Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

But from one of the living-room windows I watched the closed iron shutters.

In the evenings, from the same window, I usually followed the shop’s intricate closing ritual.

The lights in the windows went off first, followed shortly by those inside; they came out of the shop with their coats on, but momentarily left the door open.

One could hear the bell of the church in Terézváros; it was eight o’clock.

With a long rod ending in a hook she’d reach up, fit the hook into a ring soldered to the side of the shutter, which she often missed or did not find. I observed their ceremony from the height of the third floor, between us trembled the bare crowns of trees on Teréz Boulevard, and on the cables stretched over the roadway the dim light of streetlamps was swaying. I saw mainly their shadows between the branches. Laughter usually accompanied their actions. If a lit-up streetcar happened to pass, it drew its yellow light across them.

From their movements I could tell they were laughing.

Now one, now the other tried her luck with the rod. When they managed to pull the shutter halfway down, they threw the rod back into the store, locked the door, and, holding on to the shutter together, pressed it down with their combined weight. The last centimeters were the hardest. When the upper ring clicked into the one at the bottom, they slipped a padlock through and the boss took the key; they stood facing each other. Two strangers in an empty street in the evening who nevertheless had to spend every blessed day together. The key was put into a steel box that, after it was locked, had also to be sealed. They usually fussed with this for some time in the cold. Then they said their good-byes. The boss disappeared into the lobby of the adjacent building to drop off the box with the concierge; the young woman moved on.

That’s how the day ended.

I often wondered what would happen if I waited for her downstairs and followed her when she went off by herself. I didn’t think of talking to her; I’d only follow her from a distance and learn where she went every evening. But only on very exceptional occasions did I bring myself to do this, because, to tell the truth, it was better not to. To watch her as she passed by the boarded-up store windows, walking on the empty sidewalk, then turned into the almost completely dark Szófia Street, and then ceased to exist until the next day.

But there were weekdays when I couldn’t resist going downstairs two or even more times. It was an achievement if I went to the shop only once. I had no money, either, could barely buy a double espresso. At other times I’d gain two full consecutive weekdays not going downstairs at all and not even looking out the window; I wanted to feel how strong I was. Now it’s really over, I’d say to myself, she no longer interests me. But it was at just those times I felt most strongly my loss and my ridiculousness. In fact, all I’d done was waste two days, and it would be even more ridiculous to waste any more.

Because when I went back to the store, she rewarded me with a glowing countenance. As if asking me, why didn’t you come if you wanted to see me. As though asking me, why are you playing this game. And the entire agony would begin anew if her countenance was overcast. I could not be certain about anything: was she telling me or asking me these things, did she reserve her maddening reticence only for me. Her face lights up at the sight of everybody. But I could be certain that she was even more beautiful than I had envisioned her in those endless hours when I wanted to forget her beauty and therefore pretended I wasn’t thinking about her.

This is how our story began.

I didn’t notice that it had already begun, because I was not daydreaming about what would happen if I could touch her. Rather, I was contemplating what would happen if I forgot her. If I could eject her from my mind. What would happen if I never went back, if I left her to her fate, if I could convince myself that I neither had nor could have any need for such escapades.

I should look for other kinds of adventures. As if I my old self still existed, the same person from whom I could expel this other self, or my attraction to her, or my insatiable interest.

I can’t say I made no efforts in these directions.

I thought it was some sort of sexual urge from which one could break free. But I could not satisfy this urge, because I longed for nothing and no one, or rather, I couldn’t make my usual fantasizing in this area work with her in mind.

Nobody else interested me, yet somehow I had to deny this.

I made great efforts to be at least interested in others, as they had to some extent interested me before, but any person I engaged in conversation instantly ceased to interest me. And this happened because of her, but I did not understand how and why such a light-minded little promise in my life had become so weighty. Attraction had not been an obstacle before; one should expect at least that much from attraction. But now it was as though it pricked me at my most sensitive point. I could not cope, no, no, with the temptation of waiting for someone else. I should evade or avoid the ominous experience I am about to acquire. Except I don’t know what to do with the insistent sense of urgency.

Neither did I know what to do with the threat that without this experience I’d forever remain alone and my wounded pride would destroy me.

Nothing was happening as I had imagined it would; I knew this too, of course. As if I had to tear myself away from the fatal conviction that I’d been born into a world in which what I wanted to have happen, what only I and no one else wanted to have happen, would simply not occur. A world in which every intention missed its target, every action went astray. As if, using my head, I had to break through a wall that I myself strengthened every day.

Naturally, I had no such thoughts, because what I’m talking about was neither a thought nor a way of thinking; it was just there, hanging in the air, like a zeitgeist. Hope did not vanish, it was somewhere else, impossible to know just where. Elsewhere. Helplessness coursed though the brain cells, and inevitably I had to believe it was my own helplessness. A birth defect or something I developed because my mother had abandoned me. Others are deserving of love and find each other, or from the start possess the ability to love, which I lack. I just stood there with the glass in my hand. She reached for it; I wouldn’t give it to her. All that was missing were six words. Where should I wait for you.

Without an answer, I simply couldn’t leave the store.

She wanted not a word. She waited, resisted, with both hands in the air to take my glass, but with her hand she forbade me to spit out my question.

Others drank their coffee and left their glasses all over the place. I always returned mine properly and put it down on the counter in front of her; otherwise, she’d have to go and collect it. Sometimes she came out from behind the counter, stacked the glasses into little towers, the plates into piles. Perhaps as early as during my second visit she noticed my consideration and responded in kind; she took the glass from my hand and we both nodded, tipping our heads a bit. Sometimes she said, oh, very kind, how nice, really nice of you. I didn’t understand why she had to make fun of me.

And the next day, in revenge, I wasn’t going to bring the glass back to her, but she stopped me with her voice.

You brought it back yesterday, why not today.

Perhaps she felt she was overstepping a boundary; after a while she wordlessly accepted the situation and watched as if to see whether I was really like that or only pretended to be and wanted her to like me, and was trying to deceive her.

And then even the small nod was abandoned.