Now, therefore, he enquired, sharply, coolly, like someone whom emotion had made to forget he was a machine fitter:
“Why? You know of something better for me, perhaps?”
The department head, however, did not seem to be put out in the least by Köves’s manners.
“Yes, I do,” he smiled. “That’s why I summoned you.”
Casting a swift glance under the now part-way raised palm of his hand, which had been resting on the document that had been located with such difficulty, he continued:
“You’re a journalist. From tomorrow you’ll be working for the press department of the Ministry of Production, the ministry which supervises us,” and he had maybe not even got the words out, or Köves heard them, when, slipping out of Köves, brusquely and harshly, as if his life were under threat, came a:
“No!”
“No?” the department head leaned over the desk toward Köves, his face unexpectedly softening and sagging, his mouth opening slightly, his eyes staring confusedly at Köves from under the cap: “What do you mean, ‘No’?” he asked, so Köves, who by then had visibly regained his poise, although this seemed to have reinforced rather than shaken his determination, repeated:
“No,” like someone shielding something tangible against some kind of fantasy. And so as not to appear like the sort of uncouth bumpkin who could not even speak, he added by way of an explanation:
“I’m unsuited for it.”
“Of course not.” The department head too had meanwhile calmed down and plainly resigned himself to the utmost patience he could muster in order to acquaint Köves with one thing and another. “Of course you’re not suited: we are quite clear of that ourselves.” There was a momentary pause as a slightly care-laden expression flitted across his face, then, overcoming his doubts as it were, he slowly raised his blue gaze and trained it straight on Köves: “That’s precisely why we’re posting you over there,” he went on, “so that you will become suited,” and now it was Köves’s turn to lean forward in his chair in surprise.
“How can I become suited for something I’m unsuited for?!” he exclaimed, making the department head crack a smile at his bewilderment.
“Come now, don’t be such a baby!” he soothed Köves. “How would you know what you’re suited for and what not?”
“Who but me?” he yelled, even more vociferously than before, “Surely not yourselves!” in his excitement he seemed involuntarily to take over the use of the plural from the department head, even though there was just one of them sitting facing him.
“Naturally.” The department head’s eyes rounded and one eyebrow shot up almost to the middle of his forehead at the sight of such ignorance. “Look here,” he said, an unexpected tinge of gentleness creeping into his voice. The free hand which was not covering the document moved, stretching forward, and Köves was now beset with a vague feeling that the department head might be seeking to grasp his hand, though of course it could only have been his confused imagination playing tricks on him, it was too far away anyway, so nothing of the sort happened. “Look here, I could tell you a great deal, a very great deal, about that. Who could know what he’s suited for and what not? How many tests do we have to go through until it becomes clear who we are?” The department head was warming to the task, gradually bringing the colour of more briskly circulating blood to his pallid features. “Upstairs,” and at this point the hand which, just before, had been reaching forward was now raised, fingers spread, as if he were raising a chalice above his head, “in higher circles, they’ve come to a decision about you. How do suppose you can defy that decision?”
“But it’s about me, after all,” Köves interposed, somewhat unsure of himself, though not at all as if he had been persuaded, more because he was interested in what the department head was saying, yet he again seemed to be astonished:
“About you? Who’s talking about you? What role are you marking out for yourself, apart from doing what you’re told?!” And with his face now flushed like someone incapable of containing his enthusiasm, he called out: “We are servants, servants, each and every one of us! I’m a servant, and you’re a servant too. Is there anything more uplifting than that, more marvellous than that?”
“Whose servants?” Köves got a word in.
“Of a higher conceptualization,” came the answer.
“And what is that conceptualization,” Köves got in quickly, as if he were hoping he might finally learn something.
The question must have been over-hasty, however, because the department head stared mutely at him, as if he could not believe what he was hearing, and then he again glanced at the document that he was warming under his palm:
“Of course,” he spoke finally. “You’ve returned home from abroad.”
All the same, he answered the question Köves had asked, though by now in a much drier tone:
“Unbroken perfectionism.”
“And of what does that consist?” Köves, seeming to have already accepted that he was a journalist once again, yet was not to be deflected.
“Our trying ceaselessly to put people to the test.” The department head at this point indicated, with a brusque flip of the hand, that they had exhausted the subject and should revert to practical matters. “Consider it a piece of good luck,” he said, “that you’ve been noticed,” and it seemed that his words had a sudden sobering effect on Köves as well.
“I don’t want good luck,” he said, now in the same dry, determined tone and with a feeling he had already said that before to someone, even if then he may have been even less well-armed against luck than he was now. “I want to be a worker,” he went on, “a good worker. If I understand something, then …,” he hesitated slightly, but then he must have decided there was little risk to laying his cards on the table: “then you can’t trifle with me so easily.”