Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

Who could say why I started walking toward her now, when my aim was to avoid her and not disturb her in her grief, which at the moment suited me just fine; in any case, I had no idea how jealous her unconditional devotion to Father had made me, nor that it was this jealousy that made me seek out her company, because, willy-nilly, we were compelled to share the object of our mutual affection.

Just as I grew close to Kálmán because of our mutual affection for Maja.

She was holding on to the gate; I sat down on the steps and sipped my milk, making sure none of its wrinkly skin slipped into my mouth; what I was really doing was enjoying, with the most insidious humility, the grief emanating from her body.

The body really does emanate its emotions, but you have to be close to feel it.

What I actually sensed was a distorted version of the grief that the absence of Father's naked body had evoked in me, an absence that would forever remain in me.

After a while she turned to me, followed my movements, which made me drink my milk even more slowly, so it would last longer; in general, I pretended not to know, see, or feel her presence, and in so doing I instinctively hit her where it hurt most: I reinforced her sense of abandonment.

I kept this up until she completely transferred her sense of abandonment to me, hoping to find solace in my mug, in the milk.

I didn't have to wait long; she reached for it, but I raised it to my mouth and took another sip.

Letting go of the gate, she took a step toward me — more precisely, toward the mug, toward the sip of milk, toward the instinct of drinking.

She was standing over me, and between us this amounted to a conversation.

I was still pretending not to notice that she wanted my milk; as if by chance, I slid the mug between my raised knees and guarded it there.

When she reached for it, I lifted it from between my knees, out of her reach, openly withdrawing it from her.

She let out a single whiny sound, that hateful sound with which she waited for Father every afternoon.

For not only did she sense instinctively when he got up in the morning, she also had a secret intuition about when he would return at the end of the day.

In the afternoon when I'd be waiting for Livia, usually between four and five, no matter what she was doing my sister would suddenly become cranky and irritable and let out this strange, drawn-out whiny sound, as of joy heralded by pain, and she went on repeating it until she began to cry in earnest, rocking, driving herself into crying, actually not real crying, there were no tears, more like an animal whimpering, which she kept up as she wandered through the house and roamed the garden, clutching the fence, until Father arrived.

Come to think of it, the only time my little sister did not give way to these displays of joy, rapture, pain, and sorrow was when the family was together, when everyone was present after our Sunday dinners.

But now, because I didn't feel like listening to her crying anymore, I stuck my index finger into the mug and lifted out the skin.

This bit of silliness made her laugh; she plopped down next to me on the step and opened her mouth, indicating that she wanted it.

I dangled it like bait, even lowering it into her mouth, but when she was about to slurp it up with her lips and stuck-out tongue, I pulled it back; we repeated this stunt until she again made a face as if to cry, and then I let her have it along with my finger.

She sucked it off; to increase her pleasure, I put the nearly empty mug in her hand, and behind her back sneaked through the gate and ran off, so by the time she realized what had happened, she'd see nothing but the empty street.

Kálmán was standing on the trail.

This was the trail that led from their farm, above the cornfield, into the forest; he had a stick in his hand, pointing it at the ground, but seemed to be doing nothing else with it.

The wind was scraping through the deep-green corn leaves, making a shrill sound; the forest was booming.

What was he doing there, I asked him when, still panting, I reached him up on the hill, I had to scream almost to outshout the wind; but he said nothing, slowly turned his head toward me and stared at me as if he didn't exactly know who I was.

Right before his feet, in the middle of the trail, a dead mouse lay on its side, but Kálmán wasn't touching it with his stick.

I had no idea what was eating him; when I had quietly looked for him earlier in their yard — no shouting was allowed then, his parents and brothers were asleep — everything seemed fine; he'd already let out the geese and the chickens, the stable was empty, and in the pen the little piglets were busy suckling at the teats of the sow, sprawled peacefully on the floor.

When I stopped in to see how she was doing, she raised her head, gave me a long series of grunts; she recognized me, was happy to see me, and it was this silly feeling I wanted to share with Kálmán, that their sow loved me.

A little way off, his dog kept circling a bush, stuck its nose roughly into the layers of fallen leaves, scratching feverishly, and then ran around the bush some more until it hit a spot that must have promised some important and exciting find but that it couldn't get to, and began scratching and digging again.

And then, thinking I'd found a way to make him talk, I quickly squatted down on the trail, because I suddenly discovered that he must have been looking at the maggots toiling around the carcass of the mouse; his silence annoyed me, and maybe because of the wind, I don't exactly know why, I felt too energetic and excited to adjust my mood abruptly to his; at the same time I couldn't very well ask him what was bothering him, you didn't just come out and ask a thing like that.

I definitely couldn't, if only because whatever was bothering him was serious enough for him to ignore my helpfully inquisitive gesture; he pretended to be standing there by chance and even seemed embarrassed at having been looking at the dumb bugs; his posture, standing motionless, implied that I was mistaken to think he'd actually been doing something before I got there; he wasn't watching those insects at all, he had no intention of doing anything, none whatsoever, he was just hanging around, wanting to be alone, and he wasn't interested in anything; I might be an eager beaver, of course, but he didn't need me, I might as well buzz off, instead of pretending to be so interested in those bugs, he could see right through me; wasn't it enough that the wind was blowing like crazy and the sun was beating down so hard and his dog had gone nuts, so why didn't I just get the hell out of there?

But I didn't, which was a little humiliating, since staying there with this kind of rebuff and indifference made no sense, but I didn't budge.

And why was I there all the time, why did I keep coming around, anyway? but where should I have gone? and if I hadn't gone over to his house, wouldn't he have come to mine? because whenever I got stubborn and dug in my heels or got really offended, or my humiliation was too deep to get over with just a shrug of the shoulders, then he was sure to show up, grinning as if nothing had happened; and I also knew full well that he showed up not just because of me but somehow to prevent me from going to Maja, and the reverse of this, if not quite so emphatically, was also true: I kept going over to his house to see if he wasn't at Maja's.

This was the difference between us: he'd put up obstacles, hold inspections, divert and impede my actions; I merely checked things out, wanted to know what was happening, and if I didn't find him at home and his mother couldn't tell me where he was either, and after roaming the forest in the hope that his disappearance was only a mistake and I'd find him but didn't! then jealousy made my whole world turn a little black, not so much because of Maja as because of Krisztián.