Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  Then you don’t know anything about water.

  You’ll laugh at me, but I have never even seen the Tisza.

  How lucky can I get, Gyöngyvér screeched, I can take you to the Tisza. I’ll take you to my foster parents. We’ll go to the farm.

  I’ve swum in the Mediterranean, in the North Sea, and in the Adriatic too. Abbazia was our home base.

  That’s nothing, hardly worth mentioning.

  I swam in the Atlantic Ocean, also in the Bay of Tangier.

  Come on, come on, bay or ocean.

  If I were to take you to a place like that, your jaw would drop. I’d like to inform you, sweet Gyöngyvér, that you were born in a hopelessly bleak country.

  Please don’t move, I beg you.

  What are you doing, moaned the man.

  How come you have so much hatred in you. I don’t understand what we’ve done to deserve it, I really don’t.

  What hatred, I don’t have any hatred in me, none. If I can’t move, don’t you move either.

  And he said all this aloud so he could openly enjoy his own loud moans.

  Tell me, my sweet, tell me what you feel now, of me, of my body, what do you feel so strongly.

  I have never talked about things like this in Hungarian, never.

  But you’ve whispered in the ears of every French slut what you do to them—now I’m doing this, now I’m doing that—or what you plan to do.

  Why wouldn’t I have whispered, chuchoter. Remember this, il me chuchoté à l’oreille. Repeat after me.

  Please, knock me out like that too. You know I must learn French.

  But you still wouldn’t understand this. This comes long after the tenth lesson.

  Two brief, staccato shouts escaped from her.

  You’re wrong, that’s the only one I do understand, she moaned when she regained her senses, for her own barbaric shouts were distracting her. She was afraid Ágost would find her repulsive. While digging her nails into the wide muscles of the man’s back, she whispered again. She would have liked to satisfy the man’s every need and therefore she seemed to be singing deliberately either above or below every note, showing herself alternately cruder and more refined than she actually was. But this too came to an end. Deathly silence fell on the echoing little room or maybe on the whole world, and now she had to be all ears to ascertain it.

  She had not noticed whether her landlady, Dr. Szemző’s widow, had left or already returned. The mute mass of lost time appeared in this deadly silence, though she had no idea where they were in what they were doing, or whether it was the previous evening or the following afternoon.

  You’re wrong, a mistake, she gasped, just a mistake, everything’s a mistake.

  Hearing her own gasping, she felt truly liberated in her entire being. Her thin body trembled as if someone were shaking her.

  Nothing, don’t say anything. As if each spoken word made her colder. And don’t move either. I made the mistake. Now she was not playacting, she was not out to satisfy anything, please anyone, or seem to be anything she was not. Take me away, please, quickly, pick me up and take me away from here.

  What she wanted to say, in fact, was that they should die together.

  Hot and slippery with perspiration, locked into the hard scissors of each other’s thighs, melted into each other’s arms, they were lying under a light cover on the narrow creaky sofa in Gyöngyvér’s little sublet room. The woman was trembling. As if he could make her wish come true, at least with his arms the man completely surrounded and enwrapped her; that’s how he took her away. In their happiness, they both shut their eyes tight, for a little while did not even breathe. From under the cover, they could hear the wet contacts of their bellies and groins.

  Something of the rubescent, stifling summer twilight was still glimmering in the spacious courtyard enclosed within the building’s unfriendly rear floors and bare firewalls.

  Let’s lie like this, whispered Gyöngyvér into the man’s neck, just like this, stay still inside me, and as if it were pouring across the shivering skin, she felt her own hot breath skim across the perspiration’s cooler coating. Her shivering would not subside. If you speak, no, don’t speak, because when you do, I feel your voice entering me. She wanted to add that that was terribly good. She could not imagine how she would get up and go to work. In the depth of my body, in my womb I feel the waves of your silky voice coming into me, coming, and I am continually being gratified. But she kept quiet about this because she was afraid. Like a person hoarding something. Maybe it was dread that made her tremble. She felt the increasing pressure of things she could not, that were impossible to say out loud.

  From outside, they heard the sharp squeaks of tricycles, shouts of children, bouncing of balls, and various radio programs from open kitchen windows. Their bodies were tossing on the pulsing, intermittent waves of intermingled music and speaking voices. The window of this maid’s room, placed much higher than was usual in buildings of the Újlipótváros section of the city, was open a crack; they felt the aromas of their soaked bodies in the pervasive, pungent smells of fried onions and peppers and sweet tomatoes. Gyöngyvér’s perfume mingled unhindered with the penetrating odor of sausages slowly seething in stewed onions and tomatoes, which the man found repugnant. While the woman was hoping to become familiar with Ágost’s strange fragrance.

  Perhaps his hair, matted on his forehead, was the source of this fragrance. Perhaps every pore of his body.

  For long minutes Gyöngyvér wormed her way into his armpits, licking the sopping sweat, eating the aroma off the long, dark, sticky hairs. And the man shuddered at every little contact of her tongue and begged her quietly, no, no, don’t do that, which did not necessarily mean that they had entered some forbidden zone and did not mean its opposite either.

  They had been keeping each other captive like this for four days; they barely slept, hardly ate or drank anything; parted only for hours, and then continued as if in the next moment, against their will, they’d have to leave each other forever.

  They left not a single moment unfulfilled.

  Still, Gyöngyvér had not had time to go on a journey of exploration across the man’s body. For that she’d have had to let go of him, if only for a little while, and be at some distance from him. She could not afford to—on the contrary. The man, however, wanted to do a number of things simultaneously with her but had to be content with only one, which he found not enough. They could not tear themselves away from each other’s proximity. With their kisses they kept wrestling each other down, falling or dropping somewhere on the table or bed if they couldn’t stay on their feet; they would plop into a chair or onto the floor, even in the kitchen, and regain their full bodily security only when the man entered her again.

  They barely glanced at each other before they were at it again, which made their closeness permanent, yet each time it seemed to them as if it were happening for the first time.

  Silence reigned. They held their breath. At most, their blood was circulating.

  They had no previous practice or experience with each other and oddly they did not gain anything like it now. Which made them lose not only their sense of time but also any interest in relating to the outside world. They became the only possible external world for each other and thus could not be, in and of themselves, so important to each other that they might, for some trivial reason, interfere with the time of the total occurrence. In fact, neither of them had a precise image of where or of what quality the other one was, because their awareness was in their hands or their lips and tongues or the fine hairs of the nostrils; they only intuited where one of them ended and the other began.

  Come on, you could still talk to me about it. And that would divert me, said Gyöngyvér a little later, her voice sounding much deeper.

  This was her natural register when singing.

  Divert you from what, asked the man, surprised, as if awakened from a vanishing dream.

  Oh, from nothing, I don’t know, actually I
don’t know, replied Gyöngyvér, though she knew.

  She was afraid.

  She could not say it out loud because she was afraid there were words with which she might instantly spoil everything. True, she was the one who forbade the man to move, but what she really wanted to say was please for once fuck me properly. Which, according to some higher judgment, might have seemed as if she meant that what they were doing was not the proper thing. If they keep stopping. If they keep talking. And she had no words at all for a whole lot of other things. For example, to explain why she wanted to say this out loud so much. Or, if they were talking already, to ask who had the right to forbid them from saying something.

  The worn bedsprings creaked under them. With a single brief twist of his hips, the man thrust farther inside her, as though he understood her mute wish, producing a muffled, soft, rich squelching sound from under the cover; it hurt her; the move was rough. It wasn’t pleasant for him either, because his cock had become too erect during the protracted delay. The ribbed wall of the tight vagina crammed the unusually ample foreskin under the crown of his bulb, pulling harder than the small sensitive frenum could manage. Slowly, hissing a little, he withdrew a bit, backing away with his buttocks, whose taut cheeks were in the woman’s grip, barely letting them budge, he could feel her fingernails, until finally he sensed, on the collar of his bulb, swollen to the limit, the keen, cooler entrance of the vulva.

  They could not have known what they wanted.

  He remained like that, still inside, on the border of outside. As if somehow he’d gotten caught in her. One little move and he’d either slip out or back in. The frenum was burning under the crown; it might even have ripped a little.

  I wanted to tell you something entirely different, said the man in a surprisingly even tone, half aloud and while breathing brief, hasty kisses into the woman’s open lips.

  And while he was breathing these tiny kisses, Gyöngyvér’s swollen and protruding clitoris was banging rhythmically against the hard crown of his penis’s bulb. Because of which they had to end the exchange of tiny kisses.

  Neither of them knew what to do with these little exaggerations of pain.

  But the extraordinary, incredible, and sharp sensation that could extinguish all other sensations was forever seared into both their minds.

  And neither was it possible to determine what the man would reveal or conceal, and by what means. Was it because he wanted to get past the little kisses as quickly as he could that he moved so hastily, almost inattentively, or was he hoping to forsake the sobriety of live speech as soon as he could, to evade the quiet reasons of the mind and perhaps find a balance between ecstasy and sanity. A sane mind is praiseworthy, and good for nothing.

  This is how it must feel when physical bodies melt into one another.

  Their common pain is wrapped in tenderness, but it soothes nothing. He was convinced he found the woman with whom he should live his life. Their parched lips, at any rate, stuck together longer, and parted with short little pops.

  Which made them laugh again.

  As a matter of fact, this is not what I wanted, he continued, articulating each syllable clearly so as to overcome their giggles. What I wanted to tell you was that I did see everything in advance when I was in the Zurich train station. With words, he wanted to raise himself above their physical madness. That friend of my father, you know, the one I told you about, was waiting for us. But again, try as he might to resist, the face he remembered was not Gustav Grassère’s but that of Lecluse.

  He understood himself, and knew why he couldn’t get free of it.

  And the silver-gray Delahaye with its black fenders, he said aloud, feeling how dangerously close the two names approached each other. In those days, a car like that cost forty thousand Swiss francs. But you wouldn’t understand what that means. Well, back then that was the price of a large country house.

  Why wouldn’t I understand, said the woman very calmly, though she was still trembling a little. Some automobile that immediately made you fall head over heels in love with that wonderful man. The man lay before her like a landscape of the Great Hungarian Plain without a single hidden corner. And that’s how much it cost, she said, her teeth lightly clinking. No big deal, why wouldn’t I understand.

  From the surface of her skin, the trembling was sinking into ever-deeper regions.

  No, no, protested Ágost instinctively, but, surprised, he fell silent, surprised that the woman had so easily made the connection between objects so far apart and not easily imagined. He perceived this as an ominous, treacherous danger. In fact, he thought it coarse, even blunt; his taste rebelled against this sort of directness. She understands things he doesn’t talk about, in which case where is the border between them.

  Their faces lay close together, sunk between the upturned peaks of the pillows, they barely saw each other’s eyes; they each looked from below into the other’s pupils.

  He really became more important to me than my own father, that’s true. Some light fell on them from above, as much as the ceiling could reflect of the waning twilight. But what I really wanted to tell you was that not me and him, but the two of them were head over heels in love with each other, he said quickly, as though chastely excusing her.

  I’ve seen plenty in my life, Ágost, you can’t surprise me with anything, said the woman, laughing, and this slightly theatrical omniscience caused Ágost’s voice to allow a more indulgent smile to accompany his next sentence.

  Still, an unpleasant feeling remained. The woman must have seen through something, must have interfered with something.

  The moment they saw each other, they began to talk, quickly, feverishly, quietly, always in German. And they would leave me alone. They put me in the backseat and then forgot about me. Picture for yourself a very tall, very massive, very blond man. How old could he have been then, maybe thirty-eight. He had so much thick curly hair that his daughters could hold on to it and he’d lift them off the ground like that. They’d just hang off him as if he were a tree—isn’t there a Hungarian poem about something like that—I imagine it wasn’t painful for him.

  Like fruit on a tree.

  Everything about him was strong, and that can impress a boy. Massive. It was good to touch him, to wrestle with him because he was like steel, like stone. His neck, his arms, his thighs, you couldn’t budge his legs. And while he talked he felt he wouldn’t be telling Gyöngyvér all this if she hadn’t already known it. She knew it. Of course you’re right, I really liked his car. It was at least as impressive as he was.

  With other people on other occasions, he refrained from speaking much because when speaking one unavoidably conforms to the situation.

  Sometimes, all four of us would fall on him, that was the game, but we couldn’t wrestle him down unless he let us, to make his daughters happy. On the whole, a quite attentive, patient man, but sometimes rather hysterical. When he got mad, he wouldn’t scream or roar but screech like a shrew. This trait made him rather amusing. Imagine living with five women. When he screeched, the women simply laughed at him. I saw right away, it was obvious, that this was a good man, what should I say, a reliable man, and really wonderful, and then how would I tell them that I didn’t want to stay there with a stranger.

  When I was little, for a long time I couldn’t speak either. Nobody could make me, whispered Gyöngyvér, overcome by her own words, even though girls, as you know, learn to speak much earlier and much more simply than boys. I don’t know, she added, you probably liked your father’s wickedness. Then she quickly stopped, and Ágost felt he might lose her in a moment.

  And he did.

  She stopped not only because the other one was still talking but because she felt hurt. Still. The pain would not pass. Since they had been regaling each other with stories, day after day, speaking right into each other’s face, many things had occurred to her that she had had no idea were still in her memory. Recollection itself caught her unprepared, all the things the mind keeps in rese
rve as surprises for just such an occasion.

  It still hurt her terribly that she knew what adults were expecting of her, although she understands that she still cannot bring herself to talk. And this hasn’t changed, perhaps because a person doesn’t change. The other person is open, she’s seen that, or at least he willingly opens himself up to her, but she remains closed, which torments her. She’s afraid of punishment, of having to see the vengeful little girl in herself, the one who does not speak.

  They were constantly giving, only giving, everybody was giving, and still I felt these strangers were taking away everything I had. To this day, I can’t say that Gustav is my foster father or Clara my foster mother. Even though it is registered in a notarized document that I am their adopted son, and believe me, he pleaded in the voice of the unfamiliar little boy, they are much more familiar to me than my own people.

  And now he managed to compose himself.

  I was left with nothing, that’s what I sensed in advance. Nobody, I had nobody. That big cold body of water and that big cool house of theirs, the nearby mountains and the brisk air were all stronger than I was. The sun shone right into their dining room, the silverware made gentler noises, maybe that was more impressive.

  At home, sun didn’t shine into the house, I know that, but I no longer know what my home was like.

  They completely appropriated me.

  On the very first afternoon Clara took me along with the girls to ballet school. Upstairs they gave me a room that would be mine during vacations. But where was our dining room at home. Imagine, a few days went by and they still didn’t take me to the school, which they kept promising to me like a big reward because there you will learn everything but absolutely everything, and forget the face of your mother. Which is nothing but revenge, of course. Let her drop dead, be no more. You can’t ask your father to give you her picture from his wallet. How would you know he has such a picture in his wallet in the first place, and you’d have to confess to him that you need the picture because out of revenge you can’t remember your mother, out of sheer revenge.