War & War (3 page)

13.

I must somehow have drunk of the waters of Lethe
, Korin explained, and while disconsolately wagging his head as if to convey to them that the understanding of the manner and consequence of events would probably always lie beyond him, he brought out a box of Marlboros:
Anyone got a light?

14.

They were roughly the same age, the youngest being eleven, the oldest perhaps thirteen or fourteen, but every one of them had at least one slipcased razor blade nestling by his side, nor was it just a matter of nestling there, for each of them, from the youngest to the oldest, was capable of handling it expertly, whether it was of the simple “singleton” kind or the triple sort they referred to as “the set,” and not one of them lacked the ability to yank the thing forth in the blink of an eye and slip it between two fingers into the tense palm without the merest flickering of outward emotion while gazing steadily at the victim so that whichever of them happened to be in the right position could, quick as a flash, find the artery on the neck, this being the skill they had most perfectly mastered, a skill which rendered them, when all seven of them were together, so exceptionally dangerous that they had begun to earn a genuinely well-deserved reputation, only through constant practice, of course, the practice that enabled them to achieve their current level of performance and involved a carefully planned course of training that they carried through at constantly changing venues, repeating the same moves a hundred times, over and over again, until they could execute the moves with inimitable, blinding speed and such perfect coordination that in the course of an attack, they knew instinctively, without saying a word to each other, not only who would advance and who would stand, but how those standing would form up, nor was there any room for boasting, you couldn’t even think of it, so faultless was their teamwork, and in any case, the sight of gushing blood was enough to stop their mouths and render them dumb, disciplined and solemn, perhaps even too solemn, for the solemnity was something of a burden to them, leaving them with a desire for some course of action that would lead rather more playfully, more fortuitously, that is to say entailing a greater risk of failure, to the fact of death, since this was what they all sought, this was the way things had developed, this was what interested them, in fact it was the reason they had gathered here in the first place, the reason they had already spent a good many afternoons, so many weeks of afternoons and early evenings, passing the time right here.

15.

There was absolutely nothing ambiguous about the way he moved, said Korin next day in the MALÉV office, the whole thing being so completely normal, so ordinary, the reaching for his cigarettes so perfectly innocent and harmless that it was merely a kind of instinct, the result of an on-the-spur-of-the-moment notion that he might lessen the tension and thereby ease his own situation by a friendly gesture such as the offering of cigarettes, for really, no exaggeration, it was just that and nothing more, and while he expected almost anything to happen as a result, what he did not expect was to find another hand holding his wrist by the time his had reached the Marlboros in his pocket, a hand that did not grip the way a pair of handcuffs would, but one that rendered him immobile and sent a flood of warmth lapping across his wrist, or so he explained the next day, still in a state of shock, while at the same time, he continued, he felt his muscles weaken, only those muscles that were grasping the pack of Marlboros, and all this happened without a word being exchanged and, what was more—apart from the child nearest to him, who had responded so nimbly and with such breathtaking skill to the gesture he had misinterpreted—the group did not move an inch, but merely glanced at the falling Marlboro pack, until one of them eventually lifted it up, opened it and drew out a cigarette, passed it on to the next, and so forth to the end while he, Korin, in his terror, behaved as though nothing had happened, nothing significant at least, or, if anything had happened it was only by an accident so minor and so unworthy of mention as to be laughable, an accident that left him gripping his wounded wrist with his blameless hand, not quite understanding what had happened, and even when he did eventually realize, he merely pressed his thumb against the tiny nick, for that was all it was, he told them, a miniscule cut, and when the expected rush of panic, with its attendant throbbing, trembling, and loud noises in the head began to die away, an icy calm had lapped about him in much the same way as the blood had lapped about his wrist, in other words, as he declared the next day, he was utterly convinced that they were going to kill him.

16.

The work in the records office, he continued in a quavering voice, having waited for the last of the children to light his cigarette, did not involve, as did that of so many others, at least as far as he personally was concerned, a process of humiliation, blackmail, of wearing people down; no, not in his case, he stressed: on the contrary, he was bound to say, that after “the sad turn of events in his social life,” it was precisely his work that remained most important to him, that was his sole consolation both in the obligatory and voluntary after-hours areas of his specialization; it was the one thing, in the fundamental and, as far as he was concerned, fateful, process of the last few months of coming to terms with a reality which involved acknowledging the not-so-much bitter as amusing evidence that showed history and truth had nothing to do with each other, that demonstrated to him that everything he, in his capacity as a local historian, had done to explore, establish, maintain and nurture as history, had in fact given him an extraordinary freedom and raised him to a state of grace; because once he was capable of considering how any particular history served as a peculiar—if one regarded its origins, accidental, and if one considered its outcomes, cynically concocted and artificially articulated—a peculiar blend of some remaining elements of the truth, of human understanding and the imaginative re-creation of the past, of what could and could not be known, of confusion, of lies, of exaggerations, of both fidelity to—and misuse of—given data, of both proper and improper interpretations of evidence, of inklings, suggestions and of the marshaling of a sufficiently imposing body of opinion, then the work in the records office, the labor of, what was referred to as, the classifying and ordering of archive material, and indeed all such enterprises, represented nothing less than freedom itself,
for it did not matter in the least
what task he was currently engaged on, whether the classification was within general, median or specific categories, whether it was filed under this or that heading; whatever he did, whichever section of that almost two-thousand-meters’ length of archival corridor he dealt with, he was simply keeping history going, if he might put it that way, while knowing, at the same time, that he was entirely missing the truth, though the fact that he knew, even while he was working, that he was missing it, rendered him calm and equable, gave him a certain sense of invulnerability, the kind that comes to a man who recognizes that what he is doing is as pointless as it is meaningless, and furthermore that, precisely because it lacks point and meaning, it is accompanied by an entirely mysterious yet quite inimitable sweetness—yes, that was the way it was, he said, he really did find freedom through work, and there was just one problem, which was that this freedom wasn’t quite enough, for, having tasted it these last few months and having realized how rare and precious it was, it suddenly seemed insufficient, and he had started to sigh and pine for a greater, an absolute freedom, and thought only of how and where he might find it, until the whole issue became a burning obsession that disturbed him in his work in the records office, because he had to know where to seek it, where absolute freedom might reside.

17.

All this, of course, indeed his whole history, originated in the distant past, said Korin, as far back as the time he first announced the fact that though an utterly mad world had made a madman of him, pure and simple, it didn’t mean that that is entirely what he was, for while it would have been stupid to deny that sooner or later, naturally enough, that was how he’d “finish up,” or rather, sooner or later, reach a state resembling madness, it was obvious that whatever might in fact happen, madness was not a particularly unfortunate condition that one should fear as being oppressive or threatening, a condition one should be frightened of, no, not in the least, or at least he personally was not scared of it, not for a moment, for it was simply a matter of fact, as he later explained to the seven children, that one day the straw actually did “break the camel’s back,” for now that he recalled it, the story did not begin beside that certain river but much earlier, well before the riverside events, when he was suddenly seized by a hitherto unknown and unfathomably deep bitterness that resonated through his entire being, a bitterness so sudden that one particular day it simply struck him how bitter, how deathly bitter he was about that which he used to refer to as “the state of things,” and that this was not the result of some mood that quickly appeared then disappeared but of an insight that illuminated him like a bolt of lightning, something, he said, that branded him forever and would remain burning, a lightning-insight that said there was nothing, but
nothing
worthwhile left in the world, not that he wanted to exaggerate, but that was how it was, there really was nothing worthwhile in his circumstances, nor would there be anything lovely or good ever again, and though this sounded childish, and indeed he recognized that the essential aspect of that which he had distilled from his entire history, was, as he was content to acknowledge, childish, he began to peddle this insight regularly in bars, hoping to find someone that, in his “general state of despair,” he might regard as one of those “angels of mercy,” seeking such a one constantly, determined to tell him everything or to put a pistol to his own head, as he did, he said, without success, thank heaven; so, in other words, though the whole thing was perfectly idiotic, no doubt, that was how it started, with this sense of bitterness that created a whole “new Korin,” from which point on he began to ponder over matters such as how things fitted together, and if their condition were such and such, what the implications might be for him personally, and once having understood that there were absolutely no personal implications, and furthermore, having grasped that he had reached his absolute limit, he then decided that he would resign himself to it, to say OK, fine, that’s how things are, but then, if that was the case, what should he do, give up? disappear? or what? and it was precisely this question, or rather the fact that he approached this question in such a “so-what’s-the-point-of-it-all” manner, that led directly to the fateful day, meaning that certain Wednesday morning when he concluded that there was nothing for it but to take immediate action, this being the direct conclusion he had reached, albeit by a dauntingly difficult route, and the seven of them here were witnesses, he said, still squatting in the middle of the footbridge, to the daunting difficulty of it, right from the time by the river when he first understood the complexity of the world, then by developing an ever deepening comprehension which in someone like him, a local historian of some godforsaken place, involved getting to grips with the inordinate wealth and complexity of possible thought about a world that didn’t exist, as well as with the strength to be derived from the creative power of blind faith, and all this while forgetfulness and the constant terror of losing his head crept up on him, so that the taste of freedom he had enjoyed in the records office might carry him through to the end of his quest, after which there would be nowhere left to go and he would have to decide, and indeed declare, that he himself would no longer allow matters to proceed as they might have wanted to proceed, but mount the stage “as an actor,” not as others around him tended to do, but quite differently, by, for instance, after one enormous effort of thinking, simply leaving, yes, leaving, abandoning the place allotted to him in life, leaving it forever, not simply in order to be in an indeterminate elsewhere, but, or so the idea came to him, to locate
the very center of the world
, the place where matters were actually decided, where things happened, a place such as Rome, had been, ancient Rome, where decisions had been made and events set in motion, to find that place and
then
quit everything; in other words he decided to pack up his things and seek such a “Rome”; for why, he asked himself, why spend his time in an archive some two hundred kilometers southwest of Budapest when he could be sitting at the center of the world, since one way or the other, it would be his last stop on earth? and the idea having come to him it began to crystallize in his constantly aching head and he had even begun to study foreign languages, when, one late afternoon, having stayed behind in the records office, vaguely checking the shelves, as he put it, utterly by chance, he arrived at a shelf he had never before explored, took down from it a box that had never been taken down, not at least since the Second World War, that was for sure, and from this box labeled “Family Papers of no Particular Significance” took out a fascicule headed IV.3 / 1941—42, opened it and, in doing so, his life changed forever, for there he discovered something that decided once and for all what he should do if he still wanted to “carry his plan through” and to make “his last good-byes”; something that finally determined him to put all those years of thinking, proposing and doubting behind him, to let those years go, to let them rot in the past, and not to let them determine his future but to act right now, for the fascicule headed IV.3 / 1941—42 had left him in no doubt what should be done, what to do in order to recover the dignity and meaning whose loss he had been mourning, what important thing there remained for him to do, and above all, where he should seek that which he so much lacked: that peculiar, furiously desired, greatest, very last freedom that earthly life was capable of offering.