Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

In addition, something else shut down, heavily and ominously.

Empty space in a transparent system.

Futile effort exhausted and disheartened her; for half a day or sometimes for days, her face remained gloomy.

Now, at Irma Arnót’s unexpected appearance, she gave a start and roared like an animal, stretched out her arms like a child offering itself to its mother, please hug me. This gave the impression that the connection between fear and joy was unreasonably strong; the waiting time necessarily attached to every emotion had ceased to exist.

At the same moment something happened that unexpectedly distracted Irma. Roused by the animal-like roar, Elisa’s huge, long-haired, flaming red Persian tomcat plopped down to the floor from the divan’s bentwood back and, as if fleeing from mortal danger, padded off on his fuzzy paws, flitting between the furniture legs until he reached the open terrace door. Using the large oak bucket of a richly branched ceiling-high ficus as protection, he looked back at Irma with a glance of fright mixed with wonder, and then vanished in the dark outside.

When something like this happened, the cat would jump up on the handrail of the terrace, from there to the flat rooftop and the elevator shaft. From there he would slink to other elevator shafts and even steal brazenly into strange apartments; through distant stairwells he would make it to the street, into the world of automobiles, streetcars, strange smells, dogs, and pissed-on trees, moving along his dangerous routes; and the women always feared that he might never come back.

Elisa’s movement was particularly poignant because to give someone a hug, she had to use her good arm to lift the paralyzed one.

Her tone of voice and the play of her features also changed completely.

She says, I haven’t seen you for a long time, Mária called over the noise, a little humorously, a little instructively. In other people’s company, she would quickly translate Elisa’s gestures into words. She did it out of consideration, so that the guest or unsuspecting stranger who had strayed into their lives did not have to struggle. In another sense, she seemed to be not so much obliging the stranger with a translation as sharing something with Elisa in their most secret language. Elisa was begging, entreating, with the single more or less coherent sentence, I don’t know , that she cried, she sang, to Irma. They weren’t even sure whether she was repeating the English phrase for its meaning in that language, or whether her paralyzed speech organs could only form sounds reminiscent of the English phrase, in which case the syllables were arbitrary and void of meaning.

If they asked her about it, she irresistibly broke out laughing.

I don’t know , she’d answer playfully, her head tilted to the side, as if she understood the humor. Now, however, she used the phrase to beseech and extort, as an indignant beggar woman would, and when Irma resignedly hugged her, she clung to her neck and kept kissing her.

My sweet, my darling, Irma whispered, very feelingly despite her own intentions, and momentarily lost her balance; when her knees buckled a bit under Elisa’s weight, she could not but think of being hugged by her own children.

She says you’re an unfaithful pig, Mária Szapáry interpreted; on hearing this, Elisa with bubbly sounds laughed sensually into the creases crisscrossing Irma’s naked scraggy neck. With both her arms, she continued her insistent clinging, entwining, and clasping movements, partly because she was holding her half-paralyzed arm around Irma’s neck with her own good arm. As if she were wanting to climb up on Irma, to wrap her in her body, she offered up her thin body and her light, quivering, little-girl breasts.

And since you’re here, Mária continued her somewhat arbitrary translation, please help me get up.

Irma had to lift Elisa’s helpless body by holding it under the arms, to pull it up onto her, to cushion it, as it were, while Mária shoved the antique wheelchair under her.

She called me an unfaithful pig, did she, Irma was ready to burst out.

Mária keeps Elisa under lock and key, and if someone happens to ask about her condition, she considers the very question a lèse-majesté. And while she was holding the blond woman’s light body, she could not but suspect that they were engaged not in doing what they were talking about but, rather, playacting again, in their well-practiced way, for each other’s benefit.

Elisa offers herself up almost as if she were complying with Mária’s silent consent or express wish. Those two continue to weave and carry on their secret nocturnal interplay at her, Irma’s, expense.

She fought against these paranoid thoughts, she had to be sly with them, give these twisted notions a bit of air, a little chance, and, when they began to breathe, pitilessly strangle them.

But this time she was not mistaken.

When thin bodies touch this closely, they are capable of incredibly profound sensitivity.

This was not the first time she had illicitly experienced Elisa’s thin body or the exceptionally powerful flavor of their nights.

Fuller bodies may be hot and more passionate, but thin bodies are unerringly accurate in sensing things. She could not ignore the feeling that Mária used Elisa, that through her thin body she avenged herself for all her injuries.

The two tugboats were receding, and as they carried their sounds with them, echoing above the Danube and penetrating the water, their throbbing, puffing, and pulsing again separated and became independent.

I don’t mind telling you, you’ve been pretty unfair with me, remarked Irma quietly, and with a little groan she placed Elisa’s body in the wheelchair.

And as if to corroborate her earlier suspicion, Elisa and Mária laughed together, conspiratorially, shamelessly.

For them to get going, along with the chair, Irma had to squat down in front of Elisa and put her inertly dangling outturned feet on the folding footrest. The immobile feet were surprisingly heavy.

With whom else could I be as unfair as I can be with you, Irmuska, replied Mária from above her.

You mean you’re taking your revenge.

Except for you, Irmuska, on whom could I take my revenge, for God’s sake. And if I have a good reason or at least a good motive for it, why shouldn’t I.

I’ll do it.

Which Mrs. Szemző thought was a funny enough remark to laugh. She may have laughed a bit too hard, factitiously and demurely.

With which she meant to excuse herself for her own cruelty. But she had no intention of retreating.

She took the offense more seriously than if it had actually touched her.

Mária quickly pushed the chair forward so forcefully that Mrs. Szemző barely had time to straighten up and jump out of the way.

It’s high time to be at the table, she exclaimed. Please open the door. And put her blanket on her knees.

They had done this before, wasting a little time before the card game, which filled them with pleasant impatience.

Mrs. Szemző opened both wings of the door. Since one of the women would always become impatient during this little interlude, this too belonged to their well-refined routine. In the large space called the workshop, an atelier with a northern exposure originally designed for a famous sculptor, large wooden dummies in various stages of dress or undress were standing around a huge drafting table under the bare lamplight. Nothing shone or glittered, and nothing cast a shadow. On another large table, its surface dotted with myriad holes made by thumbtacks and sewing pins, and with several burn holes left by unattended irons, lay pieces of fabric, cut and waiting to be sewn, stacked neatly in layered piles, blue and claret lining material spread under red and purple silks, measuring tapes, scissors, horseshoe magnets, tailor’s chalks, pin cushions full of pins and attached to rubber bands, which Mária or occasional seamstresses would wear on their arms as they worked, so as to have pins always at the ready. Wheeled clothes racks stood along the bare walls and in front of the very deep, floor-to-ceiling closets, most of whose doors were open. On these racks, in a picturesque jumble, hung basted or finished theatrical costumes along with all sorts of civilian clothes.