Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

At his arrival, the tips of excited cigarettes caught fire one after the other among the large trees on the promenade.

Four insane glowing tips, far from one another, above the jasmine.

These were all hungry for fresh meat.

The young man in the shadow of the rowers’ white clubhouse could instantly count his rivals and weigh his chances; his heart began to beat hard as the newcomer hesitantly stopped above the water.

He heard but did not understand the sentence said half aloud.

Something menacing radiated from him, and then, I’d rather not want him, he thought to himself. Must be a lunatic, he thought, wandering here aimlessly, mumbling to himself. Stupid little cockbeater, he thought.

One would like to seduce a stupid little cockbeater like him and then leave him alone with his madness. These little idiots think something important is happening to them. And he hadn’t yet decided whether to seduce the boy or let the others take him when, perhaps because of the boy’s back or his straight posture, he thought he recognized him.

That is Demén, Kristóf. And he so surprised himself with the name that he had no doubt as to the correctness of his discovery.

At the same time, something collapsed in him that quietly and unnoticed he had been putting together. This Kristóf is just as miserable as I am except he’s a beginner, and that means he’ll be just as hopeless in this as he’s been in everything else. He had not seen Kristóf for four years but often daydreamed about him, involuntarily and voluntarily. In his own life, an eternity had gone by during those four years. It would be impossible to talk about and he didn’t want to tell anyone about it, yet the first thing that came to mind was how lucky it was that he hadn’t told anyone. He’d always thought of Kristóf during those four years as someone he could trust with his disgusting secrets. Every time he rode by Kristóf’s house in the streetcar and looked up at the windows, he thought of going upstairs and opening up his soul to him; this was something he desired more than Kristóf’s body. He did not do it, because he was afraid of what might happen afterward.

One looks for a psychological garbage can, and then, it turns out, it always turns out, that all one has found is a prattling person; that had been his experience.

Kristóf was the only one in whose case he was still tempted; he’d be the only one, and realizing this made him shudder, but anyway this vain hope was now gone. He too was nothing but a stupid little homo. In fact there was really nobody to whom one could tell anything.

That night Kristóf was wearing a black shirt, black pants, black shoes, and, big idiot that he was, thought the older boy, probably black socks too. In the camp in Wiesenbad where they spent the summer of 1957 together, from his bed he had watched Kristóf’s fastidious dressing ritual every morning. His silhouette made him recognizable in the darkness, his unmistakable posture, bare neck, bodily proportions, and the outline of his shapely head.

He was dressed all in black not because of the latest fashion, though fashion had something to do with it, but because with an all-black outfit he’d prepared to be invisible in the night.

Which also belonged to this recently discovered animality.

The other boy remembered, however, that standing in front of his locker, Kristóf always picked colors to go with other colors.

Let nothing more than his hands and face at the very most show against his all-black outfit.

But the young man spying on him could not have thought of this, because he necessarily had different ideas about his own nights.

He wore clinging T-shirts, usually yellow or white, never dark ones, matched by exceptionally small, thigh-hugger shorts. He never put on underpants. He wore only the kind of clothes in which he could easily show himself, could offer himself up, and which, when the occasion arose, he could shed quickly and effortlessly. With rawhide sandals on his feet, hardly more than a few straps, he gave the impression of being practically naked. Nobody in his right mind would ever wear black here because everything makes visible stains on black.

He was deeply shocked at inadvertently seeing this shy upper-class boy in such a place, the boy he had taken under his wing from the moment he’d first seen him.

What sort of mess has he gotten himself into again, what a blockhead. Or maybe he’s really lost his marbles, and look, now he’s talking to himself again.

Could he have been so shy and peculiar back then, with madness already brewing in him. Suddenly he felt the urge to be rid of him, mad or not, he had to get this blockhead out of here. He had to prevent what was being prepared, or has always been in preparation, from becoming reality. To protect him from knowledge that has nothing to do with him and for which he is not cut out. He quickly realized that this idiot was experimenting with himself, and even if he dabbled with what was going on here, he’d still remain an outsider. The best thing would be to throw him into the Danube. Let him swim; he’d never be the real thing anyway.

Perhaps he thought of such a drastic solution so quickly because his discovery, instead of increasing, considerably decreased the value of his own life.

As if he were saying, no, it cannot be, Kristóf cannot be a faggot.

After all, he wouldn’t do it either if they hadn’t forced him to. Ultimately, the world functions normally, and this faggot life is only one of its aberrations, about which nobody should know anything except for the initiates. Shielding his cigarette with his palm, he took a long drag and then with the heel of his sandal ground the burning butt into the black dirt.

He didn’t want to give himself away ahead of time. Which is to say, he didn’t at all want to reveal himself to Kristóf.

Or only at the appropriate moment, when his action would bring him some profit. As if he had a ready-made plan for how to put the boy to work. The firm would be very grateful for it; what a great catch. They’d rub their hands together. This boy may be a baby in some ways, but he speaks several languages and there isn’t a book or encyclopedia he hasn’t read.

Of course, his current rivals hiding under the trees noticed the fall of the burning cigarette butt. Most of those who frequented this area knew one another by sight; fresh meat was very rare.

What’s the new consignment like, the new arrivals asked every night.

Even if they didn’t know one another, they still knew why the others did something and why they did it this way and not some other way. The abilities of the young man in the tight shorts were highly respected in other hunting grounds of the city: in People’s Park, the Népliget; in City Park, the Városliget; in the Little Flask, or Kiskulacs, Canteen; in the subway toilets, in all the steambaths, at the Old Parade Ground, Vérmező; or in the City Gate coffee bar, Városkapu Espresso. Whenever he appeared, they had reason to be anxious because with his devilish and merciless finesse he managed to knock out his rivals.

Now, with their cigarettes under the trees, they did not understand why Pisti wasn’t going after the boy.

Maybe he’d let one of them have this small-balled little angel.

He knew this was how his four rivals were interpreting his motionlessness, but it never occurred to him to step out of the shadow of the clubhouse.

Let them take him if they want to; let them deal with him.

He was waiting for Kristóf to make a move, any way he wanted to or with anyone, so he could follow him secretly. He wouldn’t let him get away. Not a cell in his body desired him anymore, even though during the last four years he’d thought of him frequently, and whenever he recalled his lips, his awkward nakedness, and his hard little ass, it was indeed a sweet feeling to rub himself to sleep against the background of these images. However, the object of the ritual and its real-life embodiment could no longer have anything to do with each other.