Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  He doesn’t understand why this haughty contempt. Does Klára disdain everyone this much, or are there exceptions. Why did she become suddenly so haughty.

  If he could successfully sort out each thing that suits him and separate it from all other things and be aware of boundaries, his response would sound very different than if he thought world affairs were unfathomable, their individual phenomena inseparable or having no difference or connection among them. Because that would mean there were no borders, no such thing as a person’s character; people would have no traits, will, or ethical justification for their actions, at best only arbitrariness and blame or resignation or habit, and so on.

  Ridiculous.

  Why ridiculous.

  Somehow he too had to make a decision, unless he wanted to consider himself an exception in the universe.

  In any event thinking comes first—for the sake of the official definition, first comes thinking in the descriptive mode, and only after does one begin to speak. Which is not so exceptional. One surveys the possibilities, reviews what are one’s own or other people’s favored viewpoints. It’s hardly worth mentioning.

  But why would this be important or interesting.

  Because you are not alone and alone you can’t get anywhere, you’d be a laughingstock if you didn’t know about these things, or if you ignored them or failed to coordinate them with others. Thinking is not a solitary activity.

  This made them be quiet for a good while.

  Kristóf had a chance to be annoyed once again by the woman’s latest lecture.

  Yet their silence affected both of them as if it were a delicate pact regarding their future. Kristóf could not tell what was inherently uneven in this silence. He was, instead, stuck on one word: trampled. The woman had trampled him, had trod heavily on him and then withdrawn. She simply withdrew. This hurt him, but he did not think it was unfair.

  They were idling in the middle of the road again, for who knows how long. As if quietly signaling that they had to wait to make their turn in the night at last.

  But Klára didn’t notice that nothing was or would be in her way to keep her from turning.

  Kristóf was hesitantly motioning what to do, gesturing for her to turn.

  And if they had reached the point where they could freely laugh at themselves and each other, there was no reason not to go on to Stefánia Boulevard so Kristóf could show her the other house with the big garden behind the pointed iron fence where his paternal grandparents had raised him. Their easy laughter grew irresponsible, which, more clearly expressed, meant they were hopelessly in love with someone. No matter how they tried to fight it. Protecting their independence from each other. Kristóf is in love with the giant and he cannot refuse to admit this. His mode of admitting it is not yet fully transparent, though it is slowly acquiring shape. And Klára states up front that she will keep Simon because she wants to, gives no explanation for this and won’t do so later. And yet they are progressing further and further into a metaphysical thicket. Where neither of them is on familiar ground because they must deal not with objects but with the essence and emblems of unknown feelings, historical rhymes, genetic assonances, and even more unfamiliar parallels and congruities. Although the building must look different because new tenants ransacked and divided it, sold off the iron fence as scrap metal, cut down the centuries-old trees to build temporary huts, pens, and lean-tos, the two of them did not get that far on Stefánia Boulevard on this stormy night.

  Kristóf continued to tell his stories, to explain things, but with waning self-confidence, hinting that it might be best to say nothing of certain matters. He displayed awkwardness with all his talk; with his pig-headed persistence he showed, perhaps to the woman, perhaps to himself, his infantile clinging to various locales. Now he saw how empty they all were. The houses, the streets, the squares. And how futile his attempt to surround the woman with all those words. She avoided him, this woman kept going on her own much more objective way.

  Perhaps she wasn’t in the least bit interested in so much abstraction, or he failed to present his story interestingly enough, which deeply shamed him.

  As if he had failed to carry out an obligatory service.

  This other story of his had little to do with history or with his own life story.

  Or with words.

  They did not look at each other, barely seeing more than a dark silhouette to their left or right, with the light of streetlamps flashing and fading above the car. Neither of them looked at their watches, were no longer concerned that they might be late or should be going somewhere; their commitments had faded away. Klára continued to handle the young man’s declarations with a certain innate caution. Or remained cautious because of his rebellious tendencies. She considered his vague urban-sociological theory as intellectual decoration, theatrical scenery with which Kristóf rushed to isolate both loud catastrophe and quiet tragedy. If only to spare her. This flattered her; she was moved by his courtesy but not appeased. She and Simon had banished from their life every form of courteous or ceremonious behavior, though she systematically continued to point out to Simon what rule of accepted behavior they happened to be breaking at any given moment. But now her former life seemed to be returning through the back door, a life more in accordance with her upbringing, based on the careful exchange of courtesies and the tactful transposition of brutality into something with acceptable tones. Simon had learned a lot about this, theoretically, in a course on behavioral history at the Moscow School of International Relations, but he acquired it negatively from Klára Vay. He learned from her firm denunciations how he should have behaved in given situations, what he should have done or should do. Klára Vay was not a very sensitive person and therefore minced no words; she could not afford to be sentimental. She had only contempt for everything that was weak, timid, or indirect; she struggled with her own intellect as well, she had to be clear-sighted at all times. Eventually she would begin her university studies and she was ready to do anything for that. She had had no formal education of any kind, though she had read a great deal; she was determined to fight her way through the history of thought, alone. She knew she was throwing her weight around and wouldn’t get far with her suggestion for systematization, but she had to keep on course and she could hardly expect more than that. She now and again tested her conceptual capacity and arrogantly disregarded her fiascos. Nothing interested her but finding a direct, practical, and easily understandable explanation, a formula that accepted catastrophe and, at least for a time, resisted erosion and tragedy.

  And this formula, in all its elements, had to be beyond the personal.

  Nobody could foresee a change in circumstances.

  To find a place for herself, a form for her rebellion. So she would not remain in eternal illegality. Not to be vulnerable. She should not be allowed to sink. She would choose betrayal, destruction, and even more total devastation, whoredom, anything but the resigned muteness in which they had been living as the living dead.

  The devil take the hindmost.

  And no matter how serious her struggle proved to be, no matter how obsessed she had become with it and how calculating, she found it amusing that this young man from across the boulevard busied himself, so doggedly and enthusiastically, with her person—to which she herself, in her own well-considered interest, paid only moderate attention. He was following her, observing her, becoming her dog. She liked his crew cut, his humility, his gentleness, which at the same time she was ready to belittle or ridicule, his strong forehead; she liked looking at his boyishly soft lips, as though mapping out his dormant lovemaking capabilities and pleasure-producing physical attributes. She sensed correctly that the young man had no definable intentions or at least no conventional ones; he set no preconditions.

  Anyway, attractive and beautiful people tend to consider loyal courting and admiration their due.

  This admiration was hers; she deserved devotion and humility.

  Although it struck her as stran
ge that the young man’s courting lacked manly self-adoration and that he was not hesitant in his humility.

  And she was looking for a partner in her rebellion whom she could initiate, narcotize, and dazzle, whom she could shape to her liking with her fingers, like putty, someone who would serve her and no one else.

  Perhaps she was looking for a male being who, curiously, was not selfish, who was disciplined even when unbridled, who unlike other men was not too headstrong. So she could exclude Simon to some extent. She wanted independence; she had gone too far with Simon in their mutual dependence. To shake the young man out of his silent adulation—aside from everything else she had always longed for his lips—to make him stop talking and start doing something.

  Yet she had given him no signs in this direction.

  She deserved this much compensation: to get her hands on such an innocent, handsome boy, nice and slow. Thanks to her traditional upbringing and irregular behavior, she had missed out on the admiration and devotion that should have been hers. She regretted, painfully and urgently, not having had someone to reject. And precisely because she loves Simon, she isn’t going to pass up this opportunity. She loves no one else and she never will.

  It is true that she looked at people in love with distrust; I’m a prude, she thought. She was repelled by their toying and dallying; when she saw them she turned away, pretending not to have seen them.

  I’m intolerably prudish, she admonished herself, and I can thank that bigoted mother of mine for that too; she knew it, yet she found them disgusting, these dumb lovebirds.

  She willingly gave up tenderness; she preferred unruliness, wildness.

  What they had was not exactly love but, rather, a covenant or testament. She and Simon said to each other straight out that theirs was a new testament, why not, this was the real new testament, not Jesus Christ’s. Anyway, how can one love a snot-nosed boy like this, I’ll wind up wiping his nose. They will mate. And secretly she was excited about finding out whether he was Jewish or half-Jewish, it was all the same to her; all they had to do was go to bed and then the big truth would out. She finally wanted for herself one of these little doomed ones; this too was part of her rebellion. She had never been to bed with a Jew, and this interested her very much, this was more than rebellion against her upbringing. As though this act promised a hitherto denied quality that she’d become familiar with so she could distinguish it from other qualities; this act was still to be performed and not to be foresworn. Is there a palpable difference. Based on the experiences available to her, she did not think it was feasible to separate personality from race, since a person had no sensory means to do so. She was excited by the image of an unprotected cock, by its being circumcised, because their terrible reputation for lasciviousness lay in this anticipation. To take revenge on her parents, who with their Christian fussing around had embittered her entire love life, deliberately and well in advance. She wanted nothing of their life and still her mouth was stuffed with it; it made her spit all the time.

  She could not move for all her inhibitions, therefore she made large gestures.

  Hardly anyone noticed.

  She also considered changing her name so as not to carry her parents’; they shouldn’t be right about everything all the time. Yet taking Simon’s name would have offended her independence, and in truth she found it ugly, common; she wouldn’t admit it, but there remained in her a proud aristocratic dislike of Simon’s rather ordinary name. It wasn’t in the Almanach de Gotha* and therefore did not exist.

  Which was in every way adequate for the man’s proletarian pride.

  She could have taken her mother’s name had she not felt a certain physical revulsion against her mother for her own joyless conception. She could never touch her mother, let alone carry her name. She was even repelled by her mother’s former beauty, though she could not ignore the hereditary path it traced in her, and by the fact that it was allegedly her mother’s little-girlish physical perfection that had caused Klára’s father to fall madly in love with her. Although Klára did not know exactly what governmental position her father had held or in what areas he had performed his delicate, highly confidential activities, she forgave him, blindly, for everything. She adored and worshipped him for his circumspection, calm, and wisdom. Whenever he came home for a few days after one of his secret missions, Chief Counselor Elemér Vay had played with the little girl, giving her rides on his knees for hours or shooting glass marbles with her on the living-room floor, as if he were her grandfather.

  At the bottom of Klára’s memory, images of these occasions settled into patterns for happy hours ahead.

  Even though she also had rather ominous presentiments about her father.

  Once she was in school, on exceptionally happy days he would speak to her in German to quiz her on her French vocabulary, and they both enjoyed this immensely. She made excuses to herself, a little ashamed, for his having been taken by Arrow Cross men to the military prison in Sopronkőhida, outside Budapest, along with the elderly papal nuncio and Count Esterházy.*

  On such sensitive historical terrain, concerning the question of how these men wound up in Sopronkőhida, it was advisable for her to move cautiously, if only because of Simon. She decided not to ask, not to explore; a few inadvertent or malicious remarks were enough to persuade her not to inquire further. On her admissions applications she wrote that although she and her family had been relocated, which was why she graduated from a Franciscan high school, not only was she a confirmed atheist, but her father had anti-German views and had carried out important activities in the resistance; before she was born, pro-German factions had forced him into retirement and the Arrow Cross had failed to execute him only for lack of time. Yet anxiety about her father persisted, as well as shame about her own exaggerations and distortions, shame that she felt forced to talk like this, to lie so much. She could not deny or ignore that during the war His Excellency the regent had reactivated her father’s career and entrusted him with special missions, because everybody in the family was very proud of this.

  But if something deemed incriminating were revealed about her father, Simon would leave her; this too was very clear to her. Although among some quietly accumulating counterarguments was the fact that recently Simon had come very close to being offered a job in the diplomatic service; since it was hard to imagine a screening process that would not uncover her family background, perhaps it had already been done and did not conclude with a negative result.

  For his intemperate hatred, Klára loved Simon even more, though she could imagine a hatred so intemperate that it might make him break up with her. In fact she could not go past a certain point with him, despite the hatred she harbored for her own family. The chief counselor’s old sports car, in which they were now headed toward Stefánia Boulevard, had weathered the Hungarian Nazi regime—and, after its collapse, the requisitioning of goods to pay reparations to Russia—in a garage in Börzsönyliget, hidden among bales of straw. Only after 1956 did they free it from the straw, using pitchforks. For years afterward, the car seats smelled of hot Hungarian summers, of larks and hayed fields. Before starting out in it for Vienna with their two grown daughters that year, wearing army boots and awful-looking trench coats, so that the girls could finally dance with their peers at the opera ball, they had to obtain a new license plate and papers for it. Were the girls to be stuck in Budapest, neither of them would get into any Hungarian university, and without that, their future would have been very bleak. In those days there were no special problems in obtaining the right papers, and nobody raised objections. After a few years of enforced silence, the old network was functioning again. On the last Tuesday of October, the ready-to-fight core members met for the first time in Lehr’s apartment. While the hoi polloi on Köztársaság Square were busy hanging people, shooting, storming the Communist Party headquarters looking for underground torture chambers and, with their own ears, hearing freedom fighters banging inside the fortified secret-police cells, th
e men in the Teréz Boulevard apartment, bright in the languid sunshine, were reactivating their secret society.

  It took only a few days.

  By the time they had the false papers and the phony license plate, the Russians, together with the city police of Győr, had sealed off the borders again. Now, sitting in the car together, Klára and Kristóf could not have known that when Kristóf fled home from the devastated square that very Tuesday to tell the speechless and incredulous elderly gentlemen what he had seen, virtually breaking in on them in his agitation, he had chosen Klára’s father’s face to focus on. As if this oldest pair of eyes having been the most skeptical were the safest, as if it was this gentleman especially whom Kristóf had to convince that he was not exaggerating or distorting anything, that charred stumps of bodies really were lying out among the burning books and documents, that people really were being hanged in the street.

  It would please Klára to take a secret small revenge on her worshipped father by getting together with a Jew and thereby also inflict a nice wound on the young man. This too belonged to her rebellion; Kristóf himself had nothing to do with the passion with which she would touch him. Then she would really succeed in touching the Jew in him. No one should remain untouched by her universal pain and universal anxiety; this would be Klára’s only satisfaction.

  Simon was the one; love was meant exclusively for Simon, not for Kristóf.

  To see how much she could torment Kristóf and watch his torment—that is what Klára wanted, not his love.

  And she saw clearly that he could be tormented.

  Which Kristóf himself did not consider wholly unjustified, since his own father, killed by his comrades, had been a die-hard Stalinist; he did not forget that for a moment. It wasn’t enough for either an excuse or an explanation.

  Kristóf and Klára turned their raw self-hatred, their historical perturbation and exasperation, on each other.