Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  And when that happened, Baroness Erika’s knees and thighs would go on trembling mildly into Sunday morning.

  Which ruined her entire day.

  She never talked to her husband about her Sunday migraines; she never connected the aches in her ovaries and her irregular menstruation with these terrible nocturnal scenes, and that is why she could not mention them.

  But even if she’d known what she might naturally discuss with her husband she still wouldn’t have done it.

  She didn’t want to spoil their lovely family life with such matters.

  Now, however, she was witnessing a nightmare from which she had to wake herself immediately. It won’t last much longer, she told herself, she will concentrate on the children until it passes, she said to herself. She wants to wake up so she won’t scream because of the pain.

  What are you doing to me.

  She couldn’t imagine herself capable of suffering so much mental anguish; her heart was nearly breaking, yet this slightly alleviated her painful Sunday headache.

  What have you done to me, and what more are you going to do to me.

  The children behaved best, though they were exhausted by the adults’ peculiar behavior; Miss Bartleby found herself very busy with them. Mainly, she had to restrain the two little girls. Ortrud, sitting on plumped-up pillows, the smallest of the three children, cried out or made gurgling sounds when she sensed tension among the grown-ups, and this elicited quieting hisses and lengthy admonitions from Miss Bartleby. Children were forbidden to speak at the table. And Sieglinde began to swing her legs like a bell’s clapper under the table. Which in the Schuer household was also strictly forbidden. Both Miss Bartleby and the nanny were told not to put up with it even for a moment. They were given permission to hit the children’s bare feet with a stick. They often voiced their view that a little child should never be unsupervised and should never become irresponsibly absorbed in himself, whether in company or alone. These views referred to something the children did not understand.

  We do not cut boiled potatoes with a knife on our plate; we break them up with our fork.

  This, however, the children knew.

  We do not spread jam on black bread, only on white. They did not understand that, but they had to accept it.

  In fact, the adults assumed that the uncontrolled monotonous swinging of legs would lead the children into bad habits. Too strong and uniform a pleasure, for too long a time, would travel from the muscles of their little legs to the base of the thighs, and then the child would be doing it all the time. Miss Bartleby had to check for reddening of the girls’ little vaginas, because that would be the telltale sign. Or the boy’s little penis might grow erect as the result of the seemingly innocent foot dangling, which applied continuous steady pressure to his two little testicles. But the Englishwoman was now so busy with the scandalous sight before her and with her own politically motivated agitation that she did not notice what was happening under the table, what was brewing among the children.

  While the adults, individually and together, kept on saying what they had to say, interrupting one another, knocking down another’s words as soon as they were uttered. Baroness Thum was the loudest; the children feared her the most. She was now profoundly ashamed of Countess Auenberg’s provocative behavior, and she was ready to burst with her own multilayered jealousy. But they were all talking past one another, above one another’s words, increasing the cacophony, even though they knew they should listen to the end of what anyone else was saying, which, in fact, they heard very well. Baroness Thum had to calm herself down. And Siegfried turned more and more pale with his concentrated attention; he was the only one who did not open his beautifully shaped mouth.

  He was an exceptionally anemic, pale little boy who frequently fainted, which made his father even more dissatisfied with him.

  He was too pretty for a boy; adults looked at him with a certain aversion or uncertainty. He was actually waiting for his little sister to kick him under the table, deliberately or by accident, which would release their accumulated pent-up desire to become unruly. He longed for a little pain, a small clandestine punishment that would allow him to let loose with the aggression he had kept in check.

  Whenever he passed out, they threw cold water on him, slapped him in the face, put him in the bathtub all dressed and turned the cold shower on him. For days after the slaps his father coldly gave him, his jaw would feel dislocated and he would find speaking difficult. In vain he promised never to faint again. In his heart he did not blame his father for the strict preventive measures he took, because he knew, oddly, that his father knew what a devastating fate awaited him, his son, even if everything were done for him or against him.

  He admired his father and regularly spied on him when he went to urinate.

  He looked up to his wonderful father as to someone who had once managed to avoid such a fate, with the aid of great self-discipline.

  As if the two of them knew everything about each other.

  His father had a marvelous fate; everyone respected and admired him. And he secretly wanted to acquire his father’s habits to avoid the impending danger. Although he did not think he could possibly follow in the footsteps of such a wonderful man. He worshipped his powerful father so much that when his unsuspecting father left the toilet, he would sneak in, lock the door, and, bending over the bowl, inhale the smell of the urine; he was ecstatic, the smell of his excrement, oh, the odor of every little remnant and excretion of his; he was put out if he could not indulge himself in anything of his father’s. And to sniff his father’s soiled shirts and underpants in the hamper, because there too he fancied he could smell his urine.

  He had no way of knowing how tactful and intimately considerate his father was toward his mother, an exemplary mother and wife. She did not quite like the Saturday-night interludes, and therefore in the second year of their marriage, after she was finished with the confinement following Siegfried’s birth, Schuer decided he’d do it for her only once a week, not to burden her too much.

  One cannot say it wasn’t difficult for him, but in truth he never did it the way he really wanted to, so it was no great sacrifice.

  And thus, in the late afternoon or evening of almost every Wednesday, while staring at the smooth white wall, his lips parted and eyes half-closed to evoke the carefully selected and by now well-worn memories of the wartime barracks—in which not copulating men and women but their limbs and sexual organs played leading roles, images far removed from what he would have realistically desired from his wife but allowing him to enjoy a second weekly occasion, in Luther’s name, so that he would not be neurotic and irritable with his wife or co-workers—he quickly satisfied himself.

  They could not have known that when the little boy stumbled out of the toilet, he fainted because of his enormous love for his father.

  If she kicks me again I’ll pinch her mercilessly.

  A dangerous emotion was urging the little boy against Sieglinde, who could not have known what dangerous thoughts were occurring to her powerful father because of that woman. But perhaps she did sense something dangerous about her, and sense that her father’s thoughts were for his family. Not to mention that the young woman’s fragrance, the unusual colors and lines of her clothes, inclined her to a special predisposition toward a wide, elegant great world of whose existence she was otherwise unaware.

  They could not have known that the way of the world was changing around them; the reckoning of time was about to be jolted, and they would be jolted too, even if they had known of the impending change ahead of time.

  In fact, the powerful and wonderful father apparently did nothing but, as it were, display his knowledge to the high-ranking foreign lady and elaborate on his scientific plans. He himself could not have said whether with his oft-repeated words he was trying to conceal the emotional turmoil taxing his entire body and soul, or, the other way around, he was releasing all his emotions so as to court the elegant woman vehemently, to lure
her into his scientific plans so that later on he could make use of her influence. Suddenly he did not understand how, in the midst of explaining his scientific concepts, his judgment and thinking could slip so out of control. When and how had he strayed into such a delicate biographical subject, what could have deflected him, to speak of something he should not mention. He had not spoken of it with anyone for twenty years; and when he was supposed to report on the events he had witnessed to the freshly appointed district attorney of the republic, he had lied brazenly, not out of necessity, but with his head held high because that was what comradeship demanded.

  As if he were standing naked before the young woman with all his moral burdens. He wanted something important from her, though he could not tell what might be more valuable than his work and good name. He slid back twenty years because of the young woman, because of her he became lost in his own biography, and despite his power and reputation and scientific knowledge he could not have told at this moment who he would become, what person, who might start his life anew.

  How, in what system or order, does one formulate a sentence in oneself; he did not know.

  Who does she see in him, this young woman who should have nothing but contempt for him, if she knew who he was.

  One speaks first, and only then realizes what one wanted to say.

  This, however, happens in an instant, like slipping or tripping.

  I’d be unworthy of such a woman, he thought, and looked at her innocent delicate limbs, even though he believed he feared her.

  But then he can’t know who it was who’d been talking from his body and through his mouth, or who the person was who, in advance, saw through his plans that could not be put into words.

  He did not say aloud that there wasn’t a word of truth in anything he’d said though there were many true things in it; the temptation to say this was great, but this is something one can only desire and cannot come near doing.

  Please, do not be so gullible about me, he wanted to warn her, to protect her from himself.

  Which made him see her more clearly, because, after all, he had deprived himself of her possible effect on him. Your respect feels good, even though I know you wish to flatter me with it; still, I accept it because I melted, I have been melting in your presence. But please, do not forget for a moment what a laughable character I am, even in my own eyes. I am not a trickster, you don’t have to worry about that, I am a clever scientific official, which is no mean thing, but without significant scientific achievements, though I’ve yearned for them all my life. He became very sentimental about himself. Perhaps I shall achieve something significant yet. This woman should be a queen, who would keep her from it, it must happen.

  She shouldn’t run off with a nobody like me.

  After a while, he managed to regain some of his mental composure and, to retain it, continued to talk uninterruptedly and with great aplomb. He mentioned only subjects he had talked about a hundred times before; at most he had merely to adjust the intonations. Perhaps he played a bit more strongly on the emotional strings. Which caused his disagreeable memory to work harder. Of course the prisoners whom the volunteers had to march to Friedrichroda that foggy spring morning had not been shot while trying to escape, as the official report had said. Which ones among you have small children, step forward, you miserable commies. Good Lord, someone thought with alarm, was that the sentence. Run, damned communists, they yelled, and when those prisoners believed they could disappear in the fog, among the trees, that they were free, could go home to their small children, then it happened.

  Which ones among you have a wife at home, damned communists, step forward. Actually, he was glad this is how he remembered it and forgot nothing. Who among you have widowed communist mothers, you damned commies.

  Who is an orphan, they yelled at the last one, you damned communist.

  By the time they reached Friedrichroda, not one of the twenty-seven was left.

  But what am I saying, he interrupted himself in a practiced conversational tone, stopping himself from uttering another word on this topic and returning quickly to a favorite subject of his, which, although it did not put his life in an adventurous or colorful light, made him feel safer morally.

  These realizations, then, provide medical science with means, he was explaining, and you should never lose sight of this, Countess, means by which we can control and steer the biological fate of our people. We are no longer at the mercy of chance, as are less fortunate nations, and I hope you will forgive me for what I am about to say, because it must be obvious that I am thinking of Hungary.

  Anthropologically, the most interesting part of the story was that the second group of these communist beasts ran off into the depth of the forest with the same inner conviction as the first group had—run, damn commies—even though in the fog everybody had heard the dull reports of bullets whizzing among the trees just minutes earlier.

  There could have been no one who did not know what that meant.

  Run, damn communists, run.

  Think about it, Countess, if one has a chance to do something good and noble for the sake of one’s grandchildren or one’s entire nation, will a man with the right sensibilities pass up such an opportunity, no matter what the price.

  It seems that one’s instinct to escape proves to be stronger than one’s reason, he said to himself at the same time, the animal in one has the advantage, and the human in a person comes afterward, ready to weigh things.

  He did not answer his own rhetorical question because he did not wish to carry his pathetic tone too far.

  Individually what we are doing here are scientific odd jobs, nothing else. But the work we do together on the national scale is indeed something big.

  His fellow soldiers enjoyed it, he was thinking, and they couldn’t have been less educated or cultured than I, because this wasn’t a question of culture. To share their enjoyment after their first shots, that was wonderful. We live together or we die together. And the damn communists can always be destroyed, down to the last one, and that’s what makes the manhunt enjoyable. Which is not without etiological interest. Why does one enjoy something done in a group that one does not enjoy doing alone precisely because the group forbids it.

  Who disconnects the inhibitions.

  Or perhaps it should be asked the other way around. Why should he condemn it if he enjoys it so much.

  Countess, perhaps you won’t be distressed by this, because no matter how highfalutin it may sound, we must say it aloud, he said aloud. Together we have lifted ourselves out of the lamentable march of world history. With the racial laws in place, the grand work is ready. About this neither American nor Norwegian, not even French researchers have major doubts. They envy not our achievements, they too have come close to such achievements, but our situation and our laws.

  They were brigands, communist beasts, he said to himself, as if with his own emotions he were defending himself against his own aggressiveness.

  We consider the nation as a single spiritual and biological unit, and therefore have seen that it was beneficial to reverse the order of things in medicine as well, he continued, sounding most self-assured. He had so much practice in public speaking that it was easy for him to let his attention run on parallel tracks or to divide his thinking. Schuer was appreciated at the university because he never said anything surprising; he did not do his thinking publicly. He knew well that people liked to hear only the kind of speeches they have heard before. And because he did not like to be bored, he busied himself with different subjects while composing his speeches.

  We consider our primary task to be not the curing of the individual but genetic prevention, he explained, the treatment of the nation’s body, which means filtering out and annihilating the sick or flawed inherited stock, because we are working for the benefit of a healthy and racially pure genetic stock. It is for this purpose that we have established our network of race-nurturing physicians. One can only regret that the Hungarians cannot come al
ong with us in this great work. For the first time, we have raised the latest racial-biological findings to the level of state interest, and you will believe me, Countess, when I say that this is an unshakable edifice.

  We have in our hands a key with which we can daily open nature’s jealously guarded strongboxes.

  Genetics has penetrated closed areas that only the gods could view, until now.

  And there are only organizational obstacles to sharing this knowledge of ours with the Hungarians. From a racial standpoint I personally see no problem at all. We are familiar with the biological laws of our people’s life and therefore it is no secret with which races we see it advantageous to renew the inherited stock of our own.

  At this moment, Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein fell silent, alarmed, because not even her amplified inner monologue could stop her from realizing where her boss was headed.

  She thought every claim that they had reliable knowledge about anything was ridiculous.

  But just this once she managed not to get involved in the discussion.

  For a few moments she ruminated over the question whether Schuer’s new ideas might thwart her Roman plans.

  Health and illness, talent and madness, the rise and disappearance of entire families, nations, and peoples occur not only under environmental influences, explained Schuer to the countess, as inveterate individualists or Bolsheviks would like us to believe, but also under the influence of internal hereditary laws or, if you wish, Countess, of closed hereditary chains. One might say they are the results of independently inherited narratives. Which means, put simply, that we is a more important unit of nature than I, and any nation unwilling today to accept this hard rule will not be here tomorrow. Hereditary stock determines in advance the mode of the mutual effect occurring between a living organism and its environment. And this, Countess, no one can change throughout an entire lifetime. That is how you should look at it. In the best case, one would consider this peculiarity one’s personality. Or, because of one’s upbringing, for example, one might consider oneself a woman even though half of one’s inherited stock is a man’s.