Kaddish for an Unborn Child (12 page)

Give us this day our daily bread
, let's say (I'm not sure, but something like that). At bedtime, on the other hand, I said my prayers in German (
Müde bin
ich, geh' zur Ruh! . . .
etc.). I didn't understand a word but learned quickly and with that the soothing monotony of prayer, the duress of repetition, that singular hygiene the occasional omission of which would inflict a more severe wound on my soul than omitting to brush my teeth . . . Recalling the strong, compulsive and idiosyncratic religiosity of my childhood, which at first was essentially animistic, later associated with an all-seeing, invisible X-ray eye, though that, if I rightly recollect, was only after I was ten, when it was chiefly my father who took over
my education
. . . Onwards. The
cooler
. A dark lumber room full of insects. I was locked up in there once. I viewed it rationally. The love of solitude. The love of illness. The raptures of fever. Early signs of decadence, or just a well-founded loathing of people? To loll about alone in languid bliss in the big dormitory, watching how the sun reaches the apex of the chestnut tree standing in the garden while a cat, with its inimitable gait, curling up the tip of its tail, prowls along the indescribably adventure-packed roof opposite, with the intricate hiding places of its chimneys and turrets. The sudden cramping of guts in the evening, when what had been knotting the pit of the stomach the whole afternoon happens anyway: footsteps on the stairway, a clatter of steps in the corridor. The others.
They're coming
, I whispered wanly to myself, as if it were news of a disaster. The whole thing with the stomach cramps. It was linked to the
extra milk
in the morning, for my
anemia
. . . (The charm of the old milk bottles which, as it transpired, was just as delicate and transient as the pearls of moisture on those slim bottles with the fluted edges and closely scored smooth facets, so pleasingly bumpy to the touch.) It had to be drunk. My stomach ached for ages afterwards. The sphincter of my stomach. I would be bent double as if I had been KO'd . . . In the
cooler
self-pity overcame me in the end, after all. It came in handy, as I knew that I would have to put on a distraught face later on, when the key scraped in the lock and they let me out; let them enjoy the presumed torment they had inflicted on me. (Did I know about these little tricks instinctively, out of an inborn cunning, or did I merely acquire them very early on, the fruits of
a successful education
?) . . . By that time I had long been wise to just how foul a place the world is for a young child (little did I know that this would not change later on unless I myself were to change) . . . And the headaches. One can't help remembering them. Migraines, to give them their proper name. That's what they were. I was unable to move, the throbbing from the light on my eyes. I never dared mention them to anybody. I didn't believe that I would be believed, that others could believe, that it was believable. I believed they too were just a sin that was my secret alone, and therefore to be kept secret like the other things, like everything else. In the end, I did not even believe my own head when it was aching. This, likewise an educational success . . . Just consider the chances of surviving the whole thing, from the age of five to the age of ten. Almost inconceivable: how? Obviously, like others, like everybody else, by dint of massive, irrational, sledgehammer blows to my rationality. By dint of madness, the madness that separates (or, for that matter, unites) slavish madness from domineering madness. The first irrational determinant: my father's and mother's divorce, which was of interest chiefly in that its consequence was the school. When I nagged them for a
reason
for their divorce, the answer, both my father's and my mother's, was always:
Because we didn't understand one another
. How could that be? Both of them speak Hungarian after all, I thought to myself. I just could not comprehend why they would
not
understand when they plainly did
understand
one another. But then that was the final word, the clinching argument, a blank wall: I therefore suspected that behind it lay some weighty complicated and presumably nasty secret that they were foisting on me. It bore a resemblance to a nemesis: I had to accept it and the more (because it was all the more a nemesis) the less I understood it. The second irrational determinant was a certain tram journey that I regularly took with my father. Where we went, to whom or why, I no longer recollect. The whole matter was a lot more insignificant than the divorce. All the same. The stop where we always got off and after that a long walk in the same direction as the tram. I ventured the remark that from the next stop we would only have to go back a few paces. The response was:
I don't go back.
Question:
Why
? Answer:
Because I don't go back.
Question anew:
But why not
? Answer anew:
I've already told you:
because I don't go back.
I sensed the enormous profundity of this obduracy, only I could not puzzle it out. Total, crushing perplexity of my intellect, as if faced with some revealed secret. In the end, all I was able and indeed
had
to deduce was some inscrutable but incontestable principle that my father represented, and the power he wielded over me. “Neurosis and coercion as a system of exclusive types of relationship, accommodation as the sole possibility of surviving, obedience as drill, lunacy as final outcome,” I wrote.
The earlier culture crumbles into a heap of rubble and finally a
heap of ashes, but spirits will hover over the ashes
, that too is on one of my slips of paper (Wittgenstein), “. . . and as I was standing there, under my umbrella, and as I was brushed by the stifling secret of this establishment, this well-healed private institution, this former
State Lic. Boarding School
, a stifling secret which even today flutters about in the damp autumnal air, just as a malevolent silence bangs around the burial vaults of antiquity, all at once—how should I put it?— I was little short of pervaded by this
earlier culture
, this paternalistic-culture, this worldwide father-complex as by the all-pervading damp . . . ,” I wrote. On coming across descriptions of private schools, seminaries and military colleges in the course of my subsequent reading, I occasionally fancied I recognized “my school,” though of course that was different all the same, more genial, more absurd and, on the whole, even more perverse, though I was only able to recognize this fully, in the mirror of all-consummating shame, after many years had gone by, I said to my wife. In reality, it was based on simple principles, the principles of respect and authoritarian paternalism, I said to my wife. It simply replicated the principles of the outside world, and whether out of habit or comic miscalculation, or through habit that slid into comic miscalculation, it regarded those principles as its title to domination, I said to my wife. On the wall of the classrooms a picture of Hungary's father-usurper of the day: among the imperial and royal highnesses, secretary-generals and first secretaries of state, was a half-length portrait of the man honored as His Serene Highness the Regent, resplendent in his admiral's cap and baffling shoulder-tasseled uniform, I said to my wife. Thus, looking back on it, I said to my wife, I am beginning to suspect that the boarding school's administration may well have been influenced by Anglo-Saxon administrative and Anglo-Saxon
educational
ideals, with some leavening of Austro-German, no, Austro-Hungarian, no, Germano-Austro-Hungarian-assimilated-Jewish-minority elements, by virtue of the
genius loci
; albeit, I said to my wife, with the difference that here they were not training the elite of a world empire, but members of Budapest's middle, lower middle and even lower bourgeoisie. Spartan principles were evident at most in the inadequate catering; under the influence of scholarly and Anglo-Saxon ideals, the school management
stole
the food from the boys, obviously by virtue of the same
genius loci
, I said to my wife. I also mentioned the commemorative plaque to my wife, and how greatly it had astonished me. If I wanted to, I said to my wife, I could undoubtedly find out more about it, the commemorative plaque, that is, the reason for it, and so on, but for my part I don't have any desire to know anything. True enough, that man, the headmaster and also proprietor of our school, was invested with immense authority, but that authority carried not the slightest trace of any esteem for higher things: as befits such authority, his too was based only on well-organized terror, I said to my wife, even though he himself was a rather ridiculous figure (at this point I mentioned the nickname that we boys gave him: Fat Nat), a diminutive man with a long, bushy, drooping, yellowish-white mustache, an artistically sweeping forelock of white hair, his paunch, almost a separate body part, swelling like a huge watermelon under his grey waistcoat. Otherwise, that's all there was to it; don't imagine anything more, I said to my wife, no brutal acts, no rough words to inspire our terror. But then terror, my dear, I said to my wife, operates by multiple transference, and by the time it becomes consolidated into a world order it is often little more than a superstition. The teachers feared him, or at least acted as if they feared him. He served as a fixed point of reference for them, his approach accompanied by whispering, hissing, a general snatching-up of things. The Head! The Head's coming! Only rarely did he come. His orders and messages, indeed often undeclared wishes that were merely attributed to, one could say anticipated from, him arrived from his apartment on the second floor like from a citadel on high. We lived under the badge of that citadel, our gazes constantly raised to it, eyes peeled but taking on a shifty look in its shadow. Solemnity reigned, the well foundedness no one doubted in the least, an oppressive solemnity that simultaneously bore a touch of official heartiness. A spirit of playing by the rules of the game and of sportsmanship, a spirit of the
seniors'
approaching examinations and graduation. A spirit of modernity, yet replete with classical traditions. Along with nationalistic curriculum, nationalistic declamations, nationalistic mourning, nationalistic avowals. I recall the legends, I related to my wife, that circulated among us about the dishes that were hauled from the kitchen in the basement up the back steps that led directly to the citadel; there was always someone around who just happened to have seen what they had carried up for the Head and his family's lunch or dinner while we picked at four slices of sausage, cut into a plate of watery, paprika-spiced potatoes, or at the five biscuits served with the suppertime mug of tea. But as we know all too well, my dear, I related to my wife, privilege only bolsters authority, and the awe tinged with hatred with which we subordinated beings perceived these demonstrations very much fitted in with the general ambiguity of our lives. Although, I related to my wife, the solemnity did sometimes collapse, creaking and groaning, and tumble into some abyss, ringed by obscene sniggering, from which the demented whooping of the resident demons would drift up on these occasions but out of which the old regime, the citadel, order, would always reemerge, battered maybe, like a battleship raised from the ocean bed, but triumphant even as a wreck.
Scandal
, I related to my wife, that's what they called these irresistible, always unexpected plunges into licentiousness, so to say, which you should imagine, I said to my wife, as somewhat like when an inebriated gentleman, having kept a strict hold on himself for a good while, suddenly yields to temptation and falls flat on the ground in relief, yes, these derailments were like that, with the added remark that the gentleman's sobriety itself is nothing other than a derailment and loss of footing, the sobriety merely a heightened inebriation, I said to my wife. I told her the story of one such scandal. One of the most characteristic ones. When that ass “Black Jack,” an aging, heavy-handed tutor, stormed through the dormitories one morning to discover that one of us was missing, a
senior
, a seventeen-year-old boy whose white teeth, animated face, long brown hair and laugh I can call to mind even today, I said to my wife. At the same time (or it may have been earlier), he discovered that the small room which opened onto the end of the corridor could not be opened, that is to say, it was locked, and what was more, locked from the inside. At the same time (or it may have been earlier), the kitchen reported the “new girl” as missing, and I can still remember the girl as well, how she served at the tables in her housemaid's apron, though in truth all I can remember are her blonde curls and a rather typical, I might say archetypal, smile. Allegedly, they had locked themselves in the evening before then gone to sleep. “Black Jack” was now pounding on the door. After a hesitant rummaging and stifled whispering no further sounds could be heard on the outside. They did not open the door. “Black Jack” beseeched the culprits, and so on. Not long after, along came the Head. His face flushed, his mustache and forelock flouncing, his paunch wobbling up and down, with us malicious underlings flattening ourselves against the wall to let him through. He tugged at the handle like the Gestapo, hammered on the door with both fists like the cuckolded husband in a low farce. Then all I recollect is the public expulsion (the girl, of course, was kicked out instantly), the artful, unctuous and treacherous text, the fact that everyone of us took the side of the
senior
, and also every one of us remained silent. Only natural, you might say, I said to my wife. I now know the basis of my sense of guilt, my guilty conscience, my terror and my shame, the choking sensation that I felt during the whole procedure; I now know what sort of ritual it was that I witnessed in that paternalistic, father-usurping institution: I witnessed a