Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

My activities don't touch on any systematic philosophy of life. I am guided by the conviction that whatever appears as debit on one side will show up as credit on the other. Despite my well-developed theoretical bent, I occupy myself only with the practical organization of my life. I draw on my credit, I make up my debit. And while doing so, I never forget that symmetries thus gained are valid only for the moment of their creation.

And if I said before that studying those photographs, whose allusion to ultimate symmetry filled me with such distaste, was one of my favorite pastimes as a child, then my statement is in need of further clarification.

As becomes evident from my friend's confessions, I wasn't a quiet, retiring child. As an adult, too, I am very active, although I'm tempted to consider my urge to keep busy, sometimes reaching the point of frenzy, to be one of my darker traits, even if others envy this seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. What spurs me on is not a desire to win or to succeed but rather the indolence and inertia that thrust my immediate and not so immediate environment into a state of permanent defeat. And since there are so many more defeats than victories in one's life, I haven't had much opportunity to withdraw into a state of quiet contemplation. I don't like to use big words, but I'll say that our sorry national history, piling failure upon failure, defeat upon defeat, is partly to blame. For when confronted with seemingly impossible situations, tasks that are clearly beyond our resources, we don't even consider the possibility of regrouping our forces, but with a fool's defensive cautiousness we avoid the issues, put them off, pretend they don't exist, or with almost masochistic pleasure proceed to enumerate the reasons why rational solutions are simply not in the cards. This petty cunning irritates me no less than our fatalistic air of superiority. I believe that playing for time, lying low, waiting it out, is a justified tactic only in situations that hold out the prospect of solution; in the absence of such prospects the question of what can or cannot be done, and why, is futile, though it is as familiar to me as it is to the rest of my compatriots. When there is a solution, delay is superfluous, and when there isn't, talk is a sheer waste of time. But my annoyance and irritability seldom prove to be reliable counsel. In my feverish activity I myself pile error on error, stumble from defeat to defeat. And all the while, and not without a measure of arrogance, I keep telling myself that even a blind hen will find a seed if it keeps knocking around with its beak long enough.

But if between two erroneous decisions or two defeats I still manage to achieve some kind of breakthrough, then the feeling of surprise makes me retreat. At times like that I have to decide whether my success is the result of a correct decision or merely a stroke of luck. I observe, I weigh things, I distract myself and others, I become despondent and helpless and long for solitude. I look for something to read and, all of a sudden, softly lit corners in cozy, familiar rooms become very important.

In my childhood, during lulls in my fight for freedom, in my personal cold war, I studied photographs and military maps and browsed through dictionaries; as a young man I experienced in these periods, having grown timid with success, my casual conquests blossoming into tense love affairs, and I'd disappear for weeks and hole up in warm little nests with the unlikeliest girls; later, when I was a married man, the so-called periods of success got me started on quiet and carefully arranged but all the more persistent bouts of drinking.

My aversion to cowering and useless arguments, my propensity for acting recklessly, and my inability to handle success must all stem from my basic character makeup, which can balance feeling and thought so as to neutralize each other, but since I traveled a great deal and spent a lot of time in foreign countries, and therefore had a chance to realize that elsewhere I would probably have turned out differently, I feel that any attempt at discovering the character of a nation in something other than the particular traits of an individual is a very risky undertaking. We are all variants of the same thing. Variants determined by character, sex, family origin, religion, and upbringing. If someone, while still a child, wants to find his place in this community, he will select ancestors with the characteristics that seem most striking, but there is no personal characteristic that is not yet another version of the national character, and so, in reality, the child is selecting for himself only certain variants.

I chose two variants of the same dynamic character type: the hedonistic, social-climbing version in my grandfather and the ascetic-heroic variant in my father. They seemed as different as night and day. Their fates had one thing in common: they both died in wars that for their nation ended in defeat and had catastrophic consequences. My grandfather was thirty-seven, my father thirty-four when they lost their lives. They were united by their untimely passing, and this single connection between them made me decide that while death, most naturally, stands above all else, it doesn't have to mean the end of life. My mother grew up with one parent and was a widow when she raised me. Victory is probably a good thing, but one can also live with the misery of defeat. It was in line with this tradition that my own variant developed; and it is probably with this variant in mind that my son and daughter will choose their own.

I am thirty-seven years old. Exactly as old as my grandfather was when he lost his life in one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. To lose one's life without losing life itself — a good trick, only how to do it? — that's what I'm thinking about now. My friend's been dead for three years. It's nighttime. I'm busy measuring different sorts and periods of time. It's drizzling outside, a fine spring rain. The pearly drops on the large windowpanes are illuminated by the friendly glow of my desk lamp, until they get too heavy and fall. I think of my children and wonder when I will have to let them go for good. As if I am somewhat surprised that I have had this much time with them and that I still have some left. Here I am, sitting in this book-lined, slightly disorderly — just the way I like it — quiet, nocturnal room. Moments ago some bad feeling or unpleasant dream must have startled my wife out of sleep, because she got up and came, or rather staggered, out of the bedroom. I followed her with my ear as she groped her way through the dark hallway, went into the kitchen, drank something, I heard the glass clink, and after taking a long look into the children's room, she went back to bed, her footsteps softer and steadier. When she opened the children's door, I followed her not with my ears but with my nose. I could smell the sweet fragrance of the children, and not even with my nose but with my flesh, my bones. No doubt my wife is even more powerfully aware of this sensation than I am. She doesn't look in on me. Although we haven't said a word about it, I know that ever since I started going over this manuscript she's been as restless again as she was when, sitting at the same table, I used to spend my time alone, drinking. She fears for our children.

We couldn't have been more than ten years old when my friend Prém and I decided we were going to be soldiers. My dead friend portrays Prém as subjectively as he does me, and sees some kind of erotic mystery in our relationship. True, he views Prém with petulant aversion rather than affection. I am not nearly as well versed in psychological analysis as he was, so I have no way of judging how accurate his conclusions are. But I certainly don't want to give the impression that I am biased in this regard and would therefore reject his particular interpretation of our relationship out of hand. If two human beings are of the same sex, their relationship will be defined by the fact that they are. And if they are of different sexes, then that will be the decisive factor. That's how I feel about it, and for all I know, I may be insensitive on this issue, too.