Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

My work is done. The only thing left for me to do is to append to the text this last fragment.

Opening night at last.

Snow begins to fall in the afternoon, a soft, thick, slow snow, with only an occasional gust of wind buffeting and stirring up the big moist flakes.

It stuck to the rooftops, covered the grass in the parks, on the roadways and sidewalks.

Hurrying feet and rushing tires soon soiled it with black trails and tracks.

This white snow came much too early; true, our poplar had lost the last dry leaves of its crown, but the foliage of the plane trees on Wörther Platz was still green.

While outside this early snow keeps nicely coming down, in the den one is lying on the narrow sofa, the other is systematically decimating his extensive record collection; squatting in front of the cabinet, he takes every record out of its jacket and, according to some unknown criteria, breaks over his knee the ones he doesn't like.

He didn't answer any of my questions, and I didn't answer any of his.

And even later there was no screaming, cursing, and crying from which to escape with a quick, dramatic, tearfully tender embrace; what there was was irritable bickering, fitful mutterings, quiet indignation, all those closely watched opportunities for bloodless scrapes and bruises, as if by causing each other some deceptively minor pain, they could avoid the greater ones.

So many excuses and pretexts, and not a single word about the things that truly irritated and troubled us both, and made us feel this was too much, more than enough, the very limit.

A few hours later, when they finally left for the theater, it was clear the snow had won: the city had turned all white; snow sat on the bare branches, slowly covered up all the dirty tracks and trails, and put a glistening white cap on the green domes of the plane trees now glowing in the light of streetlamps; all sounds were muffled in the white softness.

That's how blood, pulsing quietly through the eardrum, reports good news.

I thought I was lying to him; I still didn't know then that he was also lying to me.

It wasn't even deliberate lying but rather a way of mutually and systematically keeping quiet about certain things, which is something that can grow, spread, and stifle any intelligent exchange.

He was busy, he said, he was waiting for a telephone call, he'd see the play another time, but I should go, he said, he wanted to be alone at last.

The phone call was true, he was waiting for somebody to call, but I didn't understand what it was he had to be so secretive about.

Everyone is familiar with the kind of reconciliation that, instead of bringing peace, prolongs hostilities; that's how they are walking, sometime later, in the snow, side by side in their warm coats, with their collars turned up, their hands deep in their coat pockets, just walking, seemingly at ease, stepping softly in the wet snow sloshing under their feet.

This semblance of smiling calm is forced on them by their own self-esteem, but their strenuous, defensive self-control is making them very tense, and this tension is the only thing they have in common now, it's their only bond, and it cannot be broken, if only because neither of them is willing to name the real cause of his unease.

They are waiting for the underground at the Senefelderplatz station, and there something very strange happens.

About ten days were left before I was supposed to leave for home, and we never again mentioned my plans to come back here.

The station was empty, and one should also know that these echoing, drafty, bleak stations, built around the turn of the century and therefore having a role in the imagined story as well, were very economically lit, which is to say, they were almost completely dark.

A good distance from them, on the opposite side of the platform, one other passenger was waiting, a lean, shivering figure.

A grubby-looking, self-absorbed boy, attracting attention only because the way he held his shadow-thin yet sharply outlined body showed how cold he was; he hunched up his shoulders, pulled in his neck, pressed his arms to his trunk, and tried to warm his hands by holding them flat against his thighs; he seemed to be standing on tiptoe to keep his feet from touching the cold stone floor; a burning cigarette was dangling from his lips, its occasional red glow the only reassuring sign in all that dimness.

The unlighted, vanishing subway tunnel remained silent and empty for a long time; no train, not even a rumble to hint at its coming, and for me every minute counted; if I wanted to describe this performance, including the details of the entire production process, I couldn't very well miss those very moments in which all that preparation was to culminate.

And then the boy with the cigarette dangling from his mouth started walking toward us.

Or, I should say, heading straight for Melchior.

First I thought they must know each other, though considering the boy's appearance, that was not very likely.

I felt uneasy.

His feet made no sound; he moved with a soft bounce, thrusting his body up in the air with each step, as if in moving forward he also had to move upward as well, and the unpleasant impression he created may have had something to do with the way he wouldn't let the weight of his body drop all the way to his heels; he wore a pair of tattered, slipperlike shoes and no socks; the white of his ankles flashed with each bouncing step.

Socially conscious empathy is invariably bundled up in a nice warm coat.

His pants were tight, rather short, well-worn, and ripped around the knees; his synthetic red jacket was stiff, came barely down to his waist, and made rattling noises, as if frozen, with his every move.

Until now he had been standing with his back to the boy; he reacted to this cold rattling sound, amplified in the vast space of the station.

With a single, elegantly indifferent movement of his shoulders he turns toward the boy; but as he is turning, the boy stops and, with an inexplicably hostile and deranged look, seems ready to pounce on him.

This may be the place to say something about city parks at night; about the shadows under the trees where it's blacker than black, and where strangers signal their hunger for a lustful touch with the intermittent red glow of their cigarettes.

In becoming an animal you cannot sink deeper into yourself than that.

It was hard to decide what he was looking at, maybe at Melchior's neck.

He wasn't drunk.

It seemed as if a tiny goatee blackened his chin, but a closer look revealed that this black spot wasn't facial hair at all but the chin itself, and that some horrible skin disease or blemish covered that entire area; or perhaps it was a black-and-blue mark, the traces of a well-aimed punch or a sudden fall.

Melchior didn't turn pale.

His features, reflecting a total lack of interest in the world around him, merely quivered as he shifted into an entirely different state of mind, yet I did see this as a sudden paleness.

And this subtle shift in his expression told me he didn't know the boy, yet he seemed to discover something very important in him, something so important that realizing it, and the long-dormant joy that came with the realization, terrified him; it was like an irresistible inducement, an idea that could save him; but he didn't want to betray his excitement, and so he remained very controlled.

How can you get deep enough into your memories so that you won't need to remember anything anymore?

But then he did betray himself, because he gave me a quick, cold, withering look that said I was out of my depth, as if I had committed some grave offense, as if I had offended him personally; in a quiet and deep voice, hardly moving his lips, trying in fact to conceal with his mouth the meaning of his words from the boy's wide-eyed stare, he said, Get lost.