Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

At first the patterns of the rug distracted me, and the archaic style of the book was no small obstacle either, but then I got into it, reading that the only true temple was the temple of the human body, that nothing was more sacred and sublime than the human form; it was nice to stumble on these words on that friendly, warm rug, to read that when we bow down to man, we pay tribute to revelation in flesh; to touch the human body is to touch heaven.

I tried to understand the concept, inappropriate though it seemed at this moment, and not pay attention to some woman climbing out a window, clutching at the creeping ivy, plaster falling, she screams and leaps; then it seemed that everything would blow over, only one thing bothered me still, that I'd given the armchair such an angry kick; ambulance screeching to a halt, the clattering of instruments, we're in an operating room; it seemed like such an unimportant thing, plain silly, yet I couldn't help feeling I'd been rude; I should have seen what I was doing, kicking the armchair like that, and it wasn't even my chair; sounds of funereal music, the woman must have died, she's probably being buried; I shouldn't have done it, I might have damaged the thing; one shouldn't kick someone else's chair, even if the human body is a sublime temple; he could kick the armchair because it's his; I shouldn't have, yet I did and felt good about it.

Later I asked him in a rather loud voice if I should leave.

Without turning his head, he said I should do as I saw fit.

I asked him if he held anything against me, because I wouldn't want that.

He could ask me the same thing.

I emphasized I held nothing against him.

He just wanted to watch this movie now.

This particular movie?

Yes.

Then he should go ahead and watch it.

That's exactly what he was doing.

The oddest part of all this was that we couldn't possibly have avoided the real issues more objectively; we were more explicitly truthful than if we had said what was on our minds; more precisely, our lies and subtle evasions defined the situation more honestly than emotions might have, for at the moment our emotions were too violent to be true.

I couldn't go away and he couldn't hold me back.

And this bare fact, emerging from the background of his words, proved to be a stronger bond than a pact sealed in blood.

But because of our lies, something, or the emanation of something, perhaps a compelling force that had been there before, moving between us with the naturalness of instincts, now seemed to have abated; it didn't disappear completely, only stopped; at any rate, something was no longer there; and in this absence I sensed what I had felt before.

And I knew that he sensed this, too.

There it was, still flickering like the bluish television screen, almost tangibly filling the space between the room and the hallway, maybe we could still reach it or stop it for good, but it was precisely its vibrating immobility, independent of us, that paralyzed us both, unable to make the slightest move, as if with cool reason it were suggesting that we had no other choice but to accept and endure this immobility, this was the only bond between us, and it was as strong as judgment itself; it was as if for the first time an outsider had shown us the true nature of our relationship — now, just as it was jolted in its course.

In situations like these, we automatically consider and rapidly weigh the most obvious and therefore simplest practical solution; but getting up, kicking his slippers off my feet, putting on my shoes and coat, and leaving seemed impossible, and absurd, for after all, what had happened here? nothing! — so to do all that would have been just too awkward and tedious, it would have taken too much effort and would have been unbearably dramatic. But it was just as impossible to maintain my relaxed pose on the rug, that would have offended my sense of propriety for another reason; after all, I was lying on his rug, and the question of ownership — let's not forget, it's a measure of being at another's mercy— can be more crucial than our emotions, even in the case of true love; I should go away, I should get up and leave, I kept repeating to myself, as if just saying it would make it happen, but I stayed and pretended to be reading, just as he pretended to be watching the screen.

Neither of us made a move.

He sat with his back to me, in the blue effulgence of the TV screen, and I was leaning over my book; though this may be a trifle, it bothered me more than anything else that I was holding myself stiff, because it gave me away; and although he couldn't see me, I knew that emotionally we were keeping track of each other's moves very precisely, so he was as aware of my feigned nonchalance as I was of his forced concentration on the screen; while pretending to be watching that stupid movie, he was actually watching me, and he knew that I knew; nevertheless, something compelled us to play this transparent little game, which was more offensive than any candid response would have been, yet also, despite its seriousness, quite funny, amusing in fact.

I was waiting, biding my time, and thought he would make use of this funny, amusing quality to find the last opening we could squeeze through and escape the trap of our own pompous gravity; to be more precise, I wasn't actually thinking all this but, rather, sensed that behind the tragic pose there lurked an urge to laugh.

Because this was a game, and now it was his move; a clumsy little game of feelings it was, a transparent, trivial game whose rules nevertheless forced us to observe the measures and proportions needed for human relationship; what makes us play this game is our taste for a fair fight and our eternal desire to get even; and precisely because this was a game in the purest sense of the word, I could no longer be indifferent to him or consider him a stranger; I was playing with him, wasn't I, we were playing together, the joint undertaking was bound to temper my hostility; still, I couldn't move, I couldn't say anything, I had to wait; I'd already had my chance and played my best card when I lied and said I didn't have anything against him; now, according to the rules, it was his turn.

The tense anticipation, a moment of truth hovering in the air, the invisible third person who had touched him and had touched me as well, that certain compelling force that was present but no longer functioning— and it was hard to say whether it was emanating from me toward him or the other way around, or was simply hanging in the air, making it so dense that it "could be cut with a knife," as people like to quip — it all reminded me of my first night there; we felt it then, too, when he went into the kitchen to get the champagne.

He had left the door open and I should have heard something, little noises, the refrigerator door opening, the muffled thud as he closed it, the clinking of glasses or his footsteps; but later, when we had drifted too far apart for things to make any sense and as a defense began to review our shared experiences and piece together the fragments, he told me that he had stopped by the kitchen window that evening, watching and listening to the rain, and without knowing why could not move away, as if he didn't want to go back to the room but wanted me to sense the dead silence of his helplessness; and I did, I sensed his expectation and indecision; he wanted me to be aware that the rain, the dark rooftops, the very moment itself were more important to him than I was, waiting for him in his room, though he had to admit that my waiting made him very happy; and it was this feeling, so rarely experienced, that he would have liked somehow to share with me.

He got up and, as if now, too, he was just going to the kitchen, started walking toward me.

Though we couldn't yet tell what we would decide to do, we both felt that the decision, whatever it might be, had already been made.