He seemed somewhat uncertain at first. The truth was, he remarked, only now were the “horrors really starting to come to light,” and he added that “for the time being, the world stands uncomprehending before the question of how, how it could have happened at all.” I said nothing, but at this point he turned around to face me fully and suddenly asked, “Would you care to give an account of your experiences, young fellow?” I was somewhat dumbfounded, and replied that there was not a whole lot I could tell him that would be of much interest. He smiled a little and said, “Not me — the whole world.” Even more amazed, I asked, “But what about?” “The hell of the camps,” he replied, to which I remarked that I had nothing at all to say about that as I was not acquainted with hell and couldn’t even imagine what that was like. He assured me, however, that it was just a manner of speaking: “Can we imagine a concentration camp as anything but a hell?” he asked, and I replied, as I scratched a few circles with my heel in the dust under my feet, that everyone could think what they liked about it, but as far as I was concerned I could only imagine a concentration camp, since I was somewhat acquainted with what that was, but not hell. “All the same, say you could?” he pressed, and after a few more circles I replied, “Then I would imagine it as a place where it is impossible to become bored,” seeing as how that had been possible in the concentration camp, even in Auschwitz — under certain conditions of course. He fell silent for a while before going on to ask, though rather as if it were now somehow against his better judgment: “And how do you account for that?” After brief reflection, I came up with “Time.” “What do you mean, time?” “Time helps.” “Helps?… With what?” “Everything,” and I tried to explain how different it was, for example, to arrive in a not exactly opulent but still, on the whole, agreeable, neat, and clean station where everything becomes clear only gradually, sequentially over time, step-by-step. By the time one has passed a given step, put it behind one, the next one is already there. By the time one knows everything, one has already understood it all. And while one is coming to understand everything, a person does not remain idle: he is already attending to his new business, living, acting, moving, carrying out each new demand at each new stage. Were it not for that sequencing in time, and were the entire knowledge to crash in upon a person on the spot, at one fell swoop, it might well be that neither one’s brain nor one’s heart would cope with it, I tried to enlighten him somewhat, upon which, having meanwhile fished a tattered pack from his pocket, he offered me one of his crumpled cigarettes, which I declined, but then, having taken two deep drags, he set both elbows on his knees and leaned his upper body forward, not so much as looking at me, as he said in a somehow lackluster, flat tone, “I see.” On the other hand, I continued, the flaw in that, the drawback you might say, is that the time has to be occupied somehow. For instance, I told him, I had seen prisoners who had already been — or to be more accurate were still — in concentration camps for four, six, even twelve years. Now, those people somehow had to fill each one of those four, six, or twelve years, which in the latter case means twelve times three hundred and sixty-five days, which is to say twelve times three hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four hours, and twelve times three hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four times… and so on back, every second, every minute, every hour, every day of it, in its entirety. From yet another angle, though, I added, this is exactly what can also help them, because if the whole twelve times three hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four times sixty times sixtyfold chunk of time had been dumped around their necks instantaneously, at a stroke, most likely they too would have been unable to stand it, either physically or mentally, in the way they actually did manage to stand it: “That, roughly, is the way you have imagined it.” At this, still in the same position as earlier, only now instead of holding the cigarette, which he had meanwhile discarded, with his head between his hands and in an even duller, even more choking voice, he said: “No, it’s impossible to imagine it.” For my part, I could see that, and I even thought to myself: so, that must be why they prefer to talk about hell instead.
Soon after that, though, he straightened up, looked at his watch, and his expression changed. He informed me that he was a journalist, “for a democratic paper” moreover, as he added, and it was only at this point that it came to me which figure from the remote past, from this and that he had said, he reminded me of: Uncle Willie — albeit, I conceded, with about as much difference and indeed, I would say, authoritativeness as I could detect in, let’s say, the rabbi’s words and especially his actions, his degree of obstinacy, were I to compare them with those of Uncle Lajos. That thought suddenly reminded me, made me conscious, really for the first time in fact, of the no doubt shortly impending reunion, so I did not listen too closely to what the journalist said after that. He would like, he said, to turn our chance encounter into a “stroke of luck,” proposing that we write an article, set the ball rolling on “a series of articles.” He would write the articles, but basing them exclusively on my own words. That would allow me to make some money, the value of which I would no doubt appreciate at the threshold of my “new life”—“not that I can offer very much,” he added with a somewhat apologetic smile, since the paper was a new title and “its financial resources are as yet meager.” But anyway, the most important aspect right now, he considered, was not that so much as “the healing of still-bleeding wounds and punishment of the guilty.” First and foremost, however, “public opinion has to be mobilized” and “apathy, indifference, even doubts” dissipated. Platitudes were of no use at all here; what was needed, according to him, was an uncovering of the causes, the truth, however “painful the ordeal” of facing up to it. He discerned “much originality” in my words, all in all a manifestation of the age, some sort of “sad symbol” of the times, if I understood him properly, which was “a new, individual color in the tiresome flood of brute facts,” as he put it, after which he asked what I thought of that. I noted that before all else I needed to attend to my own affairs, but he must have misunderstood me, it seems, because he said, “No, this is no longer just your own affair. It’s all of ours, the world’s.” So I said, yes, that might well be, but now it was high time for me to get back home, at which he asked me to “excuse” him. We got to our feet, but he was evidently still hesitating, weighing something up. Might we not launch the articles, he wondered, with a picture of the moment of reunion? I said nothing, at which, with a little half smile, he remarked that “a journalist’s craft sometimes forces one to be tactless,” but if that was not to my liking, then he, for his part, had no wish “to push” the matter. He then sat down, opened a black notebook on his knee, speedily wrote something down, then tore the page out and, again rising to his feet, handed it to me. His name and the address of the editorial office were on it; after he had said farewell with a “hoping to see you soon,” I felt the cordial grip of his hot, fleshy, slightly sweaty palm. I too had found the conversation pleasant and relaxing, the man likable and well meaning. Waiting only until his figure had disappeared into the swarm of passersby, I tossed the slip of paper away.