Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  The salesgirl stopped again briefly. Quickly, expertly, she looked him over as if to assess more closely the physical qualities she would have to deal with. As if she were looking under his clothes, appraising the shapes and forms she might find when she undressed him.

  Döhring actually enjoyed this look, though there was nothing personal in it. On top of everything, he’d had the impression all along that there was someone else besides the two of them in this space; someone was watching from the darkness.

  And in that case, the salesgirl was working for someone else, not for him.

  She understands every bias, every preconceived notion, the salesgirl said while they continued on their way. She herself is fond of wearing natural materials, silks, cotton, wool, linen, but why deny that from an aesthetic point of view traditional materials have disadvantages. Take cotton, for example. No matter how strong it is, after a few washings it stretches unpleasantly, in most cases it loses its color too, and there is nothing more pitiful and laughable than stretched-out faded underpants. There is no perfect male body that wouldn’t look ridiculous in one of those. Not to mention silk or Milanese knit; today we won’t even talk about those. Pleasant materials, but not at all durable. They don’t give headaches to designers of women’s lingerie, because here I can put a little frill, there a little lace, but a material that’s by nature incapable of keeping its shape is automatically alien to the philosophy of male undergarments.

  But what he had mentioned had to do with much more common reasons, Döhring interposed.

  The salesgirl was now behind the counter, she pressed some button and they were both bathed in a strong light.

  People dealing with male underwear, replied the young woman wearily, deal with philosophy, which of course doesn’t mean that the peculiarities of the male body are forgotten for even a moment; not at all, on the contrary. The materials used must conform to the physical attributes. And she mentions these merely because, in her personal opinion, one should not separate the functional viewpoints from the aesthetic ones.

  In a fairly irritated voice, Döhring asked whether this was really her personal opinion; her use of the word, to his surprise, annoyed him.

  On the salesgirl’s face appeared signs of approaching danger, and a retreat was sounded. She nodded cautiously, yes, this would be her personal opinion.

  Döhring liked the self-assurance with which the salesgirl lied shamelessly straight to his face. At the same time a small voice whispered to him not to dwell on the matter; he’d only be disappointed, it wasn’t worth it.

  Still, he asked what the salesgirl had in mind.

  Especially on the body of a man, replied the salesgirl almost reluctantly, stretched or out-of-shape underwear can’t perform its task. Its fundamental purpose is to provide protection. No situation should arise in which it cannot be relied on for safe support and the ability to keep its shape. That is its function; that is what it must do.

  For a few short moments, an irritating static of silence crackled in the invisible speakers.

  And the salesgirl lowered her eyes, as one wishing to conceal her face even more modestly. Not because she is ashamed, but because this is what professional integrity demands; after all, of the two of them she knows more about male underwear. Yet she did not flaunt her knowledge. The strong beam of light from above reached her brow at a sharp angle. It settled on her eyelashes, outlined the rims of her lips, painted almost black, and slashed her face with long shadows. The impression was that at any moment the light might flick the mask off this face.

  Döhring became alarmed, however, did not want to see the face, felt that in this light his own face was equally defenseless. All this did not last long, the crackling increased and turned harsh until it became a single twang.

  The salesgirl raised her head.

  She is making only modest suggestions, she said, and if he’s sure she’s not taking too much of his time, she’d like to show the recommended items to him. She guessed that Döhring wore not the smallest size, but one not much larger, probably size two. And she asked if she was right.

  Döhring motioned hesitantly that she was, because he couldn’t confess that he had never before bought bathing trunks or underpants for himself. And then he surprised himself by saying this out loud. He sounded a little as if he thought this was something to boast about. No, he was not familiar with the size numbers, he said, he had never bought anything all by himself.

  But the salesgirl did not wait for him to complete the sentence; she pulled open a deep drawer and, like a magician, with adroit fingers spread a large bagful of cellophane packets on the glass counter. Only then did she look back up at Döhring, and her eyes asked curiously whether it was possible that he had really never purchased anything. Döhring nodded and felt he was blushing.

  We have two series, two full lines of these, he heard the salesgirl’s reasoned voice. Gray ones, from black to white, and she’d like to show the other line too, including all possible colors beginning with white and all the way to black.

  And the adroit fingers now spread out the cellophane packets from another large, rustling bag. He looked at the woman a little incredulously and annoyed to once again be up against an improbable claim of hers. Why must this woman rattle off these empty commonplaces. What does all possible colors mean. But while he was fuming about this and managed to look up again, many things happened in the darkness. In fact, nothing happened except behind the shutters of his closed eyes, and possibly coming over from the previous night, an ancient steamboat appeared.

  In a sunny, barren landscape, among bare rocks, a superannuated steamboat, its hull nothing but rust, was making its way upstream in the narrow and shallow riverbed.

  How absurd and foolish was its progress.

  He would have shouted, but it was already too late; he heard the horrible thud that echoed long in the high mountain pass, and then the grating as rocks lurking in the muddy riverbed tore open the side of the boat. The hull trembled, but the engine did not stop; it kept puffing and struggling upstream. And then it was really the end; with the bottom ripped out, water rushed in, thick dark smoke arose, and suddenly lighter clouds of steam also began to rise.

  Stuck between the erstwhile river’s narrow shores, the boat turned on its side and stopped. No one moved or called out.

  A mute landscape.

  No one could have moved or called, because there was no one on board. A completely empty ship. The reason there is nobody in it, Döhring heard the explanation in his own surprised voice, is because I am.

  This is what I am. But at this moment he not only failed to understand why he was remembering a dream that he had forgotten when he had awakened that morning, but also did not know who he might be, talking to himself like this. As though somebody else was inside him who was talking to him.

  He was completely confused; he must have stared stupidly at the salesgirl.

  Anyway, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know his size, because in this store he can always try on anything. That’s no problem, which is to say he never has to feel that trying something on means an obligation to buy.

  This is the philosophy of the business in their store, she declared triumphantly.

  Döhring attempted a smile, though his face must have shown desperation. This was something he should have understood, but he had trouble comprehending the phonetic shape of the words. He still hoped to put a quick end to the salesgirl’s philosophical discourse. He literally recoiled. What he saw before him were the salesgirl’s long, nimble fingers, the clotted-blood-red fingernails on top of the shiny cellophane under the spotlights’ strong beams, and this sight was about to carry him away again. And here was the steamboat too, but he already saw himself as a child sitting in the cooling water of a bathtub. He was screaming at the top of his lungs that he wanted to be washed by his aunt and not by his stepmother. He liked that very much. When the aunt came, it was as though with her red nails she plowed his skin, his flesh, his entire body. />
  The soap kept slipping; with each slip the thin blades of her nails dug pleasurably into his body.

  At the same time he sensed that from this large dark space that no longer had any exits he was hearing some other kind of human sound. Coming from behind the music, finding a way between the twangs. He noted a man’s ticklish laughter. Until now, he had never paid attention to the way the most disparate thoughts, sensations, and stories run and split into separate strands along one another. The brief laugh was answered by another man’s good-natured humming. But at the moment, he did not know what to do with the forgotten desire and gratification, just as he didn’t know what to do with the ship that had sprung a leak and now lay on its side though there was nothing in which it could have sunk. His aunt had gratified him even while he was a young child, but since his adolescence she had denied him the pleasure. Back then, his aunt could not have been older than the salesgirl was now. Both of them cold and distant, ready to do anything for the sake of their profession. He could admire the one in the other. He had no way of escaping the entanglement in which he found himself in the store. He desired the salesgirl’s hand, yet his brain felt pain with her every sentence; with his fingers he had to dig into his own hair, rub his scalp so he wouldn’t be driven mad by commonplaces, it was that painful.

  He was struggling with madness, though he did not realize it, because he thought it was all the salesgirl’s fault. Maybe it was desire that hurt so much. He must have believed he was upset by this whole fashion business his aunt dealt with too. Perhaps there were sentences that hadn’t even reached his consciousness. Let the sweet pleasure of fingernails plowing his skin remain. In this bathtub-cum-steamboat that has sprung a leak.

  So then, this is the reason I had to come here.

  Words and sentences were showering on him.

  And then he had to undress, after all. Yesterday, he couldn’t find what he found today. He was left with the desire, with which he always runs aground.

  He knew he should somehow rid himself of these thoughts.

  The salesgirl saw his deep confusion; in the dimness in which she sometimes spent her ten-hour workdays she had to get used to many surprising things. By profession she was an undergarment seamstress, but she hadn’t worked for long on the assembly line. And for the last few weeks, she had been running the company’s Berlin store. She was cautious, understanding, and much more sentimental than she let on.

  And don’t worry either, she said to Döhring, that you might be trying on underpants that others have tried on before you. Don’t. You’ll never have a surprise like that in our store. If for no other reason than each packet is factory-sealed. They are aware how delicate an item male underwear is, and therefore they always offer to first customers the chance to try it on. There’s no risk involved. An item once tried on and not bought will never get back in the sales loop.

  She guarantees it.

  At last, Döhring managed to comprehend these sentences fully.

  Of course they don’t throw the items out, the salesgirl continued hastily, as if to deflect a possible objection. They couldn’t do that in good conscience. These items, after being properly disinfected, find their way to reliable charity organizations.

  She kept pouring out her words on him.

  Experienced as she was, she worried that he might have too complicated a personality; as to shopping, he might be a difficult case. As she had done before with his body, she now surveyed his face, his not yet fully formed features, and then she added that these superfluous items were forwarded mainly to religious organizations.

  Döhring caught on; this wasn’t the first time he’d been taken for a seminarian.

  He was fascinated by the woman offering commonplaces and at the same time becoming alarmed and fed up with him. He tried to restrain his emotions somewhat, but he lifted out one of the packets and held it up as if it were evidence in a criminal case. The salesgirl’s darkly shining lips parted; they looked at each other, unaware of what might be happening.

  He asked whether they sent the magenta (bishop purple) ones to church organizations. Did they send the canary-yellow ones to blind people.

  The salesgirl must have decided either to endure these questions or deliberately to misunderstand them. She brushed across the color line with her clotted-blood-red nails, laughed lightheartedly, and begged his pardon; they had no canary yellow, but she’d be happy to suggest the sulphur-yellow one. She lifted it out of its wrapper and gracefully indicated to Döhring that he might try it on.

  Döhring would have to turn around to go behind the folding screen, but he stayed put.

  Both colors are in the category of best choice, the salesgirl continued enthusiastically. At first glance, she felt that either one would go well with his skin color.

  But why, asked Döhring, in what sense would his skin have anything to do with this.

  In the sense of choosing colors, replied the salesgirl patiently and in her most confidential tone, though she sensed that no matter how temperately she spoke, the irritation between them kept increasing; try as she might, she’d be unable to reach the young man’s skin with her voice. Suddenly she could think of no way to diffuse or avoid the tension between them. She felt the way Döhring did: she wanted to attack, jump in, and clash head on. She could no longer help herself with her smile. She did not understand how this situation had developed. She had no idea what she could do with such a crazy man. That was what now popped into her mind.

  Although she saw that this was not a man, and wouldn’t become one either, only a boy. The thought persisted. The company in which she had become a leading member in a few short years worked with scientific methods; a psychologist prepared its sales personnel. And the psychologist told them to follow their first impression, always, and blindly. Now, however, this salesgirl was helpless, regarding not this boy but her own judgment. She had the feeling she had erred the moment they met. Some challenge or tension of unknown quality emanated from him, against which the company’s sales philosophy gave her no adequate countermeasures.

  To be more precise, it was very confusing that sometimes these countermeasures were completely adequate and sometimes not at all.

  Perhaps she was mistaken and this customer was actually a good boy.

  She had thought of herself, perhaps not baselessly, as someone who could cope with any need or challenge, even if often with the help of blind good luck, but ultimately she was a meticulous listener. This time, however, something was definitely amiss.

  She was among those young and ambitious co-workers who during the last few years had extricated this company from the quagmire of its exclusivity. They were convinced that its exclusivity and idiosyncrasy should not be concealed. As if to say that if people were supposed to forget the company’s reputation in this regard, the company had to forget it first.

  Your faultlessness is not the result of surrendering to the hopelessly boring, everyday crowd and enduring the confused torture of all your inhibitions, the shame of your desires—no. Your faultlessness feeds on your ability to gratify all your desires with your head held high. Everyone can come to this conclusion because everyone has well-guarded secrets; one needs only refer to these secrets, and then everyone can be branded with his or her own mark.

  The salesgirl rightly felt that for long minutes now she hadn’t uttered a sentence or made a gesture to which Döhring didn’t have a serious objection. She even thought of asking for help because she couldn’t cope with him on her own.

  They were standing face-to-face, unmasked, each with a half-completed sentence. Döhring checked quickly whether the salesgirl wasn’t taller than he. But neither of them could have said what they had unmasked in each other or in themselves. As though they had both claimed to see through the other’s game, but their situation was mutual only in that neither of them could really see anything, not of themselves and not of each other. The cause of their feeling good had been the embarrassing ignorance into which they had strayed unsuspec
tingly and could not get out of. Not only muscles but the soul too cannot tolerate unfinished movements.

  Simultaneously they began to speak, as if speedily to talk past their feelings, and at the same time they lowered their arms. With that movement, however, came something unintentionally and disturbingly tempestuous. Döhring in his confusion retreated behind a little-boyish alarm, mumbling that he should be forgiven for never having taken a look at himself with that consideration in mind, while the salesgirl, in a rather harsh and unpleasantly screechy voice, apologized that, oh, she doesn’t mean to appear forward, but ever since this new material arrived, all the sales personnel have been in a feverish professional excitement, which they like to share with everyone. And now that we’re at it, continued Döhring undisturbed, he wouldn’t mind asking why exactly did she think the magenta or sulphur yellow was the best choice for him. He had to ask. A professional should certainly be able to answer him. Seeing he’d had no idea until now what sort of skin he had. In the meantime, however, the salesgirl also went on with what she had started to say; she’d gladly withdraw those suggestions because there were plenty of others where those had come from. They completed simultaneously the two entangled sentences whose meaning they couldn’t really comprehend in the chaotic cacophony.

  And to prove that the opposite of this was true, because the situation was indeed embarrassing, they cut into each other’s words again.

  Your skin has a certain delicate tone, the salesgirl explained, that looks very good with bright colors. Because there are two basic skin types. At first glance most people would say, for example, that Döhring has white skin. A very fortunate skin type. Its base is indeed white, yet it is dominated by swarthiness. She’d be ready to bet, continued the salesgirl, and she had to be on her guard now not to look anywhere except into Döhring’s eyes, she’d bet anything that sunshine catches his skin on the very first bright spring day, though he’s never had a sunburn.

  She asked if this was so.

  They looked long into each other’s eyes.