Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

One day I noticed a pin on my desk, an ordinary pin; I had no idea how it got there, but there it was, at the bottom of the deep corridor formed by my scattered books and notebooks, gleaming just bright enough to be noticed on the brown wood; I couldn't really say why then I kept my eye on it for days or why I was so careful not to move it while turning pages in my books or while reading, writing, or just aimlessly shuffling my things, packing and unpacking my schoolbag; I may have also thought that it would disappear as unexpectedly as it had appeared, but no, it would be there again the next day; that afternoon the lamp with the red shade was turned on, though it wasn't quite dark yet, she was standing in the shadows and, looking out from the light cast by the lamp, I more or less sensed her presence in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon, and she, blinded by the light and still groggy from sleep, could not have seen me very clearly; a few more soft tapping sounds were heard from the kitchen and then the silence was complete; I knew the silence would last for another half hour, so the game we had both been waiting for could begin, and we could start it with anything at all; the pin was still on my desk — all I had to do was to make the first move and the rest would follow by itself — so with my fingernails I picked up the pin by its head; I simply wanted to show it to her, to have her see it; she began to smile, most likely getting ready to laugh her most intimate laugh, reluctantly at first, because she was afraid of me and had to overcome this fear each time anew, and I was also afraid of her; but we didn't have much time and I knew I couldn't get out of it anymore, she wouldn't let me; if she didn't make the first move, I would, and if I didn't, then she would; in this we were at each other's mercy.

Later, discovering a true, deep, and therefore not easily explained attraction, I amassed a respectable collection of these pins, carefully storing them away, and not just those that turned up accidentally; after a while I began to look for them, track them down, hunt for them; strangely enough, once it became an obsession, I kept finding them everywhere, which was strange, since I'd never remembered them turning up before so conspicuously and persistently; now I'd come across them in the most unlikely places: in pillows, in cracks, in coat linings, on the street, in the upholstered armrest of an easy chair — with a flash and a prick, they would announce their presence; I began to classify them, having discovered the many different kinds, and as a test I would prick my finger and let it bleed a little; there were all sorts of pins: long and short, with round heads or flat, with heads of colored pearl; rusty pins, stainless-steel pins, straight pins and spear-shaped pins — and they all pricked differently; but that afternoon I had only that plain, long, round-headed one that had landed so mysteriously on my desk that I even had asked my father about it when he happened to stop in my room one evening, and he looked amazed, even baffled, as he bent over, not comprehending what I was showing him; pushing back his straight blond hair, which kept falling in his eyes, his gesture unconscious yet annoyed, he told me gruffly not to bother him with my silly games; this pin, then, the original piece of what later became my collection, I was just showing to her, with no special intention, as if I had to show it to everyone; I simply held it up to the light, and then my little sister took the crucial first step and approached the pin, and that made me move, though still with no specific purpose; I slid off my chair and slipped under the desk.

I may be trembling even more now, as this confession compels me to evoke a series of moves long completed and irrevocably ingrained in me.

Fear is primordial, immeasurable, and seems real only when put into words; it's what we hope is ephemeral but what proves to be permanently alive.

I was trembling quietly then, but not out of fear, and that makes all the difference — not this dark, faltering feeling I have now, but a simple excitement, light, clear, and pure, the kind we experience when placing our limbs beyond the influence of our will, letting insidious desires have free play; for a long while nothing happened; it was warm and dark under the desk, a little like sitting in an overturned cardboard box whose open end, like a mouth, was waiting for her arrival, waiting to swallow her up.

I was conscious of the smell of the wood, that raw smell furniture never loses completely, reminding one of origins, giving one a sense of security, protection, and permanence; I could even smell the characteristic dusty-paper smell of the prosecutor's office (my desk was a superannuated government issue which Father had brought home for me one day); she wasn't moving, but I knew she would come, because after the first move there was always a tension that demanded release and completion — that was our game; then I heard her heavy, clumsy footsteps, she was walking as if she not only had to bear the weight of her body but had to keep moving it forward.

I was sitting like a spider under the farthest corner of my crate-like desk, pinching the head of the pin between my nails, pointing its tiny tip in her direction, when her long white nightshirt appeared, she dropped to her knees, and on her face there was the broadest of grins; I can say that at that moment I was free of all emotion, though it might be argued that the opposite was true, that the moment distilled all my possible emotions; she began to crawl so fast toward me that I thought she wanted to pounce on me, but after a few hasty moves her nightshirt caught under her knees and wouldn't let her go on; suddenly losing her balance, she bumped her forehead into the edge of the desk and fell forward, her head hitting the floor with a thud; I did not stir; according to the secret rules of cruelty she had to reach me unaided.

Her resourcefulness was as unpredictable as her memory; she straightened out, grinned even more broadly and eagerly, if that was possible, as if nothing had happened at all, and with a very natural movement pulled her nightshirt from under her knees, quite casually; I said very natural movement, because this time she found a natural connection between the nightshirt and her fall, while in other, much simpler and more transparent situations, she had not made the connections — for example, wanting to have some fruit, she could quite easily climb up a tree but couldn't come down; she would sit on a swaying branch until somebody noticed her, hold on tight and whimper quietly, though it was no more difficult to come down than to climb up — at times she crept so high that we had to use a ladder to get her down; perhaps only joy, the desire for pleasure, made her resourceful, and as soon as she had satisfied her desire, the object of which may have been a red cherry, a shimmering peach, or even myself, her memory went dark, her resourcefulness expired, and she returned to a world in which objects existed in isolation: a chair was a chair only if someone sat on it, a table was a table only if her plate was placed on it; for her there was no connection between the events that happened around her, which simply happened if they happened, and at most may have blended into one another; it was her impossibly exaggerated grin and her eyes widening into unblinking immobility that suggested a desire to impose some order; now on her bare knees she was creeping closer and closer until she was completely under the desk, where she felt protected, where no one could find out what we were up to; in my own way, I must have been just as blinded by desires as she; she began to pant excitedly and I was breathing louder, too; my hearing sharpened by the straining senses: I could hear, like some strange music, the separate yet harmonious rhythms of our breathing, and if I hadn't raised my hand to point the pin straight at her eyes — her eyeball simply attracted the tip of the pin— she probably would have flung herself on me, for she liked to wrestle, and she didn't shrink back now, her grin didn't fade, either, but remained as it was; hoping for some resolution, she paused for a moment, catching her breath.