Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

Yet she couldn't have wished my mouth to make any of the experienced moves; she was the first to yield to Melchior's intrusive presence, and this was natural, since she wasn't as close to him as I was, and only if you're sure of possessing someone can you afford to stray; she pushed me away a little, but we did not break our embrace; she looked into my face with all of hers, she was so close that my eyes, trying to focus, ached a little, but the dull pain felt good, because at this close range the other's face can be superimposed on your own and the blurry sight is absorbed into your own uncertain vision.

Her senses had never deceived her, she said in a choked, agitated voice, her saliva's scent, mixed with nicotine but still sweet, pleasantly surprising my nose so unaccustomed to a woman's scent, what she said referred to both of us, as well as to the one who stood between us.

But the attraction of her scent was not strong enough to overcome a sudden revulsion, an urge to get away from this voice, from this face! for the face was not only distorted, like mine, it wasn't merely responding to my bewilderment with her own; hers seemed maniacal and possessed, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that she might be insane.

Everything she said and did, every ounce of her strength, every wish, every aspect of her curiosity sprang from a tiny, sensitive, painful, and balm-seeking point of her being, and everything penetrating her from the outside world in the form of strength, desire, and curiosity was channeled back to the same point; if by some miracle I could have freed us of our clothes, and my body could have begged hers for mercy, and kissing and clinging to her I could have sunk into her wetness, I still wouldn't have reached her.

At the moment I saw her as someone willing to oblige but not to reciprocate.

In a way it was ludicrous to discover this about her in that situation, but she frightened me; I was alarmed that she might indeed be crazy, and then I must be crazy, too.

And against my better judgment I had to admit that Frau Kühnert, though she may have been driven by jealousy, was probably right: for Thea, people and feelings were only tools, means to some end; but since at that moment I myself was this tool, exposed and at the mercy of her sensitive touch, the fragrance rising from her neck and lips, I found this state of affairs tragic rather than amusing.

How did I ever get myself into this?

Whoever she picked out, she whispered hoarsely into my mouth, had to be one who had also picked her, she could be wrong about anything else, and also crazy and ugly and old.

No, no, she must be deranged or crazy, I thought, for thinking it made it less scary.

She might be vulgar and a fool, but she was never wrong about these things, and I must tell her — she was speaking right into my mouth and only a very abrupt, rough movement could have freed me from this position — because sometimes she felt, actually she felt for the first time, that she might have been deceiving herself in this case, so I must tell her whether Melchior had ever loved a woman.

Only madness could make somebody expend such an inordinate amount of physical and mental energy on so witless a question.

I pushed her away gently, but not so gently as to make it not seem cruel, for I had no intention of sparing her this cruelty.

Our arms fell helplessly to our sides, our bodies tilted back to their respective, balanced postures; as she looked at me, her face was so naked, as mine must have been looking at her, that it was as if we were seeing not each other's skin but the flesh, the bones, the rushing blood, the dividing cells, everything in the body that is selfish and self-serving and has nothing to do with another person; and at this point I should have said, It's over, let's quit, we're playing an impossible game, she's playing with me, at the expense of a third one, though we pretended to be playing for his sake.

I wanted to say all this but didn't.

It even seemed that the rudeness of my movement was useful in hiding a more calculating, more far-reaching act of kindness with which I could budge the moment of impasse into the next moment, delay and put off things and still leave her with a ray of hope.

Her hopelessness hurt me more than it hurt her, for she at least, by expressing it, could relieve herself of its pressure, and indeed, a faint glow of forced satisfaction did appear on her face, an almost audacious, sad smile that harked back not only to the question of Melchior's relation to women but also to the more provocative one about what Melchior and I could possibly do with each other that was so different from what she could be doing with me or with him, or could these things be completely identical? but this very common, pedestrian question only reinforced in me the feeling of hopelessness from which I wanted to save Melchior.

I was wrong, I thought, almost out loud, one could want another person only through that person's sex, except this was not to be, since everyone was more than his or her own sex, or maybe one never really wanted that other person; I was either wrong or crazy.

Of course, there was nothing to stop me from answering her, from explaining in simple terms what she wanted to know; but then I would have had to describe this relationship, unique and involving my whole being, in purely sexual terms, and that would have been a lie, an act of self-deception, a betrayal.

Let's go, I said out loud.

She said it was still early; she wanted to walk some more.

I could think of nothing except that I was wrong, and in the end things were very simple and she was the one who was right, because she felt the simplicity of things with her body, which I apparently couldn't feel; if she wanted to make soup she'd buy vegetables, meat, and seasonings, she'd put water in a pot which she'd set on the stove, light the stove, yes, that's how obvious it all must have been to everyone else but me; but then I must be wrong or insane.

And because I couldn't tell her any of this, I simply turned around, ready to walk back.

I would have started back, but like one just waking up and not knowing where he is, I found no path under my feet, because I had reached the end of a notion, or delusion; it was as though I had no idea what all this was, how and why we had ended up here, who this woman was, or perhaps we weren't at the place I thought we were, because the space around me had shifted and I found myself in an unfamiliar corner of an unfamiliar world, or more precisely, I did not find myself, I was nowhere, I did not exist; and then I must not have been waking from but sinking into an even deeper region of unreality.

Drained of color, the landscape was exhaling a gentle gray mist; only the edges of the massing clouds were still reflecting the windy red of dusk; down here there were no more curves, edges, or borders, and time itself had run out, though its infinitely divisible content remained inside me, but now it was formless, and what my eyes saw was also a similar formlessness.

I was making my way through chaos, moving neither forward nor backward, and certainly not along the trail, for a trail is only a concept we invent to help relieve us of our own bothersome physical mass; all right, no trail then, only the ground beaten flat by others before me, and no mist either, only water, and matter, everywhere and in everything only immovable matter.

Maybe the color of red light around the edges of vaporous clouds, but that, too, was only dust, sand, and smoke, the residue of the earth's matter; or perhaps it was light itself, which I can never see clearly.

I was quiet, because there was no landscape, only matter, weight and mass; I felt like screaming that I was deprived of beauty, there was no beauty and no form, for that, too, was but a notion with which I hoped to tear myself away from my own formlessness, but my mental exertion was laughable because, if there was still formless matter, if I could feel at least its weight, its chaotic state, then who was depriving me of anything?