The ensuing statement is intended as
a counter-statement to that other statement, by all means more official,
if in no way more credible, that was taken down and, it goes without saying,
entered into the records at a certain place, on a certain day, at a certain
hour, which details we may dispense with here.
This statement is not being made out of any desire to set the record straight,
to detract from or add to the facts, as if we believed, for instance, in
the importance of the facts, perchance in the truth. We believe in nothing
now, unless, perhaps, deaf and blind to truth and lies alike, it is solely
in the power of confession, which makes us brother to our solitude and,
so to speak, grooms us for our Ultimate Insight, whose frightful name it
immediately transforms into the Lamb gambolling before us that-only now
does it dawn on us-we have been following for so very long but this time,
without our yielding a jot in our consequentiality, may actually catch up
with.
*
One fine April day in nineteen hundred
and something, the profitable idea struck me that I might spend a few days-two,
perhaps, or at the outside three-in Vienna. Who could doubt the periodic
necessity for such changes of place and air, for purposes of one's health,
indeed, one's general creativity no less, that perpetual effort of the mind
(motus animi continuus) which, at least with me, bursts out with renewed
joy virtually the instant that I cross the frontiers of this country. Nonetheless,
I was guided primarily by purely practical concerns. To put it briefly,
I needed to pay a ceremonial visit on Dr U. at the Ministry of Culture,
where my services in the domain of translating Austrian authors into Hungarian,
truly modest as they were, had attracted a certain amount of attention,
to which they were not averse to giving utterance; furthermore, to call
on the Institute for Human Sciences, which, just a few days beforehand,
had informed me of its intention to support my then-nascent Wittgenstein
translation with a stipend to stay in Vienna-a decision that brought honour
but also attendant problems of accommodation which, all in all, would best
be clarified on the spot; and so on. I ought to add here, however, that
the desire for mental renewal, that inclination, secretly dormant in each
of us, sometimes even striking us as natural, to think of ourselves as a
private person, indeed any sort of person, would not have been roused in
me, out of its long and deep swoon, were it not for the promptings of those
illusions of personal freedom whose source, unquestionably, is to be sought
primarily in the impatient, the culpably impatient (and conspicuously sudden)
needs of my own mind, albeit illusions of freedom-or illusory freedoms-that,
indisputably, had seemed to be nourished by certain official manifestations
and irresponsible pronouncements in recent times.
To that end, urgent telephone calls are initiated between Budapest and Vienna;
clarification of appointments with ladies and gentlemen of the Ministry
and Institute, room reservations at a cheap but trustworthy hotel, and so
forth. Agonized deliberations over whether it is right for me to leave my
sick patient back here, on her own, if only for a couple of days, since
her condition, it seems, has just turned critical. I purchase a train ticket,
and even a seat reservation, all the same. That very evening I develop a
fluey temperature, on top of which one of my teeth becomes inflamed and
my face swells up. That night I am granted a horrendous apparition. There
is a ring at the door, and through the round spy-hole I glimpse a young
man the very sight of whom sets me shuddering. My Saviour is visiting me,
but in a quite different guise from when he first appeared to me, a good
four years before, directly by and above my bed, as if descending from celestial
heights and approaching me through the wall, which evidently posed no obstacle
to him. Sporting a reddish-tinged beard, his narrow, blue eyes resting upon
me with an expression of, beyond any shadow of doubt, unutterable meekness,
by a gesture of his hand, clumsy as it was but clearly benedictory, he had
approved of my existence; he had affirmed that I should live the way I was
living and do what I was doing. He instilled this affirmation into me like
a shining truth, the intense warmth of which my heart preserved for a long
time afterwards and, from time to time, suffuses me to this day.
This young man at the door did not even vaguely resemble him; he looked
like one of those homeless persons who have suddenly emerged from the apocalyptically
seething lower depths of the city: the decrepit appearance of an alcoholic,
his face covered with blonde stubble, and yet I had no doubt who he was.
He could have saved himself the suspicious, unnecessary and confused allusions
to the relationship he had nurtured with my sick patient, whom (but I already
knew that) he had visited now and again as some sort of preacher and even
sold a bible to. He was asking after her this time as well. I sensed that
although he was telling the truth, not one word of what he was saying was
true; most likely, he was testing me so as to adjust his behaviour to mine;
and as an ignoble but increasingly ungovernable mistrust grew within me,
he too transformed accordingly, although his face, his blue eyes, remained
meek, as if he had not the slightest idea what his hand was up to in the
meantime. For his hand had by then threaded itself through the spy-hole.
I retreated in terror, first to the back of the hallway then out into the
kitchen, but at the end of the arm stretching out after me like an elephant's
proboscis or a giant snake was more a hydraulic grab than a hand, tracking
me, probing after me with every step I took. I began to shout for help;
since I had not let him in, I now saw him as my killer; our ineffable, other-worldly
relationship had become a relationship of persecutor and persecuted, and
the latter-me-was calling, in an incomprehensibly ludicrous manner, for
the police to save me from him. My wife's shaking finally managed to awaken
me, though whether it was from my dream or my life I frankly could not say,
the difference being so wafer-thin, but in any event, or so I sensed, it
seemed to require interpretation. And as so often before, as I always do
by now, and yet do so all the more infrequently ever since (for want of
better) making it my profession, I sought that in writing. But all that
could come out of that was what was already clear: beyond a triggering that
could be referred to the pain in my root canal, my irremediably bad relationship
to myself, my lack of affection in general and towards myself in particular.
Furthermore, a memento mori-and this time not as a reassuring solace, as
on my better days, but as an oppressive and bleak threat. The Saviour, I
well understood, was sending a message that he was in crisis, he had been
neglected and was preparing to punish-indeed kill- me, which is to say himself.
In a hasty scrawl, I scribbled the following on a page of my notebook: "So
be on your guard; look for a link with the primal happiness, the creation
that is concealed in the depth of all things. Write; yet also pay attention
to those around me-seek solitude, even create it, but, if at all possible,
without criminally demolishing everything as is your wont."
The next day, early in the morning, I was informed by telephone that my
patient had died. She had died without me, and I myself was sick in bed.
Was that a justification? An excuse? In any case, you're always partly to
blame. Still feverish, I went to the dental surgery to have the tooth extracted.
The day after that, out to the hospital where my patient had died, and a
conversation with the marvellous, charismatic senior consultant L. "Now
it is time we were going, I to die and you to live; but which of us has
the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God," he cites with a quiet
smile. We have a long talk. I then pitch myself into the mill of a soulless
yet, for all that, somehow sobering and thus, ultimately, salutary bureaucracy.
I attend to obtaining a copy of the death certificate, take care of the
funeral arrangements and, above all-pay, pay, pay.
On reflection, I decide to travel to Vienna after all. Renewed telephone
calls, apologies, cancellations, new appointments. New seat reservations
there and back. Quite unnecessary, the lady at the ticket office considers,
the train is usually half empty. But then I like to travel without worries,
safe and secure from all eventualities. By now I don't care that I am paying
extra, which is anyway the rule of my life. I intend to make myself a gift
of this trip, to give myself a surprise treat as my own bountiful, generous
friend. I like travelling; at bottom, it is the one thing that I do like
doing. I too have always been good at travelling and bad at arriving, as
Bernhard asserts of himself. I like to be on the move, which is to say-nowhere.
Four thousand schillings lie tucked away in my desk drawer; should I chance
to have any of those friends whom I might apostrophize as "my constant readers",
they will already know that two and a half years ago, in 1989, I was in
receipt of a bursary to stay one month in Vienna. I may now reveal to them
that I also purchased, as traveller's cheques or cash, the entire three-year
foreign-exchange or currency-whatsit to which one was entitled (in general,
I have no idea about these things and instantly drop off whenever I so much
as look at a paragraph or statutory clause, all the more since, in the country
in which it was determined that I should live, those statutory paragraphs
and clauses, from the time I was born onwards, have always been conceived
against me-often against my sheer physical existence-and even those which
nominally might, perhaps, have served for my protection invariably turned
out, in practice, to be implementable against me; consequently there is
no reason to study them). I therefore simply stuffed the four thousand (4,000)
schillings left over from my 1989 trip in my pocket. I am not travelling
to Vienna in order to stint myself when I get there: if, on the evening
of my arrival, I should discover a noteworthy concert is on at the Konzerthaus
or Musikvereinsaal, then I will go to it; if I should feel like dining out,
then I will dine out, and so forth.
I should not omit to mention in this Sworn Statement that on the evening
before my trip I received a beneficent telephone call; the caller, dear
in the most pristine and truest sense of the word, asked if I felt like
hearing Verdi's Requiem, since there happened to be a spare ticket. So,
the evening before my trip I heard Verdi's Requiem at the Opera House; on
my way home, the shattering chords of the Libera me Domine de morte aeterna
resounded in my head, whilst doubt and deep emotion wrestled inside me,
as ever; I bow my head in all things but, to this day, I cannot warm to
the thought of resurrection: "Then I don't wish to die, after all," as Marat
is reputed to have said.
The reason for my failing to get a wink of sleep the whole night was not
that, however, but travel nerves, that infantile neurosis which has dogged
me since childhood, and even in the ripeness, or over-ripeness, of my years
makes a child of me all over again. I am helpless against them, even though
I tenaciously fight them as I do whenever I consciously catch myself indulging
in any form of infantility; but as I said, I am helpless against them, and
that is to say nothing of those stealthy poisons of infantility that imperceptibly
pervade me, time and time again, holding my entire organism in their thrall,
like alcohol or some indispensable narcotic.
I asked to be woken up at five o'clock but am already up and about by four.
I hate getting up early, but when I have to get up early then I get up even
earlier. My poor wife, dropping from weariness, prepares breakfast and sandwiches
for the journey, an orange, a bar of chocolate. At East Station it's like
suddenly turning up on the banks of the Ganges at some Hindu festivity.
Beggars with gangrenous legs, bawling vendors, shifty-looking drunks. I
scurry straight ahead amidst them, arm pressed protectively against the
bag dangling from my shoulder; I don't dare stand still, I give nobody anything,
buy nothing from anybody, I am mistrustful, there is no affection in me.
No affection in me. The train is there, my numbered coach there, my numbered
seat there as well, a window seat. I am safe, by and large. The heating
is on. The doors close automatically. The seat next to me is empty: I am
happy that nobody will be sitting next to me, there is no affection in me.
I unpack my journals. The daily paper sickens me with its news. The leader
article on the inside page evinces some sense of morality but that only
makes things worse: to be moral in an immoral world is in itself immoral.
What am I to do? I don't know. Honestly, Katya, I don't know.
I fold up the daily paper and stuff it in the net at the back of the empty
seat in front of me. Next I pick up the magazine 2000. From scanning the
table of contents, I have a hunch that what will interest me most in this
issue is Dalí's journal. Diary of a Genius-no hyperbole there, I have to
go along with the title, even if it is a wee bit bombastic; from the word
go I am bowled over, bludgeoned into submission, by the mark of genius,
a curious blend of childlike lack of inhibitions and braggadocio, and in
this stifling ambience I catch a breath of air only through the fissures
left open for me, here and there in the text, by the hollowness of the lies.
A brief, wry association: my own diary. What was the title I gave it? Galley-Boat
Log. Over and above any labels and differences of magnitude, in this country
a genius can only feel guilty at best. Who, in this East European hemisphere,
would take it into his head to consider himself a genius, unless he were
an Anti-genius, one of that handful of mass murderers and usurpers.
An acrid stench suddenly pervades the closed window, as if by way of atmospheric
illustration of the scatological elements into which the text delves. I
look up from my magazine: Tatabánya. A ravaged, lacerated, bleakly staring,
apocalyptic landscape, smoking concrete monstrosities, piping, scaffolding
that stretches straight across the sky, like a stern pen stroke deleting
a bit of text, or a bit of life; nothing but naked exploitation, harsh expediency,
rationality, ugliness. Die Wüste wächst, I reply to Dalí, a landscape without
land, no longer gruesome-just dreary, like reality. My passport had already
been checked earlier, now the carriage is suddenly swarming with men in
grey uniforms. One of them steps up to me, a dark, brisk chap. Hungarian
customs, he announces. He asks me for my passport in an impassive tone,
modestly, like someone who attributes no importance to himself. And yet:
as I get up a second time to fish out my passport from the inner pocket
of my leather jacket, hanging from the coat hook, the thought flashes through
my mind, quite inexplicably and just as irrationally as the sun shines outside:
there is no affection in this man. The lingering impact of Dalí's diary,
perhaps, an intuition of my own narcissistic child's and artist's soul,
ever thirsty for love, rendered at once defenceless and vulnerable. In the
meantime the man has evidently finished; he snaps the passport shut and
is just about to hand it back when, still in the same impassive tone as
before and yet somehow in a great hurry, from which it may only be my sense
of hearing, freshly honed on Salvador Dalí, that picks out a hint of underhandedness-he
asks straight out how much foreign currency (or exchange: I shall probably
never learn to tell the difference) I am "taking out", as he puts it. One
thousand schillings, I promptly rejoin, who knows why, without the slightest
hesitation. The man reacts in a most unexpected fashion: "Too much, much
too much," he mutters in rapid succession, as if to himself (as the stage
direction runs in plays of earlier times). Why too much? I ask perplexedly.
Because, he counters, the sum "is higher" than something that, offhand,
I don't quite catch. Would I show him the one thousand schillings, he requests.
I begin to be imbued by a sure feeling that I know all too well from my,
at least in this regard, all too rich experience of life: in a certain sense
I have forsaken the scene, and whatever transpires now is no longer happening
to me. Inherent to this feeling is a sense of composure and total self-surrender.
It is a compliance of the same kind as that with which one goes to meet
one's doom, always with an unconditional confidence in time, in the next
instalment, the meticulous moves, even as one is secretly aware-and maybe
not even regretting-that the end is inexorable. The one thing we are not
spared by the last residue of clear-sightedness that, as it were, substitutes
for our being there at times like this: we perceive with absolute clarity
that we have become part of a certain clockwork folly which is-or so we
believe-totally alien to us, to our very essence, and that bothers us a
little throughout; but we are, quite simply, no more capable of checking
this self-propelled mechanism than the undignified, side-splitting movements
of our diaphragms on viewing a low farce.
So I reach into my inside pocket again. My hand does not so much as tremble;
it merely hesitates a fraction before, with the flourish of a conjuror forced
to perform a trick at a highly inconvenient moment, I manage to fish out,
from amongst the four bank notes, each neatly folded in half, a thousand-schilling
bill. How much Hungarian money do I have on me, is the next question. Seven
hundred forints, I answer. I should show him that too. I show him. We count,
it tallies. And now would I empty out the contents of my pockets, runs the
quiet but all-too-insistent wish. I empty them. A paper handkerchief, a
tram season ticket, a jack-knife, an ash-baked scone. The detached observer
that is much more me at such moments than the Chaplinesque clown who is
fumbling in his pockets is all the while shaking his head with an uncomprehending
but apologetic smile. Of course, my man is finally obliged to indicate,
and with his index finger at that, the pocket that I have conspicuously
forgotten all about. His intuition might have amazed me, but at this moment
nothing amazes me, nor does it later, because I work out that his eye, small
as it may be, is-in one respect at least-unerring: that customs-and-excise
man's eye, which preserves thousands of years of experience and finesse,
since the time when customs controls were first invented by the ancient
Egyptians, Persians, Incas or Etruscans-that eye had long, long ago caught
and registered the previous hesitation of my hand.
I therefore grope with an all but childish curiosity in the desired pocket
and, well I never, what should come to light but-three thousand schillings!
I am truly amazed. The customs officer, however, confiscates them on the
spot. He also informs me: he is confiscating it because I had only "declared",
his word, one thousand schillings whereas in reality he had found four thousand
on me. That is true. What is true cannot be gainsaid. However, I don't yet
understand what crime, apart from this deception, I have committed. After
all, the money that he has found on me is my own, not someone else's, it's
not stolen. Yes, says the customs man, but I should have asked for an "export
permit". I am frankly surprised; I didn't know that. Nobody had told me.
All I ever hear is that everything has been liberalized; anyone can freely
deposit and withdraw his money at the bank, unlike in the days of state-ownership.
I no longer even need to get my passport endorsed for each and every trip;
it had never occurred to me that my money, insofar as it is real (which
is to say, western) money, might still belong to the state. No matter, the
man says, but on this note he collects from me the three thousand schillings
as well as the passport.
With this the spell is broken: I come to myself with a jolt. I entreat him
most emphatically not to do this; at twelve o'clock I have an appointment
in Vienna with a ministry man; that afternoon another office is expecting
me; a hotel room has already been reserved. I could not arrive in Vienna
with empty pockets. I did not know an export permit was required. They could
not put me in this sort of position. "Very well, Mr Kertész, take your seat,
there is no time for this; we have work to do. I shall come back later,"
is word for word what the customs man says, and then he vanishes, along
with my money and my passport.
I sit down. Apart from a certain annoyance, I feel nothing; only after some
time has passed does it cross my mind that I had actually been publicly
humiliated. Even that thought does not particularly disturb me, being somewhat
seasoned in such matters. Still, I cast a fleeting glance around the carriage:
the solitary woman in the pair of seats parallel to me, from whom I am separated
by the fairly wide corridor between the seat rows, is immersed in her magazine;
those sitting further away possibly noticed nothing; the whole thing can
hardly have lasted more than two minutes; nobody besides me and my customs
inquisitor- whose colleagues, moreover, were busy in the distance with the
other travellers-can be aware of what really took place between us.
What can happen to me? "Am I to be decapitated in a public square in the
name of the French people?" Obviously, they would have to return the passport
to me before we reach the Austrian frontier. I will have to come to terms,
however, with the loss of three thousand schillings, though I cannot claim
this thought brings tears to my eyes. The fact is, my relationship to money
could not be portrayed as one of frenzied passion. That may be a deficiency,
from one point of view, but at this moment I reap its benefits. And then
in Vienna I have friends who will gladly help me out of a jam, if necessary.
But why did I declare only one thousand schillings (which, all the signs
suggest, represents just as great a misdemeanour as declaring the whole
four thousand)? I don't know. I rack my brains long and hard over this yet
find no answer. I just don't know. There was no affection in that customs
officer, but then that cannot be the reason, and anyway show me the customs
officer who entertains any feelings of affection for his clientele. Why,
why did you fire at a dead body? Why didn't I immediately declare the entire
four thousand? I don't know. I peer deep inside myself. I can boast of having
some experience in matters of self-analysis. Still, I don't know. Honestly,
Katya, I don't know.
I pick up my magazine and carry on reading Dalí's fascinating journal. I
try to comprehend the close linkage that Dalí-and psychoanalysts too, as
I learn-purports is demonstrable between faeces and gold. In truth, I don't
understand this either, however much I rack my brains over it; on the other
hand, my feelings are somehow responsive to the idea, unamenable as it may
be to my reason, for they tell me that such a connection does indeed exist.
Anyone who fathoms this connection, the close link between faeces and gold,
and not only grasps it but also, with a cry of creative triumph, says Yes!
to it, will become wealthy, as did Dalí. But it is equally obvious that
this lucidity is completely independent from, if not diametrically opposed
to, genius. Now, I would be really curious as to which of Dalí's truly genial
canvases had been inspired, if I may put it that way, by his unsullied,
pure genius and which by a covetous wallet that is linked to his bowel functions,
constantly on the look-out for its evacuations. The fact is that, however
much he may present his life as an unstrained triumphal procession, it cannot
always have been entirely unclouded, I muse.
By now Komárom and Gyoýr are behind us, time is racing by; where can my
passport be? I start to worry, albeit not as much as the competent person
(or, perhaps, persons) plainly expects. At last my man re-appears. In more
of a hurry than before and grim of aspect. He asks me for the remaining
thousand-schilling note then, instead of giving me back my passport, informs
me that I must alight from the train at the Hegyeshalom border crossing.
I hear bewildered, fumbling protests. They are of no interest to him, and
he says so quite frankly. Instead of the "declared" one thousand schillings
he had found four thousand on me, he is sorry to say. At Hegyeshalom I should
meet him in the rear carriage, he announces; but that is manifestly an order.
On that he disappears.
For a bit, I sit there paralysed. Or more precisely: as if pole-axed. Then
I suddenly jump to my feet. I sense blazing up inside me the fire that is
the fuel of anger, of life, of aggression. I snatch my shoulder-bag down
from the luggage rack and stamp noisily down the length of the train to
the rear carriage. The men in grey are sitting in the very last compartment,
behind the closed glass door. Clearly in high spirits. Straight away I glimpse
my own man is there too. After a curt knock, I rip the door open. They fall
quiet and dart looks of undisguised loathing: my sensitive heart is veritably
cut to the quick. Being a practising artist, I prefer applause to hostility.
This time, though, God help me, I am appearing in a rotten role. On top
of that, I have the further handicap that I am incapable of arguing my case
level-headedly and coherently in an unfriendly milieu; what is more, rage
does not prompt my voice so much as choke it off.
I again gibber something about my commitments in Vienna: that is of no interest
to him, the man repeats. I entreat him to return my passport and the one
thousand schillings, offering to leave the remaining three thousand on deposit
with him because, as my already purchased seat reservation proves, I shall
be returning with tomorrow evening's train and we can clear up the matter
then; but the three thousand schillings, and at this my man smiles (if not
exactly sweetly), must be surrendered in any event, since they have been
confiscated, along with the remaining one thousand and the passport; and
he repeats the tiresome fact of the divergence that had arisen between the
sum I declared and what he had found upon my person. I hit on nothing better
than to congratulate him on his magnificent catch: he has succeeded in relieving
me of 4,000 schillings when everybody knows that people craftier than I
are shifting millions out of the country. Insofar as I have information
about any such case, I should report it, says the man, but as it is I ought
not to be going around casting aspersions on others because, after all,
it was on me that they found three thousand over the "declared" amount.
A worthy response, there was no denying it. I sense that I have drained
the goblet to the dregs, not sparing myself a single drop. I wrench the
door shut on them and, on the hindmost vestibule of the rear carriage, wait
with mounting eagerness for us to reach Hegyeshalom.
Hegyeshalom! For decades a standing symbol: on the outward trip-in hoc signo
vinces; inward bound, inscriptions along the lines All hope abandon, ye
who enter here-Work redounds to every man's honour and fame-Work sets one
free. As a reality, as a place, as a train station-a woeful, dusty hole.
I traipse listlessly after the man in the grey uniform. I have to wait in
a bare, whitewashed room, its rear part criss-crossed by crowd-control barriers
of whose purpose I am ignorant. I am not alone; besides me, another man
has also been pulled off the train, a big fellow of indeterminate age; potbelly
sagging plaintively over the trousers, between belt and a ridden-up pullover;
grey shirt, grey jacket, grey trousers, face podgy and unremarkable, nothing
discernible behind steamed-up spectacles, least of all a look. Whilst a
so-called statement is being drawn up, I hear that his occupation is some
sort of "head of department". He puffs, sighs, clears his throat, directs
his spectacles my way, flitting past me; to no avail, however, since I pay
him no heed; I do not regard him as a fellow-sufferer, I have no wish to
share my fate with him, his story is of no interest to me. I am dreadfully
sorry. There is no affection in me. Notwithstanding which, I cannot help
but notice the clumsy alacrity with which he diligently signs whatever has
to be signed. Someone calls; he goes outside then a bit later returns, leaving
the door ajar. In the unheated room a draught whisks round my throat and
ankles, a colossal billow of petrol fumes swirls in; outside a train is
being shunted. I ask him to close the door. He closes it but it does not
latch and the wind blows it open again right away. I am just able to reach
the door with my foot and give it a hefty shove. Unseemly of me, I admit,
but then I don't perceive much seemliness in what is happening around me.
I see the head of department is offended. Lest my boorishness cast him in
an even poorer light, he hastily distances himself from me: What's done
is done, tetchiness isn't going to help matters now, he chides. I am not
the slightest bit tetchy, I retort, but I don't see why I should have to
put up with sitting here in a draught and stomach diesel fumes from a shunting
engine as part of my punishment.
I go back to immersing myself in Dalí's diary. His links to Nietzsche are
provocative. The susceptibility of the Spanish to Germans struck me a long
time ago: Ortega was likewise a follower of Nietzsche, and Unamuno would
effortlessly win the title of Nietzsche's most boring disciple. "Nietzsche
was a weakling who had been feckless enough to go mad, when it is essential,
in this world, not to go mad!" This sentence from Dalí deeply incenses me.
Does the chap not grasp that madness was precisely Nietzsche's most honourable
and most consistent act? And that the anal gold-diarrhoea would never have
gushed forth with such infinite bounty into his wide-open wallet had Nietzsche
remained as "normal", that is, as sober and calculating, as himself, Dalí?
After all, someone had to be nailed on the Cross for morality for others
to be able to market it at such a good price...
But I cannot continue these musings as my name is called: "so he jumped
up in order to follow the customs man into his office." They are all sitting
there, the men in grey. "One was smoking a cigarette, the second leafing
through some kind of documents, the third scrutinising him-they so fused
together in his blurred gaze that, in the end, Stone saw them as a single
three-headed, six-armed machine"-my own prophetic words from my novel The
Failure. My man, the chief customs officer, puts some papers in front of
me: I should read and sign them. What's this? The statement, he says. I
start to read it. At the very first sentence, which takes up nearly three
lines, I find myself gasping for air. At this moment a flash of clear-sightedness
seizes, engulfs and enthrals me. At this moment I finally realize exactly
what has befallen me. I could almost cry out Eureka! I see it all now, /
Everything, everything, / Now I perceive it all. / I hear the whirring of
your ravens' wings...-yes: those three lines state, in essence, that on
the 16th day of April 1991, etc., having notified me of the relevant currency
and foreign-exchange regulations, the upper limit to the amounts of money
that may be exported and the obligation to obtain an official permit for
the exportation of sums exceeding that limit, he, the custom's man, had
enquired, etc. Yet the man had notified me of nothing. As far as enquiring
goes, he had enquired, though certainly not in a proper manner, fully in
accordance with the regulations, but effectively in the form of a snap cross-examination.
With that the matter was decided, a specific mechanism was set in motion.
For at least fifty years, ever since my country entered into war against
the civilized world and, above all, against itself, ever since then-except
for a break of, let's say, three years-every law of the land has invariably
been unlawful. What my ears had picked out behind the customs official's
deceitful question, with its automatic presumption of guilt, was the clatter
of jackboots, the blare of political rallying songs, the dawn jangle of
doorbells, and before my eyes had loomed barred windows and barbed-wire
fencing. It was not me who had answered that question but a citizen who
had been tormented and broken-in for decades, his consciousness, personality
and nervous system damaged, if not mortally wounded-actually more a captive
than a citizen. Even now, even here, even for this fraction of a second,
I am stunned and stirred by self-pity, the realisation that I have lived
my life the way I have lived it, and that this undignified and lethal life
has scored its evil sign so deeply inside my instincts. The man-presumably
without being aware of it himself-had impelled me, by his very manner, his
comportment, to lie from the outset. Judgement does not come suddenly; the
proceedings gradually merge into the judgement (Franz Kafka: The Trial).
I almost regret that I am unable to let my man, the customs officer, participate
in my enlightenment, to share with him our evident truth. For, in the end,
he too is a human being, he too has instincts. And his instincts have been
scored by the decades just the same as mine, merely with the opposite sign.
But our relationship being what it is-official, to put it euphemistically,
or in other words, one hundred per cent alienated-I shall never be able
to explain this to him, not even if he might, perhaps, understand, though
I find that hard to believe.
So I tell him that I am unwilling to sign the statement as it stands. Why
not? Because it is not true that he informed me about the law before questioning
me. But he did inform me. All right, I say, I will sign if I may add a comment
of my own. What do I wish to comment on? That before his questioning he
gave me no chance for deliberation, for thinking things over, so that sober
reason might prevail over my gut reactions. The statement is to be signed
as it stands or not all, comes his response. Then not at all, I retort.
A slight, albeit irritated shrug of the shoulders. Whereupon a lower-ranking
customs officer with blonde hair and moustache, beard pipes up to announce:
"I am a witness; I was there when you drew his attention to it." The announcement
does not surprise me, but now I have to fight back a distinct sense of nausea.
I casually remark that, from the earliest trials in history right down to
those of the most recent past, a witness is always found for everything.
And as I get back my passport, along with a receipt for the confiscated
4,000 schillings, I add that it is going to be extremely difficult to get
this country to believe it is free. I immediately regret saying this, however;
the sentence is meaningless ontologically as well as semantically, and even
in respect of strict practicality. But I was much more
preoccupied by what I might call the satisfying feeling that everything
which had happened and was happening here was the product of my very own
fantasy, that it had happened and was happening according to the laws of
my very own fantasy. I address myself once more to my "constant reader",
be there only one, and he, perhaps, myself alone: the scene can be read
almost word for word in my prophetic novel. The same behaviour, the same
procedure, the same nauseatingly stickling legalities as they plunder a
person from head to foot and then toss him out, humiliated and besmirched
with dark threats, beneath an unfamiliar sky. Like Stone, my strange alterego
in the novel, I too had set off for the wider world only to end up at a
godforsaken, filthy frontier station, where I am at home, wretchedly, fatefully,
fatally at home. Life imitates art, to be sure, but only the kind of art
that imitates life, which is to say, the law. Nothing is accidental, everything
occurs for me and through me, and when my journey is over I shall finally
understand my life.
I step outside into the open, the sun is shining. It occurs to me to call
home. Partly to escape this scabrous, dry and grating domain, and at last
hear again a loving human voice, but partly also to warn that, contrary
to my announced plan, I would be dining at home this evening, after all.
I can find no telephone.
I look in the waiting rooms, in the booking hall: none. Out of the station
buffet, as indescribable in appearance as in its odour, totters a stocky,
rubicund, elderly gentleman, tipsy with drink. I ask him where the telephones
are but he doesn't know; his mood euphoric, his eyes red, a peaked cap on
his head, his visage transfigured-he moves away. The woman in the buffet
suggests I go out of the station then, past the level-crossing, turn right
(or maybe left, I no longer remember), and around three hundred metres further
on I would see a yellow building, the post office: there was sure to be
a telephone there. I step outside the station building and, at the sight
of the dusty road, the dusty sky, the dusty houses and the three hundred
metres yawning before me, I know that I am not going to make that telephone
call. Back into the booking hall to check how I can get back to Budapest
most quickly. I ask the woman at the counter if the express train that I
can see from the timetable board is due at around ten fifty-one actually
exists. Yes, she says, but it is an international train. Good enough for
me, I respond and, more in affirmation than as a question, add that my Budapest-Vienna
return ticket is valid for it, isn't it. Yes, the woman replies, but as
she had already said, it is an international train. I at once become suspicious:
What does that mean? It means that it is forbidden to board it, comes the
explanation. I refer to the fact that I have paid out two and a half thousand
forints for an international ticket, the first half of which I had used
only in part, the second half not at all.
I notice that my arguments make no great impression; the next train, so
far as I can see, is a stopping train, which leaves in the afternoon and
plods along for several hours before reaching Budapest. In the end, the
woman at the counter gives me a good piece of advice, which is to ask the
customs men for permission to use my valid ticket to board the express train
for which I had purchased it.
Back to the customs post then. They are all sweetness and light. Not going
to Vienna after all, inquires my man. I don't understand the question; I
am in no mood for joking or familiarity. I ask him if he would agree to
my boarding the international express with my valid ticket; as far as he
is concerned, he has no objection, the customs man says, but his assent,
on its own, is by no means sufficient: I also need to ask for permission
from the border guard. I see several soldiers hanging around, one carrying
a sort of bedside table-drawer on a white strap slung round his neck. I
present my request. Speechless blank faces. I slowly lose confidence; the
feeling creeps over me that I may inadvertently have struck up in Japanese
or some other language that is unknown to me and, above all, to these soldiers.
Finally, one of them blurts out that I must wait for the commander. A good
quarter of an hour later, I spot a gaunt, more elderly officer with glasses
and an administrative mien trotting beside the rail track, accompanied by
a number of lower-ranking uniforms. I accost him and present my request.
I sense that my dejection is beginning to show on me. But this officer seems
to understand what I am telling him. "You had to get off the Vienna express?"
he asks, diplomatically but sternly. Yes, I had to get off. All right, he
says, giving me his permission; he sizes me up from head to toes with a
curt, dispassionate, disparaging look and then carries on. Still, I sense
quite distinctly that in this officer there is affection. In prisons, camps
and other suchlike places there is always an officer or orderly who revives
your faith in living. We place trust in this sort of officer; if he interrogates
us, we do not lie, we long for his presence to comfort us, and even if he
puts a bullet in our head, we know that he does not do it to amuse himself
but because he has no other choice.
The train is here. I get on. I ask if I may take a seat in a second-class,
non-smoking compartment. The gentleman and lady in the compartment, who
plainly do not belong together, don't understand Hungarian-a fact that I
find reassuring, particularly right now. The conductor comes by. I will
have to pay a supplementary charge on my ticket, he informs me. How much?
I ask very meekly, very politely. Because..., he starts to explain. I didn't
ask why, I interrupt him very meekly and very politely, but how much, because
it may be that I don't have enough money on me. Five hundred and forty forints,
comes the answer. I am reassured and pay. The conductor supplies an explanation
anyway; his efforts are futile, for although I very meekly and very politely
hear him out, I don't understand, nor am I interested. The main thing is
I don't have to get off again.
The train glides evenly, almost noiselessly. It is quiet. The gentleman
is dozing, the lady reading. An English novel, as I see from the cover.
I sit there motionless. With the train, my eyes skim along the skyline,
just above the monotonous landscape; I am looking out but don't see, don't
want to see anything. Slowly, very slowly, a sense of shame spreads through
me; it starts in the toes, passes through pit of the stomach into the throat,
and swirls towards the brain. I know that now I must reckon with days, weeks,
perhaps even months of depression. Where had I got the idea that I could
travel to Vienna? Why did I think that I could do something other than what
I have done up till now? Up till now I have lived like a captive, hiding
my thoughts, my talent, my essential being, for I knew full well that here,
where I live, I can only be free as a captive. I knew full well that this
freedom was only a captive's freedom, which is to say, an illusion; but
at least-or so I believed-it was an honourable illusion, more honourable
than my living as a captive in the illusion of freedom. I had clearly seen
the dangers of such an existence, seen that a captive's life can also make
one a captive too in the end; that it forces me deep below the cultural
level of this century, narrows my horizon, wears down my talent. And yet
this was how I had wanted to live, in the belief that this too is a life,
after all-a life that somebody, possibly I myself, ought to formulate. Why,
then, had I wanted to escape, or at least take off for a few days' vacation?
Why had I thought I might be able to change anything in this life, which
I have already long since regarded, long since treated, as not being my
own life at all but some onerous duty that has been imposed on me, like
an examination subject, and over which I retain a single privilege-or freedom,
if you prefer: if it should reach the stage where it sickens me irretrievably,
I shall put an end to it with two packs of sleeping tablets and half a bottle
of crummy Albanian cognac.
At this point I come to my senses. We are passing Tatabánya again. In the
meantime, my journey is over too, and see! I understand my life. Now, as
ever, since I can do nothing else, I clutch greedily at the aggression that
has been shown towards me, as at a dagger, and direct its blade towards
myself; but the strength and bitter pleasure with which my thoughts, as
it were, lay their hand on me this time almost shock me with their unfeigned
ferocity. I see it all now, / Everything, everything, / Now I perceive it
all. / I hear the whirring of your ravens' wings...-yes, the cup is full,
I am unable, it seems, to sustain any more wounds. Six decades of varied,
albeit monotonous dictatorships, now the as yet unnamed residue dictatorship
of all that, have worn down an immunity that I had built up by my tolerance-pointless
tolerance. On my riddled, mortally wounded body, now held together solely
by the bundles of my nerves, there is no place left for a hypodermic needle,
never mind a spear tip. I have lost my tolerance, I can be wounded no more.
I lost. To all appearances I am travelling with this train, but the train
is now merely transporting a corpse. I am dead. (For the final consummation
and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that on my grave or my
urn, or whatever should remain of me, if not as a sign of my rehabilitation
then at least of forgiveness, a customs officer should lay a single flower
stem...)
(1991)
Translated by Tim Wilkinson
