Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  Until now he must have been pressing his face hard on the grating so as not to throw up, but occasionally he just had to vomit and he did so now, into the elevator shaft.

  And Kristóf was not interested in what the boy said in his drunkenness, not in the least.

  But his heart trembled that Pisti might have thought he was the one who had betrayed him to the Russians, and in that case how could he clear his name now. If there existed one human being to whom he had never meant, not even in his thoughts, to do anything mean, dishonest, or immoral, it was this boy.

  He had gone to several places in Budapest, had repeatedly returned to them over the years, whenever he had a new idea about where he might find him; he never stopped inquiring about him, but the possibility of betraying him or turning him in had never been in the cards, not even in his darkest hours. He had gone to Csepel many times to find at least the place near the old beach where Pisti’s grandmother lived. Every morning they climbed across the fence, at least in Wiesenbad, where they slept next to each other and sometimes told each other stories all night; at least that’s how he had told the story about his grandmother.

  He found the poplars.

  But no matter what Pisti suspected him of, Kristóf could not suddenly give up on him now.

  All right, I admit, you’re not very dear or kind right now, and he laughed kindly into Pisti’s threatening, laughable face, while his naïve heart trembled at the terrible thought, but please get up.

  As if he suspected himself of the kind of betrayal that Pisti, in his mind, might have already suspected of him.

  Pisti wanted to say something, to answer, but he could hardly steady his heavy head on his neck. He had such a big head, a hard head. On his drenched face, imprinted with the pattern of the grating, and on his twisted nose there was mucus and pap of undigested food mixed with tears.

  May the big black dog fuck you, buddy, that’s what should fuck you, pal, if you understand what I mean. He still had enough strength to drag this much out of his own dark malice.

  Kristóf did not understand this, but with every word the disgusting sourness of the undigested contents of Pisti’s stomach hit him in the face.

  His head was wobbling dangerously and Kristóf grabbed him by his shoulders to keep his head from knocking against the stone stairs. Even now the boy was still dear to him, together with his stench and his vomit stuck on the grating. He could not but rejoice and be cheerful about having found him, being able to see him again. He could not take seriously the possibility that now, in this condition, or during the time that had elapsed before, Pisti had come to suspect him. Because, in fact, Pisti had told him everything. And even if he took everything seriously, what of it, Pisti was here, not hanged as so many others had been. He failed to make him sit up; the obstinate animal would not sit up but flopped exhaustedly on the stone stairs.

  Kristóf reached for his handkerchief to clean off some of the boy’s filth; he would take care of him.

  He raised Pisti’s rather disgusting, smelly head by the chin, kneeling next to him on the steps.

  Left me, whispered Pisti, sunk in his angelically drunken innocence, I don’t have a lover anymore.

  Kristóf turned the head toward him a little to wipe off the muck, a move that Pisti could have felt as maternal.

  Fucked me first, though, he whispered, blubbering and whimpering idiotically, did nothing with me except use me, goddamn it, he yelped, d’you understand, buddy, used me for nothing else, ever, fucked me and left me, that’s all.

  Kristóf somehow heard this, this surprising confession. Which, according to language rules, he could understand only as meaning that another man had made use of Pisti, some selfish character; but still, it was as if he hadn’t heard it. As if he hadn’t heard it while wiping the dear one’s face with one of the immaculately white batiste handkerchiefs, rinsed, washed, gently starched, and ironed to perfection by Ilona.

  Somehow he did not dare allow the things the drunken boy was talking about to reach his consciousness.

  Even if they had, he would not have understood them. All his irregular experiences of long years notwithstanding, his heart and soul remained completely innocent. He believed he had to become familiar with the world and had little choice as to which parts of it he would know; and when he did come to know them, he thought no, this could not have happened to Pisti.

  He must be misunderstanding or misinterpreting something, since his own experiences had been impossible.

  And to stifle his shame, he swore loudly, blaspheming God, taunting him to fuck him.

  What’s this circus for, he began to revile Pisti, as if becoming drunk with his own urge to swear, why is he such a drunken animal and why can’t he behave decently. Should be a little bit of a gentleman. He reached under Pisti’s armpits to lift him up, laughed at him, rebuked him, for the sake of God’s cunt, don’t let yourself go like that.

  Come on, stand up already.

  But the drunken boy, with a drunkard’s hideous delight, kept resisting, he will not get up, no, he won’t, he will stay where he is till the end of his life.

  Well, I’ll be dipped, shouted Kristóf with no less delight, making the stairwell echo loudly again.

  Who the hell is Kristóf to tell him what to do, Kristóf of all people. A little jism jockey like him telling him what to do, eh.

  Hold me back, somebody.

  Can’t you see, little buddy, what a filthy drunken animal I am, and if you don’t watch it I’ll start swearing at your mother in a minute.

  Great, so that’s what you’ll do next.

  Because he had told everything to Pisti.

  Stop the acting, pal. The little boy would like to play good boy from the Red Cross. But fuck it, man, I will tell the whole fucking Red Cross who you are.

  Right now, dumbbell, the question is, where did you leave your coat.

  The truth is you’re a big jism jockey and not the genuine goody-goody you’d like to pretend you are. I checked you out, boy. I got your number. I’ll tell the Red Cross the truth about you, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  He felt like yanking him up, to avoid inflammation of the pelvis, sit up already, but the drunken boy tore himself away from Kristóf’s hands with such a fury that it seemed he might hit him.

  Where in the hell would he get a coat, could somebody from the Red Cross have given him one.

  But Kristóf would not let go of him, he did not want to.

  He doesn’t have a coat, he shouted, in tears, doesn’t even deserve a coat from the Red Cross.

  For a moment Kristóf let go of the shouting person, but only to give in to an even more impossible compulsion.

  He took the drunken man’s head between his cool palms and wanted to say something nice, kind, touching and encouraging. That he loves him and his heart is full of love and he would be happy to give some of it to him because he has so much.

  Or perhaps to say no more than one would say to a grumpy child.

  But this did not come to pass, because Pisti yelled into Kristóf’s face, suffused with love and deep emotion, that never, never would he get up from here, he would not do him such a big favor as to stand up, let his cock stand up for him.

  He made the stairwell echo infernally again. Actually he was just a sack chock-full of infernal stuff.

  I know more about you, little pal, than you might think.

  Kristóf watched, observed how these unknown, humiliating, and painful feelings were being shouted into his face, emotions of which he had known nothing. But now at last he was getting to know them and he couldn’t claim to be disinterested.

  Then he let go of the dear one’s head, made rather funny and pitiful by all the shouting.

  However, it showed many frightening and shameful aspects too.

  Then drop dead on your own. I just ask you to go quietly, without waking up the whole neighborhood.

  He was done with him, but he didn’t have the heart to leave him there in that condition.<
br />
  Though it was futile to plead with him in that condition.

  Pisti’s big head dropped down dumbly, as if he could not keep it on top of his neck, there above the steps. And Kristóf, straightening up, ready to follow Klára upstairs, unwilling to waste more time on this drunken idiot, felt dizzy.

  He hadn’t eaten for God knows how long. He definitely had had no breakfast and probably no lunch either. He let himself flop against the disgusting wall of the staircase, making tiny scales of paint fall off, and waited either to collapse or for the dizziness to pass, he didn’t care one way or the other, it made no difference.

  Nothing made a difference.

  Vacillating between the giddiness rising from the cavity of his heart and his inexplicable devotion, he went on watching this repugnant stranger.

  What is he clinging to if there is nothing to cling to. To his own feelings or to the strange being’s beauty; but was this beauty, of what quality was this beauty.

  He had to close his eyes a bit, not to think continuously about something other than what he could see in front of him; he should rather forget his own thoughts.

  By the time he opened his eyes, Pisti had slowly sat up and now he looked very surprised. As if he had managed to understand his friend’s thoughts but with a slight delay; of course he did. He propped up his torso with his bare arms resting on his spread knees and kept relatively steady. His head hung down, though, exhausted and reproving.

  His unbuttoned white shirt glowed above the filthy gray steps.

  Still, Kristóf wanted to tell him what happiness had come his way today, and brag a little about the great future of his love.

  The way he saw it, Pisti’s forehead was already radiant, and he felt that Pisti was waiting for a radiant confession.

  He would have told him his story to console him but, to their great luck, he didn’t find a single word to do it with. And he now remembered that this rotten Pisti had stolen those girls from him in Wiesenbad, two girls, one after the other, the ones whom he was too shy to approach, which Pisti had instantly sensed, even though the girls were in love with Kristóf. He gave them to Pisti willingly; let him take them in his stead. Somehow his weakness and timidity were in the air no matter how hard he fought against them. His heart ached a little for the girls because, after all, they loved him and not Pisti, one of them, Bärbel Mengel, boisterously, and the other, Ingrid somebody, penetratingly and bashfully. But now, in his dizziness, the erstwhile ache about the girls felt good, that these girls had gone with Pisti instead of him, with nary a thought.

  It was very clear that real life consisted of substitutions.

  Without them he would not have found Klára, without his timidity, it was clear as daylight.

  And he was very grateful to this beastly Pisti for taking them away from him. He was very curious to know what had happened to them.

  For a while longer he watched the phenomenon of Pisti’s radiant forehead, and then without a word he left his newly found old friend, did not want to see him, and started up the stairs.

  When he walked into the apartment, the throng, sunk in smoke and noise, accepted him, him with his heavy heart. But even years and decades later he was unable to piece together all the things that did or didn’t happen that night.

  It seemed to him that he didn’t spend the whole night in the apartment but, along with others, might have gone out on the street several times.

  Standing in the wind without his coat on, this he remembered, as well as the bare storm-battered trees, and standing alone among the buildings, staring up at the dark sky.

  Perhaps they went over to the Gourmand Restaurant to buy more drinks, or only to have one there, who knows. The bar at the Gourmand stayed open until four in the morning. They wanted him to pay; all right, he paid, but he didn’t remember what he paid for and whom he treated. It definitely was not a place for redeeming bottle deposits.

  He took account of these things only in the early afternoon of the next day, when he finally managed to wake up and get dressed.

  He was literally startled into wakefulness; he wanted to leave and find Klára, no matter where she was, and that’s when he saw he didn’t have a penny to his name.

  Either the people at the party had robbed him or the bartender hadn’t given him his change.

  But he did not remember how much he was supposed to pay or for what, or how he got back to the apartment on Teréz Boulevard.

  He remembered wanting to wake up while he was still asleep, so he could get going, but he did not know where to look for her, where to begin looking.

  One thing was sure: he was lying in his own bed with his own nausea, he could see he was stark naked and without a cover, and if he wanted to avoid vomiting on the bedding he should sit up.

  He heard no sounds from the adjacent rooms, everything around him was silent.

  The Gourmand, for example, with its rich white tablecloths and gigantic damask napkins, was one of the Francophile places in the city not only because of its furnishings but also because of its unusually short but exquisite menu.

  When he had first walked into the unfamiliar apartment and stood lost among the many strangers, he imagined that the space must have been not a hallway but some sort of reception room back in the heyday of the tailoring firm. He had never seen anything like it in this his own native city. And Klára, with a happy smile on her face, was pushing her way out of an inner room and coming toward him, indicating that he should find a secure place to put the mink coat she had borrowed from Andria Lüttwitz, a place where she could also find it; after all, she couldn’t spend the whole evening wearing the coat.

  Not a coat rack anywhere.

  It was so surprising to see her, to meet her again as if for the first time, even though he already knew what that felt like. What he wouldn’t give for a feeling such as he had for her. He was happy because of her; she filled his entire view so completely that he was positively grateful to himself for it. That is how infinitely laughable his happiness was. And as they went looking for a safe place for the coat the crowd kept pressing them together. It was the kind of thing neither of them had counted on. There was a chance to make contact again; they touched and grabbed each other, felt and cautiously patted and squeezed each other, they kissed and pawed each other quite roughly; they were forced to press forward across each other, and they laughed loud and hard. As if they were supposed to deny all this to themselves. Even if with their every little move they were making progress in this bashfully guarded nothingness, which had neither temporal nor spatial dimensions and therefore remained unfamiliar to them.

  They did everything quickly and briefly, making use of strange shoulders and backs, restraining themselves so that it would not occur in front of the others.

  They did not know what.

  Klára jabbed at the air above their heads, pointing in the direction they should follow.

  Kristóf had to admit, she yelled, that it was really stupid to borrow this fucking mink coat.

  He admits it, but it wasn’t he who suggested it.

  What’s the point of admitting that she did it for him.

  Why would she have done it for him.

  All right, don’t believe me, but that’s your own stupidity.

  Perhaps it was even before this that they reached the kitchen. Where people were spreading things on sandwiches while feeding each other on the remnants. A large, dark-skinned girl told them to go back into the room, they would get their sandwiches there. Without keeping some order, everybody would gobble up everything. Ravenously they devoured the remnants the girl pushed in front of them, investing their deflected energies in this activity. Under each other’s eyes they gobbled up everything—bits of cheese rind, heels of bread, ends of salami, carrots and lettuce, which this large dark girl kept handing them with a hearty laugh from the other side of the table. Then from a piece of waxed paper she fed them some skin and fat of ham. They both happened to like these tidbits a lot, and they begrudged each
other the individual bites, taking them out of each other’s mouth. The game they played was that they would not only devour everything, but also cast covetous glances at the food in each other’s mouth, but since this happened to be what they really wanted, it was a little risky for a game. Their voracious hunger was real, the rest was a game for predators. They ate out of each other’s mouth, or at least asked for a little bit of the other’s food. They shared a pickle to go with the ham. To the dark girl’s great joy they kept taking bites of cucumber, inching all the way to each other’s mouth, juice dribbling down their necks. By that time they were barmy and drunk, but only on each other. And with each touch, with the half-chewed food being coaxed out of each other’s mouth, they deferred the impending kiss and touch, as if what had to happen would not happen at all, as if to signal that beyond their lighthearted lack of restraint complete unruliness was waiting for them. Or that at least they were trying to put it off, delay it with something else, or substitute for it with some charming little nastiness or offensive commonplace.

  But this must have happened later, because in the kitchen Klára was no longer wearing her mink coat.

  They must have forced their way back to their original place.

  From the shabby antechamber opened another, more spacious room whose door, closed only minutes earlier, was now wide open. The room was located where in other Budapest apartments the kitchen or kitchen and maid’s room would be. Two clothes racks on wheels, once used by tailors to hang suits ready for fitting, had been left in this room. Not only were the hangers full of coats but many others were thrown haphazardly over them and over the top bars of the racks. In this spacious room opening to the courtyard there was also a large platform, and that too had a thick cover of coats. This is where people had thrown their coats when they came in and where they yanked them free as they left.

  A single bulb on a short wire provided a very pitiful light.