I suppose that must have happened in the barracks of the gendarmerie. Why was that episode left out of Fatelessness? From the novel’s perspective, it was a purely anecdotal element; that’s why it had to be left out. Yet from the perspective of your own life it must nevertheless have been a fairly decisive element … Does that mean I’m going to have to say something about things that I never wished to talk about? Then why did you write about it? Perhaps precisely so I would not have to talk about it. Do you find it that difficult? You know, this is just like the interviews with elderly survivors in that Spielberg series. I hate all those kind of statements like “They herded us into the stables … They drove us out into a courtyard … They took us off to the brick works in Budakalász,” and the like. Isn’t that what happened? In the novel, yes, it did. But then a novel is fiction … Which in your case I know is based on reality. How was it that you came to be in that narrow courtyard at the gendarmerie barracks?
