Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

She was barely twenty-one years old when at a rehearsal for her first major role a loosened batten crashed down on her.

It happened that in those days she was with a man — who took care of her, of whom her family knew nothing of course, who taught her how to talk again, but whom she did not take seriously until this accident, or rather whose proximity she did not want to acknowledge. She took him for one of those people who hang around theaters, a very good-looking penniless nobody who attached himself to her as he would to someone else tomorrow, and until then she deigned to accept his services but did not think much of him. In the evenings, during longer breaks in rehearsals or on endless spring Sundays, it would have been devastating to remain alone in the huge city.

Loneliness had eaten away at her suppleness and the smoothness of her style.

And she couldn’t commit herself to this sad young man because she was always, hysterically, on guard lest he make her pregnant.

He or anyone else.

Not to get pregnant, not that, for God’s sake, and certainly not by this character. Let him have his gratification on his own account; let him squirt his fluids somewhere else, anywhere, in any way.

The small puddle usually wound up on her belly or became long stripes running down her neck, into her face, her hair; she didn’t care where.

He was a frail, sickeningly white-skinned, easily injured person whose dark hair, twisting in little waves and curls, continually fell over his shiny, large, pale forehead. She had never met anyone so poor as this man and listened to his stories with aversion, though this made her feel ashamed because a poor man was, after all, still a man. It seemed as if his poverty also meant that he had all sorts of venereal diseases. She was always anxious, worried about catching some of them, she constantly observed herself, stuck out her tongue in front of the mirror or, with the help of another mirror, studied the roof of her mouth, her throat, to ascertain that fatal blisters had not appeared. He might be Lithuanian, maybe half Polish, even Russian, she couldn’t tell. He’d run away from a Warsaw orphanage when he was sixteen, and except for his grandmother, who had raised him until he was ten, didn’t know anyone.

At most she loved his mouth strictly for aesthetic reasons, but she was ready to forgo his kisses.

She was afraid of minor infections, even the common cold, anything that might take her off her feet. She liked his eyes too, somewhat, his deeply melancholic countenance, a little disguised by his way of retreating under the protection of his eyelashes or by the unexpected vehemence of the movements with which he straightened the myriad curls of his hair. She looked for no lasting relationship with anyone because every little change disturbed her concentration.

Once a week she would wait for Médi in front of the Conservatoire, or the two of them together waited on the quai Malaquais for Médi’s love, another destitute young man, ramrod-straight, with a bad stutter, who was also Hungarian and studied painting in a studio at the École des Beaux Arts or was a model at other ones. Frankly, she didn’t want to see even these people, especially not Médi and her boyfriend, because their presence drew her attention to her lack of romantic feelings for anyone. Not even the man with whom she reached her gratification.

She was aware that her behavior was unusual or downright scandalous.

She had to be careful not to be conspicuous about it with her colleagues. Any reasonable girl would rather seek than avoid company; after all, she’d want to get married and would obviously adjust her conduct to her plans and intentions. But no, not she, not in the least. To some extent she had to keep her intentions a secret even from herself.

But this Korsakas managed to meet her most secret requirements. He satisfied her, nourished the suppleness and stylistic polish that otherwise loneliness would have consumed; and this was the most important thing for her career.

She practically begged his pardon when she too reached her climax.

And he did not want to rob Bella of all her time, because he worried about losing her. He did not demand her attention and did not even insist on penetrating her. Actually, there was something rather neutral in his behavior. And when he did penetrate her a bit, he did it carefully and with consideration, didn’t go too deeply, only filled the bays of the labia with his amazingly round bulb, which turned almost completely black with excitement. A powerful odor rose from down there, that’s where he stroked it and kept pulling it between the smells of the two of them, though in a way that let him yank it out anytime he wanted to.

With considerable effort she might have been able to deny herself the man’s body, but she always felt a renewed desire for his smell in hers.

Which was such a strange thought; as if she had said, yes, I caught a scent, and therefore I am a wild beast.

To suit their interests and needs, they developed a particular technique of communication, the sort of relationship that was not unusual in such a merciless big city. Bella did not ask herself about the source of the man’s polite neutrality. She had a cool calculation in her mind: this is what I give, this is what I get, neither more nor less.

I’m calculating and selfish, she told herself reproachfully, an egoistic beast, that’s what I am, she said to herself, as if waiting for someone to contradict her, but this was the truth.

Yet she felt that if things went on this way, if she failed to tame her egoism or relinquish her slyly extracted, selfish little gratifications, which differed from those produced in her own solitary smell and by her own hands, she’d become more and more like her father and mother, and her rebellion against them would be rendered meaningless.

She thought that she was deceiving the other person and that that was why her behavior was morally unacceptable, but she was only fooling herself, which made her very anxious, and she suffered greatly. Perhaps the man had more experience in making order of such calculations; he was ten years older than she.

Bella told herself that the business relationship would last as long as its benefit to her body remained greater than the loss or harm she might create with her infection phobias. She feared that frequent autoeroticism would leave some trace on her gestures and become obvious on the stage. She did not notice that the more efficient their calculations became, their techniques of gratification more studied and deliberate, the deeper they went into the areas where they became acquainted, in which case why would she belittle or disdain him.

She could not take seriously a body so poorly built as his, so crude and ill proportioned, and not in terms of professional considerations either. She would involuntarily close her eyes because she did not like to look at him naked. Perhaps that is why the image of what she did see remained so sharp in her memory. It was no use saying that the sight of a perfect body was boring and she’d had enough of it; for her it was as hard to accept this explanation as to accept its opposite. She would have withdrawn from the embrace of thin, long, weak arms, but the sharp sensation produced by sensitive fingers became more profound and more important than what she saw. What settled in her mind was the cautious encounter of their loneliness. And the man’s feet, his long legs and thighs, surprisingly well developed compared to the infirmity of his body as a whole.

Quite nice legs and thighs with thick black hair. All right, she didn’t love him, but she wished at least to accept his body a little.

She was most averse to his penis, which is to say she didn’t want to see it erect or withdrawn into itself, when with its dark round head it looked out of the thick pubic hair. She found his testicles positively ridiculous, undeveloped, like a child’s; she didn’t understand why a man like that didn’t sink into the ground for shame.