Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

Furious, she loosened her belt and began unbuttoning the little red buttons on her blue dress — the belt was red, too — and when she reached her waist and under her hand I could see bare skin, I thought of turning away, because she didn't seem to be taking off her clothes for me, she was simply undressing, but then, with a single move, she slipped out of her dress and stood before me in the dim light, wearing only her panties and white sandals, holding her dress turned inside out, her hair slightly tousled.

And she said quietly not to be scared, she'd already shown them to Krisztián; and then we fell silent again, just standing there, and I don't know when the distance between us slipped away, all I wanted to do was touch her; she didn't look so beautiful with just her sandals on, looked rather awkward with her dress hanging from her hand, but her breasts, her breasts were calm, the two nipples looking at me; what I do remember after that — without recalling whether she started in my direction or I in hers, or maybe we both took a few steps — is the deliberate way she let her dress drop to the floor, as if she had sensed her own little-girlish, almost laughable awkwardness, and, to appear more daring and shameless, put her arms around my neck, but in a way that kept me from seeing what she had offered up to me; I was overwhelmed by her skin, by the breezy smell of her perspiration, and with an unconscious move I hugged her, even though I would have preferred to touch her breasts; the situation could have been ludicrous, since she was at least a head taller than I, but I wasn't thinking about that then — it was painful not to have my fingers touch what my mind so badly desired.

Not from the touch of her arms or skin but from the movement of her breasts did I feel that she quickly and softly kissed my ear; then she laughed and said that if she couldn't have Krisztián, she'd steal me from Livia; but I wasn't interested, because all I wanted was her breasts, the flesh, I don't quite know what, the way they were touching me, their softness or their firmness, but she was careful not to press too hard against me, wanting the tender flesh to remain between us, keep us apart; and with that laugh she let go of me and, leaving her dress on the floor, walked into another room, taking her breasts with her; I heard her open a closet door, and it was as if all this had never happened.

And when Maja had whispered in my ear earlier that she knew all along that I loved only Hédi, the reason I hadn't protested — or insisted I loved only her, Maja, or told her I loved neither her nor Hédi but Livia— was that I would have liked Maja to steal me from the other two.

They got as far as the middle of the clearing when all three of them stopped at once, looking around somewhat foolishly, realizing at last that something odd and unusual had happened or was happening here, something dangerous they suddenly didn't know how to cope with; when I'd first sat up and noticed them, it even occurred to me that Krisztián might have sent them, this could be a trap, the trick we'd anticipated, but their genuine bewilderment made it clear that their showing up here was purely coincidental, and as astonishing as that seemed, I felt it was beautiful, simply beautiful; it was fascinating to see the three girls frozen in their tracks and listening, each in her own way, each in a different direction, their high spirits ebbing away as they grasped one another's hands even more tightly.

Their physical intimacy had always intrigued me, the mutually tender ways they touched, held hands, chased about, in constant bodily contact, put their arms around and danced with each other, and kissed so freely; the way they exchanged clothes, as if giving themselves to each other or lending some very precious part of themselves; the way they combed out, curled, and set each other's hair, polished each other's nails, put their head on the other's shoulder, lap, or chest, and cried unabashedly when they were sad, shared their happiness, locking themselves in a clinging embrace with every part of their bodies participating — all this evoked in me a desire beyond envy or jealousy which I could hide but, shameful as it was, could not suppress or restrain; and I tried, hard, for I knew that Father was forever on the lookout, noticing and censuring every so-called girlish gesture of mine, perhaps he, too, had something to fear, I don't know; at any rate, I saw, I had to see, that a perfectly innocuous gesture was enough to fill me to the brim with this desire, which may explain why I wanted to be a girl, and indeed often imagined being one, to have some unequivocal legal grounds for these unpunished contacts, even though I sensed far more impulse, fear, constraint, habit, and routine in the apparent freedom of the girls than I could admit; and whenever my longing for uninhibited constant bodily contact did not completely cloud my mind, I realized, of course, that this contact was but a parallel version of the same passionate rivalry that existed among us boys, even if we weren't permitted to touch one another physically or had to find complicated, tiresome, and often humiliating pretexts to do so, resort to trickery, outsmart one another just to share among us our most elementary emotions; I couldn't ignore, and in fact bitterly envied the profound attraction that made Krisztián want to fight with Kálmán all the time, choosing the uniquely boyish form of fighting, which girls never used; girls entered into physical fights only when in dead earnest, and then they would scream, tear, scratch, and bite one another; between us boys the game of fighting, unimaginable among girls, always erupted for no apparent reason, simply because we wanted to touch, hold one another, feel and possess the other's coveted body, and only this kind of playful fight could legitimate our desires; had we expressed them as openly as girls did, embraced and kissed as they did, had we not camouflaged the true intentions of these physical rivalries, the others would have called us fags, because clearly I was not the only one watching his step, the others were also very careful not to cross certain boundaries, although you could never be entirely sure what the word itself meant, it had a mythic character, like almost all our curse words and imprecations, implying a desire for something forbidden; for example, we say "eat my dick," because it's forbidden, or we say "motherfucker," alluding to another taboo; to me the word meant a prohibition against an entirely natural impulse, the meaning of which was only vaguely illuminated by a remark Prém dropped once, which he'd heard from his brother, who, being six years older, was considered an authority, according to whom "if you let a guy suck your cock, you'll never be able to screw a woman," a statement that needed neither comment nor explanation; it made it quite clear that everything faggy or having to do with faggots or faggotry endangered masculinity, the very thing we were striving for; in another sense, the whole notion was beyond the grasp of a child's mind; for me it meant one more of those disgusting, mean things adults did which one was never keen on following, but the word failed to stamp out the impulse, the lively desire, camouflaged though it was by the innocence of our playful fights, it merely held in check the desire that among boys constantly seeks expression; as I've said before, I wasn't alone in this; for instance, Krisztián would creep up behind Kálmán, throw his arms around him, and wrestle him to the ground, or — and this was one of their favorites — they'd grab each other's hand and keep pressing, squeezing, and bending it, the rule of the game being that no hand must be seen above the desk, and you weren't allowed to rest your elbow on your thigh — in other words, one arm had to wrestle down the other in the air; they'd turn red, grin, and, straining for support, would hold their bodies stiff by pressing their locked knees together; the object here was not to beat the opponent, as in a serious fight, but to get a lover's taste of his strength, agility, and resilience, to enjoy the preeminence of sexual sameness, and fulfillment meant the tender meeting of two like strengths; in the same way, with the tender intimacy of the girls, one could feel a certain amount of unpleasant, irksome falsity, although not so clearly or emphatically as with us, but when they were walking about hand in hand, giggling, whispering, gossiping, or dressing, consoling, teasing, or caressing one another, I couldn't help feeling that this degree of direct bodily contact was permissible only because it was merely the outermost layer of their bond, friendship, and alliance, a kind of necessary guise, like our playful fights, contact that seemed not to express real feelings but rather to demonstrate a secret conspiracy or even conceal a deadly hostility; this became especially obvious to me after the incident in the gym when Hédi accidentally discovered that Livia and I had been staring at each other, and of course she made sure word got out: that Livia and I were in love, for by doing this, she not only exposed Livia to common talk but delivered her up to me, and further, by spreading the rumor that Livia had fainted in the gym out of love for me, she saw to it that this act of deliverance became public knowledge; interestingly enough, Hédi's machinations did not make Maja jealous; on the contrary, she showed great enthusiasm, forever trying to arrange for Livia and me to be alone; yet it was clear that with their acts of kindness and maternal solicitude, Hédi and Maja would not let go of Livia; their kindness was a trap, their solicitude a noose, and what's more, buried in their approbation were underhanded concessions with which to get into a more confidential relationship with me, as if they knew that ultimately this would only confuse me, as if this had been their express goal from the start; they got me Livia, but on no account was I to be able to choose among the three of them: Livia could be mine, but only in the way and to the extent they allowed, and Livia had no objections to the arrangement, because the alliance the three of them had forged, for and against me, the conspiracy itself and their bond, was far more important to her than I was, or, more precisely, she knew it was in her own best interest not to let this secret alliance unleash their own fierce rivalry, not to let open hostilities between them make me take sides, and everything should stay as it had been: undecided, ambiguous.