Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

And perhaps it was this deliberate readiness for falsity that made me different from other boys.

I was so much in tune with the source of her femininity, I had the impression I was just playing at being a boy, and my playacting might be exposed at any time.

As if there was no dividing line between my maleness and my femaleness.

It seemed to me it wasn't I who did this or that, I wasn't the one who acted, but only chose between two pre-prepared patterns of action inside me, one for boys and one for girls, and since I was a boy, I chose the male pattern, naturally, but could just as easily have chosen the other one: I could now ask her, for example, in a rough, no-nonsense voice, what in God's name was the matter with her, though I knew perfectly well what the matter was, and if she didn't answer I could demand even more forcefully that she stop the hysterics, tell her sarcastically that her idiotic bawling and hollering was a sheer waste of time, or I could start swearing and make as though her crying annoyed the hell out of me, which it didn't; or I could switch, take the part of a girl friend and tell her that if she still wanted to see her darling Kálmán, that disgusting fat slob— and that was what she wanted to do, wasn't it? — though I had no idea what she could see in him, his name was enough to make me puke, but if she still wanted to see him, she'd better mind her lovely face and not mess it up with all that disgusting blubbering, because then he wouldn't like her nearly as much as she would like him to; all the while Maja, trusting herself to the undulating waves in the opening movement of her crying, seemed to be waiting for just these harsh words, the precise content of the rudeness hardly mattering, just needing symbolic slaps to prove to herself that she was indeed weak, as I needed to swear to prove I was strong, and as soon as she got these bracing slaps, she released the pent-up energies of a well-practiced performance, turned on her side, lowered her arms, and, switching to deep-throated bawling, finally showed me her face, so contorted by tears and screaming that it deserved some real sympathy.

As if there was a degree of falsity where the false began to appear genuine.

"What do you all want from me? Why are you screaming? What do you want? Why? Everybody, everybody keeps tormenting me!" she screamed, her scream turning into a howl that sounded quite real, giving me a perversely wonderful pleasure since her howling had to do with both Kálmán and me: it was her wavering and vacillating between the two of us that was real, though for me it still remained a game I could observe from the outside; but now, rolling back on her stomach, she buried her head in her arms again and began her rise, this time without the slightest inhibition, into regions of higher, truer, more real sobbing; I stood over her, fascinated and mesmerized, as she manipulated, slowly, gradually, with finesse, what may have seemed like a game a moment ago into a passion of suffering, and though her body at first resisted, having no real cause for suffering, and refused to cooperate, now it did, and the clever maneuver worked: sunk deep in the soft bed, she was suffering, she was trembling and writhing, this was no longer just a game; yet still I made no move, still tried to preserve the calm air of a confident male, did not reach out toward her, didn't touch her or comfort her, though the sight truly shocked me, because she kept tearing and biting the blanket and, like an epileptic, jerking and tossing her head while her legs dangled lifelessly over the edge of the bed, and she seemed to be having an attack, trapped in the unrelieved tension between total self-revelation and total self-defense; and my fear, dread, and shocked immobility hiding behind benevolent indifference were more than justified, because I was the one who wanted this to happen, I had provoked it with my words, teased the secret madness out of her so that I could feel my power over her, vanquish, in her body, that other boy within me who was too tenderly and cruelly familiar to make me truly jealous — it was all for me, then, only for me, but that voice! the shrill sobs swelling into screams seemed to be issuing not from a single source but from two different voices, as if behind the pitiful bawling, broken by the rhythmic writhing of her body, there was another, shrieking voice that grew piercingly, unrelentingly, thinner and reedier; it was unbearable, and I felt everything about to crumble and slip out of my control.

And when I lay down next to her on the soft divan, leaning over her and cautiously touching her shoulder, I was not motivated by tenderness or empathy — if anything, she disgusted me, I hated her, and feared she might go on like this forever; and though I knew all crying must come to an end sometime, its effect on me was so powerful, the sight and sound so immediate, that my former experiences failed to reassure me and I thought, Yes, she will go on like this, she won't stop, ever, whatever had been hidden and now surfaced accidentally will become permanent, and Szidónia will walk in and I'll be found out, and the neighbors will come trooping across the garden, because everybody could hear her, and they'll call a doctor, and her mother and father will come, and she'll still be carrying on in her red dress, and they'll find out that this dreadful thing was all because of me.

"Maja dear."

"Your mother's cunt, that's what's dear!"

"But what is it? Come, don't cry like this. What happened? I'm here. You know I understand. Everything. We promised, remember? You've said it yourself."

"Fuck your promise!" she said, and she rolled back toward the wall, pulling away impetuously, and I clambered after her, just to make her stop.

"I'm not going away, I only said that to get you scared, but I'm not, I promise. I'll stay right here. Come on, Maja, Maja! But you can go. If you want to, you can go. You know I always let you do what you want. Why don't you answer?" I whispered in her ear and tried to hug her, flatten myself against her, hoping that the calm of my body would somehow pass into hers.

But where was my superior manly calm by then! I was also trembling, my voice also shaking, and I didn't suspect that with faultless concentration she sensed everything and that I couldn't have given her greater satisfaction than this.

At the same time my alarmed tenderness instead of calming her frenzy oddly intensified it, and only at this point could I peer behind her madness and ascertain that, as frightful and uncontrolled as the spectacle seemed, there was plenty of sober and calculating sense left in her; I may have drawn her head close to me with a gesture disguised as one of caring attention, planning slyly to put my hand over her mouth so that no more of that sound should come out, but it was no use, we saw through each other, and she could accurately detect the deceit hidden in my gesture; her body tensed up, she flung me off her and began kicking and pummeling me, biting my fingers hard, as she kept on wailing and shrieking; her face was contorted, almost as if it had become a boy's face, hard, angular, and dirty from tear stains; and if at that moment my quaking fright had not been replaced by a bit of cunning, if I had responded to her blows and kicks with blows and kicks of my own, chances are she would have beaten me thoroughly, for though we never fought in earnest, she was probably stronger than I and, in any case, wilder and more reckless.

I didn't defend myself, I didn't even notice when she stopped screaming, what's more, I didn't try to hold her down, and I restrained myself — our relationship never had a more honest moment — I let her claw and bite and kick and scratch and tried to respond to her every move with the gentlest of touches, soft caresses and kisses that bounced off her, given the unevenness of the fight, just as her clumsy, broad-stroked, girlish punches missed me; still, I was the girl and she the boy, in this situation at least, in the way she glowered and bared her teeth and tensed her neck muscles; in the sudden silence that followed, only her loud panting, the groans of the mattress, and the thud of punches could be heard.