Fiasco (42 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

though there is no end, because—as we know—nothing ever comes to an end: one has to carry on, onwards and onwards, confidentially, and with nauseating volubility, the way two murderers chat together. Even though what we have to say is as drably objective as murder is psychologically simplified to another statistic which is just as superfluous as, let’s say, the fact that years wore on and Köves did write his novel. He had it fair-typed too, and submitted, like a petition, to a publishing house. One fine day, the postman delivered a bulky package, and just from the feel of it Köves instantly recognized that it was his novel. Ripping it open, he found a letter appended to the manuscript bundle: it informed him in a few frosty lines that his novel had been considered unsuitable for publication.

Köves becomes of interest to us once more, and not for long either, at that moment, like a descent on a precipitous slope which plunges into darkness, in that caesura of his life. He is still standing there in the hall, novel in hand, an aggrieved but all-suspecting smile on his face: it is a grimace he usually maintains for destiny. He probably imagines that a severe, maybe irreparable blow has befallen him. For a short while, before resolving to step onto his downward path, to take a breather as it were, he draws back into his fiasco like a sick eagle to its nest, its wing broken but still with a sharp enough gaze to be able to scan the ravaged domain of truths
and self-justifications for prey. Finally, the hour strikes, so to say, and he has to go. If he keep his eyes open, by the side of the road, he will, for all that, spot a few usable flowers which, even if they do not, of course, compete with edelweiss, he can nevertheless certainly pluck for himself. He tries to decide, first and foremost, whether the publisher might be right: Has he written a good or a bad book? He quickly realizes that from his own point of view (and it may be that it is faulty, but it is the only point of view from which he can look at the world), it’s all the same if he personally considers that the book was exactly what it could have been. Because, even more important than the novel itself, he comes to realize—and this realisation, to be sure, comes as an unexpected surprise—was what had been lived through by his writing about it. That was a choice and a struggle, and precisely the kind of struggle that had been given to him. Freedom had set against himself and his fate, strength had drawn from the circumstances, an assault which subverted necessity—what else was a work, every human work, if not that?…

The rest? A happy end is in store: by the time he gets to the bottom of the slough he will learn that they have decided to publish his book after all. He will then be pierced by a painful longing, and with the sorrow of nostalgia he will insatiably taste the sweet memory of his fiasco; the time when he lived a living life, when he was consumed by passion and nourished by a secret hope that a future old boy, standing before a filing cabinet and thinking, will no longer be able to share. His unique adventure, his heroic age, will have come to an end once and for all. He had changed his person into an object, diluted his stubborn secret into generality, distilled his unutterable reality into signs. What was for him the only possible novel will become a book among other books, which shares the mass fate of all books, waiting for the chance that the glance of a rare customer may fall on it. His life will become the life of a writer who goes on writing books until he has picked himself completely clean
to leave nothing but bare bones, freed of all excess frippery. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, the tale runs. Most assuredly. Yet he too is threatened by grace. True, Sisyphus (and labour service) is timeless, but his stone is not immortal. On its bumpy path, through being rolled so many times, in the end it wears down and, all of a sudden, it occurs to Sisyphus that for a long, long time, whistling to himself as he is lost in thought, he has been kicking a grey lump of stone before him in the dust.

What is he supposed to do about that? Obviously, he bends down to pick it up, thrusts it into his pocket, and takes it home—it’s his, after all. In his empty hours (and now there are only empty hours in store) he will undoubtedly take it out from time to time. It would be ridiculous, of course, for him to buckle to rolling it uphill, onto the heights of the peaks, but with his senile, cataract-dimmed eyes he contemplates it as if he were still pondering the weight, the grip. He curls his shaking, numb fingers round it, and no doubt he will be clutching it still in the final, the very last moment, when he slumps down, lifeless, from the seat facing the filing cabinet.