Fiasco

Fiasco by Imre Kertész Page B

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Authors: Imre Kertész
Tags: General Fiction
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(at which times the colleague who was called Mrs. Boda was obliged, like her other colleagues, to pass through the orders for draught beverages directly to her) (if indeed she passed them through) (the only way of establishing which fact beyond a shadow of doubt would be to snatch the order chits right away from the spike) (the right to do which, however, was the sole prerogative of the Old Biddy—the chief administrator, to give her her official title).
    “So that’s why there’s a deficit,” the old boy commented (shrewdly). “They’re pilfering.”
    “That may well be,” his wife said.
    “I’m going out for a little walk,” the old boy declared later on.
    The old boy was sitting in front of the filing cabinet.
    It was morning.
    (Again.)
    He was translating.
    He was translating from German (German being the foreign language that he still did not understand the best, relatively speaking, as the old boy was in the habit of saying).
    antwortete nicht
—the old boy read in the book (from which he was translating).
    did not answer
—the old boy tapped onto the sheet of paper that had been inserted in his typewriter (onto which he was translating).
    “For Chrissakes …!” the old boy stretched out his hand, half-rising from his seat, toward the filing cabinet.
    “… That hairy ape of a tree-dwelling Neanderthal and all its misbegotten breed,” he (the old boy) said, stuffing the carefully formed plugs into his ears.
    “I ought to change these ear plugs,” the old boy mused.
    “They’re old,” he (the old boy) continued his musing.
    “Dried out,” he mused further.
    “They’re pressing too tight in my ear.” He fiddled with the plug in one ear.
    “But then if it doesn’t press tight enough I hear everything,” he chafed.
    “There, that’s it, perhaps …” the old boy stopped his fiddling.
    The old boy was sitting in front of the filing cabinet and listening out for whether he could hear anything.
    He couldn’t. (Relatively speaking.)
    “Wonderful.” His face beamed.
    “Come on now, this is no way to make a living.” His face darkened.
    The money for translations might not be a lot, but at least it was dependable (the old boy was in the habit of saying).
    By doing the translation he could kill two birds with one stone: he would earn some money (maybe not a lot, but at least dependable) and also he wouldn’t have to write a book. (For the time being.)
    Besides which, 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.
    …
antwortete nicht
.
    …
did not reply
.
    “That’s it,’ said the old boy approvingly.
    He had not looked at his papers for days now. Nor did he have any wish to look at them.
    He had tucked them away at the very bottom of the filing cabinet in order to avoid any chance of catching sight of them.
    Sein Blick hing an den Daumen, wie festgesogen
.
    “Festgesogen,” the old boysaid, scratching his head.
    Der Blutfleck unter dem Daumnagel hatte sich jetzt deutlich vorwärts bewegt. Er war von Nagelbett abgelöst, ein schmaler Streifen sauberes neues Nagelhorn hatte sich hinterdreingeschoben
.
    “What on earth is ‘Nagelhorn’?” The old boy would have reached for the dictionary (if he had known for which dictionary he should reach, as he had two of them) (or to be more accurate, three of them) (namely, the
Concise Dictionary
, at hand to the right of the typewriter, for which he scarcely ever had to reach) (but then it usually did not contain the word he happened to be after) (as well as the
Unabridged Dictionary
, in which he usually managed to find it in the end) (and thus pure considerations of economy would haveadvocated his reaching straight away for the latter) (except that this required him to perform an awkward twist of the upper part of his body, given that, alongside the book that was to be translated, the piles of blank as well as already typed paper, the typewriter, and the
Concise

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