Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

It couldn't even be called a suspicion. It was too vague a thought to jell into any sort of lead. Besides, I had no desire to play the sleuth. When staring death in the face, one looks for explanations.

On the other side of the grave, wearing a dark, ill-fitting suit, a young man was standing, his face deathly pale. I knew him well. My aunts had been buying their milk from his folks for years. Now and then his body would tremble, as if shuddering in his fight to hold back his tears. Each time this happened, he would sing a little louder. He was one of the boys who had tried to commit suicide. The other would-be suicide, who wasn't at the funeral, had to undergo a laryngectomy and as a result lost his speech forever. This boy I knew only by sight, as a kind of local celebrity. He was born out of wedlock, his mother was barely four feet tall, a midget. No one knew who his father was. Ever since I can remember, the woman has worked in the same tavern, washing glasses behind the bar, standing on a kitchen chair to reach the sink. Rumor had it that she'd kept experimenting with drunken men in the shed behind the tavern until she got herself pregnant. She had everything going against her, yet her condition, and the fact that she went through with the pregnancy, did not bring down the wrath of the village. To this day people like to tell appreciative anecdotes — well sprinkled with spicy details — about her deft manipulations in that shed. She gave birth to a healthy boy and has been a model mother ever since. And the boy grew into such a big, powerful, attractive young man that, the circumstances of his conception notwithstanding, people have admired him as living proof of the unpredictable forces and wonder of nature. Consequently, no one found it objectionable when he became friends with the son of one of the village's wealthier farmers. They were inseparable. Leaders and trendsetters among the village young. They remained close even when the midget's son began working as a butcher's apprentice while the other boy went on to high school. It was almost as though they decided on a suicide pact, too, just so they wouldn't have to fight each other for the love of the same woman. Two male animals in whom natural love proved weaker than the need for friendship.

In those years I could gauge the social changes taking place in the village by the changing behavior of my aunts. Until then they had been bent on scrimping and saving. They would rather do without than part with anything that constituted family property. But now, with almost girlish ease, they succumbed to the enticements of the new mercantile spirit. Perhaps they grew tired. Perhaps they feared old age and wanted to keep up with the times.

The village, isolated as it was from its environs, was fast losing its people. In direct ratio to this loss, the number of abandoned farms around the village began to increase. Part of the working population moved away, and others, as if preparing for the same step, began to commute to the city. Lovely vineyards and orchards, as well as much of the farmland, were sold to city dwellers in the market for vacation property. For them this was the only means of converting ill-gotten cash, dubious windfalls, or modest inherited capital — earning next to nothing in state banks — into sound real estate. With their unused capital, city folks bought up the unused land of country folks. Jumping on the bandwagon, my aunts began to sell, too. I tried to convince them that when there is too much money floating around and real estate is the only sensible investment, the thing to do is buy, not sell. First they unloaded a vineyard for a pittance, and later, when my friend was already staying with them, they sold a big slice of the park around the house, in the face of my strenuous objections, of course. They gave me the money and told me to buy a new car. That's how they tried to rationalize an irrational move, but in fact what they were saying was Let everything go, let's lose everything that can still be lost. The new owners weren't much different. They mercilessly uprooted everything. Shrubs, rose gardens, orchards, hundred-year-old lindens and chestnut trees. They wanted to wipe the slate clean; they wanted something of their own. They found great pleasure, after so many years, in doing as they pleased with whatever was their own — even if what they did went against all reason. The long-lasting repudiation of private ownership wreaked havoc not only on state property but on newly repossessed private property as well. Sorry-looking, shoddily built vacation homes sprang up. A large field was turned into a modern campground. The temporary boom prompted people to hold down three different jobs and to break with all forms of traditional activity. The incidence of heart attacks among middle-aged men increased dramatically. And the pastor had to contend with a flock that stayed away from church even on holidays.

After recovering from their shared suicide attempt, the two friends turned into deadly enemies. The young man in the dark suit who would fight back his tears while singing psalms at the gravesite began to pay visits to the minister. First he went there just to chat, but then stayed for Bible class, where he met my friend, and after a time was attending services every Sunday. A group of village youths followed his example. A small circle formed this way, relentlessly hostile to another group, led by the now mute former friend and partner in suicide. This latter group was made up only of motorcyclists, all of them boys. Not exactly a gentle bunch. They drank heavily and got into fights, chased after girls in the campground, blasted their radios, harassed vacationers, broke into vacant summer cottages for wild parties. My friend, for the first time in his life, received holy communion from the minister.

I know very little of the circumstances of his religious conversion. But it was around this time that he befriended the meeker suicidal boy, who, after graduating from high school, was studying to be a mechanic. The two met every afternoon. The young man accompanied my friend on his long walks. If the latter's solitary walks had seemed odd to the villagers, the two of them strolling together in rain or in winter snow was even more baffling. The following year the young man applied to divinity school.

After the funeral I stayed on for almost two weeks. My aunts asked me to. I wasn't conducting an investigation, but I did talk to a number of people. I had no difficulty getting them to open up. After all, they've known me since I was a child. I couldn't be privy to their innermost thoughts, yet my hunch can't be far off the mark. I say this because the young man, who was very modest and shy, and who weighed his words carefully, maintained that, regarding the two of them, my friend had done nothing that would render him impure before God. However, I also found out something the young man had not told me. On one of their winter walks, on the riverbank, the motorcycle gang surprised them from behind. They rode around the two, but as the mute leader roared by, he grabbed my friend by the sleeve and just as quickly let go of him. My friend fell on the stones and bruised his face. As I recall, it must have been shortly after this incident that he said he was afraid one day he might be clubbed to death like a mad dog.

After his death, it took me a year and a half to muster up enough strength to sit down at his table. I found the individual chapters of his life story in separate folders. Most of my time was taken up with the careful study of his notes. From the general outline covering the entire manuscript I could determine the sequence of the chapters, but even after a thorough review of his notes, I haven't been able to decide in what direction he intended to steer his plot. However, I did find one additional, sketchy chapter, a fragment really, that I could not place anywhere. It doesn't appear in any of the repeatedly revised tables of contents. Yet he may have meant it to be the keystone of the whole story.