Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  I felt as if I were being butchered; imagination made my heart pound in my throat; I was suffocating. I have to leave even if it’s just jealousy playing tricks on me, and I have to leave even if I’m making empty accusations. My breathing grew fast and heavy. Impulse carried me across the dark lobby; I ran out of the building.

  But I stopped with the wind hitting me in the face.

  Because I could hear noises from within.

  A slamming door, a man’s voice from the depth of the courtyard, the quick tapping of a woman’s shoes. In which case it was only my jealous imagination playing tricks on me; nothing had happened in the bathroom.

  Then silence, and again a door slammed.

  Minutes were ticking by but they were not coming out.

  And against my better judgment, this compelled me, as if I were a sneak thief, an assassin, a lousy little peeping Tom, to step back into the dark lobby. To stand next to the stinking garbage cans, listening intently. Not to go away, not to leave after all. The stench and the cold were not improbable at that moment; they were sole proof of the existing world order. But it was completely incredible that I had once again sunk so low, and the sinking wasn’t yet over, since I kept exposing myself to these things. Although nobody was forcing me, it was not a free choice. The power of the body brazenly made me do these things; I was sneaking in. The only pleasure in this was that while shamelessly obeying the compulsion, I could call myself despicable.

  Perhaps for the first time in my life I realized that my physical being had nothing to do with my moral ideas or my upbringing.

  While I sneaked upstairs in the dark, clinging to the peeling walls of the stairwell, all my limbs and inner organs were gently trembling with shame.

  That I was capable of doing anything.

  I didn’t want to fight down the sensation, yet I couldn’t imagine such a life.

  In this familiar mute building, I wanted to gratify my body.

  Maybe the moonlight suffused the rushing clouds, or the city lights were reflected in the sky. I really didn’t know what I was doing. In any case the well of the courtyard was shining blue. I was glad my shoes had rubber soles so that my steps were silent.

  I stopped for a moment at the open gallery on the second floor. The iron railing cast an unfamiliar shadow on the patterned stone floor. As a child I’d of course never been out here at such an hour. I recalled winter afternoons when the air slowly darkened yet the yellow walls continued to glow. I wanted some certainty—about anything; or to ring their bell, to do anything that would stop the feeling of helplessness. To run up to the fourth floor, throw myself over the railing, hear the thud of my body, the shouts and screams; to end it all on the yellow ceramic paving of the courtyard.

  Nothing stirred in the dark building.

  I stopped on the last step and leaned my shoulder against the cold wall. No noise filtered in from the street. On the roofs, the wind continued to boom, occasionally strumming a tile or a section of the eaves.

  I waited, ready to pounce.

  Their apartment was the first one to the left of the stairs. If anyone crossed the foyer in the apartment, I’d hear it. The empty minutes of the waiting were measured only by my breathing. Again, I had to look in through the half-open door of the bathroom, and from what I saw there, my desire congealed in my guts. I could not help following her.

  In my fear and pain I kept losing my breath, yet I was standing in front of the patterned glass of the entrance door.

  The long foyer was dark, the kitchen was dark. I could see that the bathroom door was not half-open. I could hear no movement anywhere.

  Their apartment did not differ from the piano teacher’s. Opposite the bathroom was the larger room’s opaque glass-paneled door on which only a weak light from the smaller room was reflected. Or who knows, maybe some light from the street, I could not decide.

  Then they must be doing it in there, in that room.

  By now I was not even ashamed.

  On the patterned glass my breath collected as vapor.

  I seemed to smell the woman’s fragrance in the air, which was the reason I had come this far and why I kept sinking ever lower. The effort not to ring their bell and a dread that I might break down the door weakened me, or my mind became hazy because in my pants fear had made my cock rear up.

  Out of ideas, I staggered back down to the second-floor landing; that’s all my remaining sense could dictate to me. But my cock had stiffened to the point of real pain and hindered my walking.

  The Noose Tightens

  As if the question had called for him to rack his brains, the leather-capped driver did not reply for a long time.

  Now and again he studied his passenger’s face in the rearview mirror, her seriousness, her self-imposed severity, the embarrassing sensuality of her features, her mildly wounded pride, and her haughtiness, which she was deploying so clumsily against him.

  There was barely any light in the backseat of the Pobeda, but the oval side-window illuminated the older woman’s face. The driver scrutinized, analyzed, and seriously considered which of her features showed that she was Jewish. As a cadet in the Trieste Naval Academy he had learned from his Croatian platoon commander how to recognize Jews. Everyone had eyes, ears, a nose, and a mouth, but from that it does not necessarily follow that everyone is equal at birth. When out on individual passes or when amid much noise the big gates on Via Belpoggio were opened and the cadets marched out together in smart ranks formation, they paid close attention to passersby and to the girls hanging out the windows.

  That is how he explained to himself retroactively that it was not from meanness but at the dictates of their blood that they’d had an aversion for the Gottlieb child. He clung to the petty officer’s every word. Should he be tormented, as a devout Catholic, were they not obeying their racial instincts when they let the older boys take care of the Gottlieb boy.

  Ever since then, observing racial features in any situation excited him.

  Even though he had to keep his eyes on the wet road.

  He was always able to behave very amiably with Jews, he did not make them feel what he truly thought about their race, and he was especially fond of his own gallantry and generosity.

  But his momentary daydreaming, focused on moderate self-admiration, was not without danger.

  The hastily applied lipstick on the lady’s mouth, the large amount of rouge and powder, could not conceal the devastations of pain, ice-cold indifference, and constant anxiety but, rather, mocked her.

  The driver’s eyes meandered over the woman’s disintegrated features.

  In accordance with her upbringing, the passenger considered herself a perfect being, a unique specimen, different in everything and from everyone. She had deflected all doubts about herself, because her upbringing had been perfect, flawless, and that is why she knew how to behave so amazingly well in any situation. Moreover, as the favorite grandchild of Grandpapa Demén, she’d remained a pampered child forever. It was as though the driver, prompted by the map of this strange face, was reciting the lessons of his own life, burdened with much self-aggrandizement.

  I never learn anything from anything, he’d sometimes say to himself, and he was very proud of this.

  Although there were different emphases in the way these two had been brought up, their tones were similar. They made the same mistakes and notoriously repeated their own errors time after time, since they were convinced that they’d risen above their mistakes and that their high position today was appropriate.

  When in the past he had lost his way and began to suspect that he had confused his personal characteristics with his faults, he explained to himself that it was pleasant to stray. He couldn’t tell what he was covering up with which of his rogueries, or what he might have substituted for one of his shams and when. He couldn’t keep track of the consequences either; they burgeoned until he couldn’t help seeing effect as cause.

  He accepted his own little frauds and deceptions because they
were witness to his cunning and nimbleness. It was not only others he misled; he blundered continually and, one might say, followed flawed premises in his thinking.

  He reveled in his own imperfection and attributed no special significance to the flaws in his thought.

  To start with, he seemed to know when something was not as it appeared, but he’d give it a name in the interests of using it to succeed in a tactical maneuver. It was like what had happened in his childhood in Mohács in the big pantry of their palace on Városház Street, where he spooned preserved fruit out of the glass jars in such a way that the servants wouldn’t notice the drop in the level of the contents. Yet a small amount was indeed missing from the jar, and the next day the level would fall again, and the next day too, until the preserved fruit nearly disappeared—though probably no one in the household but he was secretly eating it. He liked peaches more but, by way of precaution, ate plums too, because there were more plums than peaches. He guarded his coveted goodness by deceiving himself. He managed to conquer his true desire. Sometimes he’d break a cellophane cover on one jar or disturb the natural skin formed on the surface of the fruit yet leave it untouched while eating stealthily from another jar. He had to manipulate things so that his mother would suspect a gluttonous maid. Or so that one maid would be set against another. He’d steer their suspicions in a given direction by deliberately dropping false hints. On the third day, the broken cellophane or filmy skin could be the pretext for stealing from another jar too. Then at least he could save the dangerously diminished contents of the first jar from his own hateful gluttony. But by then plum compote was missing from two open jars, even though he liked cherry or sour-cherry compote better. Sometimes he’d make whole jars disappear, so that the deficit in one jar wouldn’t be noticed; after he managed to devour the fruit to the last spoonful, shaking with excitement all the while, he buried the evidence in a deep hole in the garden.

  It was enjoyable to play with the possibilities, risky; he knew his gluttony was a mortal sin, but he didn’t want to resist temptation completely, he’d give in to it a little, and with excitement and tension thus aroused, he caused much joy to himself. He knew he was a backslider. He did not notice how he combined his secret excitements with fear and trembling, how he intertwined them. He was moving among screens and scenery; illusion and make-believe gained an independent reality.

  He had major sins, which he did not confess.

  This was the source of his secret joy. And why shouldn’t he allow himself a daring exchange of roles. He’d believed all his life that it was enough to conform to certain behavioral norms to avoid punishment. Well, all right, he can’t avoid his temptations and the quiet punishments that follow, but he can at least avoid public humiliation. Virtually every situation can be mastered; one has only to remain smooth and nimble, gain some time, because everything in this world is transitory, is it not; everything is temporary.

  Touch everything only on the surface, just there, do it but do it lightly; do not look into things deeply.

  He was way off the mark with this, of course, because he did see deeply into things even if he didn’t want to. He preferred to deny what he saw. It was like denying his silent soul, his better self. He was unable to lose his miserable clear-sightedness.

  Duty had brought him to this state, into the thick of it. It was impossible that barely past his fiftieth year he would find nothing but a pile of misery in his soul.

  Weltschmerz laid him low; his cheerful disposition kicked helplessly against it.

  He was daydreaming about himself, as was his wont, while scrutinizing a strange face.

  Yet there had been a few unblemished, glittering moments, hours, days; he consoled himself with this—though he could not think of one right now. Maybe the enormous, timeworn, peeling wall of the Trieste Naval Academy, so thickly overgrown with ivy, and the salty fragrance of the sea breeze suffused with sunshine up on San Vito. He well remembered that sensation, though bitterness blotted out the memory of what had occurred there. He knew what he was remembering, but it no longer had a shape or image, and no participants either. He could also say how many times it had happened to him. Actually, whole hours had been like that, les très riches heures under romantic laurel trees. He seemed to feel around him the texture of their aura heated by the sun, their fragrance; surely there were at least some moments like that. And who knew what one should do to achieve those moments; what should be adjusted to what, and similarly, what should be given a wide berth if these rich hours were indeed acts of grace. There was only one spot in the park, over the roofs, from which one could see down to the bay. And what would he be looking for in a place where grace was meted out. To watch how a white ship swims through the opening. They were not allowed to climb trees; he was standing on tiptoe to see the sunny surface of the water.

  And it seemed he had to take a good hard look at the map of devastation and decay in his rearview mirror so that he wouldn’t have to give up his contempt-filled hope. Or at least so he wouldn’t let his contempt for the world be stronger than hope.

  Once they were off the bridge and in between the high apartment buildings, the taxi was no longer exposed to the raw, strong squalls, but on Margit Boulevard, now muddy and broken up for road repair, the cobblestones began to shake it, toss it about. Piles of stones and sand towered on either side, pipes and cables were strewn everywhere. The wind whistled, boomed, at times screamed down at them as it swept off the roofs and around the chimneys; the windshield wipers creaked, now smearing, now wiping away the splashing dirt.

  The roadway had been dug up, revealing a long, winding wound; supposedly the city had been replacing gas pipes for weeks, but nobody was working at the bottom of the soaked ditches now, and the spring hurricane had toppled all the safety barriers and their paraffin lamps.

  If these women don’t understand why he’s dodging them, why he’s let their importunate questions go by, then fine, let them not understand.

  Contempt did not show on his face; rather, a pale and indulgent smile crinkled the thick lines around his eyes.

  With people of his own rank, he never let himself get into an embarrassing situation in which somebody might inquire about his name. After all, a conversation is not made merely of questions or answers. The purpose of a conversation is to maintain, by musical means as it were, a noncommittal flow of chatter; what could be simpler or clearer than that. While he was driving the car between the gaping ditch and the curb at the first big turn of Margit Boulevard, he grasped the steering wheel firmly with his left hand and reached across the front seat to pick up Lady Erna’s beribboned hat from the ribbed rubber mat where it had fallen.

  In the rearview mirror, in less than a second, they mutually traversed the areas around each other’s eyes, replete with wrinkles and shadows.

  The driver had well-shaped, full lips; the short-cropped mustache above them, which he had sported since his early youth, was full of shimmering gray bristles.

  My son’s name is the same as mine, László, he finally answered reluctantly, and to make his yielding to Lady Erna’s prying a little easier he said it as if letting his words out through his nose.

  Nevertheless, his arm made a very strong impression on Lady Erna.

  The way he was safely navigating the car across impossible terrain with that backhanded grip on the steering wheel. She did not resist acknowledging the impression. The movement swept even Geerte’s lips out of her memory. Only the feeling coursing through her nervous system kept the recollection alive.

  At this moment, she did not understand why she’d been attracted all her life more to the beauty of men. What Geerte’s lips had done to her and what she had done to Geerte was something no other sensual experience could even approach.

  The reality of her memory touched the reality of the sight before her.

  In a certain sense unfairly, since Geerte and the driver made contact in her consciousness without her gaining any moral insight. This was so beyond anything acceptab
le that fortunately she could find no words for it. Sometimes, such little things, at times little lapses of memory and short circuits, can make one free.

  She clicked her tongue. László, is it, she cried, well, what do you know. She did not let the reluctant man complete his sentence, because she was taken aback and amazed by the unfair contact; that at such an advanced age I should still feel something like this. She shuddered; really wonderful, she cried, to distract her mind from the intimate sensations within her. This is ridiculous; I am ridiculous.

  In vain she rifled through the many drawers and cubbyholes of her memory, but among the professor’s favorite students she could not find one named László.

  There must be some misunderstanding.

  That means his name is the same as that of the charming hero of Casablanca, and to gain some time for her ridiculous sensation she politely leaned forward and laughed amiably, isn’t that right.

  To which the driver responded by raising his leather-capped head, self-consciously and demonstratively, as if alarmed; the conversation could not continue like this. He truly did not understand what his passenger was talking about or what she was trying to achieve. What hero, what Casablanca was she talking about, but no matter what, she should not be using this tone.

  He was probably disturbed by the secret current within him. It just could not be that without any transition he should suddenly desire this chattering old woman.

  I beg your pardon, he responded coldly, though in a tone that was a shade more refined than one might expect from an ordinary cab driver; and to forestall further Jewish impertinence that such a Jewess von Haus aus might permit herself, he very slowly and deliberately returned his look to the rearview mirror.

  Gyöngyvér sat sunken into herself, pale and motionless.

  When, lounging in each other’s arms, they were startled into wakefulness that morning on the narrow bed in the maid’s room, she could think of nothing else.

  No, they were not lounging; rather, they’d held each other tight all night long when she could think of nothing else. Not all night, since she’d slipped back to him only at dawn, when they could hear on the other side of the thin wall the foyer door closing above them, which meant that Mrs. Szemző had come back after all. But she could think of nothing else. The sensation of their own bodies dissolved in the sensation of the other’s body; that was what she was thinking about, and she could not retreat far enough into the corner of the backseat not to feel a similar sensation emanating from the man’s mother, a sensation out of which the man appeared and refused to leave. Even though she was here, in the taxi taking them somewhere, along with all her feelings and sensations. They held on to each other so they wouldn’t roll off the cot or slip out of each other.