by Peter Nadas
But they wanted to have at least three children.
Have you gone mad, why are you telling me what the two of you want.
Then to whom should I tell it.
All right then, tell me.
Maybe it will be easier after the first one, people say it’s easier after the first one. She’s now exactly in her sixth week and very proud of it, and she’s hopeful again.
And she couldn’t even tell what hurts more.
She is so sensitive.
If Simon did not adore her so intensely, if their love and alliance had not meant more to him than his life—Kristóf should remember once and for all that Simon adores and worships her—then he wouldn’t rave and rant so desperately and probably wouldn’t have to drink and chase after women so much. And have pangs of conscience on top of everything.
He blackmails her with that too.
She doesn’t want even one from him, from such a fickle character, Kristóf should believe her.
Of course she understands him. Still, it hurts terribly.
This is the terrible, incomprehensible paradox in their relationship.
Kristóf did not know what a paradox was, though he had heard the word several times before.
When she bleeds for weeks on end, Simon becomes inhuman. Since they can’t do it—and they can’t, they tried a number of times—she could let him do it by himself, and sometimes she does, for a while. But she doesn’t feel anything then—someone plashing about in her blood, that’s all she feels, nothing more. It’s as if she’s slowly silting up, and why should she let this happen. And when she doesn’t, he goes to have intercourse with other women, gets angry and rebukes her for never but never understanding what’s going on in a man at times like that, and keeps throwing things around and swearing.
But she won’t tell all this to Kristóf, because she can’t humiliate herself so much with her story.
You’re a neurotic, selfish slut.
And maybe she was neurotic, if she couldn’t control her jealousy and couldn’t help Simon.
An indifferent beast, like your mother and your whole class and your entire son-of-a-bitch clan, egoist beasts, all of you.
I resent that. I am on my own.
You people don’t know what human warmth is, or self-sacrifice.
Then go fuck your own social class, you dumb animal, not me.
But that’s not even true, what am I saying, she corrected herself.
Saying things like this about herself would be unjust, because Simon was always a drinker. He had been a drinker way before he had met her, and he drank because he was so much in love or he drank because they happened to be breaking up, he always had a reason to drink. He’s a pig, a boar, she doesn’t know what else to say about him, Simon is a prole wild boar from Angyalföld, she said, as if bragging proudly with her negative judgment, so she could at the same time berate him and love him, love him and worship him. Kristóf must see what a wonderful man this man is. There’s not one man in his family who isn’t a drinker. They all drink, the women too. And why shouldn’t they. She has nothing against drinking; otherwise, it would be impossible to put up with this rotten life and with what sober people thought was reasonable drinking. They drink like fish but, Kristóf must try to imagine this, they don’t drink together on holidays because they’d probably kill each other if they did, so they go drinking separately and then come home one by one, all of them drunk. Let those dumb proles drink themselves to death. She understands them. What’s not to understand here. Now and again she joins them and tosses down a few, right along with them. Only their mother doesn’t drink, she’s a pathologically sober woman, she doesn’t need alcohol, not even to keep her mind sober. For a long time she thought that their love would save Simon from this swamp, this family morass, these wild boars who enjoy grunting and wallowing in their own filth. Simon would gain so much from her that would help him relax, calm down. She’d bear children for him, lots of little girls and boys. Or at least three. She had no intention of fucking up her life with too many stupid births. That’s how she said it, fucking up. This dumb prole family immediately accepted her, she said with feeling, even though they were all, except for a few stray Hungarian Nazis, reds. She needed this, and they sensed her weakness, what with her hating her own mother, and her sister really getting on her nerves with her unbearable habits. Her older brother, well, she feels sorry for him. She has no family, she walked out on them, disowned them all, doesn’t need them. And they’re fairly numerous too, when they come together for Easter or New Year’s it’s like a big funereal show of waxworks, and not a single live being among them. And these stupid proles are all fanatic atheists. But she doesn’t deceive herself. Her mother-in-law disdains her instinctively, in her heart of hearts, in her guts. What she thinks about her is, what is this little high-class cunt doing putting on airs with her permanent bleeds and her affectations, knocking herself to the ground and fainting left and right, pretending to have migraines; she said it like that, high-class cunt.
And that’s what I am, what else could I be.
Where does she get off claiming I don’t have migraines.
And I’m supposed to cast off my real self for these stupid proletarians. I’m not going to change myself for them, I can’t.
But where do you get all this contempt for others, where do you get the courage for it, what do you get out of it.
I do have migraines, yes. One can have migraines even if these people have never heard the term.
Come on, what’s the point of your hatred.
What hatred, what contempt, I haven’t any kind of feeling. I don’t feel anything for anyone. That’s the absolute truth, my lover has desensitized me, that’s the naked truth, what else, and that lover is my love, so there we are.
She kept quiet for a long time, staring somberly before her, and then obsessively began again.
Compared with him you are a coward, you milksop, you I don’t even hate because I have nothing to do with you, you’re a stranger, someone I don’t even know, and that’s it.
She could not solve her life. She thought she could, thought she’d have enough strength for it. And her mother-in-law keeps giving her advice that, despite her best intentions, she cannot accept.
She simply cannot.
And very quietly, then ever more loudly, she kept obsessively repeating that she cannot accept.
Kristóf didn’t know what she was talking about, what would she not accept, and what did her mother-in-law advise her, but that was no longer interesting. With her gloved hands Klára grasped the steering wheel as if to shake it; she could not accept it, no, no, she could not.
Sooner or later she’ll start drinking too.
She cannot accept it and, yes, she is full of hatred. She doesn’t know what to do with their prole pieces of advice, she hates her miserable life and she’d be glad to blow it all up. If she had any dynamite. Simon would probably be better off with a strong woman, one of those clumsy, wide-hipped bitches. While she can’t even bring a child to full term, a real shame.
I am a dumb little high-class cunt.
Nevertheless she cannot accept it.
That man will kill her.
But even then she cannot accept it.
He has already killed her; because of him she has disowned her entire family.
She cannot accept it, but then why does she love him so much.
Kristóf grasped her hand and shoulder; he didn’t know exactly what he was grasping. To make her stop shaking the steering wheel so senselessly and so he wouldn’t have to be disgusted with her and her every word, or with his own self-hatred. With her body, her mentality, her bluntness, her commonness, with everything she had taken upon herself or forced on herself, with her words. She had soiled everything with her words; he detested her and the scent of the borrowed mink coat disgusted him.
He was not sorry for her.
At least she should stop shaking the steering wheel.
But Klára swept a
long, almost tearing herself away from Kristóf’s calming hands and arms.
She can’t accept it, she shouted in the darkness, while the windshield wipers kept slowly flapping back and forth.
Don’t you touch me, she shouted in the darkness, I won’t be responsible for myself if you dare to touch me, not one finger.
I can’t accept it, no, I cannot.
I don’t want your touch.
Oh, please don’t be so good to me, you, you goody-goody sensible little boy, you make me laugh.
His main task was not to protect the miserable creature from her hysterical eruption and its tectonic force, but to overcome his own shocked physical aversion. It was as if he were responding to the same thing with his own aversion, saying exactly the same thing. Not only don’t I want to make you pregnant, I don’t even want to touch you. Or he should get out of their filthy, cold car because he’d really had enough of her, and just leave. Although he couldn’t say where he’d go. And never see this shameless woman again. He seized her firmly to free her, he shook her to let the hysteric come to at last. She shouldn’t add to her troubles with this fit. Bumping against the steering wheel and dashboard, they struggled briefly in the narrow space. His fingers kept slipping on the mink coat, or rather the silk lining of the coat kept slipping on her dress, on her bare skin, it slipped backward, he couldn’t get a grip on it, could not find one; Andria Lüttwitz’s lousy mink coat slipped down, stripping her bare.
She swept the young man’s arms off her again, but she could neither know nor see how successfully.
Their desperation no longer had personal boundaries.
They grasped each other with both hands, to keep each other from being able to grab or put up a defense. Neither one could tell why or against what. Awkwardly they knocked against all sorts of sharp, blunt, and hard surfaces. While they clung to each other with incredible strength, pressing each other to the seat, their fingers keeping them from moving, a powerful sense of strength and grim hanging-on pervaded their skin, their bodies. One couldn’t tell which one was stronger. The mink coat slid off her shoulders and was caught between them, but finally it left her bare neck free, and in the light penetrating from the outside the radiant hills of her breasts in the black dress were revealed to him. With pure muscle power alone, they were getting nowhere. She yanked her head away from the kiss, even though Kristóf wanted nothing more than to avoid it, to avoid her lips, fragrant with the heavily applied lipstick.
Don’t you dare touch me, whispered the full, round, well-painted lips with their vertical grooves and the maddeningly white teeth in this mutual stupor of resistance. He wanted first to kiss her neck, despite the woman’s strong objection, though he didn’t know why. Suck it in, with its fragrance, then quickly if clumsily lick it clean, as if atoning for his aggressiveness; then senselessly, completely senselessly, nibble and bite all around this inviting, glistening part of her body; but he was also ready to stop at once since there was something extremely servile in him, childlike, beastly, something he did not feel or had no reason to feel for Klára, and it was impossible for him to do something that was not authentic and never would be. Then they bit at each other, painfully and awkwardly, as though they’d lost any inhibition about biting. And by now they were each in their proper place in the universe. Somehow they had to nibble their way across the other’s face, flitting to nose, chin, ears, eyebrows, and jaws, to pat and feel the elevations of the unknown celestial body. At the same time—almost unconsciously, a little ashamed and reluctant—they emitted all sorts of word remnants, incomprehensible to the other.
Until they found lips, which seemed never to have existed before, and then they were surprised to arrive so suddenly at the center of their mutual sensations.
It was too much.
Her lipstick was too flavorful for Kristóf.
The squeezing of their fingers did not let up.
On each other’s lips, having barely dipped into each other, they recoiled.
I’ll break in half, let me go, her whispering lips demanded.
Because of the steering wheel or gearshift or their own excitement, their bodies were wedged into impossible positions as they panted at each other. Now they didn’t know what to do with each other or with their reflexes, and therefore didn’t know what should come next; the obstacle may have been their own excitement. Yet their lips foolishly returned and opened into each other, alluringly and threateningly, which relieved the tension and the feeling that they were infinitely helpless and ridiculous.
But at least they shouldn’t let their tongues do as they pleased; they should retract them. They mustn’t lose their manners or concede their dignity; they must not easily surrender their independence. It would have been intolerable to get stuck to each other by tangled, stiffening tongues.
Their tightly gripped fingers could not let go, and that sealed their discomfort.
I lied to you.
Kristóf had to say this out loud, and he did, almost directly into her mouth, that he had lied.
What did you lie about; the temperature of the woman’s voice seemed to fall as she asked this.
I lied, but I don’t know how or why.
You’ll probably tell me.
I will, but frankly it really bothers me, it’s such a primitive lie, and that makes me such a lousy person. And now I have to tell you, please don’t be angry, I’m ashamed and I hate myself for it.
Come on, out with it, let’s have it, come on.
It’s not the School of Physical Education where I’m studying.
Klára said nothing, turned silent and stiffened.
What an ass you are, she said quietly a moment later, more calmly and contentedly than before.
I wanted to impress you.
I was wondering about that a little, because I heard from Terike that you were going to some teachers’ college.
I wanted to say something better than that, I admit it, to look stronger than I am, because I’m weak. I have no will of my own, believe me.
Laughable, she said, peacefully and contentedly, how laughable you are. All men are equally laughable, them and their wills.
I know, but I don’t even have a will.
And you’re laughable too, and how.
I know.
Why must every man be so laughable.
But women don’t lie less than men.
I don’t care about women, Klára answered, on the attack, thrusting her lips dangerously close to his. I am not a woman but myself, I am alone, just me, and don’t forget it.
Don’t threaten me, because I’m not afraid of him.
Look who’s getting on his high horse.
I can’t open myself more than this with you.
Your lies don’t surprise me, and I don’t care about them, you understand.
But it did move you a little, you must admit.
You can go ahead and lie again, don’t worry about it.
They hesitated about exchanging at least one little kiss before he replied. As if they were weighing what was more important, the kiss or the words.
I can promise you, if you want me to.
I’ll give you full autonomy in lying, if in nothing else.
They had a good laugh at this, which freed them briefly from the threatening urge to kiss, though their fingers did not loosen.
I’ll never go to bed with you, Klára continued, serious and calm because she’d decided to rely on words. Don’t get your hopes up about that.
I won’t.
You can still be a very good friend if you behave yourself, but in my book you’re a marked person, and that’s that.
I know. That’s why I told you about the lie.
Suddenly Klára felt a strong animosity to herself; it made her lips tremble. As she kept looking at this hapless young man. Once again she had managed to steer herself into an impossible situation. For her, men—except for Simon—meant nothing but impossible situations, concerning which her upbringing had provided no advice
or suggestions.
Come on, what do you know, she asked impetuously.
I’m done with such things.
Come on, what kind of things are you done with.
I don’t want to go to bed with anyone anymore, I know that, and not with you either. I’m over that now. You definitely don’t have to be afraid of me.
You’re out of your mind, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Even if I don’t, that won’t change the situation much.
They were quiet, and neither of them could have said how they’d wound up here.
Once again she had managed to pick up a weakling, a little liar who strutted not his manhood but his vulnerability. How could she find a worthy partner besides Simon, why does she demand such impossibilities of herself. These aren’t men. All right, so she’d made a vague attempt, but she should admit defeat, end the effort quickly and retreat in a nice, orderly manner.
At the same time it also occurred to her that Kristóf might be right, even though he really didn’t know what he was talking about. What idiocy it is to consider the urge for intercourse as obligatory. Still, her annoyance and disappointment remained strong, though in the interest of an orderly retreat she should free herself of both.
Maybe, she said very quietly, feeling impelled to defend herself, I am too reserved and too sentimental, and that’s not a lucky combination, I admit.
The other one remained silent. I spoil everything, she added obligingly.
After this distancing sentence everything cooled back down to a normal temperature. Kristóf tried to analyze what she’d said but in his haste found only its emotional sources, not its sense. She wanted to avoid him, but how far at this point could her avoidance go. Their feet were cold and they were both shivering in the unheated car. Their fingers could loosen now and separate. It took a long time before each hand regained its independent existence within its own contours. Klára, with her involuntarily unleashed anger, tried to pull the mink coat back but couldn’t—an effort at least as unsuccessful as her distancing remark had been. Then, with the same anger and just to succeed at something, she turned off the windshield wipers.