Imre Kertész - Sworn Statement

7/30/2019 Imre Kertsz - Sworn Statement

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Imre Kertsz

Sworn

StatementA truestory

...And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...

THE ensuing statement is intended as a counter-statement to thatother 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 gamboling 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


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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 theinstant 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 freedomwhose 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 andgentlemen 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


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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 Ihad 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 increasinglyungovernable 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


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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 relationshipof 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 sayhimself. 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 marvelous, charismatic senior consultant L. "Now it

is time we were going, I to die and you to live; but which of us has the


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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 funeralarrangements 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 tothem that I also purchased, as travelers 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 eventhose 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


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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 theevening 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 andsandwiches 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,


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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 thatnobody 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 Dal'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: Tatabnya. 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 Wste wchst, I

reply to Dal, a landscape without land, no longer gruesome just dreary,


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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 noimportance 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 Dal's diary, perhaps, an intuition of my own narcissistic

child's and artist's soul, ever thirsty for love, rendered at once defenseless

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 Dal, 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 rapidsuccession, 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 asense 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 installment, 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


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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, quitesimply, 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, myman 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


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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 havecommitted. 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 couldnot put me in this sort of position. "Very well, Mr. Kertsz, 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;


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nobody besides me and my customs inquisitor whose colleagues,

moreover, were busy in the distance with the other travelers can be

aware of what really took place between us.

What can happen to me? "Am I to be decapitated in a public squarein 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 misdemeanor 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 theentire 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 Dal's fascinating

journal. I try to comprehend the close linkage that Dal 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 theother 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 Dal. But it is equally obvious


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that this lucidity is completely independent from, if not diametrically

opposed to, genius. Now, I would be really curious as to which of Dal'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 hisbowel 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 Komrom and Gyor 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 reappears. 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 paralyzed. 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 tothe quick. Being a practicing 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.


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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, Ishall 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 withmounting 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 bycrowd-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,


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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, Ihave 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 aspart of my punishment.

I go back to immersing myself in Dal'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 Dal deeplyincenses 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, Dal? After all, someone had to be nailed on the Cross for


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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 secondleafing through some kind of documents, the third scrutinizing 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 Fiasco. 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 enthralls 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 theman 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


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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 realization that I have lived my life theway 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. Judgment does not come suddenly; the proceedings

gradually merge into the judgment (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 percent 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 adda 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 whenyou 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


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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 thesatisfying 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 tocall 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 thetelephones 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


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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 toBudapest 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 Ihad 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 theborder 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.


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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. Isense 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. Theconductor 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'tunderstand, 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


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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, perhapseven 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 sincetreated, 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 Tatabnya 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


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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...)


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Documents

Imre Kertész - Sworn Statement