by Peter Nadas
Everyone strives to individualize the act of lovemaking because otherwise one would miss the proper share of its pleasures, and everyone fails at this because the act exists only in reciprocity. If there’s enough mutual pleasure in the act, one will not find one’s own person; if one strives for the personal, one becomes stuck on the other person’s personality and the pleasure is broken, uneven, or perhaps totally inadequate.
The search for the act, then, is directed not by instinct alone, but by the need to individualize and, at least equally, by the inevitable failure, big or small depending on the level of individualization.
One must move on, hoping that the individualization will succeed with someone else.
Religions and myths are not mistaken on this question, she continued aloud, your own flesh is impersonal, only the imagination is personal. Though frankly I don’t know why your cut from that stupid glass is so deep.
I’m not going to look at it, so you might as well stop trying to make me.
But you could, said Irma, with obvious relish. There are ugly wounds, but this one is handsome, an extremely well turned-out injury.
I believe you.
It probably doesn’t hurt now, but it may throb later.
Please forgive me, but we must look in on Elisa, I may have alarmed her with that racket. She’ll keep up this whimpering until I kick her around a little.
Keep pressing on it a little longer.
It feels too tight.
Don’t worry, that’s how it has to be.
They stood up simultaneously, to put an end to their unpredictable shared moment.
Mária was ready to withdraw her decision, however, even though she had been the one to suggest it.
Irmuska, I’d like to ask you something, she said suddenly, and, very uncharacteristically, she blushed.
Come on, out with it, and then I’ll tell you something I have a hard time keeping to myself.
Something one doesn’t like to talk about, or ask. But this I just can’t swallow.
Before she spoke, for a flash it occurred to her that maybe this was the moment to tell Irma about Erna Demén’s request.
This would be the most favorable moment.
Why didn’t you want, she said aloud—and with these words she silenced her other sentence—why didn’t you let them take you away, I don’t even remember now from where, the name of that city, what was it. In other words, why did you come home, that’s what I’d like to know, why on earth didn’t you go away with them.
What are you looking for here.
Could you answer that for me.
Irma needed a moment to catch her breath and throw her mind back.
Why indeed.
But why are you asking such an awkward thing.
The question was like a shout for help. After a few days, when she could finally walk on both feet without leaning on anything, she had managed to get hold of a coat. She did not know what Mária was planning to do but had a premonition it was something fatal. She was cold, always cold and shivering, and she took off in her coat, heading who knows where.
It was hard to carry the coat.
How can you ask such a stupid thing, she moaned.
I can’t live without knowing. Answer me.
But how can I answer, for God’s sake. You could exercise a bit of Christian humility.
Mária laughed warmly, which did not mean she was ready to forgo an answer.
In less than a half hour on the empty sunny road, an armed patrol took her back to the hospital barracks.
Mária stood in front of her, motionless in the doorway, and Elisa kept on whimpering.
And then for days she could do nothing but lie on her pallet, helpless and fevered.
The second time, it was the bumpy ride on a wagon with two Czech peasants that took her back. The peasants had set out to plow their field and now had to lose time dealing with her; they were cursing her Jew-whore mother in their unfamiliar language. Ty skurvená židovská děvko. She had to be careful in the bouncing wagon not to let her already injured body slide into the sharp plowshare. They called her rotten Jewish bitch or something like that. She had a hard time arranging these images.
Should have dropped dead, bitch.
They must have been saying something like that when they carefully lifted her off the wagon. Mělas radši zdechnout. First she remembered the coat and the smell of the coarse fabric, and then the servant’s room in whose door not so much the sight but the beastly exhalations of the two bodies held her back, and that is why she wouldn’t let them, did not wait for them to take her away with the others.
Do you have any idea why you are asking me this, she inquired cautiously and quietly. By the way, it’s Prachatice, she said, that’s the name of the place. I’m really interested in why you are so interested in this.
Where on earth is Prachatice, asked Mária in a tone that suggested she found the name itself outrageous. She has this compensation coming to her. After all these years, she has the right to punish Irma a little bit.
How can I tell you.
In her gentle way, Irma Arnót would have been more than willing to answer Mária Szapáry.
From what I can see on the map, and I’ve checked it several times since, the border is about fifty kilometers east of Regensburg.
But her willingness was also nothing but a quiet revenge. As if she were saying in advance to Mária, you’ll regret having asked this question.
They were herding us across the Regen valley, you know, over the pass, I mean the ones who could make it. I don’t remember the name of the pass. Maybe not very far from there. A little bit closer to Budweis, if that means anything to you. It was called Aussig in the good old days of the monarchy. They herded the rest into the hay barn, those who could barely move, and then set the barn on fire. This happened on the next to last day, can you imagine that. And we were allowed to move on.
This sounds familiar to me, this Budweis, maybe from Schweik.*
With this remark they were virtually submerged in a shared smile shining and spreading across both their faces, evoked by and paying homage to the hero of the book they’d read before the war; they even laughed briefly.
Later, that’s where the Czech doctors came from to see us, from Aussig, continued Irma with a cheerfulness left over from the laughter. But I’d really like to know why you’re asking about this.
Mária kept swaying her head.
Actually, I don’t know why I came home, she went on evasively. Of course, that’s a whole different thing, I know, the two things can’t be compared. I can’t give you an honest answer. In the final analysis, historically, we’re both in the place where we belong. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. Some kind of instinct to escape. Raging in me. As though accepting the premise that whatever happens is what should happen, natural the way it is—I can’t accept that.
Maybe that’s what I can’t assimilate—because it isn’t like that.
But she felt it would be useless to insist. Mária would not answer her sincerely, and that hurt.
She relented, let her go.
I’m only asking, she said softly, because I have two kinds of answer.
Well then, tell me the first one and then the second.
No, don’t laugh. I also have a third one, yes, I do.
And when she said this, for the first time the wry smile she had sustained for Mária disappeared from her lips.
And this made her lips tremble painfully.
Those Swedish nurses were not very nice, you know. Or maybe I just didn’t like my shitty life being so dependent on others. They would have taken me in exactly the opposite direction. That bothered me too. It was nothing but a primitive kind of resistance, that’s all. In your big new freedom you realize you have a will of your own, which means you are again your own master, and you don’t want to see the Swedish nurses anymore. You lash out, make repeated accusations because you can’t even stand up. Now I should drop dead, now, b
ecause of them, just when I’d almost managed to get through everything.
In retrospect, though, I must add that they were tackling an impossible job, that’s true. There were so many cases of gangrene, purulence, necrosis, whole limbs rotting away on live people. They just had too much to do, much too much. The warmer the weather, the more unbearable the stench became, there was never any water, no surgeon for I don’t know how long, maybe weeks, and no supplies or equipment. Sometimes they got hold of some soldiers to cut firewood, the nights were frightfully cold, or prisoners of war, among whom there were some Hungarians, but most of the time the nurses had to chop the wood. Decent middle-class Swedish women, you know, and they had not the slightest notion what they were up against. And there was some cold fury in them. Maybe that was the way the ordeal affected them, I don’t know. In my barracks we had a very small window opposite where I lay, and I could see from the darkness how hopelessly the sun was shining outside.
But how can you say that, it was spring then, wasn’t it.
It shone despondently. You keep waking up, going to sleep, waking up.
It shone even during the night, but that was the moon.
I don’t know if you ever paid any attention to it, but spring sunshine in our country, and that’s what I know about, is always so stark, so bare, just bare.
You’ll understand in a minute why I want to tell you about this.
But there are these weeks, these spring weeks that don’t exist in other places.
It’s a little incoherent, the way I’m speaking, you’ll forgive me, but all I want to tell you, if we’re already talking about it, is that in other places, from the very first moment it starts, spring is pure brilliance.
In our part of the world it isn’t. There’s something hazy in our spring.
When I was first able to go outdoors and realized we were in the mountains, I saw that it wasn’t so there. The barracks window was dusty, maybe you understand, she said hesitantly. But not a single muscle in Mária’s face responded.
Then how could she explain it to her.
I’m thinking of early spring, she said, close to desperation, before budding time. And just imagine, the first thing I did was clean the window.
It was also like that in Vienna, tired and hopeless, you can see there, too, that winter destroys everything. This is probably not so in places that don’t have such long, dry freezing periods. I thought—and this is going to be my third answer, though it is strange, very strange, that it’s only the third one. One recovers slowly. The two boys—I must find them somehow. As if they were lying about there, in front of the building, and they should be told to get up, the ground is too cold. As if I couldn’t remember anything.
Believe me, I wouldn’t tell this to anyone else, because one shouldn’t say things like this for others to hear.
I knew very well they were no more.
The big difference is that mountain grass doesn’t give out in the winter, on the contrary. I’d say that was a kind of fixed and certain bit of knowledge about the essence of the world. I may be absurd, and it’s risky to say, but the moment a single person goes missing, the essence of the world changes. But it was not completely unimaginable that I might find Andor back home.
Because until then I myself wouldn’t have believed, and I didn’t, that they were no more.
I understand.
But that’s only the logic of things.
Now I do. I’ve never understood it completely.
Probably not completely, but maybe you understand some of it. Don’t imagine it as if you remembered either one or both of them, or anyone else. If anyone, I’d remember Andor more because he caused me more grief, and that has a shadow, or leaves long shadows behind, the grief and pain. Let’s be clear: lovers’ pain. But there is this: my sons, these two naked words, the possessive and the plural noun, together comprised all one’s knowledge. Or rather, it’s a place that has not remained empty, though you feel its emptiness. But there is no memory, and this must be very strange for you to hear from my mouth, but there isn’t, one does not remember. That is the big stinking truth.
Damn this rotten life, I beg you, please give it a little time. Of course I understand, it would be so good to understand.
Everything I had done earlier was nothing but hubris, crude maneuvers. Only my perfect lack of guile could excuse it, and we were all guileless. Anyway, it had a lot more to do with brute force than with consciousness. And while she seemed relaxed and impassive as she went on talking, she recognized that Mária was growing restless and resistant, a response that might have been intensified by the noise of the two tugboats passing each other, and she realized that she had to finish up, bring things to a close. No, memory is something entirely different, I had to discover that, she said, defying Mária’s restlessness, impolite but not unjustified—after all, it was Mária who had wanted to hear, who had asked to be told—and that was the reason that after a while I would have given up my practice even if they hadn’t shut it down. That is why I couldn’t do it properly anymore. The work can be done only if one believes there is memory, but not only is there no memory, it’s also better that way. It seems that in the overall scheme of Creation it was decided not to include memory. But now I also think we should drop this whole subject.
For long seconds, as they arranged the delicate proportions of fairness and politeness between themselves, they stood silently in the light of the opaque lampshades, their eyes wandering over each other’s features.
Two figures of almost equal height only an arm’s length apart, but without the expectation of touching each other. No empathy, no murderous impulse, neither such love nor such understanding. Everything they felt was either more or less than necessary. One woman was strong and solid, with a weighty body; the other was delicate, extremely thin, down to her bones and tendons, yet not with the air of someone whom the next gust of wind would blow away.
One lamp hung from the ceiling, the other was above the sink; their bleak light was fractured by the unusually large white wall tiles and aging surfaces of the mirrors.
Now let’s take a deep breath, said Mária, her words accompanied by one of her loveliest smiles, forget that I asked you, or what I asked, as if nothing had happened, don’t be angry with me. And now we’ll go in to see Elisa. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, believe me I don’t, Irma, but I feel such hate.
For what.
Myself.
I feel it.
If you feel like seeing her at all.
Why wouldn’t I, Mária, answered Irma lightly, even though what she wanted to say was, why harbor so much hatred, there’s no reason for it. It’s hard to hear something like that. She really couldn’t have had a good reason, at least no personal reason, or maybe only a little. Still, Irma couldn’t say this out loud. She could not absolve Mária because of the dead ones, though her sons were not on her mind now. No. She couldn’t. Just as Mária could not go farther than she had.
This was the last word that could be uttered.
And we’ll drop the story, at least for today, she continued, well disciplined and composed, because she understood correctly the stubborn silence emanating from the other woman. If I may say so, we’re going to forget it.
They both laughed a little at this, and found it mutually enjoyable to intertwine their laughter.
It’s correct, that’s right, it is, Irma replied. If there is no remembering, how can there be forgetting. There is no forgetting either.
One of them had to continue with her loveliest, most attractive laugh suffused with suffering, the other with the pleasure provided by the workings of the mind, both of them neutral toward each other.
In truth, they both felt bad about this brief conversation and impulsively concealed their bad feelings from each other.
With your permission, I’ll go first.
Of course.
And while she unsparingly reproached herself, she could not help being happy about Irma’s coming with
her. She treated her friends cautiously; she did not burden them overmuch with the sick woman. Irma was the only one to whom she had entrusted, albeit under pressure, the story of her and Elisa. Which, for quite a time in the late 1930s was the topic of avid, excited gossip in upper-crust circles.
Irma did not follow her in right away; politeness and consideration demanded that she hang back a little in the bathroom doorway. Which was useful, because she needed time to forbid herself to think of her sons. Although she would witness the scene, she should leave some time to be shared by just the two of them.
But her hesitation had another, no less delicate reason.
According to the rules of her profession, she couldn’t feel repugnance for anything or anyone in theory, because repugnance, again in theory and in the parlance of her profession, would indicate that she’d been unable to analyze something, that there was something in that other person or in herself she could not see or perhaps deliberately tried to avoid. No matter how often she rehearsed these reasons and arguments, she had to admit that from the moment she laid eyes on her, as they say, she felt a most profound physical aversion to Elisa Koháry, whom she had known slightly when the younger woman was still healthy.
By the time Irma returned from Vienna, this woman was simply there, belonging to Mária, and there was no way to get around her or to separate her from Mária.
Mária had been taken away from her.
There were hardly any opportunities for brief, private conversations, and for this reason she simply loathed Elisa.
Although with her mind she comprehended the real reasons for her aversion and fear, she could not change her emotions with her intellect.
The moment the door opened, she could see the hapless woman; she sat at the edge of a swan-necked divan in the brightly lit room wearing a faded, floral-patterned print dress. She was whimpering, evenly and persistently, swaying her head to the rhythm of her sounds, to the right, to the left, frighteningly, untiringly, while she kept hitting her paralyzed knees with a fist.