Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

Imagining that while I stood there alone, helpless and miserable, they were playing together, conveniently forgetting about me, making it clear I meant nothing to them.

But Kálmán couldn't have had any inkling of this.

Just as it never dawned on him that if he managed to elude my vigilance and slipped over to Maja's, my jealousy wouldn't be nearly so intense as his when I did the same, because it bothered me much less what he might have done with Maja; put more precisely, I wanted to know about it, but it gave me pleasure, painful pleasure to be sure, that in a relationship which didn't mean all that much to me he was my stand-in, and that when I was there I became his substitute — and I found this act of substitution immeasurably exciting.

It was as if in Kálmán and me Maja loved not two different individuals but a single one who couldn't be fully embodied in either one alone, and so when she talked to me, she was invariably addressing Kálmán as well, and when she was with him, she would also want to be with me a little; whether we liked it or not, we always had to endure the presence of the other, play the role of a stranger for her, a stranger who had become familiar because of these games yet whose strangeness prevented the longed-for consummation and fulfillment, because no matter how provocatively she may have been playing the whore, showing off with the superficial characteristics of one, Maja remained more like a yearned-for object of desire for both of us; and she couldn't be the real Maja either, not for him, not for me, not even for herself, because whatever she was looking for in him or in me, she could find only in the two of us together, yet she was also searching for a one and only, and because she couldn't find him she suffered, and aped Szidónia's unbridled licentiousness; in the process, she became a kind of symbol of femininity for us, which we felt we should measure up to with our budding masculinity — we couldn't have known then that it was precisely with these games of substitutions— experimenting on, learning from and about one another — that she would lead us to where we had to go; all in good time, nature bids us be patient, even if patience must be extracted from a would-be lover's passionate impatience.

I thought that in this confusing game I, and only I, could come out the winner, because even if something irrevocable happened between the two of them, something more than a kiss — and of course I also wished to have that "more" myself — even then, even beyond that, Maja and I shared a deeper, darker secret: our clandestine searches, and Kálmán couldn't possibly come between us, with his love or with anything else; there was nothing he could do that might disturb our very special relationship.

And even if that "more" did happen, I would have benefited from it somehow; Maja would have returned some of it to me.

Kálmán and I kept a hold on each other, cunningly and ardently we held on, wouldn't let go, and compared to this fierce embrace, which pervaded every moment of our lives and in the hours of jealousy seemed deadly, having touched each other's member seemed rather trivial, and if not trivial then only a consequence of our rivalry.

But after the experience we'd shared the night before, I felt he could do anything to me and I wouldn't be offended, or do something I'd done on other, similar occasions, like telling him, "Up yours, motherfucker," and then taking to my heels, resolving an unpleasant situation by running away; I could outrun him, but had to be sure my words hit him only when I was already in motion, because his reflexes were faster and he might be able to trip me.

On the other hand, I felt that his moroseness and anger had nothing to do with me, he just felt that way in general because something bad had happened to him, and even if I could not learn the cause of his trouble, I wanted to help, for it occurred to me that he was like this because of Maja; I wanted us to do something that would take his mind off whatever it was.

I started picking at the dead mouse with my fingers; the bugs immediately stopped moving, waiting to see what would happen next, but didn't run away, were unwilling to let go of such rich booty.

These bugs brought to mind something else we had in common.

Sometimes, because of Livia, and with nothing special to set me off, I, too, would be overcome by dejection, gloom, apathy, disgust, feeling as if I were huddling at the bottom of some dark, slimy pit, and if somebody peered inside I'd be enraged, full of hatred, murder in my heart, wishing the intruder dead, out of existence.

My fingers felt something soft and squishy; death had left the little mouse's eye open; a small incisor protruded from its mouth, and under the tooth there was a tiny drop of clotted blood.

I was expecting Kálmán to growl at me to stop poking at the dead animal; he didn't like people picking at things.

Once, he beat up Prém because of a lizard.

It was a beautiful green lizard, its head turquoise, not too big, pitifully skinny from the winter cold, and young, which you can tell by looking at its scales; it was springtime, when lizards still move lazily, and ours, atop a tree stump, was soaking in the sun; sensing our proximity it moved over a little, which was hard for it, and also it didn't like giving up the warm sun for the cold shade; its wise eyes stared at us for a while, then weighing its need for warmth, it must have concluded that we had no hostile intentions, so it lowered its eyelids, entrusting itself completely to our goodwill, which is when Prém couldn't control himself anymore and grabbed at it; and although enough survival instinct materialized for the lizard to slip through Prém's fingers, the tail remained behind, a watery drop of blood marking the spot where it had snapped off, it was thrashing by itself, writhing on the tree stump; and then a screaming Kálmán pounced on Prém.

But now, not even my poking could get a rise out of Kálmán, I couldn't get him to say anything to me, and the bugs resumed their labor as the shadow cast by my hand began to recede.

Whatever I knew about carrion bugs, as about so many other animals and plants, I knew from Kálmán; it's not that I was completely insensitive to the world of nature, but the difference between us, I think, was that he experienced natural phenomena as events of his own nature while I remained an observer, felt excitement, revulsion, disgust, fear, and rapture, which lead directly to the urge to interfere, but Kálmán always remained calm, calm in the deepest, broadest sense of the word, as when someone is overwhelmed by the darkest grief or most radiant joy and instead of protesting gives himself to it, not trying to hinder the expression of his emotions with fears and prejudices; he remained calm with the neutrality of nature, which is neither empathetic nor indifferent but something else: I suppose that is what emotionally courageous people must be like! and maybe this was why nothing ever disgusted him, why he wouldn't want to touch anything that did not touch him, why he knew everything there was to know about the woods, the scene of our daily rovings; he was quiet, slow to move, but his eyes took in everything, his gaze was unerring, in this realm he brooked no opposition of any kind, here he was lord and master, though he did not want to rule; it was this intuitive, sensory awareness that made him irresistible, as on that early Sunday afternoon when he showed up at our house, appearing unexpectedly in the open door of our dining room, looking, from the adults' point of view at least, somewhat hapless and comical, as we sat around the table, in a cozy family setting, over the remains of our midday meal, listening to my cousin Albert: my Aunt Klára's son, a slightly chubby young man with a bald spot, whom I admired for his self-confidence and winning superiority and despised for his slyness and stupidity, was just then in the middle of a story about an Italian writer named Emilio Gadda; Albert was the only so-called artist in the family, an opera singer, who therefore had the chance to travel a lot, a rare privilege in those years, and was full of strange and colorful stories which he was quick to relate in his mighty bass — the pledge of a promising career — though always affecting a measure of modesty; he peppered his anecdotes and off-color witticisms with little melodies, singing while he spoke or speaking while he sang, giving us brief musical quotations, as if to imply with this curious habit that he was so much an artist that he couldn't afford even in pleasant leisure hours to neglect exercising his precious voice; but when Kálmán appeared in the doorway, barefoot and in his flimsy shorts, Albert interrupted his story at once with a loud, affected guffaw: how charmingly ill-mannered can such a grimy ragamuffin be! he said, and the others laughed along with him; I was a little ashamed of my friend and also ashamed of feeling ashamed, but without a word, not even hello, he told me to come with him right away, he was driven by something so strong he paid not the slightest attention to the company present, behaving as if he saw nobody but me, which I have to admit had a certain comic effect.