Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  She collapsed, writhing on the ground as if in her pain she would have to give birth again.

  But Gottlieb’s silence might provoke her; at times, whether he behaved well or inadvertently did something incautious, it was impossible to keep on an even keel or escape without fits and outbursts; his wife’s monologues accompanied him in his waking hours and even in his restless sleep, sometimes inexplicably.

  If she yelled out into the great big world, Józsika, Józsika, the whole neighborhood came running to the house and the doctor had to be called so that with the help of injections and tranquilizers she would calm down.

  I’m glad, Margit, he said now, in the voice of a man who has tired of even the semblance of indifference and, in addition to his physical reality, is searching for emotional reserves with which to mold something into something else.

  You know how glad I am about the liver.

  This did not sound very convincing.

  Why wouldn’t you be glad, you wretch, it was fresh when they brought it, I was standing by the counter for a whole day so it would be fresh for you, and on top of that I’ll fry it again for you. I can spend more time at the stove standing on my bad legs.

  She did not always fry it a second time; this was unpredictable too—just as he didn’t know whether she’d address him in formal or familiar terms—and that made Gottlieb dread the possibility of blood spurting under the knife onto his plate; he always tried to hide it under the rice or potatoes. At least he should not see the abomination when, to ensure the mental calm of his wife, he silently ate the blood.

  Because of his insane wife, once a week he eats raw blood.

  Just fry the liver again the way you usually do.

  For a change, today I’m making nice white rice to go with it, because I could eat a few grains too, the wife said pensively. For two days now I haven’t had more than a few morsels. With my stomach, I can’t cope with liver anymore, no matter how much I like it and would like to eat some. But I’ll peck at a few grains of rice with you.

  I don’t like watching you eat the liver all by yourself all the time.

  Only no blood should be left in it, Margit. You know that’s the most important thing.

  He did not look up from his prayer book, signaling obsessively that he was calling out from his book between two sanctified thoughts and had neither time nor energy to waste on this liver story even if he was frightened of blood.

  You know, Margit, how much I love to have the fried liver well done, you know very well.

  And it doesn’t matter if it burns a little and becomes a bit crunchy.

  Deathly silence followed; perhaps this was already too much, too many instructions and explanations for the woman.

  For her, his words could mean that according to her husband she burned the liver and ruined his food. She paid no attention to anything; she could not be expected to fry liver properly, and, according to these facts, Gottlieb married a woman from Munkács who spoils the creations of the Creator.

  Now something was again about to happen between them. Should she tolerate such nasty slander from this wretch from Mohács.

  In the tense emotion-filled space, Gottlieb completely forgot he had come home because of his missing hat, and that Madzar must be waiting in vain for the three sleepers to be sent to his home.

  He had developed a special ability in himself.

  Within a split second, he was able to withdraw attention from his wife. Accompanied by the singsong high falsetto, he fell back into the sought-after text. In the prayer books, he liked checking those prayer fragments that involuntarily cropped up in his mind during the day, while waves of the senseless singsong words broke pleasantly above his head.

  Even after several decades, he still did not think he knew the prayers by heart. How could he, when throughout his entire bitter childhood he had been beaten so much. His father of blessed memory beat him, his teacher lifted him out of his seat by his side locks, and her gentle mother shrieked as she pummeled him, because the raw matter in his brain instinctively protested against receiving verses whose sense, despite all his well-intentioned efforts, remained vague and elusive.

  He knew nothing, though he should have been able to rattle off all the prayers by heart. There were constant complaints about him—that he was not paying attention, that he was always busy with some nonsense under the bench, his mind wandering elsewhere.

  He fell asleep on the bench so he wouldn’t have to hear things of which he understood not a word.

  They beat him.

  Yet it seemed more pleasant to put up with the beatings than to absorb the Hebrew passages, because no matter how he had tried to follow them with his ears he could not catch them, let alone memorize or recite them by heart as the other boys did. When he was about to catch one verse, another was already pouncing on him. He did not understand how the brains of other boys coped with this speed. But he learned quickly enough that it was no use complaining about headaches. Even though the dreaded effort to somehow fit in the words of the hurrying Hebrew verses among the sounds of Hungarian and Yiddish words, and to fix them with their own meaning, had his head throbbing. The throbbing produced white circles through whose center he saw into a space of unfamiliar color. If he succeeded, if among the illuminated circles he managed to reach the inviting darkness, if past the dazzling of his own pupils he managed to glance into the red and green, then inevitably he awakened to being doused in water and beaten at the same time; and he knew that he would be beaten again at home, yanked and shoved around for a good long while.

  He could not have said when all this became pleasurable, because neither before nor after this period did he know a parallel world in which things were or could have been some other way; yet he enjoyed it. The eternal obscurity never dissipated, and throughout his life his mind searched for certainties, whether or not he understood well or truly knew some things; and though he had been unable to obtain these certainties—he had not enough education for solid knowledge—he did enjoy the endless act of searching.

  While he perused the Hungarian footnote on the Musaf prayer, which he had no problem locating and according to which the prayer’s origins were to be found in the written legacy of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn, Germany, he did not acknowledge that his wife winced, slammed the dough angrily back into the bowl, insolent, how shameless, just keeps reciting to himself aloud, and I am frying liver for such an impudent character and then, with her mouth slightly open, stared at him.

  As if asking whether such insolence was even possible.

  For a little while Gottlieb also fell silent within himself, and he stared back at her.

  Such an ungrateful, insolent man, brazen, and I didn’t just buy him a whole liver, bought him the nicest liver in the entire butcher shop, but I’m also making soup out of fresh, completely fresh mushrooms, she said after a long silence. But I did see that he left his hat at home, don’t worry, I did notice it, you wretch, you addle-brained old man, she shouted and then laughed. Her laughter echoed weirdly in the empty rooms. He left with his head uncovered, she laughed, this never happened before, but now he let that happen too. I said to myself, when I saw it happen, something like this could never happen in a normal Jewish family. What tsuris. He eats properly, just as he should, unselfishly I take good care of him. At least once a week I make him beef broth, still, he’s a complete idiot.

  Then suddenly her laughter abandoned her.

  At least I’ll cook the mushrooms for him, for this idiot, I’ll do that.

  Expecting some kind of response, however brief or small, a word of abuse or thanks or just a yell, for all the sacrifices she had been making for her husband, she stopped talking. She fell silent as if to pray. I beseech you, I am begging you for anything. She would have been content with the slightest of signals, which throughout a lifetime she had been unable to force out of this man, insensitive to the marrow of his bones.

  A little bit of compassion. Just a tiny bit, out of love.

  She k
new him well. He needed no introduction.

  He had no secret she did not know.

  I am making dumplings for you, with plenty of eggs, she added, and still you show such ingratitude toward me. Did I make them with a parsley roux, I certainly did, what more should I do for you. I’m telling you, I’ll moisten them with some beef broth. Don’t be afraid, one day I’ll tell everyone all your little secrets.

  After a while, the emotional silence became dangerously loud and tense in Gottlieb’s ears, though it would not have been advisable to evoke, by silence, Margit’s thirst for revenge.

  With his glance, therefore, he quickly returned to the first sentence of the footnote, though he was still unfamiliar with the end of the story.

  In the city of Cleve, in that vast lowland where the Maas, the Niers, and the Rhein flow toward one another, there lived a rabbi named Ammon, he read the footnote out loud, and he smiled as if he had found a liberating, happy ending in his book. Listen to what I’ve found, Margit. I don’t think you’ve ever heard of this Rabbi Ammon. I know I haven’t.

  And I’m telling you, you listen to what I am telling you. If once, just once, for a single moment you listened to what I say, what I say, I, responded the woman almost threateningly, surprised in her endless marital daydreams, not only liver, I’m telling you, how could I tell you more clearly, you mean, wicked, accursed man, that I’ve also bought sponge mushrooms for you.

  Mushrooms, she said, pronouncing the word with her entire mouth, because not only did she like to take on her lips the image of liver swollen with blood, but it also felt good to pronounce the word mushrooms with big, long vowels.

  I bought the morels from Jews, don’t worry. I don’t buy a single mushroom from the goyim. I should buy what they already touched and felt all over with their filthy paws. Wicked ones, they spoil everything. I don’t buy those mushrooms.

  Gottlieb took one look at this complete stranger, this unkempt, desperately ill woman who was incurious about anything she did not already know. With profound conviction, she guarded her ignorance, yet occasionally she seemed to know surprising things. It may have been possible that she did in fact know the story of Rabbi Ammon. Her adored father of blessed memory, an ugly, rather mean and violent man, was cantor and schoolmaster in the service of the Munkács Jewish community, and thus, in her parental home, where the stable and the classroom both opened from the salon, Margit had picked up many things.

  Gottlieb was literally beaming at her with his convincing smile, because just this once he really wanted to share the story with somebody.

  And with that smile he slowly convinced the insane woman longing for understanding, or perhaps he deceived and bewitched her.

  It says here about him, he looked back at his book quickly, that his wealth, enormous erudition, rare integrity, and piety made this rabbi first among his contemporaries. But his fame also reached the court of the prince of Jülich in Duseldorp, and if he or the princess happened to be in the mood, the rabbi was a welcome guest of theirs whenever they invited him.

  Sit down, come, sit there, facing me, Margit, sit down with those miserable dumplings, let me read to you the whole story, he said, and with his book pointed impatiently to the other kitchen stool.

  At about this time Madzar’s mother arrived home from the island, flushed and hot from work and riding her bicycle.

  Madzar, standing on the veranda, wrapped in silence and invisibility, was observing how she pushed the bicycle to the shed, how she leaned it carefully against the wall, and how she slipped off the basket she carried on her back.

  A solitary bird was chirping shrilly from the edge of the eaves.

  The bird flexed its legs twice after each chirp, but did not fly away.

  His mother had nothing in her back basket but her white petticoat, which she had taken off because of the heat, her black sweater, and a little freshly cut alfalfa for the rabbits. Her scythe was carefully hooked onto the upper rim of the basket. And the redstart nesting in the eaves had been sending its alarm signal because from among the roses or grapevines a cat was peeking out. Standing behind the veranda window, Madzar read a great many things in his mother’s dry features. Many things that earlier could not have reached his consciousness. He saw too much of the reality that consisted of simpleminded details, with which the foundation of his life had been laid. On her face, he saw again his own most intimate memories, which, precisely because of their commonness, one never scrutinizes closely.

  How many things she must have learned while she waited for the ferry and during the short trip from the island to the town shore.

  The excitement easily dissolved the dry features.

  While on the ferry with the other women and on her way to her house, she gleaned much information that she had already learned from other sources in slightly different versions; and some details now became clear about which she could never have had an inkling.

  Margit was irritated, cursed her husband, if he could take it outside, why can’t he take it back in, don’t you have hands. Why should I do everything.

  Sometimes she cried because of the kitchen stools, but she would not take them inside herself.

  Now she lowered herself to one of the stools, spellbound.

  On the Gottliebs’ veranda, there was nothing but the two stools.

  If you don’t bring it back here, don’t expect me to do it.

  Never, you understand, never.

  Maybe the wedding ring would fall off his precious hand if he did.

  You are a base, mean man who does not wear his wedding ring so he can flirt with anybody.

  The last person to tell her a story was her adored father. She did not sit on the entire stool, only on its edge, because she was afraid that this wretch, this shameless, this insolent, this mean man would deceive her with this new approach. He would deceive her by reading aloud to her. He is capable of anything. He would read something from his pious book that isn’t even in it. And I don’t want to hear it. She had a special contempt for the wretch because of his books. You don’t come up to the ankle of my adored father, you hear, you wretch, with your lack of education and your ignorance. Thinks he can fool anybody with his famous books. That people will look at him as a finer person, a scholar, they’d say, because his nose is always in books. Ridiculous. A hardworking peasant doesn’t eat as much as you stuff in your big stomach. And when it comes to sleeping, he really knows how to do that. And to snore, so I can’t sleep. Like a log, you sleep, while I only toss and turn on the sheet all night long. Your brain is as blunt as a log. Sharpen it all you want, with your books. You won’t deceive me, believe me. You only give yourself airs with your books and your great knowledge, while on the sly and quietly you keep passing them, one after the other, out here on the veranda.

  If only he did it aloud at least.

  And you make such a stink that I have to stop at the door. That’s your big knowledge, how to pass wind, that you know. So that my whole life, in my own house, I should smell it. Your stench, you shameless, treacherous, mean wretch, you are not a man. Your stink has eaten itself into the walls. I can’t even clean the window glass because of it. All the windows stink. Nobody else could live with you in the same house but me, and even I’m suffering like a dog.

  I am suffering because of you, don’t you understand, suffering.

  Why must I live in so much suffering with a complete stranger, that’s what I want you to explain to me.

  It happened that on an early spring day Rabbi Ammon received another message, Gottlieb read aloud, as if he had not heard any of the woman’s words, inviting him to distant Duseldorp, which was the name of Düsseldorf back then. Maybe she had never heard of this. Jan Willem, the prince of Jülich, had moved his court there after several decades of warfare, and, based on what he had read, Gottlieb’s imagination created a special space in which to accommodate the action of the story. Once again, the prince wanted to hear the rabbi’s advice, Gottlieb read in his book so he wouldn’t hear the
false sounds his wife was making. The messenger also revealed the subject on which the mighty prince had expected to hear Rabbi Ammon’s advice. Because then the guest would have a chance, during the journey to the palace, to contemplate the matter, turn it over in his mind. The messenger was also a nobleman, a large young man, his chin just becoming downy; he insisted on setting out immediately because the Rhine and the Maas had overflowed, not to mention the Niers, and there was a chance that they might merge and flood the highway. They rode in pouring rain, and because of the floods, a journey that should have taken only two days lasted more than five. On the low-lying meadows, above which the heavy-bellied rain clouds moved slowly, they continually had to search for passages of high ground in the water. They lost their way several times, had to put up in unfamiliar inns to feed their horses and rest them. Water, nothing but water as far as the eye could see. The horses’ hooves splashed in water. On the afternoon of the fifth day, they reached the Duseldorp castle, whose walls, in a merciless driving wind, were being lashed by the waters of the flooding river. But the prince had already adjourned the conference, attended by distinguished lords from Jülich, Berg, Pfeilen, Mark, Ravensburg, and, from the rabbi’s hometown, the count of Cleve himself. When Rabbi Ammon was led in, still drenched, the nobles were already seated at the table set for dinner and even the prince of Jülich would not have wanted to remember what he had hoped to hear from the rabbi.

  It would not have been proper to revive the debate among the restless lords.

  They let the Jew dry off, along with the dogs that burst in with him.

  Do you hear, Margit, I hope you’re listening, Gottlieb interjected but did not even look up at his wife, who, with a confused little smile on her lips, was paying fairly devoted attention to him.

  She had even lowered the bowl with the dumpling dough to her lap.

  But she was on the alert; because of the always-stinking man she could not relax the tension in her body.

  Occasionally, the noblemen would throw a bone or piece of meat to the dogs, who grew excited by the smell of food, but they forgot about the rabbi. The prince, who sat close to the rabbi but facing away from him so he could warm his aching back at the fireplace, turned to him only once.