Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

"We'll wait for you to change, okay," I said quietly, "and then we can still talk about tonight, but hurry up."

She was still looking at me: the wrinkles of her smile, the furrows around her eyes, the closely meshed curved lines that seemed to relieve the darker, deeper grooves of bitterness and suffering around her mouth were still meant for me, but as she withdrew her arm from mine, slowly, making sure the transition was appropriately considerate, therefore beautiful, a flicker in her eyes already indicated that she wouldn't have time to reward my graciousness; as soon as she got what she wanted she no longer felt she needed to pay attention to it, she was already gone; and though she did want to hurry, it wasn't because I had asked her to, or because she had to change, but because there was something else she had to do.

"I hope you don't mind, but I won't be going with you, count me out this time," Frau Kühnert said, and not even her exemplary self-discipline could hide the hurt and reproach in her voice; by this time Thea had torn herself away from me and was running down the long corridor, only to disappear in Hübchen's dressing room, but she yelled back, "I've no time for you now!"

Frau Kühnert, as if she had just heard a terribly funny joke, burst into an openmouthed laugh, what else could she do? there is a level of rudeness and insolence to which we cannot respond with hurt or indignation, because we sense that it is the manifestation of the most profound affection and, canceling out our other intentions, actually makes us happy; she stepped closer to me, and as if searching for her friend's just vanished presence, she seized my arm impulsively, unthinkingly; as soon as she became conscious of it, her ringing laugh collapsed into an embarrassed grin, and the grin, without the tact or subtlety of a smooth transition, hardened into a groundless gloom.

When I was looking not at Thea's face but at anyone else's, I found every face, including my own, coarse and vulgar, their expressions hopelessly awkward, conveying feelings crudely and obviously; at this moment, for instance, I would have loved to withdraw my arm from Frau Kühnert's hand, and she would have liked to retract her sudden gesture, but we remained in the void left behind by Thea — and didn't know what to do with it. In her confusion, clearly heightened by my own reluctant response, Frau Kühnert addressed me with a crude and verbose openness that was not only unwarranted but embarrassed us so much as almost to unite us, though it was a union neither of us desired.

"Please don't go with her," she said, or rather shouted, squeezing my arm, "I'm asking you not to interfere in this."

"In what?" I asked with a silly grin.

"You don't know this place well enough, and it's just as well, you don't have to know it, but I get the feeling sometimes, and please don't take this personally, I get the feeling that you don't always understand what we're saying, and that's why you might think she was, I don't know, crazy, but please understand that this can't be explained, because it's madness, believe me, the whole thing is madness! I always try to hold her back, I do what I can, but sometimes I must also give in to her, otherwise she couldn't go on playing the whore, because that's what it's all about, don't you see? if she couldn't do it, she would really go crazy, so please, I beg of you, don't take advantage of your position; if not you, it would be somebody else, she'd be doing it for somebody else, can't you hear them in there?"

We could indeed hear wild noises from Hübchen's dressing room, his screams and Thea's shrieks, objects falling over and crashing, skittish giggles, ripples of slightly forced laughter; then the door slammed shut, and for a moment it seemed the little room discreetly hushed up the sound of their secret doings, but then it flew open again; although I understood perfectly well what Frau Kühnert was talking about, the role she offered me suited me fine; after all, is there any event that can't be understood even better, any detail that doesn't contain potentially more significant, further details? if I went on playing the fool, I might just stumble on new details, discover hitherto unfamiliar connections — or so I hoped.

"I'm very sorry, but I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," I said, stretching my innocent grin to idiotic proportions and pretending to be a little indignant — offended, too, of course; the strategy worked, because my befuddlement, which always flatters my interlocutors, pushed her in the direction she had meant to go anyway; she felt she could speak freely now, since she was talking to an idiot, and, moreover, she could also release all the anger and frustration that had built up during that telephone conversation: "You don't understand, you just don't understand," she whispered impatiently, her sidelong glances taking in the bustle around us, "that's exactly what I mean, you couldn't possibly understand, and you shouldn't, because I don't want you to, because it's private, but if you really want to know, she is passionately, desperately in love — do you know what that is? have you ever been? — well, she's desperately in love, no, she thinks she is, she's made herself believe she's desperately in love with that boy" — she jerked her head angrily in the direction of the telephone—"and it's not enough that he's twenty years younger, he's even gay, yet she got it into her head that she'll seduce him, because she never loved anyone so much, not like this, I mean she could go to bed with the idiot in that room, with anyone, with you, but she wants him, don't you see? wants him because she can't have him, so there, now you can understand, and I'd really like you to leave right now, please don't be offended, just leave, because then maybe I can still hold her back, I can't bear to see her being humiliated, I just can't, can you understand?"

There was something false in this outburst, for she obviously enjoyed letting me in on something she should have kept and even wanted to keep quiet about, yet her passion was so deep-felt, so genuine, I couldn't ignore it; her abnormally large eyes were bulging at me from behind her glasses, which slid halfway down her nose: the upper rim of her glasses seemed to be cutting in half the watery-blue bloodshot eyes, and the lower half of the eyeballs became frightfully magnified and distorted under the thick lenses; this was the passion of goodness, love, and concern, expressed openly and unambiguously, not to be shaken even by the realization that the expression of goodness also needed a measure of falseness. Frau Kühnert needed, and wanted, to enjoy the knowledge that she was the only one of Thea's friends who was not patently selfish and greedy, who was not prompted by ignoble motives, who accepted her unconditionally for what she was, who truly understood her, and the total understanding of another person, an initiation into her secrets, was, after all, the only real satisfaction one could and should receive in return for selfless giving and attention; her hand, which a moment ago was holding me fast, was now steering me, pushing me forward, and I obediently started walking toward the exit, but at the same moment the two of them were suddenly in the corridor again, flushed and out of breath, still caught up in their pleasurable roughhousing, still panting; with his hand on his crotch, Hübchen was trying to back away while Thea, with a wet towel in her hand, assumed a fencer's posture, and lashing out with the towel, she pursued the little idiot — as they called him among themselves — letting the towel sting whenever it hit his naked body; but when she sensed, like a flash seen only from the corner of her eye, in which direction I was headed, she produced one of her most extraordinary transitions, dropped the towel, and yelled after me, "Where do you think you're going?" and letting her victim get away, she dashed after me.