Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

At the same time they also realized it made no difference that they were expressing themselves so politely, circumstantially, and very intellectually. The pleasure had grown so great that words could not stand in its way or curb it. They did not understand what was happening between them. In other words, they had to acknowledge that what was happening under the overcast sky in the spring wind was very different from what they had had in mind earlier in the morning, and also very different from what they were talking about.

As if they were slipping between mental and physical pleasure.

After all, thought the man, who hadn’t yet noticed that he was attracted to this woman. His lightly starched, carefully ironed white silk poplin underpants that came halfway down his thighs did restrain, though could not prevent, an erection. He had to admit that he found the woman quite ugly, though unusually intelligent and independent. But precisely for these reasons, a woman like this was not his type, or at least this is what he wanted to believe about himself. The underpants pressed his erect cock against his thigh, drawing the foreskin back from the tip. It will get caught like that. I won’t pay attention to it. I must not pay attention to this now, he thought.

It rarely happened to him that because of an erection he’d be confused about his own intentions.

Perhaps, if I were a revolutionary, Bolshevik, syndicalist, anarchist, or something of the sort, I could go on a little adventure like this, he said, laughing. In fact, with his laughter he was begging the woman’s pardon and showing her his strength and desire too, with a display of his full set of teeth. Then I could really get into it, obviously, because I’d want to change or save the world. Or wipe out and repair everything that others have done before me. I’m no communist. That’s not the way I think. I need clear frameworks. And supporting them in the background, of course, there must be unambiguous agreement. There is no urban plan that is not based on thousands of important pacts. What ensures the durability of buildings is not the stone or the concrete but the security of the world order. And if I can’t find these necessities here, or if they turn out not to be clean enough, then I’ll go someplace else.

That is why I decided as I did. I hope you understand.

From a distance, standing by the neo-Baroque fountain they seemed like a couple of those practiced lovers who break up for good at least twice a month. Probably neither of them noticed how unjustifiably close they were to each other. They were obviously trying to keep a distance.

Actually, they both leaned back, away from each other, yet their legs and hips remained too close.

This must have created a certain aura around them; on occasions such as this, the body releases incidental scents. Yet this is not why their situation had become so complicated. Their clothing, whose quality and character were comically similar, also reinforced the feeling of mutuality, which meant not that they were becoming similar but that they were finally realizing how similar they had been from the beginning.

It was preparing to rain on this overcast spring morning, but it did not.

They both wore sand-colored Burberry coats, designed for spring and autumn, which differed only in their cut, and they both had on dark hats; the man held his in his hand.

In those days, women’s hats were often worn low on the forehead, the brim pulled down so that the features of the face were taken into the protection and shadow of the hat. The woman bowed her head slightly and looked up from the shadow of her hat into the man’s pale-green eyes. As a protection, with both hands she pressed her pocketbook to her chest. What was considered fashionable in those days in a female figure was a slender, elongated, and overrefined silhouette. Irma Arnót was not beautiful, not even in her youth, but she had a beautiful silhouette, exactly as fragile and graceful as that era coveted.

The wind now swept away, now intensified the man’s scent. It had in it something of the cigar smoke of the Britannia, that old-fashioned hotel on Teréz Boulevard, also a barber’s shaving cream, along with lavender aftershave, and then among many unfamiliar shades the scent’s heavier, dominant, all-powerful central aroma, in which the skin’s nearness can be deciphered. They were already past the point where they listened to each other’s intentions and the secret signs signaling them. But at this stage it would have been inconvenient for either of them with a careless move to step out from behind their defenses and put their cards on the table. They would find that stupid and irresponsible, no matter which of them might propose it, very brutal and ill mannered. After all, one was not put on earth just to be in heat and to mate. Though they happen to have reached the age when many people might ask what other reason was there; does our life have any other conceivable and worthy goal besides this. Both protested instinctively against the emptiness of life, and therefore they were characterized not so much by what they did with each other but by what they denied themselves, by what they consciously renounced.

This is what made this moment so fulfilling, and they took away its grief and joy with them for the hours of loneliness.

At any rate, the man, younger than Irma, who had fled hastily to Budapest after a complicated love affair, did not ask, what made you sad so suddenly.

And it would never occur to them to address each other informally.

He despised overfamiliar amatory commonplaces, such as, what are you thinking about, what are you laughing at. Yet he was not interested in anything else and so, in his thoughts, began addressing her in the familiar. Why are you so overcast, what sorts of shadow are passing over your clever face. If he had asked and the woman had answered anything at all, his erection would have grown stronger. He did not want that. Although it had been in the air earlier in the day when, before leaving the Britannia, just to be sure, he wanted to gratify himself. To look at his erect cock in his hand, how the pleasure followed his movements. He was satisfied with his cock. Yet he had not done it — actually changed his mind halfway and left off with it. He could not embrace or press the woman to himself. And the woman did not ask the man, younger than she, though the question was on the tip of her tongue, from which of his parents had he inherited this maddening head of hair. What stupidities I’m thinking about. As if it makes any difference to me from whom he inherited it. She would have liked to say your maddening head of hair.

Maddening.

A word that would irrevocably show the wonder and amazement she felt for the other.

Neither of them wanted to go that far. Deep brown tended to appear in this kind of red; it was so rich, and undulating. Even with words, it could not be touched with impunity. Mrs. Szemző honestly hoped it would not show on her skin that her back, shoulders, and neck were shuddering. As a special armor, of course, he is defending himself against me, wearing a ritual hair helmet. No matter how she assessed it and kept looking at it, in addition to the brown and red she also saw purple, which seemed improbable. Where did you get the color of your hair, this is the way she would have preferred to ask him. While she was trying to talk herself out of it. I have two children, I’m a married woman, I cannot ruin my professional name with love affairs.

Their exertion was so great they could no longer have spoken in normal tones.

In her confusion, Mrs. Szemző shrugged her shoulders several times. Madzar became like a statue, motionless; even his miraculous eyelashes stopped glittering for a little while.

And then, somehow, they started together on the empty promenade that led along the stretch facing the Pest shore.