Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  The dying man also had huge lips.

  Pardon me, she yelled to the cabbie because otherwise they wouldn’t hear each other as the taxi bounced along, what makes you think I’m any kind of doctor. I don’t understand why you would say that.

  The man, without turning around, spoke in a loud voice.

  I took the professor to the university many times, to the academy, to Party headquarters. You’ve ridden with me too, but you don’t remember because it was at night, in the dark. One evening last year, when you went to see Aida in the Erkel Theater and we had that big snowfall. And once before that, when the professor, you remember, got that award, Order of the Red Flag.

  As you can see I remember everything exactly, believe me, I do.

  That’s very good, very nice of you, answered Lady Erna impatiently, but I still don’t understand how this follows from my being some kind of doctor. What sort of joke is this.

  Listen to me, said the cabbie, laughing, and for a second he even turned around jovially. It’s very simple. I heard what you and the professor talked about. Please permit me to say, such a conversation demands at least a diploma and a doctorate.

  I never mention my doctorate.

  And my job is such, you know, I mean, its basic nature is such that I don’t have to understand everything to know whom I’m driving from place to place.

  She couldn’t imagine what they might have talked about back then; she did not remember. She was sure they hadn’t talked about anything confidential, they would never do that in a taxicab.

  And while with her fingers she grasped and then raised a little the swollen nipple of her left breast, she saw that milk was indeed seeping from it, she would have liked to ask the cabbie to tell her anyway what they had talked about during that trip. But she did not want to be so intimate with him. With a secret policeman who might have also been an Arrow Cross man. But now she had the feeling that neither assumption was correct; this man was somehow deceiving her in some way.

  Geerte at the same time lowered her eyes but not completely, and from then on the two memories ran side by side.

  Sometimes it’s best to separate tactile sensations from visual ones.

  Nevertheless, Geerte does peek out from under her eyelids to see the nipple’s nodular, purple areola at a time when Erna entrusts her senses to its power of attraction. It never even occurred to her that she might deny herself this pleasure or that there might be any moral reason why she should. She’ll find me; let her lead. And Erna was admiring Geerte’s heavy, lazy eyelids, her auburn lashes whose roots were a transparent blond. It seems that her face, like seventeenth-century Dutch portraits, has hidden features. This is a secret they have in common.

  Perhaps no one has paid attention to this or analyzed it until now.

  The Thirty Years’ War with all its horrors is concealed in her special sense of family and home, in her inimitable tenderness and all-embracing attention, and in her gentility. It is like a benevolent curtain, hiding those aspects of human nature that the uninitiated should never see again. Or like a wrinkle, she thought, a soot-covered groove, sign of a blazing, continuous pain.

  Should look up those years, to see if this is really so.

  She had been regarding Geerte’s face, her bony and prosaic figure, as if in this small, strange town she had found the living model not of a single painter but of an entire tradition of painting. Just as it sufficed to step up to the square-grid windows to see what magnificent scales of depth and height the substance of air had taught Dutch painters. Now the situation was completely the other way around. In the face of a living person she had found what had been hidden in the paintings of a magnificent era. And if the dates of the years corroborated her assumptions, all the emphases would shift.

  But this came as a hovering, uneasy feeling, something that seems to be on the tip of one’s tongue, not fully formulated, then vanishing and reappearing out of reach.

  Of course I understood a lot of it, she thought bitterly, laughing at her old naïve self, at the entire brutal prewar world that had pretended to be so innocent, clinging to strict traditions and rules of etiquette. And all the while she pondered what the subject of their conversation might have been on that snowy evening, what indeed, and whether she should ask the leather-capped cabbie, who probably had not been an ÁVH but an Arrow Cross man but in either case was very chatty.

  The help shouldn’t be chatty.

  He was an Arrow Cross man, yes, now she was certain of it, an Arrow Cross man who later became an ÁVH man.

  Geerte’s strong arms were again around her waist. It’d be better not to get into a conversation.

  She was looking at this male head and she was looking at this memory of hers, observing the fleshy lips closing in on her nipple, tugging it away from her fingers. She released it, let her take it.

  As if it were not pleasure but a noble deed to quench the thirst of these deformed lips. The gesture of nourishment acquired new meaning in this carnal pleasure. She sank the thrust-out fingers of one hand into Geerte’s woolly red hair; she thrust the other hand, a little clumsily, as much as the stiff, striped cotton dress allowed, and a little bashfully, between Geerte’s thighs. Still, for a little while she wanted to feel as if she felt nothing. She deflected her senses with thoughts, or rather, she seemed busy with something other than what she was experiencing directly.

  What she was thinking about was the question of how the painting of a given era could deflect itself from the horrors of that era.

  And that is why several minutes may have passed before she let out a loud moan.

  She was thinking so hard about all this that she did not see the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck, did not notice when she had gathered the pills from the ribbed rubber mat and when she took her place again on the taxi seat. It was very painful to immerse herself in this old pleasure. She even berated herself for having torn herself away from Geerte. Though the years had passed the memory had not faded. She should have stayed there.

  If not in Groningen then in Venlo, where they traveled together with the children. Then, maybe her little girl would still be alive. Why can’t one stay in the moment.

  Why must one leave?

  Or why doesn’t one know which moment to stay in and never move until one dies.

  Besides, the cabbie shouted cheerfully toward the backseat, I don’t mind telling you I hear a lot of things from my son. He was one of the professor’s favorite students, and he’s been to your apartment many times.

  To this day he goes there often.

  I see, responded Lady Erna, who wasn’t especially fond of her husband’s favorite students and found interesting only those who visibly disliked or positively detested him.

  Now I understand, she added with a certain reserve. And what’s the name of the young man, she asked. I mean the name of your son.

  Himself in the Magic Mirror

  He could not go back during the next few days because of the steady quiet rain. Or rather, it was as if the fog were drizzling. It did not want to stop. On days like these, the city fills up with vapors, heavy clouds settle on it, and under the wheels of automobiles the rain sizzles steadily.

  Döhring waited for it to stop.

  Standing by the window, he was staring at the slowly bursting bubbles of the raindrops. He was gazing at this simple phenomenon obeying the simple laws of physics, and drew the conclusion that he had not gone out of his mind. He could endure this. Perhaps he’d manage to separate his continuous dream from his normal life. At least he had left no trace of anything; he’d cleaned up everything. He hoped there’d be no consequences. No telephone rang. Even if it did, he wouldn’t pick it up, because the state of emergency still made his soul shudder. He did not go downstairs to check the mail. He wouldn’t find anything but junk mail anyway. Before stepping out of here into the hostile outside world, he wished to return to that rational self of his that perhaps never existed.

  Now he knew.

  He took out a map t
o study his innocent outings of the previous days.

  Maps are rational objects; they deal with physical differences based on observation and are checked with precise measurements.

  The body of water he had discovered on his first day in Berlin was probably Teufelssee, Devil’s Lake.

  He found a similar small lake on the map called Pechsee, Pitch Lake, probably because of its dark water. He couldn’t decide with absolute certainty which of the two was the one he had been to. On his second excursion, however, he definitely rode as far as the Havel river, next to the Grunewald Tower. While studying the interconnected blue spots of lakes and rivers on the map, he had an irresistible urge to go to the water, to be on the move, to swim, to feel his limbs.

  Let the water wash the night out of his skin.

  Not to smell the shit anymore.

  There were other kinds of lake on the map. But the rain would not let up. His aunt’s top-floor apartment was just under the roof. It had only five rooms and only one of these was disproportionately larger than the rest. An empty, evenly bright, barn-size room that the sun never penetrated. One wall, sectioned by densely set high windows, faced north, and from here one could step out on a balcony larger than the floor space of the entire apartment.

  The rain clouds were coming from the north, hopelessly and heavily, one could not see their end. The northerly sky was divided by the dark stripes of the vertical structural beams. He could see far above the roofs, but nothing else. For security reasons, the solid white brick baluster had been built high enough to make leaning over it impossible. Originally, this is where his aunt wanted to store her collection of paintings, but then she and her agent found the bank in Düsseldorf more secure. Only a single, rather insignificant item from the entire collection was placed on the empty white wall, under the dark-colored, arced beams.

  It felt as if one were standing in an empty church nave. And what was interesting was that on the painting itself there was nothing to be seen but white walls and beams, a fire and colorful flames, or something like that.

  On this long and eventless rainy morning Döhring purchased those small, translucent underpants he has been wearing ever since. More precisely, that’s when he bought the first two, a purple one and a sulphur-yellow one.

  Later he returned to the store several times to buy himself a turquoise one, two different red ones, more in black, green, purple, and even silver. And they were not inexpensive. He was sorry he had to leave all the others in the store. Buying them had become a mysterious passion that he was trying to keep a secret from himself.

  Already on the very first occasion, he would have wanted to purchase a pink one but didn’t dare, not then and not afterward. There were colors he simply denied himself.

  Had he bought it, he might as well have changed his skin.

  But that was exactly what he didn’t dare do; instead, he bought the others.

  Perhaps, originally, he did not even go out that morning to go shopping. He did not need any underpants. In general, he did not buy things for himself; he wasn’t even present when shoes were bought for him. His stepmother, a passionate shopper, especially at big sales, bought everything for him, and from his aunt he kept receiving finer items. This apparently sensible division of labor between the two women was also a kind of sly competition. One flaunted her frugality, the other her generosity. He had to do nothing to maintain and enlarge his wardrobe, and he wasn’t really interested in it; he had grown used to being cared for by the two women. Perhaps this is what made him so dependent and was also the reason he eventually let himself be seduced by a third one.

  On the rainy street, among umbrella-carrying pedestrians, it occurred to him he might need better bathing trunks. One thinks of lots of things that luckily one forgets in the next moment.

  He found the store somewhere behind Wittenberg Square; in the store window, torsos sunk in sand and rolled-away heads were lying about.

  As soon as he entered, the salesgirl unerringly sensed the lost country boy in him. She pounced on him at the door with a fawning, well-rehearsed sales pitch, oh yes, those splendid little bathing suits, of course, and she’d also have something special to recommend. Would the gentleman follow her, please. One would think that underwear was really a little nothing, a small piece of colored artificial fabric, without realizing that the simplest things demand the most refined art.

  Döhring not only had no idea that he had wandered into the city’s most expensive undergarment establishment but was also unaware that here they sold underwear made to the most exceptional requirements, and to satisfy these requirements they were willing to go to great lengths, the sky was the limit.

  There is this brand-new material, the salesgirl was explaining, evenly and with great enthusiasm, while quickly and purposefully leading him into the spacious, mysterious interior of the store. It’s called living, breathing polyurethane, the realized dream of the age, if one may put it that way. It is the first synthetic that successfully combines the positive characteristics of natural materials with those of artificial ones.

  It’s the invention of the century, and of course we can thank several earlier scientific achievements for its existence. It is thin, easy to wash, prevents perspiration, dries in seconds, dries in the natural warmth of the body without stifling the skin in the least, and because it is like silk or velvet to the touch, it never causes a rash. It’s available in every hue on the color scale; its design is so clever and handsome it can be worn as either underpants or swimming trunks, which makes it very comfortable; one might say it frees one from the last inconvenience and, what’s more, from the least inhibition, which, until now, in the absence of this material, no designer had managed to solve.

  This was nothing less than a hit at the very center of the bull’s-eye. As a result, we now have a wide-pored, breathing, elastic material, silky to the touch, willing to adhere to the body as a second layer of skin.

  She is confident in claiming that this material can perform miracles on the body.

  It will not expand, won’t lose its shape, won’t lose its color. One wears it as one’s own epidermis, and would never be caught in the embarrassing situation in which one couldn’t undress in anyone’s company, at any time.

  The salesgirl fell silent for a moment and, as if expecting Döhring’s approval or support, turned around.

  She was lithe, tall, surrounded by a delicate cloud of scents.

  In the dimness, their faces were intimately close to each other; and while Döhring felt that this was not unintentional, the salesgirl, with a single glance, saw that she had the young man hooked. But no matter how ingratiatingly she spoke, no matter how soft and familiar her tone was, as if they had known each other for a long time and were now only continuing a former, professional conversation, her heavily made-up face remained as indifferent as a mask. Her eyes were beautiful, her countenance lifeless in its self-control; there was something deliberately deterrent in her manner.

  Perhaps this was the only way to speak of such delicate matters in the dark.

  Or she succeeded in discussing the intimate lives of others, without offending any code of decency, because she had donned the armor of chastity.

  From then on Döhring was more interested in the performance; he did not feel he had a role in the play. The salesgirl was only a few years older than he, yet she had already mastered something to perfection. As though it were not exactly she who spoke or moved; as if she had made another living and breathing person vanish in her, lending or renting out her corporeal shell to this stranger along with her voice. A completely attractive person radiating icy indifference. But she must have retained the natural attributes of her body, Döhring thought, though he could not see where or how she had made her personal traits disappear.

  Her attractiveness, in spite of all this, remained intact, she took it along everywhere; and Döhring stayed on the trail, defenselessly going with her.

  Her hair, cut boyishly short, glittered with gel; she wore da
rk pants, a dark jacket with a much too large, dimly striped, bright-white man’s shirt unbuttoned to the waist, very high heeled, finely designed shoes. She shouldn’t appear completely as a girl, rather as a slightly feminine boy. Döhring was quite intoxicated not only by this peculiar creature’s deliberately dubious exterior but also by the lighting and furnishings of the place. He had wandered into an unfathomably large, softly glimmering space; more precisely, he had entrusted himself to a knowledgeable and decisive being who would introduce and guide him across the labyrinth of this space of unfamiliar quality.

  With the help of a silently turning windbreak, the store was hermetically sealed from the side street, which was not that busy anyway. Inside, in muted silence, barely audible psychedelic music played—softly elongated melodies, repetitive predictable rhythms. Coarse or sudden emotions were invalid in this space; everything that might interfere with the contemplation necessary for buying goods was excluded. In a restrained voice, driven by neutral enthusiasm, the salesgirl went on speaking evenly, irresistibly. Arced, elegantly bent graceful counters and whimsically scattered folding screens could be intuited in the soft dimness. Out of faint depths, huge mirrors with curved surfaces glimmered. As in a real dream, it could not be established where the place of anything was or where was the beginning or the end of anything. On graphite-gray wall-to-wall carpet, they were progressing toward a distant counter; the ceiling was black. A few concealed spotlights provided some illumination.

  White, naked plaster torsos sat, stood, and lay about in the oval puddles of light.

  Döhring was quietly resisting, as though grumbling a bit.

  Breathing or not breathing, he said, he couldn’t bear artificial material on his body. There is no nylon or who knows what kind of synthetic, whether with small pores or large, that wouldn’t cause a rash, chafe his skin, and give him little sores.

  All artificial materials make him sweat like a pig.

  He deliberately used strong words. He hoped to lure the unknown person from behind the mask.