Detective Story

Chapter 1 The manuscript that I am hereby making public was entrusted to my care by my client, Antonio R. Martens. As to who he is, you will learn that from him in due course. All that I shall say in advance is that, given his scholastic attainments, he evinced a surprising flair for writing, as indeed does anyone, in my experience, who for once in his life steels himself to face up to his fate. I was appointed by the court as counsel for his defense. In the course of the criminal proceedings that were initiated against him, Martens did not try either to deny or to gloss over the charge against him of complicity in multiple murders. He did not fall into any of the behavioral categories with which the experience that I have gained to date in similar cases has made me familiar: either stubborn denial in respect to both material evidence and personal responsibility, or else that species of tearful remorse whose true motives are brutal unconcern for the victim and self-pity. On the contrary, Martens freely, readily, and uninhibitedly acknowledged his crimes as a matter of recordand with such stony indifference, it was as if he were giving an account of someone else's actions, not his own, those of another Martens with whom he was no longer to be identified, even though he was prepared to accept the consequences of his deeds without batting an eyelid. I considered him cynical in the extreme. One day he turned to me with the surprising request that I secure the authorization needed for him to write in his cell. "What do you wish to write about?" I asked him. "About how I have grasped the logic," he replied. "Now?" I was flabbergasted. "You mean you didn't understand it during your actions?" "No," he replied. "Not during them. There was a time beforehand when I understood, and now I have understood again. During one's actions, though, one forgets. But then"he gave a dismissive wave"that's something people like you can't understand." I understood better than he might have believed. All that surprised me was that I had not supposed that, with his being a lowly cog in a big machine and so having relinquished all powers of discernment and appraisal of a sovereign human person, that person might stir again in Martens and demand his rights. That is to say, that he would wish to speak out and make sense of his fate. In my experience, that is the rarest case of all. And in my view, everyone has the right to do so, and to do it in his own way. Even Martens. So I set about securing what he requested. Do not be surprised by his way with words. In Martens's eyes the world must have seemed like pulp fiction come true, with everything taking place in accordance with the monstrous certainty and dubious regularities of the unvarying dramatic formor choreography, if you preferof a horror story. Let me add, not in his defense but merely for the sake of the truth, that this horror story was written not by Martens alone but by reality, too. Martens finally handed the manuscript over to me. The text that is published here is authentic. I personally have not interfered with it in any way apart from making corrections where stylistic shortcomings absolutely demanded it. What he had to say, I have in all places left untouched. Chapter 2 I wish to tell a story. A simple story. You may ultimately call it a sickening one, but that does not change its simpleness. I wish therefore to tell a simple and sickening story. My name is Martens. Yes, the very same Antonio Rojas Martens who is presently arraigned before the judges of the new regime: the people's judges, as they like to call themselveKertész, Imre is the author of 'Detective Story' with ISBN 9780307266446 and ISBN 0307266443.