Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  He couldn’t very well denounce them to the authorities when at the same time, out of greed, he was helping them save the riffraff.

  Two apartments opened from the gallery on each floor, on the top floor only one. Here, stepping out of the elevator, one found oneself in a space made coolly brilliant by marble all around, illuminated during the day by natural light coming through the loophole-like windows; opposite the elevator, one faced a heavy oak door. From a steel door behind the elevator one could, on an uncomfortable steel ladder, climb up to the elevator housing and gain the flat rooftop, but very few people knew about this.

  In her slightly damp two-piece pearl-colored dress, Mrs. Szemző waited patiently at the oak door, on her face a wry smile that she had prepared for Mária. She had to breathe more deeply. She wanted to tell her about it right away, the whole thing. When she heard no footsteps within the apartment, she opened her handbag, took out the clean white batiste handkerchief, and blotted up the invisible pearls of her perspiration above her lips.

  So what now, what should we do, asked Dobrovan in the apartment.

  We haven’t decided.

  Of course we have. I’ve decided, replied Mária Szapáry. Adroitly pressing one good finger on the injured one, she made a fist with which she wiped the tears from her eyes, and scrambled to her feet.

  Oh, my, she moaned as she straightened up, words addressed to the other women as a new excuse and explanation, my ankles swelled up again. The most natural thing is for us to be quiet about it. We simply won’t tell her anything. As for the secondhand-art dealer, just leave her to me, she said as she left the kitchen.

  I’ll call on her, I’ll take care of it, don’t worry, at least I’ll have a chance to avenge everything properly.

  In the next few minutes, they forgot what they were supposed to be quiet about.

  The feminine bedlam took on the air of a preparation for carnival in anticipation of Irma Arnót’s arrival.

  She observed them suspiciously, with a bit of reserve, as she put down her hat and handbag and slowly pulled off her lace gloves and they rushed out into the hallway, interrupting one another with huge explosions of giggling and laughter, to explain about the great catastrophe and whose negligence had caused it. Pushing and shoving, they went back into the apartment. One could not miss the great exaggerations; they were all too talkative, too loud, too aggressive for some reason; their bones were much too large; they looked like awful human robots.

  They headed for the foyer and then, led by Dobrovan, returned to the kitchen to clean up the debris.

  Somewhere behind Eskü Square there’s a porcelain expert, he deals with just such cases.

  And what should I do, take this mess to him in sacks. I couldn’t look at patched-up dishes.

  Come, come, Margit Huber protested quickly, how can you say that, Dobrovan, that place is at the beginning of Veres Pálné Street, almost at the corner of Kúria Street.

  Throw it all out and forget about it, that’s what I should do, wailed Mária Szapáry.

  That’s why I’m telling you, behind Eskü Square.

  It’d be more accurate to say behind the Tiszti Casino.

  Why are you quibbling.

  They slowly picked up everything, quieted down, swept up what they could, and all without quarreling; an ominous peace reigned in the kitchen.

  I’m so sorry, I really am, Irma kept saying quietly as she helped Mária.

  And while Mária amused herself finding still more pieces of china almost everywhere in the kitchen, Margit and Bella took up positions by the sink and began to wash glasses.

  Maybe one day I’ll tell you, Irmuska, why those few pieces meant so much to me.

  If we’re going to make some for Elisa too, called Margit Huber from the sink, would you get another glass, Mária.

  But only irrepressible jealousy sounded real in this request, at least in retrospect—the wish to keep the two women from being together while picking up the shards.

  Bella added a little giggle to the remark, though she was not a party to Médi’s jealousy game.

  Watch it, I’m telling you, she said, as if to exacerbate Margit Huber’s hurt, there won’t be anywhere to put those broken dishes in all this mess.

  And indeed, Mária had to make excuses about the overflowing trash can. What should she do if she forgot to put it out every night.

  What do you mean what should you do.

  Just don’t forget. It’s that simple.

  Anyway, wait a bit with the fizz until I ask Elisa if she wants any.

  But first she had to wash off her injured finger in the bathroom and Irma had to bandage it.

  Silently they sat on the edge of the tub, not even looking at each other. Behind them the faucet dripped persistently; and since it had been dripping for months, it had left a yellowish streak on the tub’s enamel. This wasn’t rust but a sulfurous deposit from thermal water—the most ordinary brimstone, usually considered the symbol of hell. Twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, Újlipótváros received its hot water from the thermal springs on Margit Island, and not only did this water leave visible traces but a smell reminiscent of rotten eggs pervaded apartments and stairwells.

  Whenever they could, they stole brief, quiet moments like these for themselves, though they also feared them. As if something irreversible might happen, and it did happen, but nevertheless for decades they had been unable to give it up.

  The relationship among the four friends had its own etiquette, and whether they liked it or not, it hadn’t changed since their school days. Not even during the long separations. Perhaps the deepest affection existed between Mária and Irma, though they observed each other from a great distance, not with aversion but, on the contrary, with enduring curiosity. They found in each other or in each other’s behavior something extremely engaging, so they did not deny their affection, yet, because it grew beyond normal social boundaries in their worlds, they could not reduce the distance between them.

  During the summer after their graduation, they all went abroad, and when, after more than a decade’s absence, they all began to return to Budapest, with children, or divorced, or widowed, they could see in one another frightening changes in every pore; but this made no difference. Irma came back from Vienna with her husband and sturdy little twin boys; she was soon followed by Mária from Rome; and a year later, from Paris, also with a little boy, Bella showed up in a very poor state of mind; last to arrive, from Berlin, was Margit.

  If she has changed so much, then I must show some change too. They had become insufferably self-willed, deceived, cheated on, abandoned, and very disillusioned women, but never, not with a single deliberate word would they admit their disillusionment to one another or to anyone else. Only to themselves. And this sufficed for them to notice everything about one another, to make fun of one another and be aware of their profoundly guarded, amusing similarities.

  Nothing could undo the security of their independence.

  They informed one another of the shifting elements of their lives only with casually dropped words or hints, and then stepped back—somewhat reluctantly, but acceding to liberal demands about keeping a distance—into an emotional dimension where nothing had changed.

  Mária and Margit naturally quarreled constantly, argued, broke off, made up, just as they had done when they were girls; the relationship between Izabella and Irma, despite their mutual and nonbinding goodwill, remained formal, that always being its defining trait, since without the characteristically bourgeois formalities the relationship would have been impossible to make enjoyable or keep alive. Inanity, a value that served only itself, was something they both enjoyed. These bourgeois formalities were precisely what annoyed Mária most. Her upbringing allowed her to be eccentric, purposely encouraged her sarcasm, and gave her no need to conceal the supreme powers of her personality. She was crude. She thought Izabella was a dizzy hen, a silly goose, her politeness unfathomable, her sentimentality tedious, though she was also a v
ocal admirer of her exceptional talents.

  Irma slightly opened the wound in the pad of Mária’s finger and peered at it closely, amazed.

  You pressed it together quite cleverly, she said gently and quietly.

  I don’t know why, but lately blood disgusts me more and more. Just the very thought that it is constantly flowing and beating inside you.

  Yes, a quite unpleasant feeling. Irma looked up from the wound.

  She loved the coarse and ill-proportioned features of this face so much that occasionally love stopped her breath.

  Just now, when I really sucked it hard, I thought I’d throw up.

  Something you don’t know what to do about, alone.

  What do you mean I don’t know, asked Mária, surprised, like someone touched at a sensitive point. How do you know what I know or don’t know.

  It’s not exceptional, I mean. You are not alone in feeling that way.

  Even though it’s not like me, I mean feeling the disgust, aversion. At least I hope it’s not like me, she continued, sounding uncertain.

  For example, I used to like roast blood on larded onions. Now I can’t even look at it.

  We had a cook who added a little green pepper and sliced apple to the onions. Or pheasant blood with cranberries, heavenly, I must say.

  Luckily, I’ve never had any. In a normal Jewish family one doesn’t prepare something like that. It sounds quite brutal.

  And when I think how I went hunting regularly, not to mention that one keeps menstruating regularly as long as one can.

  If not irregularly.

  Stay a little while.

  This isn’t going to bleed any more, and you probably have some healing powder in your medicine cabinet. We’ll just disinfect it, that’s all. Maybe I haven’t told you this, but in the camps we simply stopped menstruating.

  One doesn’t need a camp for that, Irmuska. I left off that pretty habit of mine in the Majestic.

  Except for the kapos, they kept on having their periods, and not only because they had food. And the Blockälteste, the head of the barracks, she menstruated too. They had permanent lovers, they had so-called normal sex lives and got extra portions of margarine. These are elementary conditions. All I need now is a piece of plaster and a pair of scissors and you’ll be properly taken care of.

  The attention felt good to Mária, who was praying that Irma would go no further with her story, but whom she wanted to have close because, to be not the caregiver but the recipient of care was a treat she rarely had a chance to enjoy.

  And telling a story was part of the care.

  Mária had been taking care of Elisa night and day for more than two decades, and this period included air raids, bombings, living in the cellar, arrests during which she had no idea whether anyone was looking after Elisa in her stead, the endless days of the siege, the war. She should have interrupted, found another topic, but could think of nothing else to distract Irma with, until she remembered that when they couldn’t carry Elisa down to the cellar during air raids she took the girl’s head on her lap, right here in this bathroom. If anything should happen, at least she wouldn’t see it.

  It happened, they couldn’t resist it; this is where, in their fear, they kissed and licked each other all over, surrounded by the shaking walls and bottles, they acted as two people who had reason to hurry. In her confusion, a little awkwardly, with her good hand she again twirled and then tucked behind her ear a strand of her straight gray hair.

  You might even find some antiseptic pills there, she said. Médi is right: my whole apartment is one big mess.

  And this is probably so, said Irma, continuing what she’d been saying before, as she found what she needed in the mirrored medicine cabinet, because in the end one’s left with nothing but one’s admirable or not so admirable traits. Don’t you think. There can’t be that many surprises. Or there can be, but nobody wants more injuries. The way your heart beats, that’s personal. But your blood is not, blood is impersonal.

  Maybe that’s what you find repulsive. When one is young, one simply doesn’t acknowledge such embarrassing things.

  You don’t mean to tell me that the same kind of blood circulates inside everybody.

  Not in you, of course, you are the big blue-blooded exception. But think about it, she went on, her wry smile still on her lips. Your blood has its substance and its type, but even according to its substance or type, it doesn’t taste differently from other blood. Bókay always made the students in Andor’s class taste one another’s blood, a pretty hair-raising idea, wouldn’t you say, but in those days they had different ideas about hygiene. Blut is ein besonders Saft, jedenfalls, a special juice that’s not part of your character but exactly the other way ’round, you’re a part of it, along with your famous character, because you are one of the warm-blooded creatures, and I’m putting it mildly. This is annoying and insulting. What’s the good of all those original independent thoughts, what’s the point of this glorious individuality of ours. It means that you are also ruled by this enormous rabble, and who is to stop the janitors and dictators from following behind.

  She sat back down on the rim of the bathtub and again carefully took hold of and raised Mária’s strong hand with its injured finger.

  You know damn well I don’t know what to do with such concentrated social psychology, replied Mária quickly. She judged these dictators to be very dangerous and they might take Irma away from her.

  She shrugged a little, as if to indicate that she was aware of the riskiness of her own moral relativism.

  They can follow right behind or go where they please for all I care. My starting point is that there is a given surface and if I want something, I should be moving inward on that surface. Or downward, or upward, hell-bound or heavenward to the angels, anywhere.

  And you are always doing the very opposite.

  I can’t presume that people have character or can possess any traits. What I have to follow is a man’s shape. For me that is his only trait—the surfaces, curves, configurations, the limbs. All of which is flesh, only flesh, and form. What might happen, at best, is that after a while you discover that another human being has something you wouldn’t mind being attached to, has, let’s say, something properly constituted that determines his behavior, that has some sort of permanence and keeps making him repeat some sentence or gesture. But this is rare. In other cases, what you discover is that the person’s behavior has no iconography at all, and then that becomes the person’s characteristic feature. That’s what makes people adaptable, my dear. Whatever happens, they must remain flexible.

  Nothing can compel them, or at least they feel no moral compulsion. That’s what produces their blissful chaos. You can stare at me like that all you want, but yes, this is your average human being. You talk as if everything had been already decided, and that’s why everything can be arranged. Well, nothing is decided.

  No, no, generally, I talk about two things at once, but people usually hear only one.

  Two is too many for me too.

  Your monologue is very nice, maybe a bit much even for you.

  It sometimes happened that one of them offended the other.

  They were watching something on the surfaces of each other’s eyes that in good conscience could not be called personal yet was not impersonal.

  Like lamplight reflected in the eyes.

  At which both could change course. Mária could get over being offended, and they could both hear from the other side of the door Elisa’s odd, rhythmically repeated little whimpers. They never wanted to reach a conclusion in their conversations, never, and perhaps that is why their contact was so powerful.

  The moments they bestowed on each other kept them captive, but this did not explain why they hadn’t spent their lives together.

  Why must they part again and again.

  Just look at it, look right into it, continued Mrs. Szemző, in a seemingly indifferent voice, cleansed of all passion.

  You’ll understand w
hat I’m talking about.

  But under the influence of some unnamed shame, she was the one who had to turn away from Mária’s wide-open eyes. She didn’t want to betray Elisa, whimpering on the other side of the door, with Mária, not even symbolically.

  And if she had to leave the illuminated surface of Mária’s eyes, she peered at her open flesh again.

  Her head had a tendency to tremble, lowering and adjusting itself to spoken words, but she did not let this tic have free rein. It was an embarrassing, uncomfortable matter. When alone with it before a mirror, she would study the tic for a long time, trying to find ways to eliminate or tame it, to make this little professional fiasco of hers as unnoticeable as possible.

  The flesh itself is what’s strange, she said quietly. Even though she was thinking of something other than what they were talking about.

  Mária couldn’t divine how closely connected everything Irma was saying was to everything that she herself was ruminating on. Most people are unsuspecting toward each other in this way.

  Irma was busy thinking about that strange man’s tightly packed back muscles shining with perspiration, the coiling grooves of his spine, his surprisingly round, powerful buttocks with its cleft open all the way to his anus and immersed in slow-moving thrusts, its sides at the base of his thighs made concave by tension, she was thinking about his straining thighs and his hard testicles flashing in their slipperiness.

  For a single instant, he even rolled his head back over his well-defined shoulder to see who had surprised him.

  Because in itself, perhaps it’s not so interesting that humans are the only beings whose behavior and thinking are completely imbued with the continuous, relentless desire for possible copulation, along with all the attendant fantasies, that’s what she was thinking about, that’s what she was weighing while talking with her friend about something else entirely. The image was sharp and immovable, but the fantasy or memory of it was probably more important for her than the reality of the act. This only shows how unlikely it is that one can individualize the actual act. Acknowledging this might be a turning point in one’s life.