could just imagine how that sounded. He had cursed the day when he admitted to being a musician a hundred times over; even feeding the pigs was more respectable work than that.

“And now I’m supposed to start all over again?” the pianist smiled hesitantly, dubiously. “There was a time,” he mused, “when if I could not play for two days running, I would be itching, raring to go so badly I would almost go nuts. And now?… I’d be happy not to see a piano. I’ve burned out, old chum. Here,” and with the tip of a crooked middle finger, looking almost as though he were intently listening inwardly, he cautiously tapped on his chest as though on a closed gate that he had already been asking to be let in through for quite some time in vain, “There’s no more music inside here …,” and it was useless for Köves to reassure him that, once he had rested himself and got back to a normal life, he would see, the inclination would return, the musician mournfully shook his head in doubt.

In recent days, the South Seas regulars had also been preoccupied by another case, likewise the subject of widespread debate among themselves, though this time engendering merriment rather than dissension. Köves learned from Sziklai why it was he had not seen Pumpadour around at all recently, and the Transcendental Concubine only rarely, and even then not with the customary schnapps glasses, but totally sober, her vaguely dreamy gaze now replaced by a slightly crabbed look, like someone who has been rudely wakened from a prolonged sleep by cold reality, and who was always in a hurry, always laden with parcels and shopping bags, which had never been the case before.

“She bakes and cooks,” Sziklai chuckled.

“How’s that?” Köves marvelled, and Sziklai, who — at least “until events took a tragic turn”—now knew everything “first-hand,” from Pumpadour himself, for whom Sziklai had of late been securing regular appearances with the Firefighters’ Platform, told Köves that “things have started to look up for her,” with Pumpadour suddenly deciding to ask the Transcendental to marry him, and she, bridling at the idea, in a nonexistent world, of becoming the nonexistent wife of a nonexistent person, who was not even an actor but a repairer of clocks, though more a repairer of lighters than of clocks, became so infuriated that she declared she never wanted to see Pumpadour again. Time passed, but the Transcendental showed herself to be unbending, declaring roundly to Sziklai, who “tried to mediate,” that she “simply didn’t understand how our relationship could have degenerated to this,” whereas Pumpadour complained to Sziklai that the woman was his “last fling,” and that if he did not win her hand, “life would have no meaning.” In the end, he had written her a letter asking her for “just one final meeting.” The woman had consented, promising to pay a visit at the specified time, while for the occasion Pumpadour cobbled together a device out of all sorts of wires, an acid of some kind and an ordinary battery and taped this tightly to his body under his jacket — the device being intended to blow up and “kill both of them” the moment they embraced. Either he miscalculated, or the device was not foolproof, or maybe a combination of the two: perhaps the Transcendental disentangled herself from the hug before Pumpadour was able to activate the device, or maybe the batch was too weak, or the tightness of grip, “the two bodies clinging together,” that Pumpadour had reckoned on for a detonation was missing — but in fact Pumpadour alone experienced the explosion, the outcome of which, apart from the scare, was nothing more serious than some bruising and burns to the chest. The Transcendental had immediately run to call a doctor and ambulance, while Pumpadour, overacting as ever, Sziklai said, had fainted, was carried off to hospital, and although his injuries had healed quickly, had meanwhile been discovered to have stomach ulcers, so now the Transcendental visited him regularly, taking in his meals for him, since he had been put on a special diet.

“How’s it all going to end?” Köves cheered up, and Sziklai, likewise laughing, suggested:

“I fear the same way as our comedy: a happy end!” because, after many vicissitudes, interruptions, and fresh beginnings, the comedy had, indeed, now begun to take shape, with Köves usually working on the dialogue in the South Seas, so that at least when he was trying to write a comedy he was not haunted by the depressing spectacle of mourning perpetually accorded him by Mrs. Weigand since her son’s suicide, her eyes long not the limpid pools that Köves had once seen them as, but now covered by frozen sheets of permanent ice, his ears catching through the walls, night after night, the stifled sound of her sobbing. Besides which, Köves anyway found it easier to write a light comedy in the racket of the coffeehouse than in the loneliness of his own room, where he was constantly in danger that his attention would wander and escape his control, with foreign figures intruding onto the stage out of nowhere, such as an old man with a little dog tucked under one arm and a suitcase in the other hand; or else he was supposed to be hammering out the comedy’s ditzy, exciting, flighty, and adorable female character, but suddenly into her place other girls would push forward on whom he did not recognize those characteristics, at most their dearth — the factory girl, for example, who had been waiting for the death of her aunt from cancer and, for all he knew, might still be waiting now. Images would come vaguely to mind, memories lurk in waiting, all images and memories which had no place in a comedy and, as Köves thought, would probably not have come to mind if those empty white sheets of paper were not staring up at him, and if he did not have to sit there facing them. In his excruciating dreams (Köves had recently been sleeping poorly, indeed having bad dreams), like an alluvium which was continually sinking only to keep stubbornly resurfacing, he would sometimes make out a word, a word that, although not written down anywhere, he could nevertheless almost see, somehow starting with the letters of his name, but longer—követelés: “demand”? or maybe it was kötelesség: “duty”?—and then, if he looked closer, was not even a word but a drowning man, tumbling around amidst the waves, and Köves felt he ought to fling himself in after him to rescue him from the current before he drowned. Then, all at once, he was seized by a fit of rage: “Why me?” he thought in his dream, but it was no use looking around, he was on his own, facing the drowning man. He almost jumped, though he feared it would be a fateful jump, and the drowning man would pull him down into the maelstrom — then, fortunately, he would wake up in time, but the unpleasant atmosphere of the silly dream would trouble him for the whole day.

Letter. Consternation

One afternoon, Köves was sitting at the table in his lonely room — not long before, a late-summer light shower swept over the city, so, as he had no wish to get drenched, Köves had set to work at home — and probably even he thought he was debating whether he should make a start on the sketch that needed to be delivered for the Firefighters’ Platform, or should he write the newspaper article that was due, or should he get on with the light comedy, when, all of a sudden, he caught himself writing something that seemed most likely intended as the opening lines of a letter:

Lately, I have been thinking of you constantly. To be more specific, not so much of you as of what you read out; or to be even more specific, not so much of what you read out as of … You see, it’s precisely about this that I want to write. How can that be? That’s simple. Because I have picked up certain experiences which will certainly come in very handy for you, whereas I don’t know what to do with them. In short, I want to be of assistance to you, because you can’t deny that you are stuck. I believe you when you say that “the construction is ready to hand,” but there is something looming up between the “man of intellect and culture” and 30,000 corpses — maybe it too is just a corpse, but in any event the first, and thus the most important, because the question is whether it can be stepped over or ultimately presents an insurmountable barrier. Yes, that definitive first act which subsequently “proves to be an irrevocable choice,” if I rightly recall, just because it happened, and because it could have happened, indeed nothing else could have happened, and although it happens under the pressure of external compulsion, it does so in such a way that the external compulsion happens not to be present at the time, or is present merely as a circumstantial factor (with your permission, I would tag on the latter). It is governed by a purely helpful intention, then, though possibly also a little by one of protest; no, I can’t think of a better word for it at present than “protest,” though I don’t know what it is I am protesting against. I bow to your superior learning, but as I have already said many times, your learning lacks the colour of life, which usually shades into grey. You see, how precisely you visualize the extremes, but you get stuck on the simple, grey, absurd motive which leads to the extreme, because you are unable to imagine the simple, grey, absurd act, and the simple, grey, absurd path leading to that act. Just between the two of us, it’s not easy to do so; indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s almost impossible.

So listen!

Let’s start with me being called up by the army. I was reluctant to comply with the call-up order, in the way one is always reluctant to fulfil one’s personal destiny, all the more so as one usually does not perceive it as such. Every possible and impossible get-out crossed my mind, even including the idea of jumping off a high point in such a way that I would break a leg, but a friend (a fire officer) informed me that there was no sense in that, because they would simply wait until the fracture had mended, then whisk me off to be a soldier.

So, I went off, dazed and apathetic like a lamb to the slaughter, and, before I knew what was what, I was being fitted up in a uniform. You can’t expect me to fill you in on the horrors of barracks life, which may be rather well known, but still strike one as new if one experiences them personally. What I might say about them, perhaps, is that it is a complete absence, indeed denial, of one’s uniqueness, coupled with the incessant and intensified delights of physical being. It’s not true that one’s personality ceases to exist; it’s more that it is multiplied, which is a big difference, of course. And incidentally, to my no small surprise, when it came to physical performance I held my ground splendidly, often in the most literal sense, which as time went by filled me with almost a sense of self-satisfaction, as though the space vacated by my uniqueness had been occupied by the soul of a racehorse, which, in the intervals between being disciplined and made to run around, spots a good breather in the collective dormitory, in the steaming body-warmth, the loosening, eerily familiar atmosphere of frivolity and banishment. The barracks town was situated in some unknown part of the country, on a desolate plain, where the wind whistled incessantly and bells from the distant settlements tolled incessantly, and I well remember one dawn, when I was standing in line in the open air, in front of the kitchen, holding a mug for coffee: the sun had just risen, the sky was hanging dirtily and shabbily above us; my underpants (in which, just beforehand, I had been performing physical jerks to orders that had been barked out through megaphones) were clinging, clammy from rain and sweat, to my skin when, all of a sudden — through an indefinable decaying stench, compounded of ersatz coffee, soaked clothes, sweaty bodies, fields at daybreak, and latrines — broke a memory, though it was as if the memory was not mine, but somebody else’s whom I seemed to remember having seen once in a similar situation, some time long ago, somewhere else, a long way away, in a sunken world lying far beyond the chasms of all prohibitions, dimly and by now barely discernibly, a child, a boy who was once taken away to be murdered.

If you don’t mind, I won’t supply any further details.

Yet what a filthy dream I woke up to once! I am standing in a room by a desk, behind which is seated an obese, hormonally challenged bonehead, with matted hair, rotting teeth, bags under his eyes, and a sneer on his face: a major, and what he wants is for me to put my signature at the bottom of a piece of paper and accept a post as a prison guard in the central military prison.

So …

I tell him — because what else can I say? — “I’m not suitable.” And what do you think the jackass with the overactive glands and the rotten-toothed grin replies? “No one is born to be a prison guard”—that’s what he says, by way of encouragement. Look at it this way, others had signed up, meaning the rest of them, my fellow squaddies, because the whole platoon had been singled out for the job. “But I’m a man of intellect and culture,” I try once more. (You don’t by any chance know why precisely that phrase should have come to my mind?) To that he says: “Do you like the people?” I ask you, what answer are you supposed to give to that, if life is sweet to you, even if you happen not to like the people, since who on earth could have room for enough love to go round an entire people, and anyway the sonofabitch isn’t asking you to sign up as a god, just as a prison guard. So I say, “Yes.” “Do you hate the enemy?” is the next question, and again, what answer are you supposed to give to that, even if you have not seen hide nor hair of the enemy, and as to hating, it’s at most just this major you hate, and even him (human nature being what it is, its attention soon distracted and quick to forget) only in passing. “Right then, sign here!” he says, and he stabs a disgusting, stubby, flat-nailed, nicotine-stained index finger at the piece of paper. So, I take the pen from him and sign where he is indicating.

I’m trying to think why. Whichever way I look at it, I can see only one real reason: time. Yes, and this is something you may find a little curious, but only because, as I say, you are not familiar with the colours of life and don’t know that what we later on view as an event of major significance always appears initially in the guise of little curiosities, but it was mainly due to time that I signed. In the end, no pressing reason came to mind, and I couldn’t just stand there for an eternity, pen in hand. You might say there was no need for me to take it in my hand. Well, yes, but then the whole thing seemed so unreal that I did not feel my signature was any more real. I personally was completely shut out of the moment, if I may put it that way: I took no part in it, my existence went to sleep, or was paralyzed inside me, or at any rate it gave no twinge of unease to warn me of the importance of the decision. And anyway, was it a decision at all, or at least my decision? After all, it wasn’t me who chose the situation in which I had to make a choice, moreover a choice between two things, neither of which I wished to choose: I didn’t wish to become a prison guard, of course, but nor did I wish to be punished, for although it’s true that no one threatened punishment, that is something one takes for granted from the outset and is usually not far wrong about. Then again, there were a few incidental factors which played a part: I have the sort of nature which prefers to try to please people rather than pick a fight, so I would have to say that I was also driven to some extent by courtesy, but maybe also, in some way, by curiosity to see what a prison here is like, though in such a way that I was safe. So you see, any number of reasons relating to the spirit of frivolity and eerie familiarity that I have already mentioned were being impressed on me by my surroundings.

This is sounding as though I were making excuses, when I am merely bearing you out, for I stepped onto the path of grace — or at least what you call grace.

Not long after that, I found myself in the prison. I shall never forget my first impression: solid wooden doors lining a cool stone corridor; alongside the walls, widely separated, men standing with hands held behind their backs, foreheads pressed to the wall. They were clothed in worn-out military fatigues, without insignia, belt, or indication of rank. Armed guards were standing about at both ends of the corridor. Every now and then, a soldier hurries the length of the corridor; his glinting boots, coloured collar-patches, pistol jiggling on his butt, his supreme indifference, a true provocation. Otherwise, endless time and perpetual, suffocating stillness. And a particular odour; there is no better term for it than a prison stench.

I landed there, then, and it was not long before I was looking around with an eerie sense of familiarity. What else could I have done? I am being careful not to portray as simple what was apparently simple: for instance, you won’t hear a word from me about force of habit, or anything else which presents the reality as reality just because it is the reality; not for a second did I consider it as being natural to be there, and on the other hand not a second could pass that I did not consider as being natural, since I was there, after all. So, nothing struck me straight away: I saw no torture chambers, nobody starving to death. Admittedly, there were some nights when executions took place in the courtyard but, for one thing, I didn’t see them, for another, they were wrapped in a shroud of legality: death sentences passed by a court of law. There was generally an explanation for everything. Nothing went beyond the bounds and scale that, so it seems, I was able to accept. The military prison wasn’t the worst of prisons either; its inmates had either been sentenced for ordinary transgressions or breaches of service regulations, or they were waiting to be sentenced, unlike “over there,” as people, somewhat enigmatic expressions on their faces, referred to the customs service’s prison, which was separated from ours by an impenetrable wall.

Enough of this, though! It’s starting to sound as if I wanted to describe the circumstances — or in other words, again offer excuses — and as if the circumstances could be described anyway. They can’t. I long, long ago resigned myself to the fact that I shall never know where I am living and what laws I am governed by; that I am reliant on my sensory organs and my most immediate experiences, though even they can be deceptive, indeed maybe them most of all.

It’s funny, but before anything else I had to attend a school, a sort of course, where, along with my fellow squaddies, I was given instruction in what a prison guard had to do. I recollect the smile I had when I took my place on this course: it was the smile of the damned, of one who was, by then, ready for anything in the spirit of the contract, with the scrutiny of that bitter smile being the only reservation.

But I had not expected what happened next. What did I expect? I don’t know exactly; how could I? Essentially something along the lines that they, in their own crafty way (about which again I can have had no precise notion), would put my brains, my soul, even my body to work; would instruct and bully me, din into me, some crude, savage, and blind consciousness; in short, prepare me for my sinister job. Instead of which, what do I hear? You’ll never believe it: they are perpetually going on about the law, about rights and duties, regulations, records, procedures, official channels, health regulations, and so on and so forth. And don’t think this was done disingenuously, with a hideous, hand-wringing grin on their faces: not a bit of it! With the straightest imaginable expression, not one word out of place, not one collusive wink. I couldn’t get over it: Could this be their method? They pitch me in among prisoners, then leave me to myself? Are they relying on my duties to transform me, to break me in? Well, I thought to myself, if they have picked me out for their ends (and of course it was useless to rack my brains as to what sort of mystery could have guided that choice: some sort of educational intention, perhaps, or — and after a while this seemed the likeliest to me — merely blind, impersonal chance), they must also know what they’re expecting from me; but then, it suddenly occurred to me, did I myself know?

In a word, I was scared. As a prison guard, I was terrified of the prisoners. Or rather, I was terrified of coming into contact with prisoners in the capacity of a prison guard. It seemed unavoidable, though, since that was why I had been stuck in the post. The hormonally challenged, dog-breathed major’s question as to whether I hated the enemy kept resurfacing like a nightmarish dream, and I was seized by fear a thousand times over that they would delegate some miserable authority to me and force me to live up in practice to the word I had given. (How many times I regretted it now!) Because I naturally, or perhaps I should say: instinctively, took as my starting point the idea that a prisoner was just a prisoner, and wrong can only be lying in wait for those who exercise authority over them. On the course, naturally, I heard umpteen times over that the basis of the administration of justice was the law, so the prisoners were transgressors of the law, whom the law had sentenced to imprisonment for their wrongs. I also saw that one or another of the pretend prison guards among my companions jumped at this sort of reasoning, as if the fact that they were facing criminals directly threw light on their business; extreme necessity might have compelled even me to try my hand at the method, but it has always been my experience that it is pointless for me to pursue my luck down this path. For whatever reason, I completely lack the propensity to act as a judge over others, and I have had the feeling there is no crime on earth which could adequately justify, at least in my eyes, the job of prison guard.

That, then, was the belief with which I entered service as a prison guard in a prison.

But they must have spotted something about me that, with due care (or cowardice, if you prefer), I myself undoubtedly hurried to get spotted at every turn, because in the end I was assigned to duties against which even my eerie sense of familiarity could have found nothing to object. You know, the six-storey chasm of the military prison is a canyon whose nether regions have been turned upside down: the sixth floor was a secure area, blocked off from the stairwell by grey-painted iron walls, its inmates, unlike those on the lower floors, wearing an outfit of coarse cloth or striped prison duds, their supervision (what luck!) entrusted solely to a handful of old-hand career NCOs specially trained for the purpose, who, like wood lice, only felt truly at home in the gloom of the prison, not to speak of the nearest drinking den. Moving down, each floor loses a bit of the general bleakness, so that the second floor was no more than a sort of purgatory, inhabited solely by prisoners who worked on the outside, along with those who had the privilege of working in the internal units like the kitchen, the laundry, and the tailor’s, cobbler’s, and repair shops, such as the cooks, the barbers, and the clerks in various offices, while the prisoner doctors and pharmacist had a comfortable cell there; here was the surgery and hairdresser, and this floor also provided access to the legal block, with its lawyers, and the corridor leading to the court — named, so I was told, as in every prison in the world, “the Bridge of Sighs.”

Well, that was where I was assigned to duties, and I have to say I didn’t have to overexert myself. I went on my shift in the morning, and that was roughly also the end of the day’s work. The large cell spaces were practically all empty, their inmates did whatever they had to do, each in his particular workplace. During the evening hours, I would open and lock doors, more in the manner of an obliging lackey than a surly prison guard, for the groups of prisoners returning from their work, perhaps, needless to say, neglecting to carry out the virtually mandatory frisking. After the evening meal, I would settle down for a bit of a chin-wag in the medics’ cell, then count the prisoners and report the number by internal telephone to the duty officers at the main gate; after lights out, I too would stretch out on my iron bed and sleep peacefully until reveille the next morning, if allowed to. In our prison, you see, I was the decent guard. If you get really bored some day, ask me to tell you about all the things I did for the poor prisoners. Heaps, if that is any saving grace. For some I even smuggled letters in and out — only for the most reliable ones, of course, as that was a fairly risky enterprise. During the day, too, I would occasionally poke my nose outside my room to run an eye over the prisoners waiting along the wall to cross “the Bridge of Sighs” for some reason, and if I spotted signs of dejection or exhaustion in any of them, I would call him out and take him to the toilets so he got a chance to move around and at least rest for a few minutes, and there’s no denying it, I greatly enjoyed playing the role of mysterious Providence’s local vicar, who suddenly bestows on a prisoner, hey presto! the thrill of a good deed as unexpected as it was suspiciously unjustified.

That is how I lived, then, resentful about my fate having discarded me there, yet as comfortable as could be in that discardedness, with twenty-four hours on duty alternating with twenty-four hours off, and I supposed that army service would eventually be over and the duties come to an end.

Looking back on it, I can find no explanation for that eerie sense of familiarity. If I try to summon it up, it’s as if I were trying to inspect the life of a stranger with whom I never had anything to do, and about whom I would prefer, if possible, to hear nothing more. The snag, though, is that he is constantly being talked about, and the person doing the talking is me. Do you remember our first conversation in the South Seas? You asked then the question, What was man was fit for? You were right, I too see that now: that really is the question, and an exceedingly awkward question at that, I sense.

One morning when I went on duty, I was greeted by my fellow guard — a swarthy, stocky, short-legged, and, to all appearances, spruce manikin, except that the prison-guard vocation had taken up residence in him, squatting there like a hideous reptile — with the information that one of the prisoners in solitary confinement was refusing food. I should note that several cells for solitary confinement were installed even on this purgatory-like floor, on side corridors off the ends of the main aisle, though they were not used, as in the nether regions on higher floors, for prolonged seclusion, let alone punishment; at most, unfortunates would spend the first few days of their detention there until they had got through their first questioning by the examining magistrate and been assigned to a shared cell. There was therefore a speedy turnover in their inmates, so by the time I had registered a face, the next time it would be another looking at me when I opened up or, like it or not, checked through the spyhole. Of all my prison-guard duties, I found that shameful procedure perhaps the most difficult of all to accustom myself to — and if I’m complaining, just imagine what the person whom I was obliged to use it against would say! The very first time — I remember I was still in training for the job on the course — I had to be literally ordered to do it. My heart was in my mouth, I was so frightened of the spectacle that would unfold before me. In the end, it was different from what I had expected; not horrible, but perhaps something even worse: forlorn. Through the hole I could see a cell: a bunk, a toilet bowl without seat, a wash-basin — oh, and of course the man who had to live there. Later on, I tried to look at this as if it were not me looking but a prison guard, but of course it was not long before I had to resign myself to only being able to look as a prison guard, but in particular a prison guard who, sadly, just happened to be me. In no way could I accustom myself to that damned spyhole, through which it was possible to watch the prisoner in his cell at any time, possibly even the most inappropriate moment. It was explained to me that that was precisely the purpose: to be able to inspect the prisoner, check that he was not sick or harming himself or to catch him red-handed doing something prohibited. It was just that I had no wish catch anyone red-handed, and there was nothing at all that I wanted to inspect which might be repugnant or would displease me — I had no wish to know what a person gets up to behind the door, if he happens to have been locked up in a solitary cell. It was not hard to guess, of course: he is scared and bored, and from certain signs that were eventually distilled, almost involuntarily, as a conclusion within me, I observed, to my astonishment, that even if the prison guard did not enter the cell from time to time, it seemed for some prisoners that this would only fulfil their sense of abandonment. I devised several obvious techniques, such as stamping as I made my way along the corridor, so they could hear that I was coming (which was against the rules: the ape-faced chief warden used to slip felt overshoes onto his boots and approach the coolers like a hyena which had been famished for months; before entering a cell, instead of knocking, I would fumble for a long time with the key on the iron door, as though I was having trouble finding the lock; and although the doors, fitted as they were, with sordid expediency, with a sort of drop-down window hatch, through which the unfortunates were given their food, I always opened the door, so that they would get some air, the noise of rattling dishes, a somewhat cheering glimpse of busy comings-and-goings. As I say, in our prison I counted as one of the better guards.

Well anyway, this prisoner wasn’t eating, says Short-arse. Maybe he’s sick, I tell him. The hell he is: he’s up to no good, says he. Chummy, says I, there’s no need straight off to … Fine, says he, he’s already put in a report, I should make reports about further developments otherwise he would be obliged to report that I am neglecting to make reports. Screw you, I retort in friendly fashion. Just bugger off home, I’m the one on duty now.

We chatted something along those lines, and then I quickly forgot all about it. What did I find, though? He really didn’t want to eat. Neither at noon, nor in the evening.

I waited until lights out, and when the stillness of the night had descended on the prison — a special kind of tranquillity this is, a lit-up, timeless night, the everlastingness of the nether regions, filled with dull, mysterious, muffled hissing and bubbling underwater murmurs, so to say — I open up the solitary cooler rather like an inflamed wound, with a degree of indistinct hope. ‘So, tell me why …,’ I kick off, something like that, not really able to see his long, thin face, as it is covered by a long, wispy beard which ends in a long, wispy, ruffled tip (they’ll soon shear that off when they stick him over in a shared cell, I thought to myself with my supercilious prison-guard gloominess). He tosses out in a flip way something to the effect that his principles demanded it — and I very specifically recall him using the word “principles.”

“What principles are those, then?” I ask with a kind smile, because I had the feeling then that there was no principle on earth that I couldn’t refute. “That I’m innocent,” he snaps, and you see, I don’t even have to refute that, for which of us is not innocent, and anyway: what does it mean?

I said it out loud, or maybe only thought so to myself, I don’t know, but anyway I entered his cell, as it were dropping whatever prison-guard reserve I had. I soon had to realize, though, that my efforts were completely futile: he wouldn’t listen to my arguments, didn’t budge when I ordered him, indeed, did not utter a single word after that. He just kept running that dark, obdurate look of his over my face, like a blindly groping hand. Like someone who doesn’t allow himself to be deluded for one second by deceitful words, he searched about like a cornered animal which was ready to dive under the bunk or scurry away between my legs at the first suspicious sign. I could see he was ready for anything, looking on me as his enemy, or rather not even his enemy: a prison guard, a screw, a person with whom one does not enter a debate. His eyes were burning, with red blotches over his cheekbones; it was the second day that he had not eaten … I talked and talked; in the end I don’t know what annoyed me more: the look which obstinately banished him from the world of being understood and making himself understood, or the situation he had forced on me and which was slowly making a prisoner of me too, locking me in that cell, along with this prisoner, and all of a sudden, before I could escape, time would draw in on us and the night carry us away.

“Do you have the slightest idea what you can expect?” I asked him in the end — and, whatever the rules may say, I had long been addressing him in the familiar form, not out of any contempt, not at all, but driven purely by fraternal irritation, to be precise.

“You’re not eating?” I continue. “It’s just they won’t allow you that luxury here,” I laugh, though not out of any amusement. “You can starve, but only if they starve you. And if you don’t eat, they’ll make you, I can assure you. They’ll take you into the sickbay, push a tube down into your stomach, if possible scratching your gullet in the process — I’ve seen it happen,” I lie, though forgivably, as I had heard about what they did but, of course, had taken good care not to be party to such a spectacle. “And if you vomit it up,” I went on, “they run it in up your backside, or else they strap you down on a bed, stick needles into your veins, and push the nutrients in that way. And don’t go thinking that this somehow just happens, as if you were not there or not taking part in it. Or that you can sail through the whole thing without being tarnished by it. You’d be wrong, very wrong!” I exclaim, and perhaps even I am not aware what sorts of fragmentary memories my own words are reopening within me, or what images are welling up from the depths, as from the cellar of a ruined house when the wind whistles through them. “No one who is tortured,” I yell, “No one can remain untarnished — that’s something I know all too well, and don’t ask me how. Afterwards you won’t be able to speak of innocence any longer, at best of survival. And if you should have a wish to die, that isn’t permitted either. You think they’ll feel any pity for you? They’ll bring you back from death’s door seven times over, don’t worry! Dying can only happen in the permitted manner: with them killing you.”

That’s how I spoke, and my words appeared to be ineffectual. “Is this what you want?” I had another go. “You are doing nothing more than inviting them to commit these outrages, don’t you see?”

All of a sudden, something came to mind; I don’t understand how it had not occurred to me before, or could it have been precisely this that was secretly guiding me all along?

“Apart from which,” I carried on, “you’ll be dragging others into disgrace along with yourself. I’ll have to write a report on you,” slipped from my mouth before I had a chance to think better of it. “Do you give any thought to other people’s innocence?!” I can hear my own reproachful voice. “Here, I’ve never lifted a finger against anyone …,” I stutter and, for all that I’m a prison guard, I might even have got round to begging the prisoner had something not pulled me up. What was that? Now, pin your ears back, or keep your eyes open, because you’ll hear, or rather read, the most disgusting and, at the same time, most obvious thing, I might well say a flash of genius took wing here. Anyway, the beard covered up a lot, of course, but it seemed to me as though I spotted a scornful smile flitting over the prisoner’s face, at least briefly.

I have tried any number of times soberly to analyse that moment, and may I say in my defence that both analysis and sobriety have always turned out to be my downfall. The way I would like to remember it, the smile infuriated me to the point that I suddenly flew into a temper. However hard I try, however, I don’t recall that I was overcome by anger, especially an anger that would have deprived me of, or even just clouded, my judgement. No, all I felt was disgust, sudden despondency, resentment, and again disgust, which included this gaol-breathed prisoner, with whose, for me, all at once so extraneous wretchedness I had been locked together by the moment, through an equally extraneous series of causes, just as it included me. It was all, all, sweeping me toward the simplest solution, of course insofar as I can consider it a solution, to rid myself of that moment, with panic-stricken haste, and in the simplest possible way, as it comes. But I sensed a resistance, a stubbornly aloof, last-ditch, irrational resistance which is incomprehensibly and unfairly standing straight before me, when all I want is the light of reason, I am undoubtedly right as well; and then, abstractly as it were, I also sensed the disparity of incommensurable forces which pertains between a convict who is being stubborn and a prison guard, who, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, shoulder belt running diagonally across his chest, pistol dangling on his haunch, and trousers thrust into soft top boots, may be the very image of high-handedness and terror, should his whim so will it.

For whatever reason, I took a step forward. A tiny little step only, and I immediately stopped again. Clearly, though, the prisoner may well have misunderstood — or, as I preferred to think at the time: misinterpreted — the movement, because he instantly flinched. But there wasn’t much room, and his leg was immediately caught against the bunk, so he could only lean his upper body farther back, and that was how he faced me. That was when I raised my hand and struck a defenceless prisoner in the face, causing him to drop onto the bunk, from where he looked up at me, not without a trace of fear, yet still with a smack of satisfaction, if I wasn’t mistaken, indeed, so it seemed, even a touch of surreptitious defiance.

I no longer paid him any heed. I backed out of the cell, with my trembling hands locked the door with great difficulty, then slowly, as if I were trooping to the dead march at an execution, I set off down the corridor to my room.…

That, then, is the letter as you may wish it. The “crystal-clear act” (I remembered that right, haven’t I?), the wound that never heals.

If you wish, by the way, it may even open up the route to the 30,000 corpses.

Purely for the sake of order and continuity, I would add that as far as I am concerned, the following morning, at that breathtaking sublime moment when general orders are being read out, I simply fell down flat on the floor, then for weeks and months on end, even in my dreams, I stubbornly hung on to a new being, summoned up out of some illness which was no doubt not properly pinpointed, whom I became, or wished to become. It was a madman, no question about it, the sole refuge available to me at the time — the other, so that I might, so to say, provoke my arrest, and I don’t know if that was not what I really wanted, even if only in secret, so even I would be unaware of it, as I can’t have wanted that, after all. I will spare you the details of how many jails I did time in, how many punishments (I almost wrote humiliations, as if I could have been humiliated still further) I was subjected to, until in the end, I landed in hospital where my games, arbitrary as they may have been, but still following a definite logic, were now carried on under the crossfire of expert eyes. After all, everything depends on the firmness of our will, and in my experience a person can cross over into madness with terrifying ease, if he wants that at all costs. I had to see, however, that I could not consider this a solution. Not that I thought it was cheap, more because my normal life was no more foreign to me than madness. Then the investigations suddenly came to an end, and for a while they left me in peace, and then, on some spurious pretext, I was released from hospital and discharged from the army — thanks to the changes, as I hear from all sides nowadays.

So, now here I stand (or more specifically, sit) with my story, which I shall hand over to you, not knowing what to do with it myself. When all is said and done, nothing irremediable happened: no one was killed, and I personally did not become a killer; at most, all links broke down, and something — maybe I do not even know precisely what — has been left lying in ruins. I am striving ever harder to crawl under those ruins so they cover me completely. What else can I do? I was unable to set off down the path to grace that you denoted; all I was capable of is what I have told you, and in the end my strength cracked doing even that. I know there is the other possible path, but I can’t truly pull even that off, I have missed the opportunity, so to say, at least for the moment. At this protracted, difficult moment, I am obliged to notice, destiny is taking a rain check. As a result, I live concealed in the crowd, in protected — I almost said: happy — insignificance. I write newspaper articles and light comedies; if I try hard, I can undoubtedly make some sort of success with that. I can tell no one else what has happened to me: either they will considerately excuse me or sternly condemn me for it, though I need neither, because they will do nothing to move what is immovable. Something else is needed, and again all that comes to my mind is a word of yours, though not in the least in the sense you use it: grace. But I feel that is farther from me than anything else. From time to time, the dull, rummaging rustling of my perplexity is drowned out within me by the savage voice of fear. It is not fear of fear or cowardice, but rather something else, and occasionally I feel that my fear is all I can rely on, as if that was the best thing about me and might, in time, lead somewhere — no, I’m not putting that well: which might lead me out of somewhere, even if it leads nowhere …

But that is of no interest to you. You have simply got the upper hand over all this with a judgement and have locked yourself, with an eerie sense of familiarity, into the world of constructions, from which you deny every living thing every living way out in the name of the sole possible grace, which in reality, of course, is some form of damnation, and which, I admit, you are absolutely right about, even if, from another angle, you are not right, because it is not as easy and simple as that, even if from yet another angle it really is that easy and simple …”

At this point Köves suddenly stopped writing, as he may well have felt he was becoming bogged down in a confused line of thought from which he would have a hard job extricating himself at present (he was probably a little tired, on top of which his patience suddenly failed him), and he remained sitting for a while longer, bent over the filled sheets of paper, as if he were pondering whether to run through it again, but then he swiftly gathered the sheets, folded them in two and hesitantly looked around as though searching for an envelope (fruitlessly, of course) before finally stuffing them into his pocket and setting off from home in a hurry.

Köves was getting close to his target, having decided that he would slip the letter in person under the addressee’s door, when something in a narrow, busy street brought him up sharp. Neck craned, he was looking for a gap in the crowd: as he had thought, making her way along the other side, was a woman who was neither young nor old, her clear, agreeable face, long unseen, creased by two deep, tragic furrows. Beside her, or in fact more behind her, constantly falling back, a robust man: his bald, oval head, his fleshy face — of course Köves recognized him instantly, and yet somehow he did not recognize him but just stood, rooted to the spot, motionless. For something was missing from the face, precisely the thing that had made him so recognisable and unmistakable, but as to what that deficiency was it took several seconds for Köves to mutter to himself, his lips chilled in alarm: intelligence.

At that very moment, the man suddenly came to a standstill before a shop window (it was some sort of bakery, with a display of sweet pastries, cakes, and petits-fours adorning the window). The woman took another pace, and only when she must have sensed that she would be unable to drag the man along any farther did she stop and turn round. Köves saw her saying something and also nodding — maybe encouraging him to come on, but the man perceptibly dug his heels in, squatted and, arm extended like a child, pulled the woman back toward the shop window, until she finally relented and, with a mild shake of the head, entered the shop with him.

Flabbergasted, Köves stood at the kerb for a brief moment longer in the bustle and then quickly turned on his heels and, devastated, bewildered, shot off toward the city as if he were hoping that perhaps somewhere in the streets he would be able to rid himself of the spectacle, as of some burdensome and unpleasant object, but meanwhile the feeling pressed in him that, on the contrary, he ought to preserve it and bring it out from time to time in order to come to understand its import.

The letter stayed in his pocket.

L

Köves was given an assignment to make enquiries and write an article about why the trains were running late: the trains always ran late, but it seems they only found it unusual now, when everyone had, at long last, got used to it, though Köves, who knew very little about railways (he was not even in the habit of travelling, so the fact that the trains ran late was to him, no denying it, a matter of some indifference), was by now on the second day of trotting from one office to the other in order to collect the basic information needed for the article lest, when the time came for him to come forth clad in the expected superiority and irrefutability, he should find himself accused of not being fully informed. He had even put in an appearance in the inner offices of one of the railway stations to inspect with interest exceedingly complex point- and signal-switching apparatus, listen somewhat dozily, but with encouraging nods, to various high-ranking railway officials, who expounded on the state of rolling stock, the difficulties of freight transport, and the like, apologetically as it were, then finally found himself in the office from whose rooms, they explained to Köves, they directed all the trains that sped along (or, if it came to that, were held up) on the distant rails, and since the high-ranking official with whom Köves was due to talk happened, at that moment, to be right in the middle of directing, among various complicated charts and audio-visual devices, numerous trains, Köves was asked to be so kind as to wait a little until they called him.

It seems, though, that they must have forgotten all about him, or possibly unforeseen problems had cropped up inside while they were directing the trains, but in any case Köves had spent long enough time strolling up and down a deserted, windowless corridor, illuminated by no more than the nightmarish light of neon tubes (at one end the corridor ran into a blank wall, while at the other end made a right-angle turn into a passage which promised to be quite a lot longer than the one he was in, so it was likely that Köves was located on the shorter limb of an L-shaped corridor) himself to have forgotten (or at least not to have thought about for a long time) what he was actually doing there, for whom and what he was waiting, even whether he was actually waiting or simply happened to be there, in the same way that he might be anywhere else. Besides which, Köves was in a somewhat strange mood: at once lively and pensive, inattentive and keyed up — like everyone nowadays, so it seemed to Köves. He had hit the road that morning from the South Seas (he had a big breakfast beforehand), and there he had been welcomed straight away with excitement and a babble of voices: at the Uncrowned’s table (even that early he had taken his seat at the head of the table in person) they were in the middle of unrolling some fabric or other, a long sheet of the kind which is secured at both ends to poles and held up high (that was what they were trying out at that moment: it was embellished with the words WE WANT TO LIVE! in fancy, coloured embroidery), so that one of the waiters was obliged to hasten to the table and on behalf of the manager (who had no time to go himself and passed on well-disposed greetings) asked the gentlemen “for the sake of everyone’s comfort to please be so kind as to avoid making any stir.” While he was subsequently making the rounds of the offices, Köves’s ear had been caught, every now and then, even on streets which seemed to be a bit busier than normal, by the slogan that he had first come across in the South Seas, but signs of excitement were also being manifested by the high-ranking officials, who, despite the rather disquieting nature of their thoughts as far as the subject matter went, would crack an occasional smile while making their expositions, would lose the thread of their thinking or fall silent for a moment, all ears to the street sounds that would drift in through the window from time to time, and even if it could not have been put into precise words, all that had an effect of Köves, of course.

This elation, this state of readiness which couldn’t make its mind up what to be ready for, and therefore probably magnified every tiny thing inordinately, may well have caused Köves, all at once, to hear the tramp of marching feet in the corridor. Tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions? — Köves could not have said. In reality, of course, it was just one person, and not near at hand but in the longer limb of the L-shaped corridor, which Köves could not see into from where he was — clearly an official who had clearly stepped out of his room and was now clearly hurrying to another room, his footsteps echoing in the narrow corridor, and Köves was no doubt perfectly aware that this was the case, it was just that his present mood simply would not tolerate him taking into account such trivial and dreary facts. He merely sensed something: the vortex of those echoing steps, the pull of the marching — this truly made him dizzy, enticed him, induced him to join, dragging him off into the flood, the ranks of the unstoppable procession. Yes, out into the multitude, because Köves now did not just hear the tread of a single official as the tread of many, he could almost picture the multitude as well: warmth, security, the irresistible, blind tide of incessant footsteps and the twilight happiness of eternal forgetting were waiting for Köves — not for a second was he in doubt about that. At that very second, though, he also saw something else in the corridor: a vague apparition which resembled the drowning man haunting his dreams. Of course, he only saw the drowning man in the way that he did the multitude; in other words, not at all, yet meanwhile feeling that he saw it better than if he actually saw it: it was his uniqueness which was writhing there, his abandoned, ownerless life. At that moment, Köves sensed, with almost piercing clarity, that his time there had come to an end and had simultaneously been accomplished: whether to make the jump or not, he had to choose — indeed, with an obscure sense of relief, he felt he no longer even had to choose. He was going to make the jump simply because he could do nothing else; make the jump even though he knew it would be a fateful jump, that the drowning man was going to carry him along, and who could know how long they would have to struggle in the depths, and who could know whether he would ever be able to find his way up into the light again?

How long he stood there in the corridor, and how long he experienced the strange and evidently destined to be far from transient mood which overcame him like a sudden shock from the outside, as it were — Köves would have been hard put to keep an eye on, to be sure. The fact is, the footsteps which had induced this almost feverish state of stunned elation had not even died away when the door opened and he was called for, and Köves went in and behaved as though he were Köves, the newspaper correspondent, who was interested in nothing else but why the trains were running late, looked at charts, listened to explanations and, who knows, maybe even posed a few questions of his own, nodded, smiled, shook hands, took his leave — none of this disturbed him in the least, did not even impinge on him, as if it were not happening to him, or rather exactly as if it were happening to him alone since — he realized all at once, as he raced down the stairs and stepped out onto the street — it was precisely in this respect that some irrevocable volte-face had happened to him: everything which had happened and was happening had happened and was happening to him and could no longer happen to him without the incisive consciousness of this presence. He may still have been living, but he had virtually lived his life already, and all at once Köves glimpsed that life in the form of such a closed, complete, rounded story that he himself was lost in wonder at its foreignness. And if it was hope that this spectacle elicited from him, that could have pertained only to this story; Köves could only hope that if he personally was beyond saving, his story could still be saved. How could he have imagined he could hide away, detach himself from the gravity of his life like a stray animal from its chain? No, this was how he would have to live from now on, with his gaze riveted on this existence, and to watch for a long time, fixedly, wonderingly, and incredulously, watching on and on, until he finally spotted something in it which very nearly no longer belonged to this life; something which was palpable, confined to the essential, incontestable, and accomplished, like a catastrophe; something which would gradually become detached from this life, like a frost crystal that anyone can pick up and gaze at its final configurations, then pass on to other hands for inspection as one of Nature’s marvellous formations …

That was how Köves roved the streets, now dawdling, now breaking into a dash, aimlessly and yet, most likely, setting himself an aim as he was going, and of course he noticed that he was sometimes stumbling into obstacles, having to make his way round people, whole groups of people, there being many out on the streets and making quite a racket; he even saw a march, this time a genuine one, with the slogan WE WANT TO LIVE! on the banners raised on high amid the ranks of the marchers, and Köves felt a brief sense of cheerful, absent-minded advocacy at the sight, in the same way that he advocated sunlight, for example, even if his solitary occupation, of course, gave him little chance to devote particularly close attention to it. It was probably getting late, though it was still daylight when he turned into the street on which he lived, and he seemed to hear his name being called out among the other cries, though he started only when someone plucked at his arm: it was Sziklai, who, it became clear, had just dropped in to see Köves and had even left a note for him with his landlady, then he had stuck around for a while longer, running up and down the road, and had just decided not to wait a moment longer when who should he at last happened to see but Köves.

“Old chap!” he exclaimed, evidently extremely excited, his hard, olive-tinted face, and the sharp lines etched into it looking like a veritable wood carving, “Get your things together. We’ll be coming for you tonight with a truck!”

“What sort of truck?” Köves asked in a daze, as if he were not entirely sure that it was he who was being spoken to, and whose arm had been grabbed, and whether the person who was nevertheless being spoken to and whose arm had been grabbed really was himself. In the end, on tenterhooks and annoyed as he was, and laughing nervously at Köves’s amazement, Sziklai was obliged to tell him what had happened: the whole city had been stood on its ears, the fire brigade had been disbanded, the soldiers had gone home, the South Seas had closed, the borders were rumoured not to be guarded by anyone, and a group of people — including Sziklai — who had been waiting long, long years, knowingly or not, for a chance to escape from this city, which denied all hope, this life which belied all hope, had now got together and rustled up a truck, on which they would be setting off under the cover of the night, taking Köves with them.

“Where to?” Köves asked, at a loss to understand, and Sziklai came to an irritated standstill, having meanwhile set off almost at a run, and although he had little idea where he was going Köves more or less mechanically tagged along with him.

“Does it matter?” Sziklai fumed. “Anywhere!..” He set off again. “Abroad,” he added, and in Köves’s ear the word, at that instant, sounded like a festive peal of bells.

He walked on for a while without a word, head sunk in thought, by Sziklai’s side.

“Sorry, but I can’t go,” he said eventually.

“Why not?” Sziklai again came to a stop, astonishment written all over his face. “Don’t you want to be free?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” said Köves. “The only trouble is,” he broke into a smile, as if by way of an apology, “I have to write a novel.”

“A novel?!” Sziklai was dumbstruck. “Now of all times?… You can write it later, somewhere else,” he went on. Köves continued smiling awkwardly:

“Yes, but this is the only language I know,” he worried.

“You’ll learn another one,” Sziklai said, waving that aside, almost tapping his feet in impatience: it looked as though other urgent matters were calling him.

“By the time I learn one I’ll have forgotten my novel.”

“Then you’ll write another one.” Sziklai’s voice by now sounded almost irritated, and it was more for the record than in hope of being understood that Köves pointed out:

“I can only write the one novel it is given me to write,” for which Sziklai could no longer come up with, and maybe did not even look for, a counterargument. They stood wordlessly, facing each other in the street, a storm of shouts of “We want to live!” around them, then — was it Sziklai who made the first move, or perhaps Köves? — swiftly embraced. Sziklai was then swallowed up in the crowd, whereas Köves turned on his heels and set off back, at a shambling pace, like someone who is in no hurry as he already suspects in advance all the pain and shame his future holds for him.