Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  Perhaps this was the moment that decided their fate.

  Mrs. Szemző was standing by the window of the inner room, the one in which she would receive patients. Sufficient light remained within the bare whitewashed walls, where raw smells of fresh construction were trapped: planed wood, oil paint, and lime.

  He saw a face of hers that no one had ever seen.

  They both had on the same coats and hats they had worn in the morning. Time had not shifted; nothing had changed. Madzar was about to say something but he faltered halfway. Perhaps the woman had not heard his steps for some reason. She stood, stiffened, in a state of utter concentration, but it was not possible to know what she was looking at. She was looking out toward the darkening sky, but obviously she was listening inwardly. This sight, more alienating than exciting, made Madzar recoil.

  And the woman still hadn’t noticed that someone had surprised her.

  It would only lead to a hysterical outburst; this woman would love him madly, she would writhe, go wild, be like a bursting dam, he thought; she would sweep him away.

  In the afternoon in the Britannia, he had tried to gratify himself so that he could forget about the nagging need and concentrate on his work, but he did not succeed, because he could reach satisfaction only if he thought of no one in particular. And he thought about this woman whom no one had ever awakened and should not awaken.

  At the same moment Mrs. Szemző slowly turned toward the man, but just barely, only with her head, and a peculiar, desperate shout issued from both their throats.

  I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to frighten you, cried the man.

  Good Lord, what are you doing here at such an hour, moaned the woman when she caught her breath, recovering from her fright.

  I’ve got a job to do here, so I can easily explain myself, said the man, experimenting with a little laugh and some flippancy, but I’d like to know about you.

  I wanted to check on what you had told me. I realized you were right. And if that’s so, I needed to see whether in fact you don’t have anything to do here.

  You’ll laugh and probably think my fickleness ridiculous, but in the meantime I have changed my mind.

  I’d put the sofa there, some kind of desk here, and that would be all. It was just a passing idea that we might come up with something together.

  The man did not know how to respond to this.

  You know, there’s an unrealized or uncompleted artist in me, and that’s why I always have an ambiguous idea instead of a concrete solution, the woman continued, as if making an obligatory apology, and quite aware of what she was doing. But now, to make an exception, I was thinking simply that we could take psychoanalysis out of the usual stifling dimness—not into sunshine, because it doesn’t belong there, it would go blind there—but at least to half-shaded light, into fresh air. It’s a nice, noble idea, in theory anyway.

  Why do you speak so ironically about yourself.

  That, at least, you should leave to me.

  On the contrary, the man protested, I admit I was talking a lot of nonsense this morning. All I can say in my defense is that with the help of all that obstinate nonsense I managed to get closer. He wanted to say closer to her, I managed to get closer to you, but he stopped in time. He fell silent, but he had the sense that the woman knew exactly the words he had suppressed. Now I understand the nature of your work better, he continued indecisively. After all, you can’t abandon your patients, can’t take them with you anywhere for my sake.

  This last sentence, fueled by powerful passion, had the effect of an involuntary confession.

  Embarrassed silence followed.

  As if he had just realized that he could not take the woman with him to America.

  Although it had not occurred to him before that he might want to.

  They could no longer rescind their desire. For weeks they had been trying to talk about a job that had to be done, and what they finally said meant something entirely different. His only excuse for himself was that his words had not been clearly understood.

  I suppose I’m bringing you into this American dream of mine, he continued, because, he added quickly but still indecisively, I won’t find for myself there the kind of clean architectural situation I once dreamed of.

  But in the empty twilight this meant that he might stay for the woman.

  Mrs. Szemző hastened to help the man out of his discomfort. And I’ve realized, you know, that the structure and characteristics of our utopias may be similar, but their substances are different, and we mustn’t forget this. I don’t know, I must not, no, for me it is outright forbidden to transplant my problems elsewhere.

  But that’s exactly what he had come to understand, the man responded gratefully. Your sense of reality must work more strongly than mine or, put another way, I’m still chasing ideas that somehow insulate me from the same reality that you cannot ignore. This is the actual difference. But it’s also possible that my profession is what gives me freedom. I’ve been thinking about that too, whether I can simply move on with my ideas. Perhaps I’m guilty of turning away too quickly from something or of turning my back on things.

  Perhaps, the woman replied.

  That’s the question I’ve been thinking about all afternoon, said the man, which of course was only half the truth.

  Until now they had been standing motionless, speaking through the open door from one echoing empty room to the other. Madzar noted that the apartment’s lights seemed no less improbable in the twilight, and so he did not tell her about the theoretical question he had been brooding on in the afternoon. The lights occupied his full attention. As if his powerful passion for the woman were sliding into his professional passion for lights. Up above the nacreous sky was tending toward crimson, while below, closer to the street, yellow-beamed lamps were already shining through the loose green foliage.

  Then it’d be better if I left you alone now, the woman said.

  The man did not respond, because he felt he might stutter and somehow embarrass himself.

  He had expected from himself something other than what happened.

  That once again he was about to choose his work over a body.

  But the woman was alarmed, sensing that it was not so simple to carry out her hasty decision. Perhaps it was only via the man’s body that she would find her way out of this apartment, which, after all, was her property.

  Why should she have to part with it.

  She caught herself observing the man’s attractive body, searching for an exit and at the same time repeating to herself the words my property, my property. She fell into a trap and felt ridiculous.

  No, there was no exit anywhere, and she was procrastinating. She could not deprive her sons of their father, who, incidentally, constantly cheated on her.

  Now, for the first time, she understood what it was that her husband could not resist.

  This was too much, much too much, barely tolerable. No one could be expected to resist it.

  And the man was so taken by their multilingual, and also mute, dialogue—in which their respective languages, so foreign to the other, along with their obstinate and disciplined silences, could neither be separated from nor substituted for each other—that he couldn’t speak.

  Or say anything.

  He was gripped by his old, adolescent fear that he could not give or say anything meaningful to a woman.

  Now Mrs. Szemző had a saving idea.

  She thought that the architect should divest her of her property; otherwise, she could not work with him. And that would be the same as divesting each other of their clothes.

  And she tarried no longer because her new realization gave birth to a new rhythm of action in her. She started to leave, but for a single fleeting moment stopped next to the man and did something she otherwise would not have done in any circumstance: she dropped her gloved hand on his arm and squeezed it gently. With which she entrusted herself to his care and handed over her property; through his coat and her glove
she absorbed the penetrating feel of his strong arm, but she also put an end to her unreal fantasies. So of course she felt a little sorry for herself.

  Without a parting word, she hurried through the open door and out of the apartment.

  Madzar did not move for a long time. The sudden absence left him breathless. As if he had lost his hearing because of a toothache.

  He took in the space to which he had once been so averse. First, with his eyes he greedily felt his way around all the lights in the place as a sort of compensation, so he would not have to experience the woman’s sudden departure as a defeat and humiliation; then he immersed himself in the lights and, forgetting everything else, kept weighing and measuring them.

  Although it had grown dark in the meantime.

  The insane yellow of the street remained, though, and it transformed the shadows of the foliage.

  During the day, in addition to direct light there were two indirect sources of light. This building on Pozsonyi Road stood opposite Palatinus Mews, over which one could look out on the Danube beyond. The lively, weightless reflection of water therefore permanently hovered on the ceilings; the rooms were also flooded and colored by the heavier light thrown back by the enormous, intricate, partially tin-covered roofs of the Finnish-style Palatinus buildings.

  Of course, the effect was different on moonlit nights.

  At twilight a third, indirect light joined the reflections. This was the multicolored reflection on the thinning green foliage created by the yellow-beamed streetlamps, swaying gently on cables stretched at third-floor level above the road, itself paved with insanely yellow tiles. These effects changed with the seasons and with the time of day. Even at night, there was never a moment without some interesting play of reflected lights. He should try to separate out the mutable elements in this milieu and then perhaps trap them somehow, in some material, so as to stabilize their effects permanently.

  He forgot about the woman in an instant.

  At most, a first little drop of sperm made the beak of his foreskin stick to his underpants, and he tugged it free.

  They had come to an agreement earlier about having to lift the psychoanalytical clinic out of the classical, almost obligatory semi-darkness.

  That meant dimming the direct light but without shutting off the outside world, bringing it inside, conveying the local rhythm of eternal changes.

  He made the surface of the inner windowpanes into something like a loose quadrate net, having small squares of the glass chemically treated to become opalescent and then sprayed with the finest sand. The opposite procedure was applied to the outer surface of the windows, where the squares were untreated but the borders of the net were made opalescent. Neither vertically nor horizontally did the two systems of net exactly coincide, and this produced two important results. One could not see out of these double windows, but whoever passed or made the slightest move in front of them could see narrow slits of blue, gray, or cloudy sky, nothing more than unexpected flashes, glints of the unnamable outside world. And the outer net conveyed direct lights as shadow, as if filling the space between the processed panes with itself, and these shadows, intermingled with the sky’s reflections, continually played on the walls, left mostly bare.

  He left the walls bare but not smooth; their speckled surface gave the walls an irregular texture.

  He placed very few pieces of furniture in the available space.

  Which opened up on the courtyard side, allowing light to enter, explore, and revive the dead and scandalously proportioned hallway. He did this by replacing the primitive doors to the kitchen and maid’s room with suspended sliding doors fitted with four-square, opaque-glass panes. Here he did not repeat the net motif, which on the double outside windows of the kitchen, maid’s room, and inner rooms formed strong elongated and multiple shadows on the walls, but he did suggest it with an unfinished frame around the glass. As if to say that although one couldn’t look into or out of just anywhere, in certain conditions the space was not baffling at all. The transparent frames, gaps, crossings, strips, and intersections might be helpful; there might be a system here that you’ll recognize.

  The sliding door to the kitchen was generally closed, that of the maid’s room open, because that was where the clinic’s files would be kept, and this room became the receptionist’s permanent place.

  Madzar built the furniture out of unpainted driftwood.

  In the morning, more light came from the courtyard, in the afternoon from the street, and whether or not the sliding doors were open, at every hour of the day and in every minute of every hour intermingling lights moved and shifted the apartment around and changed its proportions.

  The courtyard windows faced east, the street-front windows faced west, so from early morning until late evening the interior lived in a tension of lights emanating from opposite poles. When clouds blew quickly past or when the sky became clear or overcast, one could actually see the walls moving from and never returning to their original placement. Everything was in constant motion.

  Psychoanalysis is a protracted, time-consuming, and unpredictable process in which both patient and therapist must cross over into a kind of eternity. In advance, they can only say they will repeat the ritual of their peculiar dialogue every week, but the end of the dialogue cannot be foreseen. You enter a castle with no exit. Everyone who has ever stepped inside receives a different image of the very same place. While one’s inner sense of space continually expands because of the treatment, and even if one learns nothing or very little of oneself, one gains a shockingly lively picture of the palpable surroundings.

  As if it were not one and the same surroundings but three or four or countless different ones.

  And this despite the fact that the patient arrives every week on the same day and at the same hour.

  Mrs. Szemző was delighted to discover that, as she worked, her behavior and the tones of her voice involuntarily followed the events of light and shadow. This involuntary attention meant that she could not stick to a routine. Light became a factor that affected the proportions of inner and outer occurrences as well as the relationship between history’s past and present; with significant emphases it enriched, modified, and occasionally even directed Mrs. Szemző’s work.

  Madzar also modified somewhat the height of the rooms.

  This was a kind of architectural manipulation, Madzar later explained to Mrs. Szemző. I had to do something rather objectionable, but I couldn’t leave it as it was.

  He raised the thresholds and covered the parquet floor with thick, matte, medium-gray linoleum.

  I could raise the entire floor, he explained, but I won’t because it is laid very well. I’d rather just cover it. That way I’ll reduce the feeling of dreariness in the building, show how low these spaces are, and give some explanation for the hovering sensation; footsteps will sound softly and safely, I’ll mute the sounds, there won’t be much noise. It will also help dim the light. I repeat, it’s empty manipulation and I’d have nothing but contempt for someone doing something like this. A bit of fakery, no better than the illusionism of our grandfathers.

  Look into the hole, little boy, see the rabbit jump.

  They laughed loud and long at this, as if getting even with an otherwise elusive enemy.

  Although these enemies had botched everything and, if they could, would continue to botch the whole world, at least now the two of them had outwitted the whole gang of dilettantes.

  Tearing Up Everything

  When they reopened the shop in early January, there was hardly anything on the shelves. Merchandise was stacked in large cartons behind the counter; people were unpacking. Everything was new, shiny, and good-smelling.

  Outside, snow had been falling quietly for days. On the ceiling and in the mirrors the concealed yellow lighting spots mingled with reflections of the white surfaces everywhere.

  The young woman stood on the ladder while the older one, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, handed her wine and liquor bottles.


  Only my eyes registered the fact that this older woman was one of the branded people: below the crook of her arm, on the inside, was a series of tattooed numbers in blue ink. First a letter, followed by a short horizontal line, a kind of dash, and then the number itself, maybe six digits. These numbers, by the way, could of course be seen only when the men who had them wore short-sleeved shirts or the women sleeveless summer dresses. A stranger’s arm would reach up for the strap in the streetcar, and one could see what sort of fate had befallen this fellow human being. As if this had not been enough, now suddenly his or her life was on public display, could become anyone’s prey. Some had the numbers removed surgically, but the wrinkly or shiny scar left by transplanted skin became a telltale mark.

  The streetcar was moving along, its speed allowing gentle breezes to blow through it, and whoever noticed the numbers, if anyone did, preferred to look out the window at the street sweltering in the sunshine. Later on, disabled veterans died or disappeared from the city, I don’t remember when, and they no longer had special reserved seats either, but back in those days many of them were still around.

  Some with a leg missing, some with an arm; where once there had been limbs, the shirtsleeves or pants were fastened with safety pins or flapped freely on the stumps. Jacket sleeves were pinned inside jacket pockets. There were wooden legs ending in shoes, crutches fastened to stumps or waists. And scars and wounds, deformities and missing limbs, traces of burns and frostbite on hideous, horrifying faces. None of this needed explanation. I could never decide what was more merciful, to stare as if I saw nothing or to turn away immediately. I preferred turning away.

  My shame and disgrace endured because I could neither look nor turn away unnoticed.

  They knew why I turned away or pretended not to see anything.

  In our neighborhood one often had to perform this hopeless mental exercise. Lack of compassion is insulting, but I didn’t know what to do with my compassion since my aversion and disgust were much stronger.