Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

And then it became significant and meaningful that they had started out together. And if that wasn’t enough, their steps were in unison.

Which quickly irritated them both.

Some strange power pulverized their independence. It was the other one who did it; the other; there was another one; another one had appeared.

In their embarrassment they could do nothing else: they listened to the loud creaking of the pebbles under their feet. For the man every step was torture. This was not the first time they’d been silent, but until now they’d known what to do with their silences, until now their luck had not abandoned them, as the man put it, nor their upbringing, as the woman put it. Now they feared they had no more reserves and that something might crack, burst open. A situation well balanced until now would become awful. The man could not but think about what he would do with his cock once he was back in the hotel.

Ultimately, it was about a lot of money, about work, nothing else. But it won’t go like this. I cannot go to bed with the wife of every client. And nothing is really forcing me to take on this job. And I owe no one any explanation as to why I might not do it.

They kept telling themselves, enumerating to themselves, their respective reasoned and realistic arguments.

If he doesn’t want to do it, he shouldn’t. I’ll furnish it myself; after all, the building has its own tradition, so if won’t be hard. And that way it won’t cost much. I’ll put the sofa there, the desk over here, and that’s that.

Or maybe someone else can do it.

But that person will not be a man, that’s for sure. Belluka probably knows someone she can recommend.

Each summer the promenades on Margit Island were replenished with fine pebbles from the bottom of the Danube.

They sank into the pebbles, and because they weren’t paying attention water got into their shoes. They were both wearing strong shoes, medium-brown and welted, the woman’s with a raised, athletic heel, the vamps divided in the shape of a heart, the toes ornamented with an elegant twisting pattern. The woman’s coat was held together at the waist by a belt, the collar turned up to keep the wind away from her neck. He could not tell what she was wearing under the coat, but the grain-patterned wool of her dress seemed identical in quality and pattern to the wool of his English suit.

He could not see her silk-stockinged legs, but he thought they were too thin. She had no breasts at all. In a few years, she’d be like a board, like a poker.

The woman was struggling with the thought that although the man’s hands were not particularly handsome, still it would be nice to hold one of them and together dig into his coat pocket. Or to restrain the hand that kept mangling his hat, to hold it down. He might have habits like jiggling his legs, and he probably wasn’t well brought up as a child.

Their steps grew stiffer and stiffer. If one may say such a thing, the man’s hands were positively ugly, his fingers short and thick, his wrists too powerful. Still, she would have liked to feel them, to walk with their fingers intertwined and to keep on walking. To get away from here and go to America with him. They should have stopped to shake the pebbles out of their shoes. And neither of them could bear thinking about the long stroll stretching out before them. The farther they walked from the entrance to the island promenade, the more certain it seemed that once well inside the island, in spite of everything they would irresponsibly fall on each other.

A saving idea occurred to the architect.

They shouldn’t continue in this direction because there was too much wind on this side; they should cut across at the casino and take a look at the new covered hall for the high-board diving tower at the Sports Baths and how it had been marked out; he’d heard it would happen this week, according to the plans.

Maybe he would find the renowned architect Alfréd Hajós* there.

The woman understood the implication of this suggestion, and at the same time the enormous ache surprised her.

She felt in her throat and in her chest that although she would accept the man’s arbitrary decision, she wouldn’t get away scot-free with a surrender.

Because it hurt very much, she would not be free of this pain for a long time. She was suffering and she would continue to suffer.

Luckily, they found nothing and no one.

They found only traces of uprooted trees, a few abandoned ditches from which the designer must have taken soil samples, and a few stakes at various points on the neglected lawn. The construction had been halted for some reason. This gave them an excuse to talk about neutral topics, look around, roam about, linger and be silent, and then quickly turn back.

At the island’s entrance, which is one of the city’s most exposed spots, the wind stormed across their bodies, pushing them relentlessly.

They tried to resist, laughing loudly, they held on to their hats, kept on shouting, accidentally bumped each other, and then deliberately leaned against each other back to back and, holding on to each other, kept guffawing about how they were so enjoying themselves and how each successive gust took their breath away.

Or who knows what took away their breath.

There was nothing to be done about the wind; in the end, they took the streetcar.

In the empty car, they panted loudly, right in front of the conductor, flushed and wide-eyed. They behaved as if they had just saved their lives.

And if they already had, then they could quickly part company at the very first stop in Pest.

Which is the second-stormiest place in Budapest; here, tin gutters often become loose, rain pipes detach themselves from the walls, plaster and roof tiles take flight and crash to the sidewalks.

They parted on Lipót Boulevard as if they never wanted to see each other again.

I don’t know where I got the courage finally, valiantly, to spit it out. The sentence was bad, but I said it anyway. I’d like to have a date with her. It sounded like another person’s voice calling over into my own life.

Maybe today’s young people no longer say things like that, they say something entirely different, but back then that was the proper expression. Propriety, of course, did not make the declaration less shameless.

It wouldn’t have been possible to wipe out or remedy one of my shameful deeds with another.

Only nine months had gone by, I figured out quickly while standing by the rain-lashed living-room window, yet those events seemed to have receded into a calmer distance.

During the fall, there was one foggy evening when I ventured back to those places, but luckily I found not a single soul among the trees and bushes. Yet it seemed so useless to go on with everything as before when I could not help looking continuously into another life. Into a life running parallel to the one I was leading. I should have kept the secret even from myself. I needed more time, maybe the same length of time that has passed until now, this was my ascetic hope, and then I’d forget it completely. Though the best thing to do would have been to kill, that’s what I kept imagining, to kill everyone, leaving no one on earth who might remember those things.

Sometimes I even recalled the black dog, the way it stood over me, panting into my face, longing to lick my eyes.

With legs spread, hips thrust forward, there above me stood the men who knew everything better than I, did everything better than I, and wouldn’t miss a single opportunity.

The strange shadows of huge birds.

That is why I hesitated, helplessly mulling over every prepared sentence, that is why I waited for weeks for the right moment, and that is why I became so harshly determined with my dumb sentence when the right moment finally arrived that blustery March morning.