Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Shapeless puddles of standing water marked the swamplike vicinity of the fountain.

Bricks had been set down in some of the puddles so one could manage to approach the fountain, but from the wobbly bricks my feet slipped into the water several times. If I really wanted to walk home on the Árpád Bridge instead of taking the night tram, I had a hopelessly long and unpleasant trip ahead of me in wet shoes.

Maybe it would be better to put an end to my life.

The hard lump that had developed on my bruised shin was throbbing and turning blue, a tight pantleg was rubbing against the oozing wound, and I was limping badly.

Once on the other shore, to reach Váci Road, I’d have to make my way across Vizafogó, a jungle of worthless little proletarian housing projects that keep sinking into the sand. From there, the only routes lay along tall fences and cheerless planks of factories all the way to Lehel Square, where, amid a constant noise of shunting and switching, I’d cross the Ferdinánd Bridge over the railway tracks and continue on the endless, sooty Szív Street until I reached Andrássy Road. There, I could choose to go under the plane trees on the promenade lined with salvia, forget-me-nots, pansies, and daisies, where I might be somewhat exposed, or, remaining in the maze of houses, to approach Grand Boulevard from the cover of little side streets.

I hoped to find the main gate open and slip in without Balter’s noticing me.

But in the end I set out on the long trek with two parallel sets of calculations at work in me. It was also possible that I would be unable to hobble home at all.

Jumping off the Árpád Bridge, one could be much more certain of killing oneself than by jumping off the Margit Bridge.

The span between the piers is much greater, the bridge is simple and unadorned, and there’s no chance that one would knock against the steel framework or that the piers would be a hindrance. I wanted to reach the water unharmed. I needed only a single glance to get an idea of the width and depth of the whirlpools and of the current’s strength.

It would be nice this way; at any rate, this bridge was preferable.

But even if I were to go through with it, first I had to urinate. I could barely hold it anymore; I was hurrying, limping, anxious to reach the mysterious darkness of the chestnut grove below the boulders of the Japanese Garden, where I could finally relieve myself.

The promenade along the shore and the thicket around the Dominican cloister had kept me captive for four whole nights, so I hadn’t wandered this far afield, and I had no idea to what sort of place my urge to urinate would bring me.

But I knew the area from my childhood, and a few days earlier I had taken a stroll there with a slightly limping, very elegant young lady from Buda, who in her utter passivity mercifully wanted nothing from me. Whenever I joined her family for an opera or ballet performance at the open-air theater, or in the casino for five o’clock tea and a dance, before and after the event the two of us would go for a walk on the island to about this point. There was nothing interesting past the chestnut grove, except perhaps for the war-damaged ruins of the neoclassic Music Well, soiled and stinking of urine, and the barrenness of the paved ramp leading to the bridge.

An artificial waterfall poured over romantic rocks into a calm little pond.

This is how far we came.

The bodies of plump goldfish glimmered among the water lilies, and one could gaze at the fish even if one had nothing worth saying to one’s companion. The point always arrived when I had nothing to say to girls, or when they didn’t want to talk about Edith Piaf, Simone de Beauvoir, or Camus. I was not enthusiastic about their favorite topics. What they wanted to talk about was the cooing voice of sweet little Ákos Németh, along with all the gossip about him, which was of very limited interest to me. If they’d wanted me to grasp their breasts and stroke them while gazing into their eyes, or if they’d let my fingers wander under their skirts, there’d have been no problem at all.

But all they wanted was that I passionately return their kisses, nothing more, maybe put my arm around their waist but not slide my hand up the back of their sweater.

You’re doing this only to get me excited, I know. Men do this to make women lose their self-control.

Oh, how awful, how can you do a thing like that.

They’d slap my hand no matter where it sought contact with their bare skin.

Mean boy, they said sulkily; try as you might, I won’t let you do that.

It was quiet now because the taps of the waterfall had been turned off at ten o’clock sharp at the power station, though the steeply rising rock garden with its footpaths remained illuminated by floodlights all night long to make patrolling easier for the police.

Their aggressive lips desensitized mine, and I found no passion in aggressiveness. I wondered whether they had learned this aggressive kissing from one another, whether I should fall on them with the same aggressive vehemence.

Hurrying toward the dark grove, I discovered that the light was on above the urinal and the door had been left wide open. Normally, this should have been closed when they turned off the waterfall.

Inside it was dark.

As I carefully entered the place, which smelled strongly of tar and urine, expecting to step into muck or bump into something unexpected, the beams of floodlights coming through the narrow windows high up on the walls temporarily blinded me and made me stop.

A familiar stench and familiar human tension warmly pervaded the space.

I should have realized immediately that I’d fallen into a trap and would not easily escape; I was in a snare. But from that moment on I was once again standing outside my own personality.

I saw nothing, only heard and felt on my goose-bumped body that many men were standing in front of the tarred wall opposite me. Somehow they seemed to fill the place completely. It was as if the temperature had risen sharply, for it seemed feverishly hot. As if disturbed by my entrance, the men rustled their clothes and made little knocking and shuffling noises on the floor. I stared, opened my eyes wide, wanted to see what was happening, what they had so abruptly interrupted when I came in, but darkness and the light coming straight at me simultaneously blinded me. Then the dark silence became deeper and tenser, and I could hear in it, at arm’s length, directly behind the open door, the solitary dripping of a faucet.

This is how water drips into a broken porcelain sink.

I did not move from the doorway.

This somebody, whom I was observing within me, did not turn on his heels and take off, as he should have. In his terror he did not run away, rather he stepped out of the harsh light and into the feverish darkness that had always tempted him. Dispassionately and almost omnisciently, he glanced around in the new space, though he could not have seen much of it.

Tar and water formed a compound fragrance at once sharp, clear, deep, and dark; it devoured all other odors and threatened the sense of smell.

All the while his abandoned persona could not swallow, and his entire body was trembling gently, mainly in the knees, because of his shaking soul.

He found pleasure in this bodily fright.

He heard the sound of his footsteps, which told him that with his entire being he had once again become like soft cat’s paws on which he would rush to his doom. Although in the empty shell of his persona someone was dissatisfied and sending out danger signals, whispering you cannot do this, you must not do this. As if somebody was still there who could be convinced to do something.

The one now standing in the space abandoned by his corporeal reality was not strong enough to convince himself of anything.