The Union Jack Read Online Free Page A

nothing else functioned, Ernő Szép was pointed out to me, a so-called “cub reporter,” on one or two occasions, in the erstwhile so-called “literary” coffee-houses and cafés which still operated at that time, albeit only as disaster coffee-houses and disaster cafés by then, of course, into which strayed only shadowy figures seeking some warmth, temporary shelter, temporary formulations. And on one or two occasions—perhaps even two or three—I, the “cub reporter,” was even introduced to Ernő Szép (who naturally never recalled my earlier introductions), purely for the sake of being able to hear him introduce himself with the phrase that has since attained legendary, nay, mythical status: “I
was
Ernő Szép.” At this juncture, I proposed a minute’s silence to the friendly gathering of my former students whohad been urging me to tell the story of the Union Jack. Because, I told them, as the years and decades pass not only had I not forgotten that form of introduction, it actually came to mind increasingly often. Of course, I said, you would have had to see Ernő Szép, you would have had to see the old chap who, before you would have been able to see him,
was
Ernő Szép: a tiny old chap who seemed to be relieved of his own very weight, swept along the icy streets like a speck of dust by the wind of disaster, drifting from one coffee-house to the next. You would have had to see, I said, his hat, for example, a so-called “Eden” hat, of a shade that had evidently once been what was called “dove grey,” which now teetered on his tiny bird’s head like a battle-cruiser pummelled by numerous direct hits. You would have had to see his neat, hopeless-grey suit, the trouser legs bagging on to his shoes. Even then I suspected, but now I know for certain, that this introduction, “I
was
Ernő Szép,” was not one of those habitual disaster jokes or disaster witticisms of this disaster city which, in the disaster era that had by then undisguisedly set in, were generally believed and accepted, because people could not believe, because they did not know or want to believe or give credence to anything else. No, that introductoryform was a formulation, and a radical formulation at that, a heroic feat of formulation, I would say. Through this formulation Ernő Szép remained, indeed became the essence of, Ernő Szép, and at the very time when he already only
was
Ernő Szép; when they had already wound up, liquidated and taken into state ownership every possibility by which Ernő Szép had once still been permitted to be Ernő Szép. Simply a lapidary formulation of the actual truth condition (the disaster), couched in four words, which no longer had anything to do with wisdom or lightheartedness. A formulation which lures nobody towards anything but with which nobody can ever be reconciled, and by that token a formulation with a far-reaching resonance—indeed, in its own way, a creation which, I will hazard a guess, may survive all of Ernő Szép’s literary creations. At this, my friends and former students started to mutter, some of them sceptically objecting that anyway the oeuvre was, so to say, “irreplaceable,” as they put it, and moreover Ernő Szép is at this very time gaining a new lease on life, at this very time people are starting to re-read and re-evaluate his works. I knew nothing, and in this instance once again don’t even want to know anything, about this, since I am not a literary man; indeed,for a long time now I have not liked, and do not even read, any literature. If I search for formulations, then I usually search for them outside literature; if I were to strive for formulations, I would probably refrain from formulations that are literary formulations, because—and maybe it suffices to leave it at this; indeed, there is truly nothing more that I can say—literature has fallen under suspicion. It is to be feared that formulations that have been steeped in the solvent of