Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

And to make him understand me, at least some of all the things I'd been telling him, I should have told Melchior about the very last, happy little coda of my story: on that cold, harshly lit Berlin square in front of the theater I should have told him about the soft darkness settling on my eyes in which I recognized Kálmán's hand! — or was it Krisztián's? no, it was Kálmán, Kálmán! — should have talked about this last little remnant of childish pleasure, and since I had no free hand, what with the drawing board in one hand and my schoolbag in the other — which later I lost— I had to use my head to break free of his clasp, I was so overjoyed that he should be there, about as unexpected and unbelievable as when you look for a needle in a haystack and actually find it.

Silently Melchior watched my silence; there was something to see in that, I suppose.

And on that December afternoon, too, it wasn't I who moved first but Hédi; she lowered her head.

She wanted nothing more to do with our mutual silence over recent events, or with the agreed-upon no with which we denied them; she asked me to see her out.

Even at the front entrance of the house we did not look at each other; I looked at the darkening street while she poked around in her pocket.

I thought she wanted to shake hands, which would have been odd, but no, she pulled out a small, shabby brown teddy bear; I immediately recognized it as her and Livia's mascot; Hédi squeezed it a couple of times, then told me to give it to Livia.

And when I took it and her hand accidentally touched my fingers, I had the feeling that everything that might stay here of herself she wanted to entrust to Livia and me.

She left and I went back into the house.

My grandmother was just coming out, probably escaping to me from the annoying, consoling chatter of Aunt Klara.

She asked me who that was.

Hédi, I said.

The blond Jewish girl? she asked.

Dressed in black from head to toe, she stood motionless and expressionless in the dimly lit foyer in front of the closed white door.

She asked if anybody had died in the girl's family.

No, they're going away.

Where to? she asked.

I said I didn't know.

I waited for her to start for the kitchen, letting her pretend she had something to do there, then I went into Grandfather's room.

It had been a month since anyone had entered it; without Grandfather it had become dry and musty, nothing stirring the layers of dust.

I closed the door behind me and just stood there for a while, then put down the little teddy bear on his table, where books, notes, and writing implements, the excited traces of his last days, lay scattered about.

On the third of November he began working on an election reform plan, but could not finish it by the twenty-second of November.

I recalled his story about the three frogs that fell in a bucket of milk: I couldn't possibly drown in such an awful, sticky mess, said the optimistic frog, and while talking, his mouth stuck together and he drowned; if the optimist went down, why wouldn't I, said the pessimistic frog, and promptly drowned; but the third frog, the realist, did the only thing frogs can do: he kept treading milk until he felt something hard under his feet, something hard, dense, and slightly bluish, from which he could push off; of course he didn't know he had churned butter, how could he, he was only a frog, but he could jump out of the bucket.

I had to take the teddy bear back from the table, I felt that leaving it there would be a mistake.

The only thing I knew about Livia was that she went to study glass grinding; once, about two years later, walking on Prater Street, I happened to look through a basement window propped up with a stick; a group of women were sitting behind shrieking, grinding wheels; Livia was among them, a white smock casually unbuttoned at her chest; deftly she was working a stemmed glass on her wheel; she was pregnant.

The same summer I got a letter from János Hamar, a very friendly letter mailed from Montevideo; he wrote that if ever I needed anything I should let him know, I should write to him, he'd like to see me as his guest, but I could stay with him permanently if I liked; he was posted there as a diplomat and had a pleasant, easy life; he was staying for another two years and would gladly go on a long trip with me; I should answer him at once for he, too, was all alone and didn't really want anyone anymore; but the letter arrived much too late.

I continued to believe that everyone who was still alive would eventually return, slip back quietly, cautiously, but I never saw any of them again.

When years later I came across the little teddy bear, I looked at it; it hurt too much; I threw it away.

On our evening or nighttime walks, on whichever of our usual routes we chose, our matching footsteps always resounded like a strange hostile beat in the darkness of the deserted streets, and our conversations or silences were never so all-absorbing that we could free ourselves of the constant, rhythmic beat even for an instant.

It was as if the city's houses, these sore sights, these war-ravaged façades, had kept close track of our harmless footsteps, but when they echoed them they echoed only what was hollow and soulless in us, and if up there, in that box of an apartment under the eaves, we'd chat freely, then down here on the street, where we had to bridge the gap between the bleak surroundings and the intimacy of our emotions, our conversations tended to become heavy, took on a tone of responsibility that is usually referred to as cool frankness.

Up there we hardly ever talked about Thea; down here we did so often.

Prompted by my emotional duplicity, I manipulated these conversations so that I'd never be the first to mention her name, always approaching the subject carefully, circling cautiously around it; when her name had already been mentioned and Melchior was talking about her but got stuck because he became frightened by his own unexpected association of ideas, or recoiled from his too passionate statements about her, then with sly and calculating questions, interjections, and comments, I'd helped us stay on the trail that led back to his murky past, to continue our progress in that foggy landscape from which he tried so adroitly, with all his intellectual resourcefulness, to isolate himself, even at the cost of causing serious emotional harm to himself.

But on my afternoon or early evening walks with Thea, I had to resort to tactics that were exactly the opposite of those I used with Melchior, because roaming the flat, windswept countryside around the city or sitting on the shore of a good-sized lake or on the banks of a canal running off into the horizon, watching the surface of the water or just staring into space, the very spaciousness of the landscape ensured a free intimacy of expression, a clear separation as well as mutual interdependence of sentiment and passion, for nature is not a stage set, is slightly surreal for eyes used to struggling with unreal surroundings, and does not tolerate petty little human comedies with exclusively urban settings; as I continually diverted and sidetracked Thea, my covert intention was to maintain her feelings for Melchior in a state of tension and at the same time prevent her from being honest with me — that is, talking to me about him openly.

I found this arrangement just right for achieving my secret goal.

But we talked about him even when we didn't, and I experienced the suppressed excitement a criminal must feel when getting ready for action, just listening, watching, stalking the scene of his intended crime, convinced he need not do anything, need not interfere in the order of nature, it's enough to have discovered how the system works that has created the prevailing situation; his prey will fall into his lap as a gift from the situation itself; and with both of them I did nothing but continually and consistently maintain this kind of situation with my suggestions and insinuations.