Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

"Because you don't want to miss out on anything, right?"

"I'm not going to tell you, so don't get your hopes up."

"I'm not interested."

"So much the better."

"I'm an idiot for coming here."

There was a moment's silence, then very quietly and hesitantly she said, "Want me to tell you?"

"I couldn't care less. Keep it to yourself."

She stepped closer to me, very close, but the look in her eyes faltered, turned opaque, as though she'd been deeply touched by something, and that fleeting uncertainty made it clear that she didn't see what she was looking at, didn't see me, didn't see my neck, although she seemed to be looking at it, at the bite mark, but that's not what she saw; in her thoughts she was roaming that secret region which she wanted to hide from me and which I was so curious to see, to know, and above all, I wanted to feel Kálmán in her, feel her every move, hear the words she had whispered in his ear; then, hesitantly, as if trying to convince herself I was really there yet not fully realizing what she was doing, she pinched together the collar of my shirt, tugging at it absentmindedly, and lowering her voice to an ingratiating breathlike whisper, she drew me even closer.

"The only reason I am going to tell you is that we promised we wouldn't keep any secrets from each other."

And like someone who has managed to hurdle the first and most serious obstacle posed by her own sense of shame, she sighed, even smiled a little, using this smile to find her way back to my face and, looking straight into my eyes, continue what she had started: "He wrote to me, sent me a letter, Livia brought it over last night, that I should come, too, on account of the costumes, you see, and that we'd meet in the woods this afternoon."

Now I had the upper hand, because I knew that this wasn't the whole truth.

"You're lying."

"And you're completely off your rocker."

"You think I'm a fool and can't tell when you're lying to me?"

I grabbed her wrist and simply yanked her hand off me, she had no business pawing me like that, but I didn't let go of her completely, I just pushed her away — she shouldn't be the one, certainly not with her transparent little lies, to decide just how close we should get — and I made this move though her affection expressed by such proximity, letting me feel her breath on my mouth, and even her dangerous lying that might have deceived just about anybody else pleased me very much, yet it was as if I had realized that the body, seductive and warm though it may be, never wants to possess another without attaching some moral conditions to this possession, and that precisely for the sake of a perfect and total possession, so-called truth is more important than the warm body or its momentary closeness; this truth, of course, does not exist, yet one must strive for it, for this inner truth of the body, even if it turns out to be only provisional, ephemeral; and so I acted like a cool-headed manipulator, deliberately and ruthlessly interfering with the process in the interest of some dimly perceived goal, rejecting the body in the hope of regaining it more completely sometime in the uncertain future.

There is no harsher move than pushing someone away, deliberately, contemptuously: I lost her mouth, I gave up my attraction to her beauty in favor of a deeper attraction, but I did it in a shrewd, calculating way, so that she should be even more beautiful when I got her back, when she'd be all mine, because it was my rival, of course, the usurper, the stranger who was also my double, Kálmán, whom I had to evict from her mouth when I insisted that this perfectly formed mouth should not lie; therefore, I hoped to gain as much through the harshness of my gesture as I had to lose by it.

"Forget it, it's not that important," I said to her mercilessly.

"Then what d'you want from me?" she cried out, choking with anger, and snatched her wrist out of my hand.

"Nothing. You're ugly when you lie."

Of course lying did not change her looks — if anything, her wounded feelings made her more beautiful; again she shrugged her shoulders, as if she were not at all interested in how I happened to see her at any given moment, a nonchalant shrug that was in such stark contrast with what she must have been thinking that she had to lower her lids, chastely, her wide-open, always astonished eyes disappearing behind the lazy, thick lashes, leaving her mouth free to rule her face.

I couldn't have wished for anything more at this point than to watch her motionless mouth: perhaps what made this mouth so unusual was that the upper lip, a perfect twin of the lower one, arched straight toward the little groove running down from the nose to the edge of the lips, without the two usual peaks breaking its rise or the tiny hollows at the mouth's edge interrupting its downward slope; the symmetrical pair of lips formed a perfect oval.

A mouth ready to whistle, sing hauntingly, or chatter endlessly, and full cheeks framed by a mass of springy brown curls all added to her cheerful, carefree, and unself-conscious demeanor; she turned around and without relaxing her narrow shoulders still raised in a shrug headed for the door, but then unexpectedly changed course and, instead of walking out, threw herself on the bed.

It wasn't a real bed but a kind of divan that doubled as a bed where during the day a heavy Persian throw rug covered the bedclothes; it was soft and warm, her motionless body fairly sank in it, clad in the maroon, flower-patterned dress she had filched for the afternoon from her mother's closet, which was in fact a tiny sunlit room with built-in white floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, all filled with pleasant-smelling dresses, one of our favorite places for rummaging and exploration; her bare legs, dangling helplessly from the divan, almost glowed in this stuffy dim room, and what made the sight even more inviting was that her skirt rode up to her thighs, and as she lay there, hiding her head in the protective embrace of her arms, she began to cry, making her shoulders, back, and even gently curving backside shake and quiver.

Her tears didn't move me much, I was familiar with every possible variant of these crying sessions: the simple whimpers, the even, inconsolable sniffling, and the furiously rising huge outbursts that she invariably carried to unbearably ugly, sloppy, snotty crescendos of bawling, followed by slow, talkative denouements, quiet shivers, stifled tremors of exhaustion that made her body spongy-soft and relaxed until, without noticeable transition, she found her way back to her usual self, which was, if possible, even stronger and more confident — and fully satisfied.

This familiarity with her crying styles didn't mean of course that I could deny her my sympathy, for I knew she was capable of crying even when I wasn't looking; she had given detailed accounts of her solitary crying sessions often enough, lacing them with a healthy dose of self-mockery, including the candidly revealing admission that crying, an unabashed and self-indulgent flaunting of pain, was no small pleasure, and what's more, she liked to cry in Livia's company, too, finding her a similarly sympathetic, gentle, somewhat more objective provider of solace than I; still, something about her crying was directed only at me, some playful, exaggerated quality made to order, as it were, a theatricality prompted by my presence; her cries were part and parcel of our mutual dishonesty, an important element in the elaborate system of lies and pretenses that nevertheless had to be enacted with the utmost care and conviction, the very fraudulent games which we played in the guise of total honesty and openness; it was as if with these cries she was trying out, in front of me and for me, the part of the weak, helpless, easily injured, refined woman she would one day become, although in reality she was cold and hard, calculatingly cruel and shrewd, and while in beauty no match for Hédi, she acted so very tough and aggressive, so stubbornly possessive of everything and everyone, that she seemed to dominate us even more than Hédi did with her beauty, although that, too, was a charade, as she must have known I knew; she was rehearsing a role, and those flounced and frilly dresses and silky fabrics for which we both had developed a deep liking were the appropriately feminine, external supports for the role, and stealing them added a further element of excitement to her clandestine acts of transformation, because she wanted to be exactly like her mother; I started toward the divan with the most confident steps, for in my assigned role I had to be strong, calm, understanding, a trifle brutal even, in short, absolutely masculine, a role promising so many playful pleasures that, however false it was, I had no problem assuming it.