Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  I really can’t go lower than this, he threatened himself.

  Still, he could not give up the struggle whose purpose he could not know.

  The gas lamps spread their mute and empty light over the deserted promenade. His fate cheated him again, or maybe he wanted to trick his fate. On the Pest shore, the lamps illuminated the empty pier in the same way.

  On the Margit Bridge, seen in the cold blue light of distant arc lamps, a sluggish yellow streetcar was crawling upward.

  Nobody followed him.

  Instead, the older unknown man, who could not have been more than thirty, had followed him for a while, that was certain, he heard him panting behind him but then falling behind. And why shouldn’t he. What a hopeless character I am, really a stupid little prick. He was sorry they hadn’t caught him, wrestled him to the ground, and done it to him. And now here I am, feeling sorry about it. Torn to pieces and bloody, defiled by their sperm, he’d have been rolling in smeared excrement, but at least with his throat cut he’d be past everything, past this whole rotten hopeless life. The cops could have their turn. He had fought off the unknown man; he struggled with himself. It’s not enough that I was born a Jew, not enough that I’m an orphan, must I be a homo too. He did not understand his birth, and he knew he should part with his life for the sake of his happiness, since he couldn’t count on anything. And even this wasn’t quite true. His problem was that his life was stuck at the halfway mark. If only he had been born a Jew, but his mother came from a very Catholic family. If only he could have been an orphan—after all, the Communists had beaten his Jewish father to death—but his mother had simply abandoned her child.

  That alone was reason enough to feel sorry for himself, but he thought he was better off without such a miserable mother.

  This life he’d received at birth means nothing, and not only to him; it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. Never a better opportunity than the present, tomorrow will be too late, I have to do it today. For months, he’s been thinking that out of sheer humanity he should remove himself from among the living. If these shadows, emerging and vanishing in the night, were not around him, still their brutality and mercilessness appeared in his filthy imagination as something highly desirable, as the very last straw. Or they did not exist, not even now. He was not far from realizing that, given the painful lack of gratification, he should consider their existence as pure hallucination. Neither the dark-skinned, slow-moving, marvelous giant, who might be a Gypsy or half-Gypsy, existed, nor did his younger assistant, probably from the suburbs, with his messy hair and his Hungarian mustache hanging down on either side of his mouth; he was only running away from himself into the big empty world. Everything else is sheer imagination. He imagined the somber buildings with their tin domes on the other shore, which the weak lights of the Újpest docks barely illuminated. Lights were still on in some of the apartments, it seemed, and from the partly cloudy sky the city’s reflecting lights, rich in reds and yellows, were spraying down in a steady drizzle.

  Scenery, that’s all it was, somber scenery; in reality, he stands alone on this empty island between the two waters.

  Protected somewhat by his imagination.

  A deluge that keeps overcoming and carrying him away but he’ll never have anybody, and that’s all human life is worth.

  Breezes fingered his sweaty skin under the black shirt.

  I don’t exist, he said half aloud, and I shall not exist either, he added.

  If I want to stay alive, he added to himself, I have to get used to the idea that I don’t exist, he said again half aloud.

  With long trembling lights on its back, the large, fragrant, swelling river rolled along darkly. It made no sound; the waves had subsided. The tiered riverbanks rose beyond the waves’ last laps. On steps under the water, clinging duckweed made bubbly sounds as it rocked back and forth. The two tugboats that had met here a little while earlier, both with dangerously low-floating barges and a grating din, were now far away, the sound of their horns fading in the distance. The puffing of one could be heard somewhere to the north, from behind the badly lit Árpád Bridge, that of the other from the opposite direction, perhaps from the wartime ruins of the Erzsébet Bridge.

  The tugboats’ puffing in different registers lingered in the hazy air, and some of the oil fumes in their wake remained, trapped between the shores.

  Sometimes he was convinced that his existence was nothing but hearing, smelling, and seeing—at which he took off after other people. Who perhaps also do not exist or, more precisely, who under the influence of contact instantly lose their dazzling corporeal existence.

  The bodily magic of boys or adult males grew dim in the light of day, anyway; it dissipated at the slightest touch.

  A rough, taut, resistant material remained in his hand; a strange feeling that soap would not wash off. The magic of girls or mature women lasted longer and penetrated more deeply because he had more confidence in them and this confidence was sanctified. He could even close his eyes so as not to see—with them he could cross the delicate border where body and soul meet—but when he did, he also sobered up. It happened when, after some reluctance, a kiss turned out to go on too long or when with tiny little kisses he returned to a woman only to be dragged back into the body-and-soul convention; but it never happened twice with the same female.

  He played his part soberly, and this was painful to recall, or it would have been even more painful to return to its painfulness.

  As if he had known in advance that he would trick them. While performing his duty in accordance with generally accepted requirements and rituals, which is to say while trying to discharge a duty about which he knew nothing, he looked with aversion at the female’s distorted features and quivering flesh. He fled from them when they approached again and asked for more of the same. As if he were grasping a peculiar substance that had little to do with oft-mentioned bodily desires and attractions; and the more aggressively they approached with their disgusting physical excitement, the stronger he felt this alienating substance.

  From the moment of penetration, it was no longer he they wanted but something they could obtain from anyone with a sense of rhythm and a cock. And he could not even say what other idiotic men kept repeating, that women want only a cock, because in this regard women behaved, compulsively and politely, he had to admit, as if cocks didn’t even exist.

  In fact only men dreamed of cocks, which made this whole thing impossible to understand.

  He did not want to believe that people make a mistake about one another precisely in their intimate bodily contacts and vehement gratifications.

  There was someone in him who with icy calm followed him in his every impulsive movement and sinful thought, but he did not believe this someone either.

  Sometimes the presence of this someone was amplified, but it never spoke.

  And he did not have enough strength to suspend the enormous gravity of physical existence.

  He simply could not believe it.

  In fact, he was struggling not with his double vision but with a special trinity. Even now, the third member of the trinity was with him, a little behind him and clinging to his side as he stood near the water thinking; for long minutes, taking cover in the deep shadows of the rowers’ white clubhouse, a boy, older than he by a few years, kept an eye on him.

  From the moment he’d crossed the quietly squeaking promenade, sectioned by the pale haloes of gas lamps, still panting hard, he had been followed, naturally, by more than just the eyes of that older boy waiting patiently at his post.

  At his arrival, the tips of excited cigarettes caught fire one after the other among the large trees on the promenade.

  Four insane glowing tips, far from one another, above the jasmine.

  These were all hungry for fresh meat.

  The young man in the shadow of the rowers’ white clubhouse could instantly count his rivals and weigh his chances; his heart began to beat hard as the newcomer hesitantly stopped above th
e water.

  He heard but did not understand the sentence said half aloud.

  Something menacing radiated from him, and then, I’d rather not want him, he thought to himself. Must be a lunatic, he thought, wandering here aimlessly, mumbling to himself. Stupid little cockbeater, he thought.

  One would like to seduce a stupid little cockbeater like him and then leave him alone with his madness. These little idiots think something important is happening to them. And he hadn’t yet decided whether to seduce the boy or let the others take him when, perhaps because of the boy’s back or his straight posture, he thought he recognized him.

  That is Demén, Kristóf. And he so surprised himself with the name that he had no doubt as to the correctness of his discovery.

  At the same time, something collapsed in him that quietly and unnoticed he had been putting together. This Kristóf is just as miserable as I am except he’s a beginner, and that means he’ll be just as hopeless in this as he’s been in everything else. He had not seen Kristóf for four years but often daydreamed about him, involuntarily and voluntarily. In his own life, an eternity had gone by during those four years. It would be impossible to talk about and he didn’t want to tell anyone about it, yet the first thing that came to mind was how lucky it was that he hadn’t told anyone. He’d always thought of Kristóf during those four years as someone he could trust with his disgusting secrets. Every time he rode by Kristóf’s house in the streetcar and looked up at the windows, he thought of going upstairs and opening up his soul to him; this was something he desired more than Kristóf’s body. He did not do it, because he was afraid of what might happen afterward.

  One looks for a psychological garbage can, and then, it turns out, it always turns out, that all one has found is a prattling person; that had been his experience.

  Kristóf was the only one in whose case he was still tempted; he’d be the only one, and realizing this made him shudder, but anyway this vain hope was now gone. He too was nothing but a stupid little homo. In fact there was really nobody to whom one could tell anything.

  That night Kristóf was wearing a black shirt, black pants, black shoes, and, big idiot that he was, thought the older boy, probably black socks too. In the camp in Wiesenbad where they spent the summer of 1957 together, from his bed he had watched Kristóf’s fastidious dressing ritual every morning. His silhouette made him recognizable in the darkness, his unmistakable posture, bare neck, bodily proportions, and the outline of his shapely head.

  He was dressed all in black not because of the latest fashion, though fashion had something to do with it, but because with an all-black outfit he’d prepared to be invisible in the night.

  Which also belonged to this recently discovered animality.

  The other boy remembered, however, that standing in front of his locker, Kristóf always picked colors to go with other colors.

  Let nothing more than his hands and face at the very most show against his all-black outfit.

  But the young man spying on him could not have thought of this, because he necessarily had different ideas about his own nights.

  He wore clinging T-shirts, usually yellow or white, never dark ones, matched by exceptionally small, thigh-hugger shorts. He never put on underpants. He wore only the kind of clothes in which he could easily show himself, could offer himself up, and which, when the occasion arose, he could shed quickly and effortlessly. With rawhide sandals on his feet, hardly more than a few straps, he gave the impression of being practically naked. Nobody in his right mind would ever wear black here because everything makes visible stains on black.

  He was deeply shocked at inadvertently seeing this shy upper-class boy in such a place, the boy he had taken under his wing from the moment he’d first seen him.

  What sort of mess has he gotten himself into again, what a blockhead. Or maybe he’s really lost his marbles, and look, now he’s talking to himself again.

  Could he have been so shy and peculiar back then, with madness already brewing in him. Suddenly he felt the urge to be rid of him, mad or not, he had to get this blockhead out of here. He had to prevent what was being prepared, or has always been in preparation, from becoming reality. To protect him from knowledge that has nothing to do with him and for which he is not cut out. He quickly realized that this idiot was experimenting with himself, and even if he dabbled with what was going on here, he’d still remain an outsider. The best thing would be to throw him into the Danube. Let him swim; he’d never be the real thing anyway.

  Perhaps he thought of such a drastic solution so quickly because his discovery, instead of increasing, considerably decreased the value of his own life.

  As if he were saying, no, it cannot be, Kristóf cannot be a faggot.

  After all, he wouldn’t do it either if they hadn’t forced him to. Ultimately, the world functions normally, and this faggot life is only one of its aberrations, about which nobody should know anything except for the initiates. Shielding his cigarette with his palm, he took a long drag and then with the heel of his sandal ground the burning butt into the black dirt.

  He didn’t want to give himself away ahead of time. Which is to say, he didn’t at all want to reveal himself to Kristóf.

  Or only at the appropriate moment, when his action would bring him some profit. As if he had a ready-made plan for how to put the boy to work. The firm would be very grateful for it; what a great catch. They’d rub their hands together. This boy may be a baby in some ways, but he speaks several languages and there isn’t a book or encyclopedia he hasn’t read.

  Of course, his current rivals hiding under the trees noticed the fall of the burning cigarette butt. Most of those who frequented this area knew one another by sight; fresh meat was very rare.

  What’s the new consignment like, the new arrivals asked every night.

  Even if they didn’t know one another, they still knew why the others did something and why they did it this way and not some other way. The abilities of the young man in the tight shorts were highly respected in other hunting grounds of the city: in People’s Park, the Népliget; in City Park, the Városliget; in the Little Flask, or Kiskulacs, Canteen; in the subway toilets, in all the steambaths, at the Old Parade Ground, Vérmező; or in the City Gate coffee bar, Városkapu Espresso. Whenever he appeared, they had reason to be anxious because with his devilish and merciless finesse he managed to knock out his rivals.

  Now, with their cigarettes under the trees, they did not understand why Pisti wasn’t going after the boy.

  Maybe he’d let one of them have this small-balled little angel.

  He knew this was how his four rivals were interpreting his motionlessness, but it never occurred to him to step out of the shadow of the clubhouse.

  Let them take him if they want to; let them deal with him.

  He was waiting for Kristóf to make a move, any way he wanted to or with anyone, so he could follow him secretly. He wouldn’t let him get away. Not a cell in his body desired him anymore, even though during the last four years he’d thought of him frequently, and whenever he recalled his lips, his awkward nakedness, and his hard little ass, it was indeed a sweet feeling to rub himself to sleep against the background of these images. However, the object of the ritual and its real-life embodiment could no longer have anything to do with each other.

  He turned icy cold toward him in the warm early summer night as he realized he had secretly loved him and still did. There was a possible life ahead of them that he would gladly spend with Kristóf.

  He would make use of him.

  He would wait until somebody else finished with him and only then would he talk to him.

  When liberated and pursued by his own shame he would run home to his sweet little auntie.

  It would be best to accost him on the empty bridge. He’d expose him, annihilate him. Even the tip of your black shoe shows jism, my sweet, that’s all he’d say. I just thought I’d call your attention to it, with your permission, of course. Because of the long wai
t and the anticipated excitement of betrayal, his beautiful naked thighs became covered with goose bumps. He had never hoped for so precious a prey at so late an hour. Glad of his discovery, he imagined himself rubbing his hands together in anticipation of huge profits. He wanted to take revenge on him immediately; and he had reasons.

  He hated him from the depths of his soul exactly the way he hated himself, and that is why the other man’s vulnerability made him happy.

  Now I’ve got you in my claws, you rotten little Jew.

  In the meantime, Kristóf was unsuspectingly enjoying the deadly silence and wrestling with the different persons living within himself.

  His other self living within him did not tell him to go down to the water, where on the grayly gleaming steps the rocking duckweed made bubbly sounds.

  True, that self did not say not to go either.

  It’s safer to jump from the bridge. Neither did his other self say he should hurl himself to the depths from the bridge, even though he picked a good spot on the bridge from which it would be most advantageous to jump. Without slamming into the pier while falling; that’s how he wanted to end it. The water would carry him away as it had carried away the dead and wounded shot into the river by Arrow Cross men.

  Without a trace.

  It may have been a third person thinking like this within him, this is no longer me, he thought, because this person had no empathy, even though at other times it mutely signaled what feelings it harbored for him in connection with anyone.

  At any rate, for some time now he has suspected the presence of someone with some sort of design on him.

  He did not look at his watch, even though he felt like leaving, not because he meant to keep things from happening tonight, or to keep the giant from luring him away, but because he felt that time was running short.