Fiasco (2 page)

Nothing easier.

For the old boy thought of himself—we can hardly dispute that he had every reason to do so—as old, as someone to whom nothing more could happen, nothing new, whether good or bad (with a proviso for the far from consubstantial chances of the just slightly better or slightly worse) (although this made essentially
no difference to the essence), as someone to whom everything had already happened (including what might still happen or might have happened), someone who had outwitted—transiently—his death, lived out—definitively—his life, gained his modest reward for his vices and strict punishment for his virtues, and had long been a permanent figure on that grey list that is kept, who can tell where, and in accordance with what sort of promptings, of those who are excess to headcount; someone who, despite all that, wakes up day after day to the fact that he still exists (and doesn’t find it so unpleasant at that) (as he might, perhaps, have felt) (if he always took everything into consideration) (which he did not do at all).

For that reason, then, there are no grounds at all for us to believe that these were the things being thought when the old boy was standing in front of the filing cabinet and thinking.

No, all that’s at issue is that it was midmorning (relatively—getting on for ten), and that around this time the old boy was in the habit of having a think.

That was how he ordered his life.

Every day, when ten o’clock (or thereabouts) came around, he immediately started to think.

This was an upshot of his circumstances, since before ten o’clock he would not have been able to start thinking, whereas if he only set about it later on, he would have reproached himself for the lost time (which would have only led to further loss of time, or held him back even further, if not—in extreme cases—completely obstructed him from thinking).

Thus at ten o’clock (or thereabouts), so to speak automatically and quite independently of the intensity of the thinking, or even of whether or not he thought at all (the old boy was so much into the routine of thinking that he was sometimes capable of creating the appearance of being in thought even when he was not thinking, possibly even when he himself might have imagined he was thinking),
the old boy stood in front of the filing cabinet and thought.

For at ten o’clock (or thereabouts) the old boy was left alone in the flat (which for him counted as a precondition for thinking), as his wife would earlier have set off on the long journey to the bistro on the city outskirts where, as a waitress, she earned her bread (and occasionally the old boy’s as well) (if fate so willed it) (and it certainly did so will it more than once).

He had also done with his ablutions.

He had also drunk his coffee (in the armchair to the west of the tile stove) (allowing for an adequate gap).

He had also already smoked his first cigarette (pacing back and forth between the west-facing window and the closed entrance door to the east) (sidling a bit in the constricted space formed by the curtain made from an attractive print of manmade fibre covering the north wall of the hallway and the open bathroom door) (a door which was constantly open, for purposes of ventilation, since the bathroom was even more airless than the airless hallway).

These were the preliminaries, if not reasons (though most certainly preconditions), for the old boy to be standing in front of the filing cabinet and thinking at ten o’clock (or thereabouts) on this splendid, warm, slightly humid but sunny late-summer (early autumnal) morning.

The old boy had plenty of troubles and woes, so he had something to think about.

But the old boy was not thinking about what he ought to have been thinking about.

Yet we cannot assert that his most topical care—that is to say, the one he ought to have been thinking about—had not so much as entered his head.

Indeed we cannot.

“I’m just standing here in front of the filing cabinet and thinking,” the old boy was thinking, “instead of actually doing something.”

Well certainly, the truth is—not to put too fine a point on it—that he should long ago have settled down to writing a book.

For the old boy wrote books.

That was his occupation.

Or rather, to be more precise, things had so transpired that this had become his occupation (seeing as he had no other occupation).

He had already written several books as well, most notably his first one: he had worked on that book (since at the time writing books had not yet become his occupation and he had written the book for no obvious reason, just on an arbitrary whim, so to say) for a good ten years, but had subsequently seen it into print only after a fair number of vicissitudes—and the passage of a further two years; for his second book just four years had proved adequate; and with his other books (since by then writing books had become his occupation, or rather—to be more precise—things had so transpired that this had become his occupation) (seeing as he had no other occupation) he merely devoted the time that was absolutely necessary to get them written, which was essentially a function of their thickness, because (since things had so transpired that this had become his occupation) he had to aim to write books that were as thick as possible, out of carefully considered self-interest, since the fee for thicker books was fatter than that for slimmer books, for which—since they were slimmer—the fee was correspondingly slim (proportionate to their slimness) (regardless of their content) (in accordance with MoE Decree No.1/20.3.1970 concerning terms and conditions for publishing contracts and authors’ royalties, as issued by the Ministry of Education with the assent of the Treasury, the Ministry of Labour, the president of the National Board of Supply and Price Control, and the National Trades Union Council).

Not that the old boy was burning with longing to write a new book.

It had simply been quite some time since a new book of his had been published.

If this were to continue, his very name would sink into oblivion.

Which, in itself, would not have concerned the old boy in the slightest.

Except that—and there was the rub—he had to be concerned about it in a certain respect.

In not so many years he would reach the age at which he might become a retired writer (in other words, a writer who had earned enough from his books not to have to write any more books) (though he could do, of course, if he still had the wish to).

That, then—if he stripped away all the vague abstractions, and he was a stickler for the concrete and tangible—was the real goal of his literary labours.

But in order not to have to write any more books, he would still have to write a few more.

As many more as he could.

For if he were not to lose sight of the real goal of his literary labours (that is, that he might become a retired writer, or in other words, a writer who had earned enough from his books not to have to write any more books), then it was to be feared that the degree of oblivion into which his name was falling might affect—to wit, adversely—the factors determining his pension (about which factors he had no precise information, but he reasoned, perhaps not entirely illogically, that if a bigger royalty was to be expected for a thicker book, then more books should yield a bigger pension) (which, in the absence of more precise information, as has already been indicated, was just speculation, if not entirely illogical speculation, on the old boy’s part).

So that was why the old boy had to be concerned, even if in other respects he was not in the slightest bit concerned about the fact in itself, that his very name was sinking into oblivion.

Consequently, despite not burning with any longing to write a new book, he ought to have settled down to it long ago.

Only he had no clue what. (This, incidentally, had already happened to him on other occasions, though only with any regularity since writing books had become his occupation (or rather—to be more precise—since things had so transpired that this had become his occupation) (seeing as he had no other occupation).

And yet it was a just a question of a single book.

Any old book, just so long as it was a book (the old boy had long been aware that it made no difference at all what kind of book he wrote, good or bad—that had no bearing on the essence of the matter) (though as to what he meant by the essence the old boy either knew only too well or had no idea at all) (at least we are forced to this conclusion by the fact that, standing and thinking in front of the filing cabinet as he was, this thought, among others, was running through his head, though he gave not the slightest sign of wishing to clarify the essence of this notion—of the essence—if only for his own purposes).

But the old boy did not have so much as a glimmer of an idea, little as that may be, for the book he needed to write.

Despite having done truly everything in his power as far as he was concerned (for, as we have seen, at this very moment he was standing in front of the filing cabinet and thinking).

In recent days he had already gone through every one of his old, older, or still older ideas, sketches and fragments, which he kept in a folder furnished with the title “
Ideas, sketches, fragments
,” but either they had proved unusable or else he had understood not a word of them (even though he himself had been the one who noted them down some time before, or some time before that, or still further back in time).

He had even undertaken lengthy walks in the Buda hills (contemplative walks, as the old boy called them).

All to no avail.

Now, with his ideas, sketches, fragments, and walks (contemplative walks, as the old boy called them) in turn, one after the other, all having come to nought, all that was left was his papers.

It had been a long time since he had seen his papers.

Not that he wished to see them.

He had even hidden them in the farthest depths of the filing cabinet in order to avoid somehow catching sight of them.

So the old boy had to be in a very tight spot indeed to be driven, for once, to place his ultimate trust—if previously it had been on a stroke of good fortune (which, for known reasons, we might better amend to the virtually impossible), then on the his ideas, sketches, fragments and his contemplative walks—in his papers.

But at this juncture it is to be feared that if we do not break away a bit from the old boy’s train of thought, we shall never get to see in the clear light that is indispensable to what follows the subtle, but not inconsequential, difference between ideas, sketches, and fragments, on the one hand, and papers, on the other.

It may be that we shall not be forced into too lengthy an explanation.

Specifically, ideas, sketches, and fragments are only produced by someone who is driven to those resorts by imperative and pressing reasons; someone—like the old boy, for instance—whose occupation happens to be writing books (or rather, to be more precise, for whom things had so transpired that this had become his occupation) (seeing as he had no other occupation).

Papers, on the other hand, everybody has. If not a number of them, then certainly one: a scrap of paper on which one noted down something at some time, presumably something important that was not to be forgotten and was carefully put away—and then forgotten about.

Papers which preserve adolescent poems.

Papers through which one sought a way out at a critical period.

Possibly an entire diary.

A house plan.

A budget for a difficult year ahead. A letter one started to write.

A message—“Back soon”—that may later have proved to be portentous.

At the very least a bill, or the washing instructions torn off some undergarment, on the reverse side of which we discover minute, faded, unfamiliar and by now illegible lettering—our own handwriting.

The old boy had a whole file of such papers.

As we have perhaps already mentioned, he kept them in the farthest depths of the filing cabinet in order to avoid somehow catching sight of them.

Now that he wanted the exact opposite—namely, to catch sight of them—he first had to lift out of the filing cabinet his typewriter, several files—among them one labelled “
Ideas, sketches, fragments
”—as well as two cardboard boxes which held a miscellany of objects (both necessary and unnecessary) (at all events only the occasion of the particular moment could assign a firm ascription to those designations) (as a result of which the old boy could never know for sure which of these objects were necessary and which unnecessary) (a distinction that became all the more unclear, as years might go by without his opening the lids of the two cardboard boxes and so casting even a single glance over the variety of objects, necessary and unnecessary alike).

This, then, was his way of ensuring that he caught sight of the ordinary, grey, standard-sized (HS 5617) box file containing his papers.

On the grey file, as a paperweight, so to say, squatted (or swaggered) (or sphered) (depending on the angle from which one
looked at it) a likewise grey, albeit a darker grey, stone lump; in other words, a stone lump of irregular shape about which there is nothing reassuring that we might say (for instance, that it was a polygonal parallelepiped) (anything, in fact, that can soothingly reconcile the human soul to the world of objects, without its ever truly comprehending them, insofar as they at least match a familiar construct, thus allowing the matter to be left at that), seeing that this particular lump of stone, by virtue of its still extant or already worn-down edges, corners, roundings, bumps, grooves, fissures, projections, and indentations was as irregular as any lump of stone can be about which one cannot tell whether it is a mass from which a smaller lump has been broken off or, conversely, the remnant small lump of a larger stone mass, which in its turn—like a cliff face to a mountain—was in all certainty part of a still larger stone mass (but then every lump of stone instantly entices one into prehistoric deliberations) (which are not our aim) (difficult though they are to resist) (most especially when we happen to be dealing with a lump of stone which diverts our failing imagination toward ulterior) (or rather primordial) (beginnings, ends, masses and unities, so that in the end we retreat to our hopeless) (though it is at least invested with the alleged dignity of knowledge) (ignorance regarding which, for this lump of stone as for so many other things, one cannot tell whether it is a small lump broken off from a larger stone mass or, conversely, the remnant small lump of a larger stone mass).