Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

And the person who could have picked up the receiver without any trouble, an attractive, tall young man barely nineteen years old, with nearly ramrodlike posture, was simply not in a position to do so. He saw everything, weighed everything, clearly heard the phone ringing, yet somehow, for quite some time, had not been present anywhere. At any rate, there were many things he could have done but did not do because he was busy with other, much more important matters. As if he had to have a complete overview of his entire future life before, from his imaginary distance, he would consider what he could and could not do.

Who is capable of taking on such a great responsibility; it paralyzed him.

People in his milieu sensed a passing absentmindedness at most, but not his threatened mental state. He had a flawless education, and when he talked to someone he smiled persistently, paid unflagging attention, showed interest, and asked questions without being intrusive — all of which was enough for people to consider him truly endearing. Even his own relatives ignored the unpredictability of his behavior; they thought he was a bit of an eccentric but essentially a fine fellow.

He was now standing at a front-room window looking out at something, while leaning with his hip against the windowsill. He kept his eyes on something; his eyes were submerged in something that no one but he could see; with his eyes he seemed to have grown into this something, but this was revealed only by his unnatural posture, the stiff little half-turns he made. When he leaned forward and felt the pressure of the wood on his loins, he almost touched his temple to the window; simultaneously he had to retract his neck lest his head press the glass from the window. Nobody could have understood what he was doing here. Had he simply stopped at the window without paying special attention to anything, he would have seen the festively deserted square with an occasional yellow streetcar crossing it; or the trees swaying in the wind, their bare, glittering branches knocking together; or perhaps the enormous sky in which cracks of white incandescence had opened up and clouds, heavy with rain yet flying swiftly, were effortlessly chasing one another without piling into a thunderhead.

The vision did have a sort of unpredictable rhythm.

The rain shower did not necessarily batter the windows when the sky grew dark. Up above, the clouds were moving more rapidly than would have seemed possible while also releasing the rain to swoop earthward; so it seemed as if the water were flowing through the white incandescent cracks.

He saw this too, though he wasn’t looking at it, just as he also looked at things that he could not possibly have seen. And one cannot even say that he was thinking about something. He was not thinking. With his body, he responded to the rhythm of the gusting wind, and thus he adjusted his rhythm to match any thought or any other form of sensation that crossed his mind. As if inside him too, the elements had taken control that day, as they had in the entire city. He became gloomy and then cheered up, he found supporting arguments for his mood and in a little while discarded them; they seeped away from him; then suddenly his feelings ran dry, he grew despondent and became hopeful. He had no explanation for the simultaneous diversity. Out of this embarrassing lack, the soul’s chaos was yawning at him, his own. But not a single feature of his face became distorted; on the contrary, self-discipline made his countenance seem frighteningly indifferent.

There was somebody else in him, another being who was not a person but who followed his every thought and movement. Whatever he missed, whatever he did or intended to do, this someone was watching impassively, voicing no opinion but not leaving him alone either. When trouble was grave, it would register in the young man’s face with its neutral countenance. It waited for the moment of action; it did not interfere with anything. As if to claim mutely that every moral command or consideration is secondary because it is always preceded by action or resignation. But with the tenacious carriage of his head and his petulantly pursed lips, the young man showed that he was not just gazing idly out the window, that he wanted something or there was something he could not not want, that he sees something; maniacally he is keeping his eyes on something, he cannot let go of it. And this something is down there on the boulevard, on the opposite side. Occasionally a passing streetcar obscures it. Maybe in the bus stop. When a bus stopped he got on his toes as if to see through the bus. Maybe somebody is supposed to arrive, he is waiting for somebody, that’s why he can’t leave his post.

While he was waiting for this or for something entirely different, and enjoying the windowsill’s rhythmic pressure on his loins, the young woman in bed in the inner back room did make a move. As if impatience, or some protest, or perhaps a sensual bodily excitement had coursed through her naked arms. Her brownish skin twitched but in the opposite direction from which her arm muscles contracted. It was the last beat of her sleep, which included the temptation of the unwanted awakening.

She had been alone in bed since early morning; the telltale signs of the absent person included a hastily turned-up eiderdown and a few scattered articles of clothing, dark socks on the floor near the bed, pajama pants a little distance away, and a pair of white underpants on the rug; a shirt and a cream-colored pajama top on an overstuffed chair at the far end of the room. Since he had left in a hurry, the young woman alternately forced herself back to sleep because she wanted to forget what had happened during the night and dozed off, or was startled to wakefulness again. Not because of the morning noises and not because of the persistently ringing telephone. It was as if she were taking a ferry across a river flowing in a flat landscape and the ferry docked now at this shore, now at the other. It seems she must have really been dreaming; she dreamed of crossing over. She dreamed of shores that did not differ from each other; no bushes or trees, not a single tree anywhere, only farm wagons, jostling cattle, and people wrapped in clouds of dust as they streamed forth from the vast lowlands. The last images of her dream remained glued for a while to the surface of her wakefulness. The river was enormously wide, murky, the surface of its dull, glistening water almost convex. From one shore the other shore could not be seen. But I should see it, she thought half-asleep, remembering the shore she had left, but it’s impossible, this is an impossibility. At the same time, she did not know what she should be seeing. The words clattered hollowly in her head; she did not comprehend their meaning even when awake.

As if to look out from under the pillow, she lifted it slightly from her head and at the same time raised her head. Instead of listening to senseless words, she wanted to hear whether anyone was going to pick up the receiver, or maybe she’d have to after all. Because of her little movement, she suddenly smelled something that was at once strange and familiar. What is going on here anyway. She was happy to register the fact that despite the old lady’s demands, no one was picking up the phone. And neither would she. She had nothing to do with it. After all, Kristóf must be in one of the front rooms. Each time she awoke she would traverse the entire apartment, concentrating her attention on each detail, going from room to room with her awakened senses, as if to palpate the physical and mental situation of the people found in them, and in this activity there was most definitely something blatantly animalistic.

The young man named Kristóf had in time become her obsession.

She spied on him with her imagination, she pursued him with her sensuality, she wanted to know what he was doing, when and where.