Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Their freedom seemed beautiful and dazzling to him. He saw himself as tied down by tethers of convention.

He despised himself for his servility; he was repelled not by them but by himself. Yet he was the one who had done so much against himself, almost everything. He quickly realized that one couldn’t sink lower than this to attain freedom, or at least he hoped he wouldn’t have to sink lower. His heart, beating happily and anxiously, now almost exploded in his chest; from the inner tension of fear and stupefaction he nearly stopped breathing. He probably couldn’t have endured sinking deeper, though he knew that now there was no stopping, he was sliding ever lower. He couldn’t possibly touch anyone like that, not as the others did, he kept telling himself scornfully. He excused himself for not reaching a climax in such wretched circumstances; he couldn’t, even if he found out that every man did it this way. Because then he’d have to give up his frenzied search. He needs affection, he told himself. Out of cowardice he couldn’t accept the ecstatic affections, and he reproved himself for this. Or came to terms with the thought that there was no human being in the world he was looking for. No such man and no such woman either. Yet he couldn’t give up the notion of mating, he couldn’t relinquish the vain or naïve idea that, like a songbird, he’d find his mate, for his sentimental hope had not left him.

Very vaguely, timorously, he hoped that fate would summon someone here, the right person, just as it had sent him here, that fate would not abandon him here. At the same time, he felt that he, with his petit-bourgeois sentimentality, was ridiculous. To imagine that he would meet his total-stranger doppelganger, differing from him only proportionately. He couldn’t imagine this other person except as an exact likeness, which is why it couldn’t be a girl. But this person should be more perfect than he, rather like that giant from whom he’d been fleeing, but not so perfect as to humiliate him with physical and mental superiority.

He couldn’t imagine kissing the giant on the mouth; at most he went as far as envisioning the giant naked, to the point where one naked skin encounters the warmth and exhalations of the other’s naked skin.

Nor did he let the tribal warriors — those strange loud-mouthed beings, all his age or younger — distract him from what he envisioned in his mind. There should be somebody for him, and not just anybody. This is what he thought, even though he always lost his equilibrium when faced with the warriors. He had good reason to fear them, not only because they were quick to come to blows, but because they could see into his most secret intentions, even those still unknown to him, could see into an area he was not too keen to visit by himself.

Let the little prick get lost in a stinking cunt, they hissed when they saw him slinking along the same trail as before, coming closer yet still refusing to let them have their way.

He refuses everything.

Waiting for the knight of his dreams, the little darling, they laughed in a mock chorus.

Indeed, for them, nothing was sacred; the whole world was but a parody of itself, designed solely for their amusement.

You can’t be waiting for the gallant rear admiral Miklós Horthy, my sweetie, there he is on his great white horse, they lisped, giggling into his ear as he passed them.

In the very same tones ladies use in the fancy Café Gerbeaud.

Let him take you on his huge smoking cock, they yelled to his back.

Or maybe Jean Marais.

Boys, I think he is waiting for Mrs. Béla Kun.*

It was impossible to avoid them; still, he didn’t take them very seriously. He quickly discovered that no matter how powerful and fearless they might seem at night, in reality they were pariahs — servants of others’ pleasure, at everyone’s mercy — which is why he could not help loving them.

He was running from them.

He longed for their inner strength, their naked muscles, the nauseating smell of their face powders, their eyes decorated with artificial lashes, their unbridled parodies, their total boldness, but not for their vulnerability.

As he ran he lost his way in the complicated network of paths, lanes, and trails — nothing but the topography of senseless desires, the imprint of pampered fantasies and futile wishes on this filthy planet. Of course, if he could see everything, if he could observe the entire system of their existence, then he’d definitely understand.

And experience the other’s life without giving up anything of yourself, without touching him at all.

On the very first night, he’d decided to return the next day. In daylight, however, his nocturnal decision lost its validity. It was like returning in daytime as an ornithologist to a research area; the birds were screeching, singing, twittering, chirping, billing, and cooing, some of them offering impudent retorts. He might in daylight see into the secret chambers of a stranger’s conscience here, but he didn’t want anything to do with anyone or thing. The ones who had disappeared from his earlier experience were precisely those who in daylight might have guided him to some useful anthropological discovery, but in daylight no special interest linked him here, so he became a total stranger to his nocturnal self. Living his other life, he could make no contact with the requirements of this one. Or would have to exchange one of his lives for the other so that the totality of his existence would not be so intricately false, to turn the two lives into a single one. To attempt that, he felt, would be the end; he’d be playing with madness. Or perhaps he was already in this situation up to his neck and could no longer distinguish among different levels and planes of reality. Something was unavoidably happening, but it immediately and uncontrollably slipped through his fingers.

When he spoke to someone and at the same time made an effort to distract his own attention from the relentless inner speech within him, he did so with a resigned, permanent smile, which is usually enough for people to consider one endearing. But this is what made him aware of his madness’s reality. Not even with the help of his stronger, more reasonable daytime self could he soften the pain of his duality. With his polite daytime smile he promised more and forgot more than he could keep of his nocturnal promises. For a successful coordination of his selves, he’d first have to whisper to one of them which of the two was his other life. He did not succeed in this because neither the nocturnal nor the daytime life was more realistic or more improbable than the other.

In the meantime, it seemed sensible not to deny himself the nights on Margit Island. He would accomplish nothing by forbidding them to himself, anyway. But he’d stay strictly on the trails; he had to prescribe this for himself. To watch, to see, to observe, but not to mingle with those who meant to possess only his nocturnal self; to be on guard, to preserve his daytime self and, in the spirit at least of mating, to keep himself whole. If not exactly sane, at least on this side of insanity.

To trust himself to his sense of smell.

To discern in the darkness the buffeting and the waves of odors — of tobacco, shit, stale urine, sperm, the hostile or friendly emanations of bodies excited or cooling; these signals always steered him aright. Because of them, he became like an animal, following a scent and letting his feet carry him on. He felt more at home as an animal than as a human, because he recorded and preserved his need for objectivity with senses that worked only on an animal level. This smooth feeling of animality was one of the fascinating discoveries of the night — strong enough to absolve him, to neutralize his feeling of guilt and to erase his moral doubts. However, not even his feet or sense of smell could guarantee him total safety on the dark trails.