Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

But I wasn't really interested in her loss of beauty, the beauty she perhaps never possessed, or in her coat; it was the look in her eyes that hurt so much, seeing her so frightened and unsmiling; I smiled at her so she wouldn't see my own pain; it was her helpless empathy that hurt, that pathetic attempt learned from adults to wade into other people's suffering without feeling the suffering itself.

I felt my whole being recoil from her in protest and dread, because I knew why she had come.

Still, there was one calming aspect of her appearance, rather appropriate to the circumstances: she was wearing hiking boots and thick socks folded down at the ankles.

She said hello and I must have done the same, though I remember only my forced smile, because I wanted to give her one of those bright, carefree smiles that used to be ours, to smile at her as if nothing had happened and nothing could happen so long as we both had this smile; we took a few steps toward each other, then stopped, hesitated; it seemed odd and repulsive to both of us to meet this way, in roles that made us remember, and remind one another, of all that had happened; there had been too many tragedies, too many deaths; to get over the hard part, I laughed and said it was really nice of her to come, after all, we hadn't seen each other since my mother's funeral.

My laugh seemed to increase her fright and she must have taken my words as a reproach; her big eyes welled with tears — who knows how long those tears had been in the making! and to hold them in, and also to keep me from rebuking her further, she threw back her head defiantly, her hair flowing through the air almost as in the old days; no, that's not the reason she had come, she hadn't lost her mind completely yet, she didn't want to hurt me, there was nothing she could say to me, anyway, she just came to say goodbye to us — that's how she said it: to us — because there was a fairly promising opportunity the next morning: someone had agreed for a reasonable price to take them as far as the border town of Sopron, and there they would see, she said, and shrugged her shoulders; she had gone to Livia and to the Hűvöses, and at Livia's nobody was at home, so if I saw her I should tell her — well, just what to tell her? — on second thought, just tell her that she was here and that she left! and since she had come through the woods, she thought she'd drop by Kálmán's, too; then she fell silent and waited for me, her eyes pleading, imploring me to make her believe the unbelievable, and quickly, too, because there was a curfew and she had to get home.

And then she couldn't stop talking, and forcing her tears back, she rambled on about the situation, explaining things in great detail — but about the important thing, the one thing that touched us both most deeply, she said not a word, almost as if trying to protect us; still, she changed, was transformed back to her old self, not beautiful, but strong, which may have been what we had thought of as beautiful in her before.

Yes, I said.

I had to utter this dry, unemphatic yes without a confirming nod, while looking straight into her eyes so she couldn't get away from it, though I felt how cruel it was, even savagely pleasant, to tear someone's foolish hope to shreds, a hope that can't deal with unalterable certainties, cruel even when the other person knows all too well that the yes can never become a no, that it will forever remain a humiliating yes.

There was no need for us to elaborate on this yes; she told me the bare essential — they were leaving the country — and from this terse announcement, which I must say didn't affect me all that much, I also grasped that owing to some possibly tragic occurrence not all three but only two of them were leaving; she used the plural, but without the usual rancor or peevish, childish spite; my ears missed the intonation that used to refer to her mother's lover, who had come between mother and daughter; we didn't have much time, but regarding the lover the possibilities were clear: either he had died or was lying wounded somewhere or maybe had left the country himself or been arrested, because if he had disappeared from their lives for other, personal reasons, the hatred for him would have been there in her voice, and the two women setting out by themselves, entrusting the lover to the care of impersonal history, for me became as much a part of the realm of insensitive yeses as everything Hédi had been able to learn in the past few hours about my own fortunes, and about Kálmán's death, had become for her.

In other words, my yes meant I knew she knew everything she needed to know about Kálmán and about me, there was nothing I needed to add, just as she didn't have to elaborate on her story, for she must have known I knew all I needed to know.

Wide-eyed — no, with eyes opened wide — we looked at each other, or more precisely, we weren't looking at each other but in each other's eyes we were staring at that mutually understood, impersonal, volatile, and for some reason profoundly shameful yes, which could only allude to death and to the countless dead, perhaps in each other's eyes we were looking at the shame of the survivors, the facts that needed no explanation yet were inexplicably irrevocable, looking in each other's eyes as if we needed to gain time, despite our fretful haste, enough time for the glint of disgrace to fade from our open eyes, but fade into what, where to? into talk, clarification, recollections, and explanations? but what was there to recollect or explain if in the moment of saying goodbye we couldn't have a common future and there was nothing to be salvaged from our common past? and if neither of us could even cry, how could we possibly reach out and touch in a truly human way?

So we remained silent, not because we didn't have anything to say, but because the indescribable number of things that needed to be said became incommunicable in our shared despair and shame at our hopelessness; only by severing the bonds of mutual understanding could we escape the shame of our common fate and make an effort to forget.

That living taciturnity became our common future; for her it lay where she was fleeing to, for me here, where I was staying, a not very significant difference; our features were locked into themselves, self-protective and tactfully hiding their own pain, and our eyes, which even in their indifference were caressing and soothing one another, despite their understanding were now forbidden to find the common ground that glances can share; this was going to be our new bond: the will to end it all, even though we were still alive! all this we still had in common, in spite of everything, and we knew we did.

It wasn't just her, it was impossible for me to tell anything to anybody, I couldn't, and I didn't want to.

What died in me was the need to talk to others, rotting away along with the bodies of my dead friends, and she was going away.

The chairs were there, standing around the table in the darkening room, four forlorn chairs around the table, and it occurred to me that I ought to ask her to sit down, as was proper, except that along with those chairs — on which she had never sat, by the way — there also stood between us all those afternoons when she would fly into my room and, without stopping her flow of words, throw herself on my bed and lie there stretched out on her back or stomach.

I asked her, as if this was the most important of all questions, about Krisztián, what would happen to him now that she was leaving, and we both knew this was only my effort to spare us from dealing with the truly crucial questions.

A tiny wry smile appeared around her immobile mouth, wise and sardonic; she must have thought my evasion too crude, too sentimental, superfluous, and she said she had taken care of all that, a supercilious smile on her arching lips; they hadn't seen each other for a long time, she continued, shrugging her shoulders, letting me know she would not say goodbye to Krisztián — another thing, I thought, that would remain unfinished and painful; she would write to him from the free world, she said sarcastically, quoting the phrase so familiar from radio programs broadcasting messages from refugees; besides, the thing they had between them was rather childish anyway, though Krisztián was no doubt handsome, and then suddenly, openly, emerging for a moment from behind her cynical look, she flashed her teeth in a harsh, coarse smile and said I could have him! uglier boys now appealed to her more, which meant, she was sorry to say, that I was also out of the running.