Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Mutual imagination became their aphrodisiac, and this made the darkness vibrate and tremble in a state of excited expectation that no mortal man could have gratified.

It was as if he had acquired forbidden knowledge, the city’s ultimate secret.

If he approached them very carefully, minding the slightest crackling sound, they would fly apart, continue elsewhere, and look for different partners for their games, or they’d call him, signal to him, gesturing and hissing for him to come and join them, be the third or fourth among them. It was all the same to them. They offered him their lips, opened for kissing or sucking, or their asses, or simply their erect cocks for a blowjob. They ridiculed the desire for married life or any sentimental notion about mating.

Anything could happen. And he was the one who had to bolt, frightened.

Yet they were not indifferent to everything and everyone, not always.

In general no one was faithful to anyone, nothing could be considered permanent, not even for a moment, every occasional relationship could be dissolved at any time because everyone possessed a certain amount of manliness, so it was always possible to make, with anyone or in any way, a defensive or offensive alliance based on the cult of manliness. But even these strict basic rules were constantly being rewritten and modified.

I can’t decipher it, that’s what he felt, and he went after them, dazed.

Some among them would suddenly find his one and only and leave with him, laughing happily. Some among these returned after a few minutes and, as if nothing meaningful had happened, would go back, indifferently or disappointedly, to searching for someone else. To be more conspicuous and provocative with their nakedness, some men hid their clothes among the ruins of the Szent Margit monastery,* some in the niches of statues, or in portal arches and jambs, or behind dismantled Gothic corbels; others made them into small packets that they strapped to their waists or lower legs. Formidable tribal warriors. He envied them, in his heart he felt great warmth for them, though they were the ones he had to be most chary of: they were wild, merciless, tough, and unpredictable. Sometimes they’d attack as a group. Hissing and snickering like children, they’d make stinging remarks, behavior that was artificial and, despite the manly display of muscles, very feminine. They left behind a scent of cheap cologne and the strong smell of sweat. Without a thought they kissed, sucked, and pummeled. They must have decided at some point to live their lives in this unrestrained and licentious manner.

But I could not decide.

I couldn’t imagine what role I could possibly have in such an insane game designed for more than two people. I wasn’t ready to make a decision about anything. First, I wanted to watch, to see everything with my own eyes, to see through these appearances; everything these men did with one another seemed like sheer humiliation or self-abasement to me, and I simply could not comprehend it. As if I were watching, repelled and estranged, my own inadequacy for submissiveness.

As if I were watching the readiness of someone whose life, despite ceaseless self-rebuke, was one long temporizing. It would have been better to decide right off, especially if this thing was hereditary anyway. But this someone had no idea what to do to bring about a decision. That is why he’d better stay on the trail.

Not step off it.

According to local custom, the trail provided a measure of safety, respite, and protection; staying on it meant, for the others, that I hadn’t yet decided. As if I were saying to them, hold your horses, I’m still searching, waiting for the great unknown, and I’d like not to be touched by you until I find my right to self-determination or voluntarily relinquish it.

I also feared stepping into shit, another reason it was dangerous to go off the trail.

There were others also, who, driven by unrealizable desires, roamed the trails endlessly, went away, and then came back — quite a few like that.

They searched in vain, all in vain; they found no one.

The reason was not necessarily their timidity but rather their squeamishness or their exceptional needs.

It was impossible to understand everything.

Perhaps this was one reason he’d have been glad to exchange his life for that of the bravest ones, so as to understand at least something of the indifference of those who didn’t care whom they were with so long as they could go on being with someone. If only he could accept every stranger’s approach and understand it; if only he could let them have his way with him but without his touching anyone. Which would mean remaining untouched himself.

If only he did not suffer so shamelessly from lack of bodily contact.

He could not touch himself, because here that gesture’s meaning was unequivocal: it meant that you were offering up your body as free prey, and your every move would be watched from every direction, just as he was watching others. One enticing signal was all that was needed for two men to fall on each other and quickly satisfy each other, or to engage in the act for a while, careful not to reach gratification, and then part — with a gesture a little like a thank-you or good-bye — and vanish without a trace into the very depth of the night, only to resume with others. As though they believed permanent attachments to be superfluous and mawkish. They were conspirators, ready to initiate him into their most jealously guarded and dangerous secrets, but only if he first swore to uphold their principles. He probably should have turned his body over then and there. But he could not find the required submissiveness or this kind of self-abasement in himself. Yet the situation was not unpleasant, even though he was excluded and inexperienced, because the fear and trembling kept him in a constant state of excitement. He’d have liked to become completely shut up in himself, but he had to keep himself open. It was important to behave as if he belonged with them, to show that if he wanted to he could give up this tenacious defense of his body’s integrity at any time. Otherwise they wouldn’t put up with him. His sperm kept on seeping. His erection referred not to just anyone but precisely to that someone who might pop up at any moment, that someone whom everyone here idolized and worshipped, that someone whom he too was looking for but hadn’t yet found. Or rather, though he did profoundly understand them, it would be better and he’d complete his knowledge if he sacrificed himself; but — and here’s the rub — he does not understand that here no one is looking for a real person; everyone is chasing his own imagination.

His desire was directed at all of them, almost all of them, but the moment one man stepped forward and approached him, his desire no longer focused on a single person; it focused on no one.

And that is why he would then flee.

He ran from the encroaching figures, from having to respond to this magical attraction; his feet pounding on the hard trail, he ran ahead of them like a wild animal, trusting himself to his sharpened senses, his feet carrying him blindly. Shrubs with branches like sharp arms hit him in the face and wrapped themselves around his body, cracking and snapping as he dragged them along and broke free of them. They were embracing him with their tendrils and tentacles, meaning to pull him back and punish him for refusing to surrender to reality as he must for even the shortest moment of gratification.

He found their roughness, avidity, and brutality frightening; in fact he was not so much frightened as painfully sober when near them. Yet he appreciated the insane bravery with which, if only for a moment, they offered up their entire ecstatic being along with their secret desires, or served other men’s ecstasies with their mouths, their attentive hands, or their carefully lubricated and open rectums.