Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  He is a leech. And she did not yet allow herself to think of their little girl, who had been killed by the deliberate negligence of this human wild boar, this coyote, this polecat, this eel.

  And she did not think of her son either.

  But how could she not think about them.

  She was living with two men, living under the same roof with two common criminals. In the building that her adored, handsome grandfather had built and left to her. He must not have been very different from these two, she could not help thinking, maybe even meaner than they. But this is what a solid bourgeois upbringing is supposed to do, help one to gauge, understand, and accept every circumstance and situation and then, armed with this knowledge, to resist chaos. Yet occasionally she felt she’d collapse under the spiritual and moral weight of it, which was far greater than her load-bearing capacity. But she never talked of this with anyone. More correctly, it never occurred to her that she could in fact speak to anyone about the peculiarly muddled organizational and economic aspects of her life.

  Had I stayed in Venlo with Geerte, I’d have had another, I don’t know what kind of life.

  However, couples leading lives similar to theirs, in high social positions, discussed mental problems, concerns about their emotional lives, or even strictly professional matters only when they touched directly on the family’s existence. Similarly, they did not chat about their household problems or daily routines from the standpoint of their emotional lives. Lady Erna had to solve such problems alone, because her husband was weighed down with his scientific work, his correspondence, the required and recommended reading of texts that towered in piles all over the apartment, his public life with its labyrinths and complications, the obligations that went with his official duties, his travels, and his lectures. Their lives were measured out to the hour and minute, which meant spotless shirts that could be changed at a moment’s notice, ties and suits sent to and delivered from the dry cleaner, vests, overcoats, and fur coats, but also rugs, table linen, curtains, and tableware—she had to see to the maintenance of all this. The brass door handles and brass ornaments had to shine brilliantly and at least once every two months the silver dinner set, along with all its accessories, had to be polished. This meant a house where unexpected guests could be welcomed at any time with the greatest reverence, and the same for guests formally invited to dinner. Or where hungry students were to be given used clothing and stuffed with slices of bread spread with goose fat or crunchy goose crackling, scallions, and salted black radish.

  Who would not have wanted to break free of this yoke, this terrible treadmill of obligations, at least once a week.

  When, of an evening, the professor would suddenly stand up from the table, and this happened at least once or twice a month, and reach not for a bottle of his favorite Hungarian wine, egri leányka or soproni kékfrankos or szekszárdi bikavér, but, having shed his corduroy housecoat for his jacket and hat and, after breathing a gentle kiss on his wife’s tastefully bejeweled hand, leave the apartment and step out on the boulevard, he had a choice of several places to go. The nearest beer hall was in Király Street, but because of its proximity, it could be the most dangerous. The simplest solution was to walk toward Lövölde Square, at the corner of which was a very dark, in the strictest sense of the word barely illuminated, and stinking bar, a plain drinking place with an oily floor, which in Budapest argot was called a stand-up bar, consisting of two enormous rooms that opened into each other; they were always jammed. There, while nursing a red-wine spritzer, the professor could almost always pick out and then quickly pick up a female who suited him. He loved the women here, in the condition they were in, to the point of adoration, though undoubtedly he did not love their persons, not their inner characteristics and not even their pitiful bodies. Lost petit-bourgeois women sunk to the bottom of alcoholism, or bitter proletarian ones filled with brutality. Who did not want anything but a drink. Or, at most, hoped he wouldn’t hit or pummel them but either stroke them or leave them in peace. They were grateful for his stroking, which never ended in the usual brutality; after all, he loved them, each one of them individually. They were so pleased with the refined manners of this peculiar man, with his pleasant smell and with his fee arranged in advance, that they would cling to him, hang on to him, until they reached the next doorway or cluster of bushes, and they never remained dry.

  For a twenty-forint bill, they took care of everything very quickly. They were grateful to providence that they could be done with everything so fast and with such a fine gentleman to boot.

  If he wanted a higher-quality woman, which happened rarely, a more artful and more sophisticated one, someone in theory more suitable to his social standing, then he continued along the former Queen Vilma Road, under the chestnut trees, to the Moszkva Bar, where once Hedda Hiller used to sing her bittersweet chansons. Love again, always that damned love, again and again. And if he wished to sink as deep as possible into filth, then he could just walk on the boulevard to the Ilkovics. Here he could find whores riddled with nicotine and alcohol, looking worse than ghosts; this was the pits, rock bottom. They never gave hints concerning their origin or condition; at most, they complained or cursed. He could thank these creatures sunk in the swamps of the city for his strongest erections and most elaborate orgasms. Around the railway stations, things were neither clean nor danger-free. Here he could be mugged or knocked out, and he might also run into unemployed, dissolute former colleagues who came to this part of town to warm themselves or have a helping of boiled kale without meat for one forint and forty fillérs.

  Out of mercy, the servers would splash some onion sauce on the kale.

  Bellardi’s son, who also frequented this place to have kale and watch the whores, had a special ability to remain unseen.

  Only Gyöngyvér noticed him.

  Every time they ran into each other in the spacious hallway of the Lehrs’ apartment on Teréz Boulevard, by chance, as it were, they caught each other’s eyes and found it hard to let go. While they exchanged a few noncommittal words, they openly and shamelessly gauged each other’s mental and erotic abilities. Bellardi looked deceptively like a little boy, but his gaze and scrutiny made the woman, older than he, gasp for breath and shudder. One of them would be coming, the other going; sometimes Ilona was also there, standing between them to let one of them out and the other one in. This did not keep them from continuing their shameless game.

  And one could not claim that between their meetings Gyöngyvér did not daydream about the young man in the personal service of the professor. Who continued to come to the house to correct proofs of the professor’s latest articles and arrange books and papers, even weeks after the professor had gone to the hospital on Kútvölgyi Road.

  Gyöngyvér was taken by the suppleness and energy of the frail small body; in her imagination, she contemplated the weight of a feather and the manliness of a reed. I could blow this little boy away like blowing out a candle, like a feather, my voice would make him fly away. I’ll swallow him whole, I’ll suck him like candy, she wanted to say to herself, and she felt the boy, soaked sopping wet with her saliva, along with his innards melting all over her tongue; but his severe look pierced her brain and stopped her imaginings.

  Jesus, he can see right into me.

  A lunatic, a madman; I shouldn’t start with him, she said to herself, ordering herself to be cautious.

  She was afraid of him, yet she longed for the fears and risks of meeting him again. She could not give up wishing this. The boy’s slender childlike body stood at a generous distance from Ágost’s physical attributes. And she began to weave plans to free herself from the monster with as little pain as possible. The monster whom she couldn’t live without. But he was too heavy for her, at least two sizes too big for her, destroying and crushing everything. She would prefer a sweet little child like this, whom she could play with and on whom everything looks sweet and nice.

  The young males orbiting around Professor Lehr were in clo
se contact with Ilona. Most of the time it was she who answered the telephone and went to the door when they rang the bell; in her simple way, she judged correctly when she should take the telephone to the professor’s bed, when to deny some calls, and whose messages to put on ice. Although she had never heard of the scientific questions his work was concerned with, she could judge what service or professional connection the famous professor needed, and whose service might further increase the professor’s prestige.

  From the time his illness kept the professor in bed and his mental state kept him from appearing in public, Ilona acted as his private secretary. Everyone tried to keep away his actual secretary, a very ambitious and exceedingly nervous woman named Kati Geyer, who had come from the Communist Youth Movement and everyone knew worked for the state security services.

  There was no reason to fear her, because for her the weakened professor’s case was closed. Kati Geyer was interested only in people who were in some way important to her career. She came to the apartment to help with the professor’s correspondence and to have the necessary allocations and departmental orders signed.

  Ilona learned her role well, and she got along better than Lady Erna did with this impossible sniggering female, who was always shaking her dyed mane, if only because they were both from the country.

  And Ilona was particularly keen on ensuring that signs of the professor’s occasional loss or lapses of memory were noticed as little as possible. She arranged visits for the days and hours during which the professor could still show something of his immense knowledge, far-reaching interests, and engaging affability. Lapses of memory have their own strict regularities, of course, but like the feeling of helpless falling in a dream, they are incomprehensible and interminable. Periods of slow improvement would occur in which medical practice could intervene to stabilize the faculty of speech for a few hours or, in favorable weather conditions, a few days before the next regression, the speech being more damaged each time it returned. Whenever she arranged a visit, Ilona had to coordinate the urgent wishes of feared and powerful men, the limited allowances the professor’s physician made, and the professor’s anticipated condition.

  Lady Erna was the only one who saw through the little freckled woman’s scheme.

  Once she innocently opened the door on them, or who knows, maybe she suspected something; the sight waiting for her in the professor’s book-lined room was so delicate and heartwarming that she silently closed the door.

  She never found out whether Ilona had been aware of the silent intrusion.

  It was in Erna’s interest not to disturb Ilona in the performance of this service.

  Ilona also arranged the little Bellardi’s visits.

  He came as he had used to in his student days, though for some weeks, thanks to the professor, he had been working as a researcher at a scientific institute. But he came to read foreign-language works to the professor, who tried to keep his mind off his deadly illness by keeping his mind alert. The professor’s students had to know Latin, had to be fluent above all in German but also in French, so they could read without hindrance and speak flawlessly when it was time to emphasize something; acquiring further languages he left to the personal interest of each student.

  On his visits, Bellardi would receive a glass of tap water, sit in the winged easy chair by the window, and not interrupt his reading even when the professor dozed off.

  He would politely go back and read the same text again when the patient awoke of his own accord.

  They were just passing the Franciscans’ building, which for decades had been wrapped in scaffolding.

  Lady Erna again addressed Bellardi very quietly.

  Please forgive my inconsiderateness, she said, embarrassed, a remark that only deepened her clumsiness of the moment before. Now the pretense of her embarrassment was important. It was how she wanted to help herself get through this delicate situation and why, relying on the sheer sense of rhythm, she then stopped talking.

  I’m at your service, Bellardi called back readily.

  Less than a year earlier the friar here had died; for his whole life he had been the spiritual advisor of the family’s men and boys, and he had been Bellardi’s confessor too.

  It’s most embarrassing, but would you mind telling me, please, Lady Erna continued in a livelier and sharper tone, after the pause she had made for effect, how is it possible that when last winter, as you mentioned earlier, when you were good enough to take us to the Opera—

  To the Erkel Theater, Bellardi corrected the woman.

  Now it would be better not to hear the sharp Jewish voice.

  He felt as if everything together in one mass were crashing down on his shoulders and chest, all his former happiness in love, turned to torture and anxiety, were falling on him, everything he couldn’t ever confess to the old friar. He had never wanted to ask questions the good friar could probably not have answered. He hated to disappoint the friar, because he felt closer to him than to his father or his father-in-law, whom he truly respected and loved.

  He could not have endured the friar’s noncommittal silence.

  You’re right, of course, to the Erkel Theater, not the Opera House. But as far as I remember, you did not talk to the professor at all. I can’t get it through my head how that could have been. You and I haven’t been introduced, but the two of you must have met many times in earlier years.

  I can certainly confirm that, of course, Bellardi replied, with the boyishly charming smile he used as a substitute for contempt. This time he showed his still strong, white, and irregular teeth.

  The professor several times honored me with his attention and engaged me in conversation. In earlier times, I must add.

  But then how could it happen.

  Bellardi did not reply right away, because he was thinking of something entirely different and didn’t understand how or why. It happened so long ago. And it was pointless to think of such things. And now he could never tell anybody about it; he had no confidant and never would have.

  I learned with sorrow from my son about the professor’s critical condition, he said slowly a little later. He would have thought it improper to name the real reason, yet at the same time it would be arrogant and deceptive to remain silent.

  And truth to tell, he continued reluctantly, after a while the professor no longer paid attention to me.

  On the backseat, both women leaned forward a little and listened carefully, spines straight and heads up.

  Bellardi hesitantly continued to weigh things, even though he had said what he said, and ultimately it was not he but his dead confessor who spoke from his mouth. The old Franciscan had been of the opinion that at times there’s no point in avoiding saying something that flaunts one’s virtues or is involuntarily rude. Absent such remarks, one is likely to flaunt something even more unpleasant.

  There is nothing more embarrassing than flaunting one’s modesty and humility.

  To be honest, I didn’t want to embarrass him, because there are very few people I respect more than him.

  He grew weak the moment he said this, but that made him talkative, and for a while they barely let each other get a word in edgewise.

  I understand, I do, I’m very grateful that you answered. It was a very nice gesture on your part, understanding my poor husband’s condition.

  On the contrary, I regret I couldn’t do more then and can’t do more now.

  But as a matter of fact what I really wanted was to ask what has happened to your boy over these many years. I don’t know, I’ve no right to expect answers to such questions. And I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer.

  Me, you know, they took me away at dawn from my apartment, but in the morning, without any warning, they carried off my little son too.

  You’re not serious.

  What could I say that would be more serious than this.

  Because in that case, what happened to you is exactly what happened to us. Forgive my incredulity. My older brother wa
s also taken away at dawn. The next day they came back and took away my little nephew.

  It took two years for my father-in-law and mother-in-law to find the little boy.

  It seems that was their way of doing things.

  If it hadn’t been for an influential woman friend of ours, who was in special contact with such circles, they could not have fished him out from where he was. They had changed his name, his mother’s name too; luckily they didn’t change the date and place of his birth.

  You’re not serious.

  It sounds improbable, I admit, legal nonsense, Bellardi exclaimed, and at that moment many different emotions stuck in his throat.

  They did whatever came into their heads.

  Legal nonsense, I admit.

  Matches our own family story, word for word, believe me.

  They spent everything they had on it, whatever they were left with. What they deigned to leave them. But at least they weren’t relocated. That was our great good luck. And our influential friend told my father-in-law whom to bribe.

  But where on earth did they find the child, if I may ask. My God, you’ve no idea how similar the stories of the two children are.

  They so upset each other with their careless words that they both forgot about Gyöngyvér.

  Pardon me, Bellardi said impatiently. Excuse me, but because of the strong wind I couldn’t hear your question.

  And only at this moment, after she had spoken, did Erna understand fully that the stories of the two boys were identical in all respects. She shuddered at the thought. After all, Kristóf’s mother also left her child because of a woman, and in that case, how was the story or history to be understood.

  She stared the devil in the eye, as if in the bedroom of the house in Venlo she and Geerte had not planned to run away and escape together.