Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

After that handshake we didn't pay much attention to each other, yet the inner compulsion of our feelings so shaped the situation that while walking up the red-carpeted gleaming white staircase — I was conversing with his friend and he was chatting with Frau Kühnert and Thea — we seemed to be steering each other with our shoulders; though our bodies did not touch, from that moment on they became inseparable, they wanted to stay close to each other, that's how they proceeded up those stairs, our bodies doing their job so assuredly that we didn't have to pay special attention to our closeness, which was neither surprising nor controllable, setting itself immediately on the right course, with aims and possibilities of its own — about which, as it turned out later, only I had certain misgivings — so he was free to go on chatting without having to look at me, and I didn't have to look at him either, because by then I had gained so much confidence from being close to his body and to its fragrance that I could also converse freely with the young Frenchman walking on my left.

But I wouldn't call this a collusive or complicitous feeling, being much darker and deeper; to use an analogy, I'd say it was as if one was arriving in the present after a quick journey from one's own faraway past, and the present is as improbable and dreamlike as a city that at the moment of arrival one moves about in dazed — no, the meeting had none of the excited cheerfulness and joy peculiar to erotically charged little conspiracies, unless it was the much deeper joy of a long-awaited homecoming.

Actually, what made the moment special for me, and perhaps that's the reason I remember it so well, was the stir Thea created, being a well-known and celebrated personality who attracted the audience's curiosity, which was extended to us as well in the form of furtive, sidelong glances, everybody being eager to see, to know, in whose company and with what sort of men the famous actress was making her appearance here, and we, four very different non-celebrities, must have seemed rather unusual, almost scandalous in this formal, overdisciplined setting.

Thea was onstage here, too, playing the offstage role of famous and notorious actress; and let it be said to her credit that with the most economical means she managed to pretend she noticed none of the eager, respectful, sometimes envious and contemptuous glances, since she devoted all her attention to Melchior — behold, this is the man! she declared by her gesture as she leaned lightly on Melchior's arm, rewarding him with almost the same adoring look she was getting from her admirers, and adjusting her own face — bony, Oriental-looking, no makeup — to look just as pretty as her audiences were used to and always expected to see, of course looking for some protection as she gazed with those narrowed, impishly smiling eyes into his, protection to help her stay incognito — make it so she wouldn't have to look anywhere else! no, she didn't want to mind her steps, she'd go anywhere she was led — though all along she was leading him, in her long, tight black skirt slit to her knees, her dainty spike-heeled shoes, her slightly translucent lead-gray silk blouse, more fragile and vulnerable, altogether more shy and modest-looking than she was in any of her other roles.

She spoke in a voice deep and warm with feeling, softly but volubly, her hushed tones keeping the content of her words from the earshot of the curious, spoke only with her mouth, while her smile, perfectly disciplined, mimicked flawlessly the artless mimicking of social banter, smuggling into her act some of the tension we'd left behind in the rehearsal hall, thriftily using her unexpended energies to reduce and deflect the elemental joy and passion evoked by Melchior's mere presence, by the proximity of his body, but however sparing her histrionic means, or because they were so masterfully pared down to perfect proportions, no one could ignore her presence; people stopped, turned, followed her with their looks, whispered behind our backs, clandestinely or quite openly stared into her face, jabbed each other, pointed fingers, the women checking out her clothes, ogling her supple walk, the men affecting cold indifference, imagining kneading her breasts gently or wondering what it would be like to feel her slender waist or slap her shapely round behind; in a word, they all had her; while she was walking up the stairs, seemingly fully absorbed in her man, her audience, each in his or her way according to his or her taste, made as though she were their exclusive property, their lover, their younger sister, and we, too, gained attention, becoming in the spectators' eyes professional extras in this little scene of Thea's procession.

Prompted more by the situation than by genuine curiosity, and feigning ignorance and surprise, I inquired of the lanky, dark, tousled young Frenchman how he happened to be here; we were still walking up the stairs as he leaned over to me with an expression at once friendly, reticent, and condescending, with his surprisingly narrow, flatly cut eyes in which there didn't seem to be much room for the eyeballs to move freely, which is perhaps why his gaze was so rigid and piercing, but what I really wanted to know was what Thea was buzzing so lullingly into the ear of the man whose closeness my shoulder, arm, and side were registering.

The Frenchman answered in perfectly idiomatic though heavily accented German that he didn't live here, at any rate not in this part of the city, but liked to hop over, and did so frequently; our invitation couldn't have come at a better time, because he'd meant to see this performance, but frankly, he didn't quite understand why I was surprised, why shouldn't he be here? for him this world was not nearly so alien as I might think, on the contrary, he felt more at home here than in the western part of the city, for he was a Marxist and a Communist Party member.

The cleverly manipulated rhetoric of his reply, the unmistakably antagonistic edge on his assertion, the touchiness with which he discovered in me a possible adversary, his self-righteous tone, his flippantly insolent though hardly lighthearted demeanor, his rigid and provocative stare radiating both narrow prejudices and something attractive, youthful, combative — all this I found so remarkable that I took up the challenge right away, though a heated political debate in these coolly, lifelessly formal surroundings seemed out of place: teased by contradictory impulses, I had a strong urge to laugh: what kind of drivel was he trying to palm off on me? his statements struck me as a pleasantly irreverent joke might, an impression only intensified by the childishly defiant expression on his handsome face and the animated elegance which another culture gave his appearance, which, judged by local standards, was rather slovenly: a thick, soft, slightly threadbare sweater, not quite clean, a fire-engine-red woolen scarf wrapped twice around his neck and tossed over his shoulder, attire that the gathering audience, scrubbed to the required level of festive cleanliness and therefore looking pitiful and lacking style, scrutinized with such shock and disapproval you could almost hear the indignant groans, but I didn't want to offend him, if only because I, too, scrutinized by the same audience, felt obliged to remain collected, and so I smiled politely, somewhat superciliously, and without bothering to take the sting out of my words replied that he must have misunderstood my surprise, since no rebuke or calling to account was intended and I considered it a privilege to meet him, it was just that in this eastern hemisphere during the last six years — and, I emphasized, for at least six years — I hadn't met anyone who'd call himself a Communist and claim careful personal consideration as the reason for being one.

Just what was I getting at?