Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

And not only that, but also my own sentimental self, longing for brotherhood, would not let go of me; that was my problem, being buffeted by these different intertwined selves that I could not separate. Because of my birth I wound up in a world where in certain cases yes might mean no or no could mean yes. Yet I simply couldn’t imagine or accept about myself that I might have anything to do with these repugnant characters and what I saw them do. I wished myself back in the time when I knew nothing of this. There must be some people fortunate enough to go through life without ever being aware of this world. And if this is the way things are in the end, and I’m too craven to admit that I’m just like these people and have been looking in vain for the real world behind the appearances, now that I’ve found it and see that every other kind of life is but a gross illusion of this ungainly reality, then I must opt for the bridge.

But if my desire is to grasp a cock, anybody’s I can, then why on earth should I kill myself, I asked, rattling and panting with carnal desire and self-hatred.

I would have preferred, with the same effort, to laugh at myself for being so ridiculous.

How ridiculous and ignoble, and willing to sink even lower.

I had no place where I could get away from tormenting doubt. I knew no one with whom I could share any of this. I could just as easily have taken it into my mouth, mutely, anyone’s, so that when the hot sperm was ejected from the depth of his body I could feel at least once what I’d be like as the other man. But I didn’t have enough power of imagination to think this thought through to the end. Even though I stated clearly why I would not want to do it. I did not want to be the way I was, as defined by my natural qualities.

Only God could see things correctly, if there was a God and if he could see. But the no stayed stronger in me.

Whether I reject or approve and adopt a life like that, I can’t endure it for long.

I had to get to that point from here.

Out of the darkness and onto the lit-up bridge. Let the cold of the water swallow me forever, and let no one ever find me either, being a person of such miserable birth. I cursed my mother, whom I did not know, of whom I barely had memories, who left me for a large, bony, pale, blond Frenchwoman. And because my father didn’t notice any signs of this in my mother’s behavior and because he did not keep her from leaving, I cursed him too, a man stupid enough to want to fuck a woman like that. But he was taken away one ordinary early summer morning, in unknown circumstances and for unfathomable reasons, maybe killed by mistake, so my curse could not settle on him as I wanted it to. I was the accursed one. Because I did remember what this dead man’s reproductive organ was like, how it rested on his testicles, I had the brains to remember a thing like that, what his belly was like and his pubic hair when the water rained down on him from the showerhead.

I remember the hair on his body, long and black, how it clung to the deep brown skin of that marvelous body; yes, I remember that very precisely.

By the time I grew up mine became just like that of the murdered man, even though I was blond like my mother and blue-eyed like a pure-blooded German. I wore a perfectly strange cock on my body; the skin had a different consistency and color, but the only real difference between our cocks was that for this brief transition called life I was not circumcised, so that I could reveal our sameness in the mirror only if I pulled back the dark foreskin from the bulb and in that state laid the hanging cock on the testicles, which appeared almost black under the blond pubic hair. All right, so I have a Jewish cock, though I always tried to console myself with the thought that my body at least was like my mother’s and completely Christian. The wrinkled beak of the foreskin remained very narrow because I did things like this only very rarely, preferring to stroke it through pajama pants or underwear, so that when I did pull it back, the pain was greater than the pleasure.

From this I learned that I too was condemned to a terrible death.

I wanted to follow him faithfully, so that it would happen as soon as possible.

I heard in advance the grating noise my footsteps would make. It wouldn’t make sense to waste more time on sentimental thoughts. I felt like a person who in his sleep has lost all his clothes and is now made to appear stark naked in public. I had no choice. My impending death did not upset me, it was like a fait accompli; what bothered me were stupid trivialities such as the question why I couldn’t stay with them now that I had turned around and noticed them trying to get my attention with the glowing embers of their cigarettes. In this place every movement and gesture, or their absence, had an agreed-upon order and meaning, and just as I could haltingly read and find my way among their signals after a few days, they could already read me fluently. It was impossible to avoid being an open book that the eyes of these men could read. It was exactly the opposite of what happened in my other life, where nothing was uncovered, where behind the appropriate concealment of customs and rules, within the flexible frameworks of appearances, a person was sustained by his or her intentions.

I shuddered when I realized that since I was unaware of my own intentions, I must be even less aware of other people’s.

In our other life, something must happen to us that slips through the cracks between obstinacy and dissembling. In fact, darkness must have lurked behind everything all along. In which case, however, reality made visible must also have something behind it, and I can’t get to the end of either one, I can’t see their boundaries. I can’t decide which of my two real lives, so trickily covering each other, is the more robust one. Everyone has another life that must be kept hidden, I knew that, but in the concealed background of a life hiding behind appearances or brutality there is yet another life, and that one I didn’t know. Because while what men did to and with one another was rough, common, and brutal, the language of their communication was exceedingly refined, more complex, civilized, and flexible than spoken language and at the same time very clear and practical.

I enjoyed their knowing more about me than, for lack of experience, I did myself. Whatever I did or didn’t do instantly became a decipherable signal for them, whether it was my silence or motionlessness; and therefore no matter how hard I might try, I stood before them more naked than I could have ever seen myself in my other life. If I understood anything of their language, I understood something of myself that I had once chastely concealed or covered with lies. Appearances could not cover my real being. Not only was I observing them, but I was beginning to see myself with the experienced eyes of those who listened constantly from their place in the darkness and, in accordance with their undisguised intentions, were keenly evaluating and grading my behavior.

To carry out my plan and gain the bridge, I had to walk along the creaky stretch of the promenade in front of the rowers’ clubhouse, or cut across the dense thicket with a few short steps and take the trail to return to the island’s lit-up interior, which at this hour was completely deserted.

Nothing moved.

Sometimes from the Pest shore, sometimes from the Buda shore, I could hear creaks turning into shrieks. Streetcar wheels make the metal rails shriek like that when they round a bend. And then there’d be nothing again, only the wind fingering the trees or a human step crackling in the thicket. One could tell by the sounds where a night streetcar on either side of the city happened to be. There were more places on the Buda shore where streetcars would shriek — in the great bend of Margit Boulevard or, farther on, at different points on Moszkva Square. On the Pest side, the number 2 streetcar might shriek before the Parliament or the number 6 on Marx Square, or it could be another night line, the number 3, making a wide two-part turn at Visegrád Street where it opens into Grand Boulevard to return to Váci Road.