Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

And now, twenty years later, and only a few days before my thirtieth birthday, which, on the strength of an intuition, a persistent though inexplicable premonition, I had come to consider — as it happened, correctly — to be a highly significant turning point in my life, I decided to forgo the pleasure of spending yet another pleasant afternoon with my fiancée and of being the guest of honor at my own birthday party, which her parents had arranged for me, and instead, seeking a refuge worthy of the supposed significance of the day, I turned to solitude, again to solitude, or rather to a more intimate tête-à-tête with my betrothed; delayed by some business engagement, my future father-in-law had not yet come home, and when the lovely Frau Itzenpiltz, using the excuse of having to see about supper, considerately withdrew, leaving the two of us alone in the room, I told Helene about my intention to travel; she had no objections at all — on the contrary, I felt she agreed and understood that it was imperative that the first chapters of the narrative I had been planning for years be committed to paper before our wedding day, to make certain that the expected change in our lifestyle would not divert me from my original ambitions or, worse, cause me to abandon them—"I feel, Helene, I really do, that you do not require a detailed explanation," I said to her in a whisper, and the sincerity of my words was no doubt enhanced by the fact that I clasped her hand gently, and our cheeks were so close I could feel whiffs of my own breath mingled with hers on my face; the red of dusk was playing with the patterns of the silk hangings on this warm autumn day, the windows were open; "Still, I find it necessary, Helene, to speak of something I can broach only with the utmost reluctance, for it is so dark and morally dubious.. what I intend to tell you increases the perils of your undertaking as much as it does my own responsibility, please realize that; you can still change your mind," I said, and knowing full well she wouldn't, I laughed, teasingly; "What I intend to say, then, is that happiness, though it ought to be at the very center of my heart's desires, is not, for no amount of explaining and quibbling will make it conducive to artistic creation, so if I leave now, I am deliberately exchanging the happiness I know can be mine when I am with you for the unhappiness I always feel when not in your company, the unhappiness I knew before we met" — needless to say I was lying to her, while pleased to be affecting an air of sincerity, or, I should say, my confession was sincere inasmuch as it was a pretext only; and being able to deceive her, seeing her fall under my spell so easily, made her even more attractive to me, but at the same time, precisely because in her gullibility she laid herself so open, precisely because she couldn't be anything but what she was — tears of anguish were brightening her blue eyes — the real sentiment I wanted to express grew ever heavier within me; "Away from here, I don't ever want to see you again" is what I should have said to her, because I could not resist the deep-seated urge to escape and, in a sense, to disappear for good, as in fact once, while leaving their house, I did catch myself mumbling, completely unawares and spitefully, "It's finished, done with, I'm free" — and if now, having the luxury to fantasize, I try to imagine what would have happened if that afternoon before my departure I had not merely looked for a pretext but spoken candidly to her, what I see before me is the face of a young woman whose translucent white skin and soft round features give her an uncertain, almost ethereal look, though the pale freckles scattered around the delicate nose and the thick bronze-red hair imbue it with a curious vitality, and this face shows no surprise, on hearing my news, indeed breaks into a smile, as if it had been waiting for these words; when Helene smiles like this, with full-mouthed enjoyment, she looks older and more experienced, because in her moistly gleaming teeth there is a touch of wanton willfulness; she quickly wipes away the teardrop brought to her eyes by the moral superiority of knowing she has acquiesced obligingly to my plan, and yet she makes a gesture that, in the heat of the moment, excited by each other's breath, we both long for: it would have to have been a very common gesture, but this is the point where my imagination comes to a respectful halt, given Helene's then still untouched sensuality; leaving, then, after a supper spent in a convivial family atmosphere and a farewell which in the circumstances seemed almost too lighthearted, I may have carried away with me Helene's earnestly given consent, yet I could not but feel our future to be ominous and threatening, since all signs indicated we would have to build it on insincerity, insincerity in the guise of mutual attentiveness and consideration, because, on the one hand, it seemed that my unavoidable physical attraction to her would be nourished not by the kind of raw and inexplicable force that, as far as I knew, one felt in real love, but only by an exquisite sense of beauty, a titillating vulnerability, and on the other hand, I didn't think she would ever admit that to endure living with her own fragile emotional sensibilities, she herself needed those coarser gestures, a secret lewdness which she could not possibly expect me to provide and the presumed lack of which would not be compensated either by the mysteriousness of my obscure silences or by the lies of my playful fits of sincerity.

Of course it wasn't coarse sensuality or an inclination to mutually shared lewdness that I was lacking, and in any case, I don't really believe in a refinement that can forgo physicality and still remain healthy; but beyond the simpleminded fear every young man must feel before leading his bride to the altar, I was fearful and anxious for another reason: our relationship, at least outwardly, reminded me very much of the unbalanced and unresolvable tensions between my parents; in every sign of physical coarseness I detected Father's gestures, and in the longing for them I saw Mother's needs; if I hadn't possessed the gift of self-knowledge that enables us to carefully separate the overlapping planes of cause and effect, thereby discovering the endless circular stairways of our emotions which, dissatisfied with mere form and appearance, lead us downward and inward to ultimate understanding — without this gift, even our engagement would have become unbearable by the knowledge that my malady was hereditary, that fate condemned me to the humiliating absurdity of having to repeat my parents' lives and misdeeds, of being the same as they, and even of dragging an innocent outsider into this fatal sameness.

The snow was already melting, and though I was afraid of the dogs I decided to walk home from school through the woods.

One had to step carefully here; the trail, beaten into the heavy, clayey soil, wound steeply around the gnarled trunks and coiling roots of ancient mistletoe-laden oaks and plunged through the underbrush, clumps of wild roses, elder, and hawthorn that looked impenetrable even in their barrenness; melting snow had turned the thick layers of leaves sodden and I kept losing my footing on the slippery surface; seeking an outlet, tiny rivulets had cut grooves right through the middle of the trail, creating a regular brook that ran sparkling and gushing in its rusty yellow bed, swelling up where the trail took a sudden turn, then rushing on, engulfing stones and pebbles; imagining dense forests and wild mountain rapids all around, I leaped from one bank of my stream to the other, zigzagging back and forth, trusting my body to the slope's pull, sensing that the more daring my leaps were — the harder I landed and the longer I stayed in the air, finding the site of my next takeoff with a single glance — the more confident I became and the less likely I was to slip or fall; I was racing downhill, I was flying.