Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertész (translated by Tim Wilkinson). (1/2)
Title: Kaddish for an Unborn Child.
Author: Imre Kertész (translated by Tim Wilkinson).
Genre: Literature, fiction, Judaism, writing, philosophical fiction.
Country: Hungary.
Language: Hungarian.
Publication Date: 1990.
Summary: The first word in this mesmerizing novel is "No." It is how the narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child. It is the answer he gave his wife (now ex-wife) years earlier when she told him that she wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years between those two "no"s give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on the Holocaust. As the narrator addresses the child he couldn't bear to bring into the world, he ushers readers into the labyrinth of his consciousness, dramatizing the paradoxes attendant on surviving the catastrophe of Auschwitz. (Refer to PART 2 for rest of the quotes).
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ "No!" I said instantly and at once, without hesitating and, virtually, instinctively since it has become quite natural by now that our instincts should act contrary to our instincts, that our counterinstincts, so to say, should act instead of, indeed as, our instincts.., and even nowadays, even by my counterinstincts, I still recognize what I like intuitively, even if not with that same chest-thumping, gut-wrenching, knee-jerking, galvanizing, inspired, so to say, flash of recognition as when I recognize things I detest.
♥ ..and on Dr. Obláth's face there now resettled the countenance of a professional philosopher and professional intellectual, middle-aged, of medium build, middling means, middling talents and middling prospects professing middling views on a mediocre mid-Hungarian hill range, and the wrinkles of his cynical, happy smile completely engulfed the slits of his eyes. His voice too immediately recovered its objectivity, even objectivism, that well-oiled, habitually hair-splitting and in fact self-assured voice, which had merely faltered momentarily just beforehand at the threatening proximity of real-life things; and so we strolled homewards, two, in point of fact, well-dressed, well-fed, well-preserved, middle-aged, mediocre intellectuals professing middling views, two survivors (each of us in his own different way), two still living, two half-dead individuals, and we discussed, quite superfluously, the sorts of things that can still be discussed between two intellectuals. We discussed, peaceably and desultorily, why it is not possible to be; how the very sustenance of life is, in point of fact, sheer bad manners since, in a more elevated sense and looked at from a more elevated perspective, it ought not to be permissible to be, simply by virtue of events and the continual recurrence of events, let that much suffice, that is reason enough; not to speak of the fact that more erudite minds already proscribed being from being long, long ago.
♥ "No!" something within me bellowed, howled, instantly and at once, and my whimpering abated only gradually, after the passage of many long years, into a sort of quiet but obsessive pain until, slowly and malignantly, like an insidious illness, a question assumed ever more definite form within me: Would you be a brown-eyed little girl, with the pale specks of your freckles scattered around your tiny nose? Or else a headstrong boy, your eyes bright and hard as greyish-blue pebbles?-yes, contemplating my life as the potentiality of your existence. And that day, the whole night through, I contemplated nothing but this question, now by the blinding flashes of lightning, now in the darkness with dazzled eyes which, in the capricious intervals between the ragings in the atmosphere, seemed to be seeing this question flicker across the walls, so I must regard the sentences that I am writing down now, on this sheet of paper, as if I had written them down that night, although that night I experienced them rather than wrote them down, experienced them, which is to say was riven by sundry pains, most notably those of memories (I also had a half bottle of cognac), and I jotted down on the pages of one of the notebooks, exercise books or writing pads that I always have with me at best just a few muddled words that I was hard put to reconstruct afterwards, and even then didn't understand, then later on I forgot the whole thing, and it was only after many years had passed that the night stirred into life within me once more, and again years had to pass until I can attempt to write down now what I would have written down that night, had I been writing, and were a single night, anyway, not too short, far too short, for me to have been able to write down what I would have written down. But then, how would I have been able to write, for that night was just the start, probably not the very first but at any rate one of the first steps on the long, long, who knows how lengthy path towards true clear-sightedness, or in other words, towards knowingly known self-liquidation, an initial scraping towards the grave bed which I am making for myself-there can be no doubt about it now-in the clouds. And this question-contemplating my life as the potentiality of your existence-proves a good guide, yes, as if, clutching me with your tiny, fragile hand, you were leading me, dragging me behind you along this path, which in the end can lead nowhere, or at most only to a totally futile and totally irrevocable self-recognition, and a path down which one may (why the "may"? even "must" does not begin to express it) set off only by removing the barriers and impediments that loom along it; first of all by removing, I would go so far as to say radically uprooting, my mediocre intellectual existence, even though in point of fact I adopt that pose merely as a prophylactic, as if I were a wary libertine moving around in an AIDS-infected milieu-or, to be more precise, as if I had been one, as it's been a long, long time since I was a mediocre intellectual, or any sort of intellectual at all: I am nothing. I was born a private person, as J.W.G. once said, and I have remained a private survivor, I say; I am at most still a bit of a literary translator, if I am and have to be anything/.
♥ ..however, on this all-illuminating night, when I see my marriage at such a remove from myself, and I comprehend so little that my incomprehension finally turns out to be quite simple and perfectly comprehensible, on this all-illuminating night, then, I am obliged to recognize that it was my wife's instinct for life that drove her to utter those words, and her instinct for life needed my success to make her forget the mighty slice of bad luck that her birth had dealt her, the hated, incomprehensible, unacceptable, absurd bad luck that I myself noticed about her, instantly and, so to say, involuntarily-true, not as bad luck, on the contrary, virtually as a sort of halo, no, that's an exaggeration, let's just say as the nacreous, delicate scallop shell of an incarnation-the moment we first met in an apartment somewhere at a so-called gathering when all at once she separated from the chattering group as from some hideous, formless, yet nevertheless, because it breathed like living flesh, perhaps kindred matrix, which rippled, expanded and spasmodically contracted as if in the throes of labor; so when she, as it were, broke away from there and traversed a greenish-blue carpet as if she were making her way on the sea, leaving behind her the dolphin's slit open body, and stepped triumphantly yet timidly ever closer towards me, I, let me tell you, instantly and to say involuntarily thought: "What a lovely Jewish girl!"
♥ ..I write because I have to write, and if one writes, one engages in a dialogue, I read somewhere; as long as a god existed, probably one engaged in a dialogue with God, but now that He no longer exists most likely one can only engage in dialogue with other people or, in the better case, with oneself..
♥ ..no, the "aunt" and "uncle" (I no longer remember exactly how we were related, but then why would I remember, they long ago dug their graves in the sky, into which they were sent up in smoke) were genuine Jews..
♥ ..I think the war had already broken out, but here at home, everything was still nice and peaceful, they were still only conducting blackout drills and Hungary was an island of peace in a Europe in flames, what had happened and went on happening uninterruptedly in, let's say, Germany or Poland, or in, let's say, the "Bohemian Protectorate" or France or Croatia or Slovakia, in short everywhere all around, couldn't happen here, no, not here, no way; yes..
♥ ..though of course I do wish to remember, willingly or not, I can do nothing else: if I write, I remember, I have to remember, though I don't know why I have to remember, obviously for the sake of knowing, remembering is knowing, we live in order to remember what we know, because we cannot forget what we know, don't worry, children, not out of some kind of "moral duty," no, come off it, it's simply not at our discretion, we are not able, to forget, that is the way we are created, we live in order to know and to remember, and perhaps, indeed probably, indeed with almost total certainty, the reason why we know and remember is in order that somebody should feel shame on our account if he has gone so far as to create us, yes, we remember for the one who either is or isn't, it doesn't matter, because either he is or he isn't: in the end it comes down to the same thing, the essential point is that we should remember, know and remember, that somebody-anybody-should feel shame on our account and (possibly) for us. Because as far as I am concerned, if I were to set off from my privileged, my ceremonial, I nearly said my sanctified memories, but then, I don't mind, if we are going to use grand words, then so be it: from my memories, sanctified and, indeed, consecrated at the black mass of humanity, then gas would start to leak, guttural voices would croak Der springt noch auf, the final Sh'ma Yisroel from A Survivor from Warsaw would be whimpered, and the tumult of world collapse would raise its din... And after that a gentle drizzle of surprise, daily renewed that, would you believe it, I leapt up and so to say concealed again after all, ich sprang doch auf, indeed I'm still here, though I don't know why, unless it was pure chance, the way I was born, I'm just as much an accomplice to my sticking around as I was to my coming into this world-all right, I concede, a grain more shame attaches to hanging around, especially if one has done one's utmost to hang around, but that's all, nothing more: I wasn't willing to be taken in like other suckers by the general passion and breast-beating claptrap about sticking around, God help us! and in any case you're always partly to blame, that's all there is to it, I have stuck around and therefore I am, I thought; no, I didn't even think, I just was, simple as that, like a Survivor from Warsaw, like a hanger-on from Budapest who sets no store on his hanging on, who feels no need to justify his sticking around, to attach notions of purpose to his having hung on, yes, to turn his having hung on into a triumph, however quiet, however discreet and intimate, yet essentially still the only genuine, the only possible triumph, as the prolonged and propagated perpetuation of this hung-on-to existence, namely my own self, in descendants-in a descendant: you-would be (would have been); no, I didn't think about that, I didn't think that I needed to think about that until this night overtook me, that all-illuminating yet pitch-black night, and the question arose before me (or, to be more precise, behind me, behind my long spent life, since, thank God, it's too late and will now always be too late), the question, yes--as to whether you would be a brown-eyed little girl, with the pale specks of your freckles scattered around your tiny nose? Or else a headstrong boy, your eyes bright and hard as greyish-blue pebbles?-yes, contemplating my life as the potentiality of your being, contemplating it all, strictly, sadly, without anger or hope, as one contemplated an object. As I said, I didn't think of anything, even though, as I said, I ought to have.
♥ In short, I suddenly caught myself writing because I had to write, even though I did not know why I had to, the fact is I noticed that I was working incessantly, one might say with an insane diligence, always working, driven not solely by the need to make ends meet, because even if I did not work I would still exist, and if I were existing then I don't know what that would drive me to do, and it is better that I don't know, even if my bones, my guts, have an inkling, to be sure, for the reason why I work incessantly is that while I am working I am, and if I did not work, who knows if I would be, therefore I have to take it seriously because the most deadly serious associations subsist between my continued subsistence and my work, that much is blatantly obvious and not in the least normal, even if there happen to be others, even a fair number of them, who likewise write because they have to write, though not everyone who writes has to write, but in my case there was no getting away from the fact that I had to, I don't know why, but it seems this was the only solution open to me, even if it solves nothing, on the other hand at least it does not leave me in a position of-how shall I put it?-unsolvedness that would compel me to regard it as unsolved even in its unsolvedness and consequently torment me not only by virtue of unsolvedness but also by the shortcomings of this unsolvedness and dissatisfaction over that.
♥ "No!" instantly and at once, without hesitation and virtually instinctively, yes, still instinctively, for the time being merely instinctively, albeit with instincts that ran counter to my natural instincts and indeed my very nature; so this "no" was not a decision in which I might (might have), let's say, decided freely between a "yes" and a "no"; no, this "no," the decision, was a recognition, but not a decision that I reached or could have reached, rather a decision about myself, or not even a decision but a recognition of my verdict, a decision that could be regarded as such only insofar as I did not decide against the decision, which would undoubtedly have been the wrong decision, for how could a person make a decision against his fate, if I may use this pretentious expression, by which (fate, that is to say) one usually takes to mean what one least understands, which is to say oneself, this treacherous, this unknown, this perpetually countervailing factor that in this form, strange and estranged, as it were bowing in disgust before its power, one nevertheless finds simplest to call one's fate. And if I wish to see my life as more than just a series of arbitrary accidents succeeding the arbitrary accident of my birth, which would be-how shall I put it?-a rather unworthy view of life after all, but rather as a series of recognitions in which my pride, at least my pride, can find gratification, then the question that assumed an outline in Dr. Obláth's presence, I might even say with Dr. Obláth's assistance-my existence viewed as the potentiality of your being-now, in the light of that series of recognitions and in the shadow of the onward march of time, was altered, once and for all, in the following manner: your non-existence viewed as the necessary and radical liquidation of my own existence. Because this is the only way in whhich everything that happened, everything that I did and that was done to me, has any meaning, only this way does my meaningless life have any meaning, including my continuing what I started, to live and write, it doesn't matter which, both together, for my ball-point pen is my spade, and if I look ahead, it is solely to look backwards, if I stare at a sheet of paper, I see solely into the past..
♥ ..here in this tower block in the heart of the Józsefváros district of Budapest, or rather not its heart but its entrails, a block that is so conspicuous, so startling, like an oversized artificial limb, in this ground-hugging neighborhood, but from my window I can at least peek over (what a surprise!) still extant old fence, and see the pitiful secret of a paltry garden which was a constant source of excitement in my childhood but now excites me not at all, indeed distinctly bores me..
♥ ..I most probably must have said that this statement, which is to say the statement "There is no explanation for Auschwitz," is faulty in purely formal terms, since for something that is there is always an explanation, even if, of course, merely an arbitrary, erroneous, so-so kind of explanation; nevertheless, it is a fact that a fact has at least two lives, one a factive life and another, so to say, cerebral life, a cerebral mode of existence, and this is none other than an explanation, the explanations or, better still, set of explanations that overexplain the facts to death, which is to say ultimately annihilate or at least obscure the facts, and this hapless statement that "There is no explanation for Auschwitz" itself is an explanation, being used by its hapless author to explain that it would be better for us to remain silent about Auschwitz, that Auschwitz does not (or did not) exist, because, you see, the only thing for which there is no explanation is something that does not or did not exist. However, I most probably said, Auschwitz did-that is, does-exist, and therefore there is also an explanation for it; what there is no explanation for is that there was no Auschwitz, that is to say, it would be impossible to hit upon an explanation for Auschwitz not coming into being, for the start of the world being such as not to be reified in the fact we call "Auschwitz" (if I may be allowed at this juncture to pay my respects to Dr. Obláth); yes, there would be no explanation precisely for an absence of Auschwitz, from which it follows that Auschwitz has been hanging around in the air since long ago, who knows, perhaps for centuries, like dark fruit ripening in the sparkling rays of innumerable disgraces, waiting for the moment when it may at last drop on mankind's head, for in the end what is is, and the fact that it is is necessary because it is: The history of the world presents us with a rational process (quotation from H.), because were I to see the world as a series of arbitrary accidents, then that world would have, well, a rather unworthy view (self-quotation), so let's not forget: To him who looks upon the world rationally the world in turn presents a rational aspect: the relation is mutual-again something H. said, not H., Leader and Chancellor, but H., grand-scale visionary, philosopher, court jester and head butler of choice morsels to leaders, chancellors and other titled usurpers, who, I fear, was moreover absolutely right about this, all that is left for us is to examine closely the subsidiary question of what kind of rational process it is of that world history presents to us and, furthermore, whose rationality looks rationally upon the world in order that the relation may be-as indeed, I'm sorry to say, it is-mutual, I most probably said; the explanation for Auschwitz, I most probably must have said, to my way of thinking the explanation for Auschwitz, I most probably must have said, since that was and indeed still is my opinion, is inherent in individual lives, solely in individual lives; Auschwitz, to my way of thinking is a rational process of individual lives, viewed in terms of a specific organized condition.
♥ Yes, individual lives, as a whole, and then the whole mechanics of carrying them through, that's all there is to the explanation, nothing more, nothing else, all things possible do happen; only what happens is possible, says K., the great, the sad, the wise one, who already knew from individual lives exactly what it would be like when criminal lunatics look upon the world rationally and the world in turn presents a rational aspect to them, that is to say, is obedient to them. And don't tell me, I most probably said, that this explanation is just a tautological way of explaining the facts with facts, because yes, indeed, this explanation, hard as I know it may be for you to accept, that we are governed by commonplace felons-hard even when you already call them commonplace felons and know them as such-nevertheless as soon as a criminal lunatic ends up, not in a madhouse or penal institution, but in a chancellery or other government office you immediately begin to search for what is interesting, original, extraordinary, and (though you don't dare to say so, except in secret, of course) yes, great in him, so you are not obliged to see yourselves as such dwarfs, and histories of the world as so absurd, I most probably said; yes, so that you may continue to look upon the world rationally and the world in turn may present a rational aspect to you.
♥ And just stop once and for all, I most probably said, this "There is no explanation for Auschwitz," that Auschwitz was a product of irrational, incomprehensible forces, because there is always a rational explanation for evil, it may be that Satan himself, just like Iago, is irrational, but his creatures are very much rational beings, their every action may be deduced, in the same way as a mathematical formula may be deduced, from some interest, greed for profit, indolence, lust for power and sex, cowardice, the need to gratify some urge or other or, if nothing else, then, in the final analysis, from some form of madness, paranoia, manic depression, pyromania, sadism, erotomania, masochism, demiurgic or other form of megalomania, necrophilia and what do I know which of the multitude of perversions, perhaps all of them at once, whereas, I most probably must have said, now pay attention, what is truly irrational and genuinely inexplicable is not evil but, on the contrary, good. That is precisely why I have long since had no interest in leaders, chancellors and other titled usurpers, however much you may be able to recount about their inner worlds; no, instead of the lives of dictators, for a long time now I have been interested solely in the lives of saints, because they are what I find interesting and incomprehensible, they are what I am unable to find merely rational explanations for; and even in this respect Auschwitz, however sick a joke this may sound, Auschwitz proved a fruitful enterprise..
♥ So much for the story, and even if it were true that I do not wish to see my life merely as a series of arbitrary accidents succeeding the arbitrary accident of my birth, because that would indeed be a rather unworthy view of life, I have still less wish to see things as though they had all happened in order that I should stay alive, since that would, perhaps, constitute an even more unworthy view of life..
♥ But don't try putting it into words, for you know as well as I do that under certain circumstances, at a certain temperature, metaphorically speaking, words lose their substance, their content, their meaning, they simply deliquesce, so that in this vaporous state deeds alone, naked deeds, show any tendency to solidity, it is deeds alone that we can take in our hands, so to speak, and examine like a mute lump of mineral, like a crystal.
♥ Yes, and in my opinion this is what there is no explanation for, since it is not rational as compared with the tangible rationality of an issue of food rations, which in the extreme situation called a concentration camp might serve to avoid the ultimate end, if it could serve that purpose, if that service did not run up against the resistance of an immaterial concept which sweeps even vital interests to the side, and this, in my opinion, is a most important testimony for fates in the great metabolism of what, in point of fact, constitutes life-much, so much more important than the banalities and rational acts of terror that any leader, chancellor or other titular usurper ever offered or could offer, I most probably said...
♥ But-yes-we must at least have the will to fail, as Bernhard's scientist says, because failure, failure alone, is left as the sole fulfillable experience, I say, and thus I too have the will, if I must have a will to anything, and I must, because I live and write, and both are willings, life being more a blind willing, writing more a sighted willing and therefore, of course, a different kind of willing from life, maybe it has the will to see what life has the will for, because it can do nothing else, it recites life back to life, recapitulates life, as if it, writing, were itself life, though it is not, quite fundamentally, incommensurably, indeed incomparably not that, hence if one starts to write, and one starts to write about life, failure is guaranteed.
♥ I carefully thought it all through in this much detail, or this plastically I might say, as only befits my profession as writer and translator, after one of my longer-standing, almost painfully and interminably long-standing relationships had come to an end, a relationship that at the time, or so I believed, was taking a fairly heavy toll on me and, seeing it was thereby threatening the freedom that was absolutely necessary (not just necessary: indispensable) for my work, I was induced to prudence yet at the same time to further reflection as to what would follow. That was chiefly because I couldn't help noticing that regaining my long-yearned freedom by no means conferred the stimulus to work that I expected from this turn of events; indeed, I disconcertedly had to admit that I had worked more energetically, I might say more angrily, and thus more productively, while I had merely been struggling for my freedom, indecisively now breaking up, now getting back together again, than I was working now, when I was free again, to be sure, but this freedom only filled me with emptiness and boredom; just as a good deal later, another sort of state, to wit the happiness that I experienced with my wife during our relationship and then at the beginning of our marriage, likewise taught me that this state, to wit that is to say happiness, also has an adverse effect on my work. So first of all I took a hard look at my work, as to what it really is and why it creates demands that are so oppressive, or at any rate tiring and often frankly unattainable, virtually suicidal; and even if I was then still groping far away-God, and how far-from true clear-sightedness, from a recognition of the true nature of my work, which is in essence nothing other than to dig, to keep on digging to the end, the grave that others have started to dig for me in the air; at any rate, I recognized that as long as I am working I am, and if I were not working, who knows, would I be? could I be? so in this way the most deadly serious associations are sustained between my continued sustenance and my work, one precondition of which, it seems, must be, I supposed (because, however sadly this may reflect on me, I was unable to suppose otherwise), unhappiness, though not of course unhappiness of the sort that would immediately deprive me of even the possibility of my working, such as illness, homelessness, poverty, to say nothing of prison and the like, but rather the sort of unhappiness that women alone can confer on me.
♥ Yes, because it appears that in my pain I end up hitting on creative forces, no matter what the price, and no matter that it may just be ordinary compensation finding an outlet in creativity, what is important is that it nonetheless finds an outlet and that through the pain I live in some sort of truth, and if I did not live in it, perhaps the simple truth might-who knows?-leave me cold; as it is, however, the notion of pain is intimately and permanently interwoven within me with the aspect of life, the (I am quite certain) most authentic aspect of life.
♥ ..and I formulate it in this pointed manner precisely in order to underline its absurdity to myself, because as soon as I had completed this self-analysis I also squared accounts with my complex, indeed, I instantly took a natural aversion to it, or to be more accurate, not only to my complex but also to myself for building up the complex even as I was concealing it from myself and playacting, precisely this idiotic infantile complex, attesting to intellectual immaturity and betraying inadmissible vulnerability, when there is nothing I hate more than infantilism. I was thus cured at least of that particular complex, or to be more precise, I pronounced myself cured, not so much in the interests of regaining my health of course but more my self-esteem, so that when, not long after that, I entered into a relationship with another woman, I laid down the possibly harsh-sounding but nevertheless highly practical condition that the word "love" and its synonyms should never be uttered between us, or in other words, that our love could last only as long as we were not in love with one another, whether mutually or unilaterally was neither here nor there, because the moment that this misfortune should happen to overtake either or, perchance, both of us, we would have to terminate our relationship instantly; and my partner, let me put it that way, who also happened to be recovering from a fairly severe amatory mishap, accepted this condition without demur (at least so it seemed) though the untroubledness of our relationship, I don't doubt it, evidently soon troubled her and would have eroded our relationship had I not in the meantime made the acquaintance of my ex- (or at that time still future) wife, which in the end (at least for me) represents the radical solution.
♥ ..nearly all my friends and acquaintances or whatever I might call them had acquired their own apartments, as for me, I didn't think about it, or to the extent that I did think about it I thought that I could not entertain the thought of it, simply because it would have required me to live in a different way, under the badge of money and, above all, of moneymaking, and that would have entailed so many concessions, misconceptions, compromises and, all in all, so much inconvenience, even if I were to have lulled myself into thinking that it was all just temporary, purely a means to an end, because how can we live even temporarily in any way other than the way we must permanently and generally live without its bitter consequences rebounding on our normal life, that is to say, more or less the life that, after all, we have stipulated for ourselves, in which we are, after all, the masters and legislators, and I was therefore simply unable, and did not even wish, to take upon myself all these absurdities, the absurd conveniences of acquiring an apartment in Hungary, which first and foremost would have put my freedom, my independence of mind and as a matter of fact my independence from external circumstances under threat, under total threat at that, so that I had to set myself against that danger totally, or in other words, with my whole life. And actually I must admit that my wife was right, for after reconnoitering my circumstances at the time with searching tenacity and irresistible probing, accompanied by those plays of expression that were already then slowly becoming familiar and which, so I thought at the time, acted upon me like an ever-surprising and miraculous sunrise, she declared that meant I was imprisoning myself for the sake of my freedom. Yes, undoubtedly there was some truth in that. To be more accurate, that was precisely the truth. That, given a choice between the prison of acquiring an apartment in Hungary and the prison of not owning an apartment in Hungary, the latter suited me better, since there (in the prison of not owning an apartment in Hungary) I was better able to do as I pleased, better able to live for myself, sheltered, concealed and uncorrupted, until this prison-or, if one insists on making comparisons, I could perhaps better call it a preserving jar-suddenly, and undoubtedly through my wife's magic touch, sprang open, and my subtenant life all at once proved to be unsheltered, unconcealed, corruptible and consequently untenable, just like my subsequent and eventually my present life too, and just as, I suppose, every life proves to be untenable once it is contemplated in the light of our flashes of recognition, for it is precisely the untenability of our lives which leads to our flashes of recognition, in the light of which we come to recognize that our life is untenable-and it really is that, untenable, because it is taken away from us. Yes, I lived my subtenant life as if I were not quite living, diminished, temporarily, absentmindedly (taking only my work seriously), with that feeling, unclarified but sure, and therefore not standing in need of clarification, feeling, that it was, as it were, merely a waiting period of uncertain duration elapsing between my only two pieces of true business, that of my coming into being and that of my passing away, which I must somehow while away (preferably with work); yet this waiting period of my only time, the only time I can account for, though I don't know why and to whom I should account for it, perhaps to myself, above all, so that I may recognize what I still have to recognize and do what I still can do, but then to everybody, or to nobody, or to anybody who will be ashamed on our behalf and possibly for us, since I am unable to account for my time either prior to my coming into being or after my passing away, if these states of mine have anything at all to do with the only time I have-something (that is, that they could have anything to do with it) I find hard to believe.
♥ ..I nevertheless happened to be being accommodated in the hospital barrack, and the next morning I staggered out of the Saal, or room, to the so-called ablutions, and as I opened the door to the so-called ablutions and was just about to move towards the wash trough, or perhaps before that to the urinal, when my feet simply (and I am unable to come up with anything more apt than this tired cliché, because that was almost literally what happened) they simply became rooted to the spot for a German solider was standing at the washbasin and as I entered he slowly turned his head toward me; and before fright could cause me to collapse, faint, wet myself or who knows what else, through the greyish-black fog of my terror I noticed a gesture, a hand gesture by the German soldier, beckoning me towards the washbasin, a rag that the German soldier was holding in the hand that was making the gesture, and a smile, the German soldier's smile; in other words, I slowly grasped that the German soldier was just scrubbing the washbasin, while his smile was merely expressing his readiness to be of service to me, that he was scrubbing the washbasin for me, or in other words the world order had changed, which is to say that it had not changed at all, which is to say that the world order had changed merely this much, and yet even just that much was not an entirely negligible change in that whereas yesterday it had been I who was the prisoner, today it was he, and this put an end to my sudden terror only inasmuch as it gradually tamed the immediate feeling into one of persistent and unshakable mistrustfulness, matured it within me, one could say, into a way of looking at the world that my subsequent camp life (because I continued to live like this, as a free camp inmate in the camp, for quite a while) bestowed on my free camp life such a singular flavor and piquancy, the unforgettably sweet and tentative experience of life regained: that I was living and yet living as if the Germans might return at any moment, and therefore not fully living after all.
♥ Around that time, I remember, I suffered greatly from a feeling (in reality I might better to call it an ailment) which for my own purposes I termed a "sense of strangeness." The sensation has been well known to me from early childhood on, essentially my constant companion in life, but around that time it haunted me in a manner little short of hazardous, not allowing me to work during the day nor allowing me to sleep at night, leaving me at once tense to breaking-point and enervated to the point of inertia. It's a well-defined nervous ailment, not a figment of the imagination, I at any rate believe that in its essence it has a basis in reality, in the reality of our human condition. Usually it starts with what is often an awesome, but sometimes, especially back then, intolerably acute feeling that my life is hanging by a single thread; it's not a matter of whether I am living or dying, death has nothing to do with it, in fact it has to do with nothing other than life, and life alone, it's just that life suddenly assumes within me an aspect and form, or more accurately a formlessness, of the utmost uncertainty, so I am not at all sure about reality; yes, I am seized by total uncertainty about the extremely suspect experiences that are presented to my senses as is for reality, the real existence of myself and my surroundings altogether, an existence that, as I have already said, at the time of such experiences or what I might perhaps better call paroxysms, anyway at the time of these paroxysmal experiences, is connected by just a single thread to life, my own and that of my surroundings, and that thread is my reason alone, nothing else. But then, not only is my mind mistake-prone and, to put it mildly, a far from perfect instrument or sensory organ, or whatever I should call it, on top of that it usually functions sluggishly, haltingly, fuzzily, indeed at times hardly atr all. It only follows my actions like someone in bed with the flu does another's bustling about around him, registering almost everything only after the event, and though one tries to direct this stranger's rummaging and activity with the occasional listless word, if the latter pays no attention, or happens not to hear, with a resigned impotence one gives up bothering anymore. Yes, this is the "sense of strangeness," a state of total estrangement which contains not even a slight hint of the fantastical, the astonishing, or an unbridled imagination but just torments one with the tedium of the routine, the commonplace; yes, an utter homelessness, though it neither knows nor gives cognizance of any home, either abandoned or waiting for me in the way that, for example-and this is a question that I have often posed myself in such states-death would be a home, for example. But then, I have replied to myself on such occasions, I ought to believe in the other world, but the snag is precisely that I cannot believe in this world, least of all when in these states, where I am reduced to addressing such questions to myself and when I hold the existence of another world (to wit, the other world) to be just as much an absurdity as the existence of this world; that is to say, I don't hold it to be at all inconceivable, nor yet conceivable, of course, that another world (to wit, the other world) may exist, only that even if it does exist, then it certainly does not exist for me because I am here. That is, barely here at that; I am only more or less alive, and that fills me with a sense of some unnameable sin. ..Everything, but everything, is mere deduction, conjecture and probability, no certainty anywhere, no shred of proof anywhere, I wrote. What constitutes my existence? Why am I? What is my essence? For all these questions, I wrote, it's common knowledge that it is hopeless for me to seek not the answer so much as merely reliable signs; and even my body, which sustains me and will eventually kill me, is strange, I wrote. "Maybe if for just one moment in my life, just a single moment, it were given to me to live in step, so to speak, with the detoxifying actions of my kidneys and liver, the peristaltic movements of my stomach and intestines, the inhalatory and exhalatory movements of my lungs, the systole and diastole of my heart, as well as the metabolic exchanges of my brain with the external world, the formation of abstract thoughts in my mind, the pure knowledge that my consciousness has of all these things and of itself, and the involuntary yet merciful presence of my transcendental soul; if, for just a single moment, I might see, know and possess myself in this way, when there could be no question of course of either possessor or possession, but my identity would simply spring into existence, which can never, ever come into existence; if just one such unrealizable moment were to be realized, maybe that would abolish my "sense of strangeness," teach me to know, and only then would I know what it means to be. But since that is an impossibility, it being common knowledge that we don't know, and can never know, what causes the cause of our presence, we are not acquainted with the purpose of our presence, nor do we know why we must disappear from here once we have appeared, I wrote.
♥ It was impossible for me not to suppose, therefore, that this consciousness implied a duty, and that even if I were only postulating this duty, its commandments were nevertheless inviolable or, to be more accurate, they could, of course, be violated, but only with the feeling that one has violated the commandment, in other words with a guilty conscience; yet at the same time, and as far as I am concerned, this is the most peculiar part of it, this commandment is not exclusively-how shall I put it?-a moral commandment; no, it also contains an element, requirement, indeed demand, calling directly on one's handcrafting talents, so to say, that the world "must be constructed," "must be described," "must be studied," and at a time of its own choosing one must be able to demonstrate-it doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter to whom: to anybody who will be ashamed on our account and (possibly) for us-that one's religious duty, totally independently of the crippling religions of crippling churches, is therefore understanding the world; yes, that when all is said and done, it is in this, in understanding the world and my situation, and in this alone, that I may seek my-and again, how shall I put it in order not to say what I am bound to say?-my salvation; yes, for what would I seek, if I am already seeking something, were it not my salvation? Then again, I also supposed that all this is merely the sort of thought that one is bound to think; in other words, that a person thinks these sorts of thoughts as a result of his condition, because he is compelled to think these sorts of thoughts as a consequence of his condition, and since a person's condition, at least in certain respects, is a condition that is prescribed and predetermined from the outset, a person is therefore able to think solely predetermined thoughts, or at least ruminate and ponder solely on matters, subjects and problems that are prescribed and predetermined from the outset.