Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  Because I didn’t think I felt anything for her. Or I might have thought that that’s how others did it, just take the risk and do it. Begin by just looking, without feeling anything, cautiously look at her, that’s something nobody can forbid. But this woman with her thick glasses right away needed to know what would develop from my interest. Maybe it was more than mere curiosity on her part. She was keeping an eye out for what should be forbidden. She was the boss in the shop, but that couldn’t have meant much in this context. Maybe the difference in their ages was what counted, or the woman’s old age, or her ugliness.

  Perhaps she wanted to protect the beautiful young woman from random crazy annoyances.

  This seemed unlikely, however, given their cool relationship, more friendly than hostile yet dealing with each other as if they had to avoid tension.

  This tension was in the air. Clarissa, my sweet, she’d say to the young woman, or she’d call her my little Klári. And the other would reply, Terike, darling.

  Perhaps their tension was just as passionate as the secret attention the young woman and I had been paying to each other. The boss might have feared that the other woman would slip out of her hands, a fear indicating a kind of jealousy, after all. There was a chance that their tension might explode one day, in which case I thought I should keep away from them.

  When I turned my back to the counter and looked at them in the mirror, I was acting out of instinct. I must not be the cause of an explosion. Of course, the mirror also revealed to the boss the directions of our glances, but it protected us. It protected me from my self-accusation of being too forward and from the shame of being so crazy about her. Naturally, this act of mine was more forward than if I had turned to her face-to-face, more insane.

  While searching for her countenance in the mirror, I saw her back, her shoulders, her naked neck, her hair caught in a loose bun. This was more than I had wished for. Because in the reopened store mirrors covered every wall, which was considered very luxurious since one could see everything from both sides and, from certain angles, the same thing multiplied many times.

  Our lives were barely moving on; therefore, those many mirrors confused others too.

  You barely stepped into the place and you were already facing yourself among the sweet aromas. And if you wanted to turn away from yourself, you saw at the edge of another mirror how, on the polished surface and in multiple copies, you were turning away from yourself, or how the waitresses, also multiplied, were waiting for your order. Even the ceiling was framed with a mirrored strip.

  Of course, some people took to the mirrors immediately and were delighted to keep looking at themselves, or to preen and pose, though doing it as if keeping it secret from themselves. The walls behind the narrow shelves packed with merchandise were also mirrored, and there was another mirror above the sink. This woman named Klára, whom sometimes the boss a little mockingly called Clarissa, always splashed water on this mirror above the sink and then carefully wiped it off. Maybe to see me better. Because sometimes she pretended she had to rinse out the glasses and would turn away from me; I would also turn around, but we could still look at each other—all we had to do was raise our heads a little.

  The boss noticed every little irregularity.

  She was always complaining about the draft. It may have been too hot in the store, but the new entrance door did let in streams of unwanted air.

  She’d be shivering near the door, behind the cash register, with the tip of her pencil following the long column of numbers, and if she raised her eyes a little behind her glasses, she could see in the mirror opposite what the two of us were doing with our glances. One could be exposed in all those mirrors, yet one could also say that’s not me, it’s only some reflection. It’s not the same as looking directly into someone’s eyes. We had some respite from her only when her husband showed up or, around noon, their pathologically overnourished son, a pupil in the nearby music school who allegedly played the violin as wondrously as Jascha Heifetz.

  Even in those moments I cautiously looked back at Clarissa in a mirror, and not only because it excited me to know whether we were indeed safe.

  January went by, and then February, and still I knew nothing of this Clarissa. Nor did I believe that such a beautiful young woman could be interested in me. After all, she did nothing but look. But this was a big thing because I could not discover anything about myself that would justify her looking. And I had no idea what to do with her first name or nickname either; I did not want to imprint it on my consciousness. I was a little ashamed of this, but it’s how I protected myself. I didn’t want to think that maybe in the future, thanks to some fortunate circumstance, I might wind up so close to her that I could call her by her name or that I too might address her, pompously, as Clarissa. This was completely shameful idiocy, but I had to maintain my distance.

  Let this remain a minor novel that no one has ever written and no one ever will write.

  I had no idea what beauty was or what one should think about it.

  The eyes see something, and when they cannot not see this something it cannot be addressed with a common first name. I must not be interested in anything that has to do with her ordinary life. I did not understand how such a beautiful woman had wound up here, though I couldn’t have said where she should be. The questions cropped up because I was interested in everything. Or, why was she behaving so commonly with everyone. Or, if she was behaving so commonly why didn’t I believe that she was indeed common.

  When the boss’s husband was in the shop, I watched her because I had no explanation for the enmity between her and the boss; I wondered what it really referred to or stemmed from. Or why did this Clarissa smile so politely at everyone, and if she smiled so politely why didn’t she go ahead and sleep with everyone. I thought my cogitating was ridiculous, since I wanted nothing from her. I told myself almost each time I left the shop that, no, I will no longer put up with this humiliation; but nobody had humiliated me. I’m not coming back. I won’t come back even if she’s waiting for me, even if she’s really missed me. But no matter how I formulated these firm decisions for myself I could never keep to them, not to one of them, ever.

  They made the weekdays horrible because nothing was happening, and Sundays became unbearable, interminable.

  Still, Sundays were better than weekdays because I had no idea where she might be, I didn’t know where she lived, and the store was closed.

  But from one of the living-room windows I watched the closed iron shutters.

  In the evenings, from the same window, I usually followed the shop’s intricate closing ritual.

  The lights in the windows went off first, followed shortly by those inside; they came out of the shop with their coats on, but momentarily left the door open.

  One could hear the bell of the church in Terézváros; it was eight o’clock.

  With a long rod ending in a hook she’d reach up, fit the hook into a ring soldered to the side of the shutter, which she often missed or did not find. I observed their ceremony from the height of the third floor, between us trembled the bare crowns of trees on Teréz Boulevard, and on the cables stretched over the roadway the dim light of streetlamps was swaying. I saw mainly their shadows between the branches. Laughter usually accompanied their actions. If a lit-up streetcar happened to pass, it drew its yellow light across them.

  From their movements I could tell they were laughing.

  Now one, now the other tried her luck with the rod. When they managed to pull the shutter halfway down, they threw the rod back into the store, locked the door, and, holding on to the shutter together, pressed it down with their combined weight. The last centimeters were the hardest. When the upper ring clicked into the one at the bottom, they slipped a padlock through and the boss took the key; they stood facing each other. Two strangers in an empty street in the evening who nevertheless had to spend every blessed day together. The key was put into a steel box that, after it was locked, had also to be sealed. They
usually fussed with this for some time in the cold. Then they said their good-byes. The boss disappeared into the lobby of the adjacent building to drop off the box with the concierge; the young woman moved on.

  That’s how the day ended.

  I often wondered what would happen if I waited for her downstairs and followed her when she went off by herself. I didn’t think of talking to her; I’d only follow her from a distance and learn where she went every evening. But only on very exceptional occasions did I bring myself to do this, because, to tell the truth, it was better not to. To watch her as she passed by the boarded-up store windows, walking on the empty sidewalk, then turned into the almost completely dark Szófia Street, and then ceased to exist until the next day.

  But there were weekdays when I couldn’t resist going downstairs two or even more times. It was an achievement if I went to the shop only once. I had no money, either, could barely buy a double espresso. At other times I’d gain two full consecutive weekdays not going downstairs at all and not even looking out the window; I wanted to feel how strong I was. Now it’s really over, I’d say to myself, she no longer interests me. But it was at just those times I felt most strongly my loss and my ridiculousness. In fact, all I’d done was waste two days, and it would be even more ridiculous to waste any more.

  Because when I went back to the store, she rewarded me with a glowing countenance. As if asking me, why didn’t you come if you wanted to see me. As though asking me, why are you playing this game. And the entire agony would begin anew if her countenance was overcast. I could not be certain about anything: was she telling me or asking me these things, did she reserve her maddening reticence only for me. Her face lights up at the sight of everybody. But I could be certain that she was even more beautiful than I had envisioned her in those endless hours when I wanted to forget her beauty and therefore pretended I wasn’t thinking about her.

  This is how our story began.

  I didn’t notice that it had already begun, because I was not daydreaming about what would happen if I could touch her. Rather, I was contemplating what would happen if I forgot her. If I could eject her from my mind. What would happen if I never went back, if I left her to her fate, if I could convince myself that I neither had nor could have any need for such escapades.

  I should look for other kinds of adventures. As if I my old self still existed, the same person from whom I could expel this other self, or my attraction to her, or my insatiable interest.

  I can’t say I made no efforts in these directions.

  I thought it was some sort of sexual urge from which one could break free. But I could not satisfy this urge, because I longed for nothing and no one, or rather, I couldn’t make my usual fantasizing in this area work with her in mind.

  Nobody else interested me, yet somehow I had to deny this.

  I made great efforts to be at least interested in others, as they had to some extent interested me before, but any person I engaged in conversation instantly ceased to interest me. And this happened because of her, but I did not understand how and why such a light-minded little promise in my life had become so weighty. Attraction had not been an obstacle before; one should expect at least that much from attraction. But now it was as though it pricked me at my most sensitive point. I could not cope, no, no, with the temptation of waiting for someone else. I should evade or avoid the ominous experience I am about to acquire. Except I don’t know what to do with the insistent sense of urgency.

  Neither did I know what to do with the threat that without this experience I’d forever remain alone and my wounded pride would destroy me.

  Nothing was happening as I had imagined it would; I knew this too, of course. As if I had to tear myself away from the fatal conviction that I’d been born into a world in which what I wanted to have happen, what only I and no one else wanted to have happen, would simply not occur. A world in which every intention missed its target, every action went astray. As if, using my head, I had to break through a wall that I myself strengthened every day.

  Naturally, I had no such thoughts, because what I’m talking about was neither a thought nor a way of thinking; it was just there, hanging in the air, like a zeitgeist. Hope did not vanish, it was somewhere else, impossible to know just where. Elsewhere. Helplessness coursed though the brain cells, and inevitably I had to believe it was my own helplessness. A birth defect or something I developed because my mother had abandoned me. Others are deserving of love and find each other, or from the start possess the ability to love, which I lack. I just stood there with the glass in my hand. She reached for it; I wouldn’t give it to her. All that was missing were six words. Where should I wait for you.

  Without an answer, I simply couldn’t leave the store.

  She wanted not a word. She waited, resisted, with both hands in the air to take my glass, but with her hand she forbade me to spit out my question.

  Others drank their coffee and left their glasses all over the place. I always returned mine properly and put it down on the counter in front of her; otherwise, she’d have to go and collect it. Sometimes she came out from behind the counter, stacked the glasses into little towers, the plates into piles. Perhaps as early as during my second visit she noticed my consideration and responded in kind; she took the glass from my hand and we both nodded, tipping our heads a bit. Sometimes she said, oh, very kind, how nice, really nice of you. I didn’t understand why she had to make fun of me.

  And the next day, in revenge, I wasn’t going to bring the glass back to her, but she stopped me with her voice.

  You brought it back yesterday, why not today.

  Perhaps she felt she was overstepping a boundary; after a while she wordlessly accepted the situation and watched as if to see whether I was really like that or only pretended to be and wanted her to like me, and was trying to deceive her.

  And then even the small nod was abandoned.

  I’d have liked to say in gratitude that today’s coffee was especially good. Or some such little foolishness, lightheartedly, as people somehow expect from one another. The glass wobbled awkwardly on the saucer and I didn’t say anything. Because it seemed as if my hand were shaking. I did not want the inapt sentence, I didn’t want other people’s sentences. My grandmother had, with the best of intentions, stuffed my head with all the commonplaces, and they would have worked well in appropriate situations, but I wouldn’t let them.

  If she took the glass from me, the tips of my fingers involuntarily touched the tips of hers.

  Sometimes she, sometimes I, successfully avoided this involuntary contact, the game being no longer about that but about the avoidance of it. As if both of us preferred the contact to be voluntary yet neither wanted to risk it. I couldn’t do it now, anyway. At the same time, it would have been impossible to stretch the moment out longer under the boss’s eyes, because Klára did not want anything like this to be happening in the shop. As if with her eyes she was asking me not to involve her in a dangerous situation in front of the wicked boss.

  In that case, I preferred to take on my own humiliation again; all right, I’ll resign myself to leaving once again without the redeeming words.

  I saw everything, I understood everything, I realized what I had to do, yet I did not leave.

  The insatiable little child reached the end of his wishes and the three small bags filled with candy, fudge, and jelly beans were lined up next to the scale. The boss could openly raise her eyes to look at me.

  She gazed at this lunatic for a long time.

  Now I could only hope that a customer would come in and distract her so she’d turn away. Because she wouldn’t turn away to deal with the child, she let him stand there, in front of the counter, jingling the coins in his hand. The glasses the boss wore were small and round, and the thick lenses, when looked at from up close, enlarged her eyeballs. Her alarm was directed at me, but her gaze was always frightened, as if she feared everything and everybody. Her thin bony body was full of emotions. She sucked in her upper
lip, the lower one protruding hideously as if she were ready to pucker it, her jaw set and taut. She wore a much-laundered yellow cardigan over her white work coat, perhaps to break the impression of a uniform, to be a little different from the other woman, and as we stared into each other’s alarmed eyes, the yellow of the cardigan particularly bothered me. Because of the emotional knots in her body, she pulled up her shoulders. Her voice was hoarse from heavy smoking, and the humorless edge of her words was at once a defense and an attack; a malicious woman.

  She tempered her nastiness with exaggerated obsequiousness, or covered it with sugary tones when she felt compelled to defend herself.

  She always had a cigarette burning somewhere; she would leave it anywhere in the store.

  What she really needed was to light up and feel the pleasure of the heady first puff; after that, the cigarette was free to smolder as it pleased.

  These first puffs left the imprint of her deep-red lipstick on the edge of the paper.

  American Dream

  A restless Madzar, on the very same day, returned to the building on Pozsonyi Road.

  The wind had calmed down somewhat by then; it was around seven in the evening.

  He walked up to the seventh floor and did not turn on the lights because he wanted to see the effect of natural light in the opalescent glass cylinder of the stairwell. Opal diffuses light, strengthening the insufficient and dimming the abundant. Which made twilight lighter inside than outside. When he reached the seventh floor he was surprised to find the apartment open, because he remembered locking it himself that morning.