Fiasco (24 page)

“Right, foreign,” said Köves, as if he were only telling the truth out of disdain.

“Do you regularly get parcels from abroad perhaps?” the janitor inquired, and Köves, who had meanwhile come to his senses, now replied with unconcealed sarcasm:

“If I do, you’ll know soon enough from the postman!” And with that he was on his way to the door when the janitor’s response—

“My, my, Mr. Köves, so what if I do? It’s not a secret, or is it?”—caught up with him more or less on the staircase, and as he made his way up from the basement the chuckling also gradually faded away, so that all he carried with him, on the folds of the overcoat that had been praised shortly before, was the cabbage smell.

One noon—or might it not rather have been getting on for evening? Since arriving there, time seemed to have become somewhat disjointed, with his having left the old tempo behind but not yet having found his way into the swing of things in the new place, so that it was as if it were all the same to him what the time was, the part of the day, and even what day, obviously as a result of the lazy way of life, which would change as soon as he found work and it imposed order on him, although, he mused, might it not be all the same to him precisely for that reason?—Köves set off at an easy pace to the South Seas. No doubt it was a Sunday, with an unwonted sluggishness reigning over the city; sounds of jollity could even be picked out here and there, the sleepy stillness broken by the racket of children, a strident burst of music and the odours of Sunday lunches streaming from open windows; only the ruins looked even more inconsolable than at other times—maybe the absence of the otherwise constant sound of hammering and the sight of workers scrambling around on buildings—as if they were unable either to be built up or destroyed and now wished to stay there forever the way they were, stubbornly holding out in the midst of perpetual decay as it were, though tomorrow, of course, the hammers would ring out anew, goods trucks do their rounds, people yell. Peter had turned up in the room already early that morning, when Köves was still in bed, and the boy had wanted to set out the chessboard on the bedspread, on his stomach, but Köves told him in no uncertain terms that he was unwilling to play. “See if I care,” the boy said in response. “I was fooled by you once, but you know diddley-squat about the game. And anyway, I hate you,” he added from the doorway, leaving Köves hoping that the hatred would spare him thereafter from playing chess. Later on, Köves went for a walk, looking around the city—having a bite to eat at a stand-up buffet en route, whatever
they were selling as long as it was cheap—and looking at shop windows in particular, at least those that were not boarded up. He had already procured for himself one thing and another, but shopping did not proceed anything like as easy as Köves had, if not imagined, in any case would have liked; a crowded throng packed most of the shops, and in many cases he was greeted by a line of people stretching outside the doors, and by the time he had reached a counter it turned out that he had to buy something other than what he had wanted to buy, in the best case at least something similar: a nightshirt instead of pyjamas, for example, but even then only in a much larger size than his, more of a fit for some potbellied giant, although Köves couldn’t stand nightshirts, so in order that he would be able to return her husband’s pyjamas to Mrs. Weigand, he chose to sleep in the buff, though he bought a nightshirt nevertheless, and—with exchange in mind—not just one but two, for when he was about to leave he had spotted an unaccountable dash of joy in the saleswoman’s expression which suggested, Köves reasoned, that nightshirts must be a scarce commodity there, so it would not be smart to pass up this good fortune; in the end, it emerged that Mrs. Weigand did not insist on hanging on to the pyjamas at all, as she herself had no use for them and they were, as yet, too big for Peter.

He was already at the corner when the sounds of wheezing and a hurried scrabbling of the claws of tiny legs struck his ears, and as he turned the corner a little dog flew like a brown projectile, hurled with great force, at his lap, flinging its tiny head and its shiny nose this way and that in its ecstasy, sniffing, lapping with its lolling tongue at Köves’s hands, fixing its sparkling button-eyes expectantly on Köves, then from farther away a porously woody-sounding voice blared:

“Here this instant, you little rascal!” It was the elderly gentleman and his dachshund, whom Köves had run across not long before. “A shameless flatterer, you are, nothing else!” the elderly gentleman’s
grouching sounded more like an expression of affection as he bent down and attached the leash in his hand to the dog’s collar. “There’s no escaping him once he’s formed a liking for someone,” he continued, apparently still grumbling but in truth with barely concealed pride. “But it’s rare for him to form a liking for a person at first sight, take it from me, Mr. Köves!”

“I see you already know who I am,” said Köves, somewhat surprised, “so there’s no need for me to introduce myself.”

“Certainly I know who you are.” The elderly gentleman was jerked vigorously by the end of the leash, as the dog suddenly pulled away in his excitement so as to bless a house wall with a cocked rear leg. “In a certain sense it’s my duty to know. Keep still now!” he scolded the little dog, which was again leaping around like crazy, getting entangled with their legs. “I’m the chairman, you see.” He again turned his head with its fine white hair, ruddy-cheeked face and amiable smile toward Köves.

“Ah! I see,” said Köves. “Chairman of what?” and, to make the question sound airier, even more casual, Köves bent down to stroke the animal, which in gratitude immediately jumped up at him.

“The one that you too, for example, elected.” The elderly gentleman’s smile now beamed broadly and at the same time took on a somewhat impish look. “Come now, Mr. Köves!” he said in a quieter, confidential tone, “let’s not play with words!” and Köves, perhaps less at a loss than before, reiterated:

“I see.”

“We already met the other day,” the elderly gentleman went on, “but you were in a hurry then.”

“I had something to take care of,” explained Köves.

“That goes without saying,” the old fellow hastened to assure him, “but you may have more time now. We’re taking a constitutional.” He glanced at the dog, which, after the initial paroxysms of delight, had now, it appeared, suddenly grown bored with them
and was straining at the leash after some scent or other, its muzzle pressed to the pavement: “If you would care to join us, please do. How do you find it in our house?” he then asked. Köves replied with an easy little half-smile:

“Couldn’t be better,” saying it like someone who meant it, make of it what one might.

“Splendid!” said the elderly gentleman. “Mrs. Weigand is a fine, decent lady; you couldn’t have a better place to stay.” He glanced askance at Köves, who, because he could not tell offhand, and he could not discern from the face which was turning toward him whether was he was expected to agree or protest, held his peace. “I gather you’re a journalist,” the old fellow went on. “I know you’re not with a paper at the moment.” Quickly, almost in anticipation, as if seeking to cut Köves short, he raised his free hand (with the other he was trying to restrain the dog, which, on spying the small park in the middle of a square which had suddenly appeared before them, was all for scampering toward the strip of wan grass). “I imagine that has nothing to do with your talents. Nowadays …,” the elderly gentleman was getting nowhere with the dog, which was on its hind legs, straining at the leash with all its might, so he bent down and released it: “Scoot! Off you go and take your poop, you rascal!” only after which did he continue the sentence he had begun: “Nowadays,” and here his face, up to that point sunny and bursting with health, darkened slightly, “it’s not easy to live up to one’s profession. Could you explain to me, Mr. Köves,” he said suddenly, turning his whole body toward Köves, “why I’ve become the chairman, for example?”

Köves, surprised as he was by the question, and having even less clue what the explanation might be, and he chose to respond at random:

“Obviously they trust you.”

“Obviously.” The elderly gentleman nodded, strolling along the gravelled path of the square’s garden, hands clasped behind his
back. “I myself can think of no other explanation. They trust me, but they serve someone else. After all,” the elderly gentleman spread his arms as they walked on, “that’s people for you. The battle’s not yet over, and already they’re lining up on the victor’s side. Yet,” and here the elderly gentleman came to a halt to raise a stubby, well-manicured index finger on high by way of warning: “victory is far from assured, and what will decide it is precisely the fact that they already think it’s all over. A strange logic, Mr. Köves, but I’m old now and nothing surprises me any longer,” and with a shake of the head he set off again, Köves at his side: what he had heard may have been enigmatic, but it interested him all the same, and he had just formulated a question in his head when, with a sharp about-turn which ended up as just a half-turn, such that Köves sensed his gaze on him, although he was not actually looking at him, the elderly gentleman got in first:

“Have you seen the houseman yet?” his voice may have been dry, yet it still sounded as if it were concealing a sneaking excitement.

“Yes, I have,” said Köves.

“And did he not say that you should come up and see me?” The customary affability was now lacking from the elderly gentleman’s smile; it was somehow more of a gash, the corners of the mouth trembling slightly as if he were rubbing salt in his own wounds.

“No. Or rather …,” and Köves was suddenly reminded of Mrs. Weigand’s strange hesitation when she had mentioned the chairman the other day, as well as his own visit to the janitor, about which he now thought back, he himself knew not why, with a degree of bewilderment. “If I omitted to do something,” he said, “then I would ask you to excuse me.”

“The omission,” the elderly gentleman now began visibly to regain his previous, amiable poise, “was not yours. Just look!” he pointed to the middle of the little park, “Wouldn’t you know it, but that rogue has again found something to amuse himself with,” and indeed the dog was leaping around a young boy’s ball, then
scampering after pieces of gravel that the child threw for it to fetch. “And it’s not the first omission that has been perpetrated against me,” he then went on; they had already crossed the square’s garden and had now set off around its perimeter. “Being the chairman, I ought to protest, of course. Only I’m completely unsuited to the role, Mr. Köves.”

“Come, come,” said Köves, “people didn’t elect you because they saw you as unsuitable …,” he was slowly beginning to understand the old fellow, and as he understood him his distress provoked a smile: that was all it was about, a storm in a teacup, he thought.

“But it’s true,” the old fellow kept plugging away, casting the occasional solicitous glance at his dog farther off as they carried on walking. “I can’t keep a secret, for instance. Then, I’m incapable of the requisite objectivity: what counts with me is always what I feel sympathy or antipathy toward, that’s all that matters, there’s nothing I can do about it.” He spread his arms. “If two people call on me to ask about someone whom I have taken a liking to, then I can’t say anything about that, even though I’m well aware that I’m making a mistake, a mistake, and in a double sense: first of all, I’m contravening the need for official secrecy, then, secondly, I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the person they were warning me about.” He fell silent; with his puckered brow and long, trouble-laden face he now oddly resembled his dog. “What I have to do is no picnic, Mr. Köves,” he sighed. Köves, more as a mechanical courtesy than anything else, remarked:

“It’s no picnic for anyone conscientious.”

The old fellow, however, truly pounced on the remark:

“That’s what it’s about, precisely! Conscientiousness and sympathy! I didn’t warm at all to the two strangers who came round to see me—and I suppose they also dropped in on the janitor—though I’m well aware that duty binds me to them. All the same, my sympathies are with the person they were asking about. Yes, yes, we’re still here, you little scamp!” he called out to the dachshund,
which was rushing toward them only to race off again. “I wouldn’t take it too much to my heart if he were to find himself in danger,” he eventually added.

“All the same, the person in question can only be grateful to you, in my view,” Köves said, by now undeniably fed up with the role that had been forced on him, but not judging the moment as propitious to part from the old fellow.

“Grateful!” The elderly gentleman raised both hands in the air. “Have you any idea how much I’ve done for other people?! And it was never so that they would feel grateful to me but so that I should be able to sleep soundly at night.”

“Maybe it’s to that you owe your prestige,” Köves said, cracking a smile, like someone bringing the conversation to a close. He came to a halt, thereby forcing the old fellow to stop short. He was just about to hold out his hand when, fortuitously it seemed, something else came to mind:

“And what did the two men enquire after?” he asked; his smile had not yet vanished, only become set as though it were only there still out of forgetfulness.

“The usual things.” The elderly gentleman shrugged his shoulders. “When the person in question comes home, whether he has any visitors, then does he have a job, is he working already,” the old fellow would have liked to resume his walk but, since Köves did not move, he nevertheless remained standing there.

“Were they customs men?” Köves asked, his voice unquestionably faltering a little bit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Köves.” The old fellow, paying no heed to Köves, set off after all, so compelling Köves, if he wanted to hear him, to do the same. “Were they customs men, I wonder?… They didn’t wear any uniform, and I have no idea why customs men should get involved in such matters. You see how much I put myself out?” He looked reproachfully at Köves.
“We’re already discussing things that one should not speak about, because how do customs men come in here, and why would we look with suspicion, or maybe—even worse—fear, on a body that upholds the law?…”