Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

For this look, I realized later when I had time to reflect on it, called attention to itself precisely because it didn't seem the result of some childish whim, which became clear to me when, in response to my uncomprehending, questioning glance, her face did not dissolve into a defensive or apologetic smile but remained motionless, her gaze unwavering, with nothing awkwardly solemn about it either, simply serious, and I asked myself, Why is that dumb girl giving me the eye? and my own eyes must have asked the same question, as I thought of the silly line we used to blurt out in similarly ambiguous situations, as a form of defense against embarrassment—"Just keep lookin' if you so smart, come on closer 'n' smell my fart" — and she didn't respond to this either, didn't change, even though my grin must have indicated what I was thinking about, and I almost laughed out loud; in the end, I did notice a change, but in myself, because I couldn't turn away and in fact also became serious, as if, from the slippery slopes of my earlier fear and anxiety and of my lopsided grin, I now had to plunge into an infinitely soft body of gray water where nothing palpably familiar remained except this extraordinarily open gaze, seeking no effect, therefore most effective, meaning to achieve nothing, with no recognizable purpose or wish to communicate, using the eye simply and naturally for what it was meant for — to see, to look — reducing the organ to its basic biological function, a nearly uninvolved possessor of objects in its sight; and this was so unusual yet so similar to everything I had vainly longed for in my relation to Krisztián, because he always found ways to evade me, to stay aloof — oh, how familiar it all seemed — yet I had to be suspicious of her, because the open look of natural possession is separated by only a thin line from the other kind of look that appears when, concentrating on what is happening within us, we do not notice what our eyes are looking at and, the inner occurrence seeming more important, the lens itself cannot decide whether to focus on the inner or outer subject and the face we involuntarily present to the person we are observing becomes impassive and inert; but no, I could detect not a single trace of this self-absorbed blankness; her face remained discreetly closed and inaccessible, but the look in her eyes was like an animal's! no mistake, she was looking at me, nobody else, she saw me, her attention was directed at no one but me.

I saw her through heads and shoulders, standing in the first row, being one of the shortest pupils, while I, not much taller, was in the third row; the distance between us was considerable because boys and girls were separated in the gym, so not only did her gaze have to traverse the wide no-man's-land which, in compliance with school regulations, divided the sexes and where on other occasions the beribboned flag of our Young Pioneer troop was raised with solemn ceremony and the accompaniment of annoying loud drumrolls, but she also had to twist her head and look backward to see me, yet she seemed to be standing very close to me, right in front of me; I don't know how long it took for all my suspicions to dissipate, but after a while her closeness was almost palpable; she was practically inside me, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the wintry pallor of her brown skin, the almost sickly dark circles around her eyes where the veins were so prominent that the brown of her skin seemed to fade into blue; the tiny mouth under the pointed narrow nose, the impertinent little bulges of her upper lip, and her forehead that later was to have a special fascination for me; I grew to love its clear, even brown hue in summer, its delicate spots in winter, when the bone structure appeared in faint outline, softening the shadows in the delicate hollow of her temples and making her hair, pulled back with white clips, even darker, her wild, thick, strong hair, like her eyebrows, arching delicately but asymmetrically, almost comically, above her eyes; that's how she looked then, or rather, that's how I saw her, that's what I saw of her, that and her neck as it rose out of the open collar of her white blouse, the muscles hardening with almost boyish toughness as she turned around, keeping her head low; only later did I begin to notice her body; her eyes were what was important now, and perhaps their immediate setting — her face, but that, too, was soon lost, to be replaced by a warm, hazy sensation, not unlike fainting, a mere feeling, a state of being, a certainty that at this moment she and I were experiencing the same feeling, sharing an identical, most intense state of being which never became conscious and in which there were no thoughts, glances, or bodies but all these fading into blurred outlines and replaced by something that cannot be talked about.

Her eyes were in my eyes, my face penetrated hers, and my neck felt her neck and was keenly aware of the danger, the risk she took by turning around to me, and as if blinking might interrupt the continuity of our shared gaze, we seemed not to have closed our eyes, not even once, and our gaze seemed endless.

We are trying to stare each other down, I thought then, but today, delving into my memories, I find this interpretation derisory; our inner monologues are but feeble rationalizations, deceptions, or, at best, mistakes compared to the dialogues conducted by eyes and faces; of course we weren't trying to stare each other down.

Yet we shouldn't be surprised if strong emotions demand immediate verbal expression, since the mechanism that operates on early conditioning, what we call personality, is compelled to defend itself most vigorously precisely when in its devotion to another it loses its conditioned habits.

I simply didn't know what to make of it all.

I couldn't comprehend what had happened, was happening, or was yet to happen to me, and I didn't know where it would lead us, this powerful, uncontrollable, ultimately unfounded happiness, the ease with which our gaze possessed our emotions, and I began to be afraid again — of her, and of Prém, who might choose this moment, now that I'd found some security with her, to turn around and quick as lightning hit me across the mouth; if he did that so that she saw it, I'd have to hit him back, and that, I felt, given the likely complications, should be avoided at all cost; and I didn't understand why she did this here, why now? since plenty of opportunities for this, or something like this, arose at other times and in other places — it was not, after all, some inexplicable miracle that brought her face so close to mine, and it would be a deceptive exaggeration to claim it was sheer force of emotion that shortened the physical distance between us; no, I had known her well enough to sense her closeness from afar, even with the heads and shoulders between us; this wasn't the first time I'd seen her — although at this moment she really did seem like a stranger we might pick out of a huge crowd simply because we felt lost and in some undefinable way this person struck us as friendly and familiar, as though we'd met and even talked to each other before — so I did know her, and her body, her face, her gestures were all familiar to me, I just wasn't sufficiently conscious of this knowledge or that it might be important to me; I've no idea why, I just hadn't noticed her, though I should have; for six years we'd been attending the same classes in the same school. My senses no doubt had registered her every feature, but impassively, with no emotional resonance; come to think of it, there was no aspect of her quietly modest being that could have been unfamiliar, since during all those years of such close proximity we had to communicate on many levels, and quite intimately, too, because she was on confidential terms with two girls, Hédi Szán and Maja Prihoda, with whom I had an unusual and for me typical relationship — ambiguous but very warm, less than love but far more than friendship; she was rather like a lady-in-waiting to them, a quiet shadow cast on their beauty, a mediator between two rivals, and, in their meaner moments, their maid and servant, a position which, with the dignity of her innate wisdom and sense of justice, she did not seem to resent, being as neutral then as she was whenever the two, with exaggerated solicitude, chose to treat and love her as an equal.