Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

They were herding us across the Regen valley, you know, over the pass, I mean the ones who could make it. I don’t remember the name of the pass. Maybe not very far from there. A little bit closer to Budweis, if that means anything to you. It was called Aussig in the good old days of the monarchy. They herded the rest into the hay barn, those who could barely move, and then set the barn on fire. This happened on the next to last day, can you imagine that. And we were allowed to move on.

This sounds familiar to me, this Budweis, maybe from Schweik.*

With this remark they were virtually submerged in a shared smile shining and spreading across both their faces, evoked by and paying homage to the hero of the book they’d read before the war; they even laughed briefly.

Later, that’s where the Czech doctors came from to see us, from Aussig, continued Irma with a cheerfulness left over from the laughter. But I’d really like to know why you’re asking about this.

Mária kept swaying her head.

Actually, I don’t know why I came home, she went on evasively. Of course, that’s a whole different thing, I know, the two things can’t be compared. I can’t give you an honest answer. In the final analysis, historically, we’re both in the place where we belong. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. Some kind of instinct to escape. Raging in me. As though accepting the premise that whatever happens is what should happen, natural the way it is — I can’t accept that.

Maybe that’s what I can’t assimilate — because it isn’t like that.

But she felt it would be useless to insist. Mária would not answer her sincerely, and that hurt.

She relented, let her go.

I’m only asking, she said softly, because I have two kinds of answer.

Well then, tell me the first one and then the second.

No, don’t laugh. I also have a third one, yes, I do.

And when she said this, for the first time the wry smile she had sustained for Mária disappeared from her lips.

And this made her lips tremble painfully.

Those Swedish nurses were not very nice, you know. Or maybe I just didn’t like my shitty life being so dependent on others. They would have taken me in exactly the opposite direction. That bothered me too. It was nothing but a primitive kind of resistance, that’s all. In your big new freedom you realize you have a will of your own, which means you are again your own master, and you don’t want to see the Swedish nurses anymore. You lash out, make repeated accusations because you can’t even stand up. Now I should drop dead, now, because of them, just when I’d almost managed to get through everything.

In retrospect, though, I must add that they were tackling an impossible job, that’s true. There were so many cases of gangrene, purulence, necrosis, whole limbs rotting away on live people. They just had too much to do, much too much. The warmer the weather, the more unbearable the stench became, there was never any water, no surgeon for I don’t know how long, maybe weeks, and no supplies or equipment. Sometimes they got hold of some soldiers to cut firewood, the nights were frightfully cold, or prisoners of war, among whom there were some Hungarians, but most of the time the nurses had to chop the wood. Decent middle-class Swedish women, you know, and they had not the slightest notion what they were up against. And there was some cold fury in them. Maybe that was the way the ordeal affected them, I don’t know. In my barracks we had a very small window opposite where I lay, and I could see from the darkness how hopelessly the sun was shining outside.

But how can you say that, it was spring then, wasn’t it.

It shone despondently. You keep waking up, going to sleep, waking up.

It shone even during the night, but that was the moon.

I don’t know if you ever paid any attention to it, but spring sunshine in our country, and that’s what I know about, is always so stark, so bare, just bare.

You’ll understand in a minute why I want to tell you about this.

But there are these weeks, these spring weeks that don’t exist in other places.

It’s a little incoherent, the way I’m speaking, you’ll forgive me, but all I want to tell you, if we’re already talking about it, is that in other places, from the very first moment it starts, spring is pure brilliance.

In our part of the world it isn’t. There’s something hazy in our spring.

When I was first able to go outdoors and realized we were in the mountains, I saw that it wasn’t so there. The barracks window was dusty, maybe you understand, she said hesitantly. But not a single muscle in Mária’s face responded.

Then how could she explain it to her.

I’m thinking of early spring, she said, close to desperation, before budding time. And just imagine, the first thing I did was clean the window.

It was also like that in Vienna, tired and hopeless, you can see there, too, that winter destroys everything. This is probably not so in places that don’t have such long, dry freezing periods. I thought — and this is going to be my third answer, though it is strange, very strange, that it’s only the third one. One recovers slowly. The two boys — I must find them somehow. As if they were lying about there, in front of the building, and they should be told to get up, the ground is too cold. As if I couldn’t remember anything.

Believe me, I wouldn’t tell this to anyone else, because one shouldn’t say things like this for others to hear.

I knew very well they were no more.

The big difference is that mountain grass doesn’t give out in the winter, on the contrary. I’d say that was a kind of fixed and certain bit of knowledge about the essence of the world. I may be absurd, and it’s risky to say, but the moment a single person goes missing, the essence of the world changes. But it was not completely unimaginable that I might find Andor back home.

Because until then I myself wouldn’t have believed, and I didn’t, that they were no more.

I understand.

But that’s only the logic of things.

Now I do. I’ve never understood it completely.

Probably not completely, but maybe you understand some of it. Don’t imagine it as if you remembered either one or both of them, or anyone else. If anyone, I’d remember Andor more because he caused me more grief, and that has a shadow, or leaves long shadows behind, the grief and pain. Let’s be clear: lovers’ pain. But there is this: my sons, these two naked words, the possessive and the plural noun, together comprised all one’s knowledge. Or rather, it’s a place that has not remained empty, though you feel its emptiness. But there is no memory, and this must be very strange for you to hear from my mouth, but there isn’t, one does not remember. That is the big stinking truth.

Damn this rotten life, I beg you, please give it a little time. Of course I understand, it would be so good to understand.

Everything I had done earlier was nothing but hubris, crude maneuvers. Only my perfect lack of guile could excuse it, and we were all guileless. Anyway, it had a lot more to do with brute force than with consciousness. And while she seemed relaxed and impassive as she went on talking, she recognized that Mária was growing restless and resistant, a response that might have been intensified by the noise of the two tugboats passing each other, and she realized that she had to finish up, bring things to a close. No, memory is something entirely different, I had to discover that, she said, defying Mária’s restlessness, impolite but not unjustified — after all, it was Mária who had wanted to hear, who had asked to be told — and that was the reason that after a while I would have given up my practice even if they hadn’t shut it down. That is why I couldn’t do it properly anymore. The work can be done only if one believes there is memory, but not only is there no memory, it’s also better that way. It seems that in the overall scheme of Creation it was decided not to include memory. But now I also think we should drop this whole subject.