Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

French death, for instance, was a phrase that meant absolutely nothing, and the gesture, the way I drew his face closer and held his chin in my hands, barely touching the skin of his face with my fingertips, was nothing more than an unconscious means to an unclear end; neither of us could go on talking anymore; earlier, while he was talking, although he held my gaze captive as if in my eyes he had found the only secure point to which he could anchor himself, it didn't seem that he was looking only at me, that I was the only subject of his scrutiny; gazing at me like this allowed him to retreat into himself, to regions where he would not venture alone; but now, his retreat enabled me to enter this otherwise forbidden territory, and the more his gaze became fixed in mine and I became a subject of his gaze, the farther he could push himself away from me — I had to be on the alert — and the farther I could retreat along with him; and because I was with him, he could handle his real subject with even cooler, more cerebral, and elegantly meandering sentences, adorned with an even softer smile; and his real subject was his thoughts, his memories; let's call it by its name: the solitude caused by the sheer existence of the body, the sensation of being alive in a space felt to be dead! and then this smiling coldness removed him so completely from the story of his body that he could see its little episodes almost with my eyes — hence his gratitude, perhaps, for being able to sense, if only in a flash, how dead space might perceive a living form, to sense that even I could become one with that alien outside world; hence the wetness in his eyes, a wetness that produced no tears to roll down his cheeks but only blurred his image of me and obscured that other, more distant sight he beheld; his embarrassment over this physical change pulled him back from that interior landscape; the thing he'd fixed his eyes on turned back into a person, me; to match the speed of his return, I had to back out of his eyes just as quickly, but scared of losing what I had gained, I pressed his knee between my knees and bent forward slightly to touch his face, while he, pressing my knee between his, also bent forward to touch my face.

To touch.

Just to touch, and to feel.

Sometimes we listened to music, or he would read something to me out loud, or I would recite Hungarian poetry to him; I wanted him to feel, to understand the poems, was eager to prove that there was such a language, a language in which I could also express myself reasonably well; he was amused, chuckling occasionally, even letting his mouth drop open like a child when shown a new toy; I was light and carefree; dressed or naked, we fell asleep in each other's arms on the divan in the dim hallway, while outside it darkened and was evening again, another winter evening; candles had to be lit, the curtain drawn, so we could sit there again, facing each other, well into the night, sometimes into early morning, when the room had cooled off; the clock on the wall ticked away peacefully, the candles smoked as they guttered, and we drank heavy Bulgarian red wine out of dainty crystal glasses; hours turned into days, days into weeks, carrying us almost imperceptibly from autumn into winter, when each morning our poplar tree, like its own laced skeleton, drifted into ever softer mists; I would find giving an account of this time as difficult as it would be to answer the question of what right I have to include his feelings in this recollection of a shared past, the feelings of a stranger; on what grounds can I claim that this or that happened to us, when I feel equipped to talk only about myself, to describe with reasonable accuracy only the things that happened to me? there's no answer to the question, or maybe the only answer is that one winter evening I realized just how much we loved each other, if love means the fervor and depth of mutual attachment; yes, that may be the answer, even if just a few weeks or at most a month later we noticed that something had ominously changed in us, in him as well as in me, and kept changing, ever more threateningly, until it reached a point where I had to close my eyes so as not to see him like this and hope that when I opened them again all the disconcerting hints would have vanished, and his face, and his hand in my hand, would be the same as before — at the moment I seemed to be clutching the stump of my own hand — and his smile would be the same, too, because nothing had changed, nothing could have changed; I don't remember exactly when, calendar time meant nothing to us then, but it must have been at the end of November or the beginning of December, my only point of reference is Thea's opening, for which Melchior joined me, though by then they were no longer on speaking terms, so in all probability it was shortly before then, at the height of her pre-opening-night frenzy and panic, that she came up there one evening, hoping to find Melchior alone — I remember supporting her in that hope — but she found only me, and that meeting also made things different, although on the surface nothing had changed; he and I went on sitting in our chairs, just as we had done before, the candles were burning the same way, and it was as quiet as before; the room hadn't changed, the phone didn't ring, neither did the doorbell, nobody wanted anything from us and we didn't want anything from anybody; it was almost like sitting in a gallery above the ruins of a deserted and depopulated European city, with not much hope of being liberated, and though there may have been others out there sitting in similar rooms, it was unlikely we would ever hook up with them; our solitary togetherness, made exciting earlier by our having to hide and pretend, turned unpleasant now, I don't know why; I realized, of course, that it was on my account that he had driven everyone away, locked us in, unplugged the telephone, and would not answer the doorbell, yet I couldn't help reproaching him for it, not openly of course, because everything he did he did for me; I tried to block out these thoughts by closing my eyes, but it didn't help; what disturbed me most was the thought that we'd grown so very close, I just had to back off, loosen the bond; it was as if I had just become aware of our closeness and suddenly found it revolting, unbearable; I had to find some unfamiliar ground, something I could not have known before, and neither could he, something that could in no way be his, something unshared; and when I opened my eyes again his face struck me as being a little more distant and indifferent, a stranger's face, and the discovery was both pleasant and painful, because any strange face can raise in us the hope of recognition or the possibility of getting to know it better, but this face was vacant and boring, holding out no hope at all, I'd had my fill of it; I might have gotten to know it these past few weeks, but the knowledge was insignificant, like so much else I'd picked up, because it seemed that no amount of knowledge, not even dangerous knowledge, helped me to find a safe haven within myself, a foothold of devotion and permanence; so it was a mere adventure, then, an unprofitable one, for in the end he remained a stranger to me, as I remained a stranger to him, and I didn't understand how I could have thought him beautiful when he was ugly, no, not even ugly, only boring, a man, one I couldn't possibly have anything to do with — a man.

I hated myself, I found myself disgusting.

And he may have had similar thoughts, or sensed what I'd been thinking, because he withdrew his hand — at last I was free of that horrible stump — stood up, kicked the armchair aside, and turned on the TV.

This was so deliberately rude, I let it go, I didn't say a word.

Then I got up, too, kicked the chair out of the way, and walked into the hallway.

Almost at random I picked a book off the shelf and, making myself believe I was really interested in it, stretched out on the soft dark rug and began to read.