The following is from László Krasznahorkai’s Herscht 07769. Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. He worked for some years as an editor until 1984, when he became a freelance writer. He now lives in reclusiveness in the hills of Szentlászló. He has written five novels and won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature, the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, and the 2013 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction for Satantango.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Willy-Brandt-Straße 1, 10557 Berlin—that was the address he wrote down; then, in the upper left-hand corner, he wrote only Herscht 07769 and nothing else, signaling, as it were, the confidential nature of this matter; no point, he thought, in wasting words by adding any more precise indicators of his own self, as the post office would send the reply back to Kana based on the postcode, and here, in Kana, the post office could get the letter to him based on his name; most essentially, everything was contained on the piece of paper which he had just now folded twice, nicely and accurately, slipping it into the envelope, everything formulated in his own words that began by noting that the Chancellor, a learned natural scientist, would clearly and immediately understand what was on his mind here in Kana, Thuringia, in wishing to call her attention to the need for such a personage as herself, who, in addition to tending to the everyday troubles and cares of the Bundesrepublik, must also attend to seemingly distant troubles and cares, especially when all of these troubles and cares were besieging everyday life with such destructive force, and now he was obliged to speak of a siege, a staggering presence, in his view, threatening the existence of the country, indeed all of humanity, as well as societal order, a siege looming from ever more directions, but among which he must emphasize only the most important: the seemingly unanswerable distress signal emitted by natural philosophy in the course of the vacuum experiments, concealed within methodological descriptions— although it had come to light a long time ago, he himself had realized only now that in a completely empty space, demotically understood, events were occurring; and this in and of itself was enough reason for the leader of the country, as well as one of the most influential people in the entire world, to prioritize this and exactly this matter and convene the UN Security Council—it was the very least she could do— because at stake here was not merely a political matter, but one of immediate existential import, and he sketched out the details briefly, and that was it: he was of the opinion that it would be best to be succinct, as he knew the addressee would have very little time to read his letter, no point in being verbose when writing to an expert, he signed the letter, folded it twice, slipped it into the envelope, and addressed it, but no, he shook his head, it wasn’t good, he took the letter out of the envelope, crumpled it up and threw the paper to the ground, as he said to himself (as he usually did): I must start from the assumption that the Chancellor is a trained physicist; this meant that he did not have to explain everything in detail but could hit the ground running so the Chancellor could at once grasp the importance of this matter and act immediately, at a minimum, convene the Security Council, and he leaned with his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands clasped together, he picked up the piece of paper, smoothed out the wrinkles, read through what he had written, and since he had a pen that could write either with blue, green, or red ink, he took the pen and, clicking on the red ink cartridge, strongly underlined the words “Security Council” several times, then the expression “at a minimum”; he nodded to himself as if signaling his approval despite his earlier misgivings, folded the paper twice again as before, nice and neatly, following the earlier fold lines, put the letter back in the envelope, and already he was on his way to the post office, where altogether there were two people waiting in front of him, the first person was done quickly, but the second one, holding a small package, was trying to find out something with dreadful thoroughness, wanting to know how much it would be to send a package by regular mail, how much by DHL ExpressEasy registered, how much by DHL ExpressEasy unregistered, or how much by registered mail alone, she really didn’t want to finish, she kept dragging it out, asking more and more questions, then she just hemmed and hawed like someone who was having a very hard time making up her mind, although the person standing right behind her didn’t have too much time even with his extended lunch break, because the Boss hardly ever let him out, the Boss was suspicious of Florian, clearly he considered his supposed toothache an unacceptable pretext, a German doesn’t get a toothache, he thundered, but still he had no choice other than to let Florian start his lunch break one half hour early so he could get to the Collier Dental Clinic, but only to see Dr. Katrin, and in no way Dr. Henneberg, because he was afraid of him, and, well, to tell the truth, it wasn’t too convincing when Florian started bringing up this toothache again, although he had no other choice, as he didn’t have the courage to tell the Boss the truth, moreover, as far as that went, already, in the beginning of the beginning, he hadn’t had the courage to tell the Boss the truth because he knew him well, he knew the Boss, to initiate him into this matter would have meant allowing a glimpse into his self, more precisely into that one single hidden compartment of his own self where the Boss hadn’t yet reached, only Frau Ringer had reached there, and not the Boss, because Florian did not want to hand over his one single secret, no, not this single secret, because otherwise Florian told the Boss a good many things, or, in other words, the Boss was always able to get nearly everything out of him, he was an open book as far as the Boss was concerned, I know everything about you, the Boss used to repeat, even what you don’t know about yourself, you are my responsibility and so you always must tell me everything, because if you don’t tell me everything I’ll sense it, and then you know what will happen, and Florian knew, because ever since the Boss had prevented him from becoming a baker and taken him into his own business, Florian had become a wall cleaner and was on the receiving end of the Boss’s countless blows for everything, because everything he did was bad: not like this, don’t put that over there, don’t do that now, do it later, don’t do that later, do it now, don’t use this, use that, not so much, not too little, nothing Florian did was ever good enough for the Boss even though he’d been working with him for five years now, in a word, no, he had to be quiet about this matter, and Florian was quiet, truly from the beginning of the beginning, namely from that point on when, for the first time, he felt as if he were struck by lightning as he was walking home from Herr Köhler’s house, and he was thinking about what he’d heard, because truthfully put, he didn’t understand, for a long, a very long time he hadn’t understood what Herr Köhler was trying to say, only then, as he was headed home, it was truly as if he’d been struck by lightning because he suddenly realized what Herr Köhler was trying to say, and he was very frightened because this meant that the entire universe rested upon the inexplicable fact that in a closed vacuum, in addition to every one billion particles of matter, one billion antiparticles also arise, and when matter and antimatter meet they extinguish each other, but then suddenly they don’t, because after that one billion and first particle, the one billion and first antiparticle doesn’t arise, and so this one material particle remains in existence, or directly it brings existence into life: as abundance, as surplus, as excess, as a mistake, and the entire universe exists because of this, only because of this, namely without it, the universe never would have existed—this thought frightened Florian so much that he had to stop, he had to lean against the wall when he got to the end of Oststraße, and turned left on Fabrikstraße, going toward the Shopping Center, his body was flooded with fever, his brain was buzzing, his legs trembling, he couldn’t bear to go on, namely according to Herr Köhler, science had not yet been able to explain this, and as he spoke, Florian was still thinking about how earlier, he’d said that something could arise from nothing; Herr Köhler had explained that the process within a closed vacuum begins in such a way that within nothing and out of nothing suddenly there will be something, or rather: this event begins, which is fully impossible, nonetheless it begins with the simultaneous birth of those one billion particles of matter and those one billion antiparticles which immediately extinguish each other such that a photon is released—Florian was still thinking about this part of Herr Köhler’s explanation, trying to grasp it; he could still hear Herr Köhler’s voice as he explained the conclusion to this process which, in his view, was even more startling, although the gist of Herr Köhler’s explanation only became fully clear to Florian as he passed by the abandoned train station and its lanceholding saint bolted onto an iron arch; he staggered alongside the boarded-up windows, he staggered along the empty street, then somehow he got home,
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within nothing out of nothing
and he staggered on farther, dragging himself up the staircase like someone who’d been beaten, it was too late to go over to Frau Ringer so what else could he do but go home, but it was so hard for him to get the key into the lock, and so hard for him to open the door, and he found the kitchen filled with some kind of murky fog as if some kind of evil force were preventing him from reaching his usual spot in his own kitchen to finally plunk himself down, he was broken, he just sat there, holding his head in his hands so it wouldn’t explode from the throbbing, and only his thoughts were dragging themselves on, so that it was no surprise that the next day as he got into the Boss’s car at the corner of Christian-Eckardt-Straße and Ernst-Thälmann-Straße, the Boss immediately noticed that something was amiss, he asked him, too, goddammit, what the fuck is your problem now, and after Florian only shook his head, staring fixedly in front of himself, the Boss only added: well now, fuck it, today’s getting off to a good start, and it looks as if you didn’t even shave!! by which he meant that Florian had a screw loose again, but no, he only felt burdened, very burdened by everything that Herr Köhler had told him yesterday, and it wasn’t so easy, because first he had to understand Herr Köhler, to try to understand what Herr Köhler was saying and what it meant, this in and of itself was already difficult, partially because his knowledge of physics was confined to whatever he had managed to read ever since childhood and whatever he’d been able to comprehend in the course entitled Modern Paths of Physics given at the Adult Education School located in the Lichtenberg Secondary School building: Florian only had a secondary school certificate, afterward graduating from baking industry vocational school: every Tuesday evening he would sit there among the other students, for two years now, he’d walk up the hill along Schulstraße, and he listened and he paid attention and he took notes and he finished up the year industriously, then he registered once again for the following year so he could attend the same course again as the first time around he had not understood many things properly, and it was good to hear the instructor, Herr Köhler, once again as he explained the wonderful world of elementary particles, as he termed it, and then one day Herr Köhler suggested to Florian that if he helped him cut down a large, dried-out spruce tree in his yard on Oststraße he would explain to him everything that he hadn’t understood about the wonderful world of elementary particles; it was only at the end of the second year that Florian had been able to pluck up his courage and gone over to Herr Köhler on the last night of the course in the basement of the Lichtenberg Secondary School where Herr Köhler held his adult education classes, to tell him that, regrettably, a few things were still not completely clear from the lectures he had been attending for two years, no problem, Herr Köhler replied, Florian was welcome to come over if he would assist him in cutting down the tree, but of course Florian wouldn’t let Herr Köhler assist him in this task, and the very next weekend he chopped down Herr Köhler’s tree all by himself, neatly trimming away the branches, bringing them out to the garden gate, then, as Herr Köhler watched him dumbfounded, Florian grabbed the trunk of the tree, and, just as it was, took it outside in one go as if it were just a little twig, and he piled it on top of the branches to be hauled away, it wasn’t a such big deal, but the result was that not only did Herr Köhler explain everything to him again, but that from that point onward, Florian could pay a visit to Herr Köhler every Thursday at seven in the evening…
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From Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai, translated by Ottilie Mulzet. Used with permission with the publisher, New Directions. Translation copyright © 2024 by Ottilie Mulzet.
