Parallel Stories: A Novel

by Peter Nadas

  And everyone sensed that something was not right with his conscience; the village too made him feel it. They openly laughed at him when he stood before them, red in the face, having a temper tantrum, driven to the edge of his self-control.

  He readily used his physical strength to help people; he rushed to their aid with self-sacrificing zeal, as if to alleviate his shame by doing something, as if to conceal some physical flaw. It was not that these people along the Danube were unfamiliar with the concept of self-sacrifice, but rather that they saw through the trick; the pastor wanted to redeem mercy with caritas. Behind his back they told one another that he behaved like a Catholic. The transgressions of his youth seemed to be presiding over his present efforts. He still desired the woman in Vésztő, whose temptation, so long ago, in his days as an assistant minister, he had been unable to resist. He carried luggage, heavy sacks of anything, he uprooted stubborn stumps with a pickaxe, he moved the bulkiest beams; the peasants took advantage of his gentle humility, at times abused him. And because of his willingness to serve them they did not like him.

  One prefers to disdain a person one abuses. They watched him, observed him, spied on him, hoping to figure out what the pastor wanted to achieve with his behavior.

  The Christians who live in these parts have never even heard of monastic humility.

  Ever since his wife died, and that was more than four years ago, no day passed without his being tortured by the old feeling about that woman from Vésztő. He could not be rid of the scent of that woman’s strong body. He felt as if he were losing the meaning of his life’s entire work, even though he had been truly self-restrained since his wife’s death; he had exiled all selfishness and considered his life as a service to others. No agitation and no hope could shift the heavy apathy that settled oppressively on his heart at times like this and remained there for hours, sometimes days or weeks. What could he do, what could he give, what could he offer as sacrifice, if with the labor of his entire life he had not overcome his most sinful desires. He did not argue with the Lord. One receives God’s mercy or forgiveness not as a reward for one’s deeds. His doubts about Calvinist doctrines of faith and predestination were not based on theological considerations. Rather, he had practical problems with his own life: how to lead others to the point where at least they would not stand in the way of mercy with their evil deeds; how to lead young souls to the command of love when his own body searched for nothing but the physical desires of others.

  All right, he has been restraining his body’s desires since then, if one can put it that way.

  However, a young soul recognizes no obligations regarding others except those that please that young person’s body.

  But doesn’t a young soul follow the divine plan when it satisfies its urges.

  He became aware of his naïveté after his wife’s death, when he was past his fiftieth year. Her death took away the faith that had served him steadfastly for decades. He willingly reconciled himself to this, yet he still faced the question, from where would he draw the strength necessary for his calling if not from his faith. He was on his own with his physical urges and no person to attach them to. The practical mind has no general ideas for a man past fifty, so he could serve only himself, whom else, with his remnants of the procreative instinct—and it wasn’t even the instinct of procreation; and he in the name of the Lord Jesus should have been serving the Almighty. His service was, at best, empty fervor turned into self-interest, which stupid people liked to see and which they counted on so as to get something for nothing again. Because of his good deeds people around him became like wild beasts on the lookout for prey. Nothing interested them except their profit; go on, call the pastor, he’ll take care of it. He’ll pull it out, cut it down, uproot it. That pastor is strong as an animal; all you have to do is tell him. The possibility of even the smallest profit made them feverish; what else could be torn or ripped from what. They rolled their eyes frenetically in their eternal, insatiable pleasure. And these characteristics of his, which he recognized in other people, reminded him again of that insane woman of Vésztő with whom, as a young man engaged to be married, he had cheated on his bride.

  He saw their disgusting greediness, yet he could not help following them like a calf. He could not do otherwise; he went on serving them.

  Since then he knew, from experience, that sin gave much more pleasure than perspicacity or even moral purity.

  He was spared a public scandal and his secret was preserved in the village, albeit at the cost of the terrible tragedy: from the moment the crazy woman and her husband drowned in the Tisza in their wagon, along with the horses, he could not free himself from the tormenting thought and agonizing self-accusation that he had caused the fatal accident. Burdened with these thoughts he successfully repelled all temptation, which was not so difficult since the water had taken from him his only beloved woman, the one from Vésztő.

  He knew he should not try, but he wanted to understand the divine plan. Or at least he was curious to learn it as a theological guide for life. Ultimately he had been the one who forced, who convinced the woman to undertake that final journey. He had not done so with criminal intent; he wanted to save the little waif from her. He had discovered by accident what she had been doing with the foundling. It was not he the woman loved, he thought; she did not love anyone, she was insane. He came to think that desire burned so brightly in her because she was possessed by the devil. And he too was taken in by the devil. With his own eyes he had had to witness the woman torturing the little foundling with the same passion that she made love to him.

  He was making love to a man-eating monster.

  If he could not free himself, he wanted to free at least that miserable child; and lo, the fishermen did save her, fished her out of the Tisza. Years later he was still trying to figure out how his and the woman’s sin fitted into the plan of divine providence, and he could not understand it. This meant unceasing struggle for him, and he was unable to forget. His wife’s death had permanently done away with the sources of a naïve religious worldview in him. His body was continuously tortured by the absence of his wife’s body, even though he had never found the insane passion with her that he had with the woman from Vésztő.

  At best he would have a few hours’ relief; they both learned a little from each other about what it was like to love a siblinglike being.

  He began to have serious doubts about the hereafter; in addition, he was especially tormented by what he had to demand of his body in the name of his vocation or in remaining faithful to what he missed so much.

  If only because of his son’s terrible death, he could not have Creation allowing atheists and Communists to be right and materialism to enjoy such primacy. He could not believe there was no hereafter, that there would be no final judgment, that there was no kind of mercy.

  He was pursued by extreme anxiety when he returned from the Catholic town on the other side of the river and, after a half-hour walk, with his long strides gained the village’s miserable main square, mute in the heat. He was sweating in his black suit; his prostate, his bladder, and his kidneys were killing him. After all, a pastor can’t just stop by the roadside ditch to relieve himself; anyway, he couldn’t urinate quickly and amply anymore. He really should have stopped often at the edge of the empty road. And if he did not urinate at least a bit, the persistent urge remained in his urethra and bladder, and after a while his kidneys began to burn and shooting pains pierced his back. His bladder tightened unbearably, which in turn produced an urge to defecate.

  It was hard to take so much physical punishment all at once.

  The women on the steps of the general store, standing there with loaves in hand, were still analyzing the recent event in fine detail, but the delivery truck had long since sped away and the presbyter was back at his place behind the fence.

  The suffering pastor could hardly wait to get home. He had to acknowledge his grandson’s negligence as having been his own mistake, and he was in n
o mood to discuss it with anyone.

  His shame and the accumulated poison in his body created bizarre images in his mind.

  He had walked down the middle of the road, which definitely testified to openness of character, but the moment he noticed the little crowd of people in front of the store he stepped onto the sidewalk and walked more rapidly in the shade of the morello trees. Let the villagers see that even without them he knew how to deal with such negligence. He greeted them, smiling at each one, and the women returned his greeting as usual, readily, distrustfully, joylessly.

  In his heart he despised them for their joylessness.

  Every morning he tried to awaken cheerfully, but during the last quarter-century these obdurate pagans on the Danube had rarely reciprocated his smile or laugh. It was impossible to budge them from their gloom even with a word of love.

  Luckily he managed this time to avoid talking to them, but he had hardly taken a few steps in the shade when he literally tripped over the presbyter, still busy loosening pickets on his decaying fence.

  He asked the presbyter whether he had seen his grandson Dávid.

  The thickset, large-eyed, and always rather grubby little man had enough troubles of his own. Why should he keep an eye on the pastor’s shitty grandson too. He had to replace the whole fence, but where would he get new cross-pieces for it, and as if he hadn’t even heard the pastor, he told him about his problem.

  Imagine, he shouted, with the nail-ridden piece of wood in his hand poking in the direction of the general store, your reverence won’t believe it, that rotten tramp stole bread right in front of our eyes.

  His grandson had stolen bread, no. The pastor’s jaw dropped on hearing this.

  And before that, he stole from my cherry trees, what kind of a world do we live in, wasn’t ashamed to steal from us in broad daylight.

  Every trace of a smile disappeared from around the pastor’s eyes and he simply watched the words emerging from the presbyter’s toothless mouth.

  That is what made the presbyter understand what the pastor had asked him before.

  And he quickly answered that no, he hadn’t, how could he have seen Dávid.

  Then who stole the bread, asked the pastor, staring at the presbyter even more incredulously.

  Some tramp, a pox on him, the presbyter continued to rave. How did he get the nerve, to eat sour cherries off his tree right in front of him. He can’t stomach it.

  They stared into each other’s eyes.

  Well, your reverence, that’s what we’ve come to, I’m telling you, this is the kind of world we live in.

  The ferrymen told me he didn’t ring the bell, the pastor continued hesitantly.

  The presbyter knitted his shaggy old-mannish brows.

  You say he didn’t ring the bell, he shouted stupidly, but why wouldn’t he, he mumbled very slowly and haltingly, drawing out his words along with his sluggish thoughts, trying to backpedal a bit.

  Bells were ringing in his ears, but he could not decide if it had been at noon the day before when he had heard them last.

  The pastor’s experience was that the brains of people on the Danube were even slower than those of people on the Tisza.

  Could it have been at dawn, he mumbled to himself. His effort to remember took longer than the pastor’s bladder could endure.

  Well then, God be with you, he muttered so he could at last be on his way.

  Nevertheless, a mere half hour later they were riding their bicycles together out of the village.

  The dirt road would take them a little away from Balter’s property, yet Balter thought they were headed toward his place. They jumped off their bicycles, hastily threw them to the side, and walked in his direction, agitated and threatening.

  The moment he saw them he meant to put on his shirt, which would have been the decent thing to do, but he didn’t. As if he had lost his presence of mind. The first thing that came into his head was that his wife had died.

  During hot summer days, the dry sand along the Danube draws out a person’s steps, and anyone walking in that sand seems to be making progress more slowly than he actually is, rising and sinking a bit. Here come the messengers, Balter thought anxiously, counting heavily on news of his wife’s death.

  Then he’d move back to town to escape the damned horseflies.

  He had witnessed many deaths and concluded that death behaved unpredictably even when it came about as a result of human violence. If, for example, a tube is shoved down someone’s throat or someone is beaten mercilessly, the people doing such things must count on the person’s possible death, though it’s not inevitable, since artificial feeding and even the bloodiest beating can be survived, depending on the victim. And yet death can appear with a single jolt. Or after the very first blow, even though no one intended it. He had witnessed it so many times, from close up and from far away, that when he saw the messengers he could only think that here it was again.

  For decades he had wanted nothing but his wife’s speedy death.

  The two men were approaching quickly on the marshy footpath that led straight to the apricot tree. Balter, holding his shirt in his hand, did not move for several moments. A large-bodied bespectacled man was in front, in a white shirt and black pants rolled up above his ankles; in build and age he resembled Balter, and he almost covered up the little man galloping behind him. The little man wore a black hat in the heat and kept waving a picket in rhythm with his hastening steps. When they came within hearing distance, still treading on the soft sand, they both shouted greetings, which Balter acknowledged but, because of the surprised waiting, was not in a position to return.

  Seeing him mute and motionless, the two men slowed and, after a few involuntary steps, halted, uncertain.

  Shouting from his spot, the larger man asked whether Balter had seen a tramp in the area.

  Balter felt that a very long time passed before he understood the question, and he could signal only with a shaking of the head that no, he had not.

  But this apparently long time did not remain empty; a great many things happened during it.

  The bespectacled man’s wild look settled mainly on Balter’s pants. First, he looked over the lower parts, then, a bit embarrassed, his eyes glided past the groin area and up to Balter’s deep chest, as if to gauge its size and strength should he have to fight the man. As if Balter were the tramp they were looking for so hard. Or as if a similar, even more impossible assumption were making the air vibrate around them. Suspicion and blame: these two were suspecting him of something. Given their physical attributes and age, a fight between them would not have been uninteresting. The pastor’s wrath restrained by his moral stance, and the jailer’s cool competence based on much experience; the pastor’s short temper and his strength refined by spirituality, and the jailer’s raw strength and inexperience in spirituality—these made for measurable differences that rendered the outcome unpredictable. And they weren’t in it alone, face-to-face; there was the third unpredictable man too.

  Realizing this, Balter’s eyes moved to the picket the smaller man was holding in his hand.

  Balter’s realization could not have escaped the pastor’s attention.

  The pastor’s suspicion and urge to find blame persisted, but there also arose in him a vehement wish to revoke them. He had no means to do this but by staying at a respectable distance and repeating his question, this time more gently, whether Balter really hadn’t seen anyone suspicious around.

  He got no answer this time either.

  One can’t engage in complicated explanations when shouting, anyway. He continued to gesticulate and yell as if trying to make himself understood by a retarded person. Which once again fired up his words.

  It was impossible not to hear his disdain for slow-witted people.

  There was a boy here earlier, in bathing trunks. That’s his grandson. And this tramp must have gone by here too. So why does he say he hasn’t seen either of them, he shouldn’t go on saying that.

 
; Balter shook his head to indicate he had not, and kept looking at the picket.

  Two nails were sticking out from one end of it.

  How could he not see someone prowling about. Why wouldn’t he help.

  Even if he asks the same thing three times, the answer is still no. I didn’t see anybody, I’m telling you.

  Well then, you’d better take good care of yourself, the pastor shouted, and keep your eyes peeled, though it was not clear whether Balter should be wary of the two men or of the tramp they were looking for.

  They turned around, plodding back on the sand again for a good distance, and picked up their bicycles practically on the run.

  Balter slowly lowered his shoulders, which made him feel the shirt in his hand; slowly he put it on. He watched indignantly as the two men were swallowed up by the low-lying dirt road.

  When they disappeared he looked furtively around his garden and took off for his house. As if expecting that the sight of well-tended plants would reassure him that it was nothing, everything was all right, peace still reigned.

  In this peaceful state, noisy with the rushing of blood and the buzzing of bees, he saw that the cabbages were nicely acquiring their round shape and the potato stems were beginning to dry in their evenly filled rows. Tied to their stakes, heavy green tomatoes in tight, darkly fragrant bunches were getting ready to turn red in a few days; looking at it all, he felt an aversion bordering on disgust. His plot of land had a very good exposure, the soil was favorable because it rested mainly on former tideland, and the barren sand hills, which the low-lying dirt road sliced in half, blocked the wild winds, absorbed the fire of the sunshine, and after sundown poured out the accumulated heat. He had to grab something quickly, anything. He went about his business as he did on any other day.

  But he was seized by an urge to escape. To lock up his house and vanish in the fields. The air was coming to life; a merciless struggle was taking place in the heart of his peace.

  He could no longer find his bearings.