Fatelessness - By Imre Kertesz Page 0,18

of the words, it sounds German; an io, then Italian; and taki, then Japanese. All this stuff was just silly, of course, but it kept me entertained.

After that I took a look at each of the grown-ups as they came in. They too had been rounded up by the policemen from the buses in just the same way as us. That, in fact, is how I realized that when he was not with us, he was out on the highway, engaged in the same pursuit as in the morning. One by one, there must have been seven or eight of them who were collected that way, all men. I could see, however, that they were giving the policeman a tougher time, with their expressions of bewilderment, shaking of heads, explanations, showing of documents, and nitpicking questions. They pumped us too: Who and what were we? Later, though, they tended to keep to themselves; we gave up a couple of the benches for them, and they huddled on or hung around these. They talked about all sorts of things, but I didn’t pay much attention. They attempted mainly to figure out what could be behind the policeman’s action, and what consequences the episode might have for them; from what I could hear, though, there were about as many different views as there were men. On the whole, as far as I could tell, it depended mainly on what sort of documents they had on them, because as best I could make out, they too all had some paper giving them leave to head for Csepel, some on private business, others—just like us—out of public duty.

I did, however, take note of a few more interesting faces among them. One of them, I noticed, did not join in the conversation, for instance, but instead merely read a book that, it seems, he just happened to have with him. He was a very tall, gaunt guy in a yellow windbreaker, with a sharp slit of a mouth stretching between two deep, ill-tempered-looking furrows in his bristly face. He had chosen a place for himself at the very end of one of the benches, beside the window, legs crossed and back to the others; it was that, perhaps, which reminded me somewhat of a traveler who is so used to railway compartments that he considers every word, query, or the habitual introductory chitchat that accidental travel companions exchange a waste of time, enduring the wait until the destination is reached with bored indifference— that at least was the kind of impression he gave me.

A somewhat older, elegant-looking man with silvered temples and a bald spot on the crown of his head caught my attention the moment he arrived, not long before noon, because he was highly indignant as the policeman ushered him in. He even asked if there was a telephone that “he might make use of.” The policeman made it clear, however, that he was very sorry but the device “is reserved purely for official purposes,” at which the man fell silent, an angry scowl on his face. Later on, from the answers, laconic though they were, that he gave to inquiries from the others, I gathered that he, like us, also belonged to one of the Csepel manufacturing establishments; he styled himself “an expert,” without going into further details. Otherwise he came across as very self-confident and, as far as I could tell, his take on things must have been similar to ours by and large, except that he seemed to be offended at being detained. I noticed that he was invariably disparaging, even somewhat contemptuous, in his pronouncements about the policeman. He said that the policeman, in his view, “may have some general instruction, it appears,” that he was probably “executing overzealously.” He reckoned, though, that obviously “the competent authorities” would eventually act on the matter, adding that he hoped that was going to be soon. I heard little more from him after that, indeed forgot all about him. It was only getting into the afternoon that he fleetingly attracted my attention again, but by then I was tired too and noticed little more than how impatient he must be, now sitting down, now standing up, now folding his arms over his chest, now clasping them behind his back, now checking his watch.

Then there was also an odd little guy with a very distinctive nose, a large rucksack, dressed in “plus fours” and huge walking boots; even his yellow star somehow seemed