Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

This was not good.

I had to think hard about whom I wanted to follow or join. Any way you looked at it, it wasn’t good, but almost any situation had a chance of turning up something good, and once in a while you could gain a real advantage. In the end, everybody was waiting for his turn, but nobody wanted to be first.

Only a single damaged lamp was giving light above the street. The trolley’s overhead wire had slammed into its cable, the shade had been twisted under the weight and the glass broken, but the bulb was intact. Dead bodies lay among the piles of cobblestones the rebels had used as improvised antitank obstacles. At the corner of Kálmán Street smoke was swirling from a burned-out tank. From a distance it looked as if it were steaming. Maybe it had been trying to go around the piles of cobblestone when it caught on fire. It had run up onto the sidewalk and hit a tree; the crown of the tree had fallen on it, and branches and the tank were burned to a crisp together. The blackened branches stuck out of the tank like horns. Only one wall of the collapsed newsstand was intact. In the darkness the foggy air was leafing through white pages. Nothing else was alive. Occasionally the piles of these white, two-day-old newspapers rose and slipped sideways a little.

Even then, I saw that woman again.

Only her eyes, actually, because she held her scarf against her face. That early morning she wore not a hat but a turban. The cashmere scarf and the turban had the same color and pattern. In those days, the sight of such finery was not conspicuous; not even a Persian lamb or mink coat was. People wore many things that earlier they’d kept hidden and wouldn’t have dared to wear. As if they were in the midst of a permanent celebration, though these fine items did not fit the occasion. But she had her arm looped through a basket handle and her hand on the basket just as she always had when going shopping. And while the rest of the people were discussing things, she must have said something from behind her scarf to the man next to her, which he did not seem to understand. This man was wearing riding boots, also an item one hadn’t seen earlier. Then the woman started forward on the sidewalk. The man took a few steps after her, glass and rubble squeaking under their feet, but he did not follow her. She didn’t care; she stepped off the sidewalk and walked on with her basket on her arm. She did not run, did not hurry, and leaned her torso forward just a little.

Like someone going to a store.

The man remained on the sidewalk, which was not very clever because right at that spot the sidewalk protruded and turned like a panhandle.

He was standing on a panhandle with a dark sea of danger in front of him. He should have stepped back or started walking in one direction or other; he should have moved. The rest of us watched to see what he would do.

The woman reached the lit area under the streetlamp with no trouble, but from there the going was harder because of the bodies and the piles of cobblestones. Streetcar tracks poked out from the pavement like dead spines. The city was full of objects that had lost their meaning. Nothing was happening. She stepped between the tracks, where a veritable ditch was gaping under her. This wasn’t bad since she could use it as protection and duck down into it. We did not hear anything suspicious from anywhere in the darkness. At least twenty of us were waiting to see where all this was leading and were not even aware of one another’s breath, or maybe we were just paying no attention to things like that. Once she was across the tracks and out of the area lit by the streetlamp, we could see her break into a run.

If she has managed to get that far, we prayed, she shouldn’t perish now.

During those days it was possible to understand why people did what they did. This woman was saving her life. We saw her next when she reached the side of the building on the corner.

I saw her again at Glázner’s. By then it was light. She had gotten there much sooner than I, because she was already in line when I arrived. When I saw the line from afar, I felt I should just give up, but then where would I go for bread.

The moment one saw a line, one began to figure. This line was so huge that any calculation was doomed. While I was procrastinating — I walked to the front to ascertain that the line indeed was as long as I thought and to see what was happening, and I had to walk all the way to József Katona Street — many more people joined it. But there were other procrastinators too, who also did not believe their eyes; they too walked to the front or looked at the line from afar, pondering what on earth to do. One’s saved life was becoming hopeless. Senseless even in retrospect, as if having survived until now was pointless.

And the longer one weighed the situation, the more one’s chances dwindled, seeing others take the place one should have claimed by right of first arrival.

The end of the heavily populated line coiled loosely from Sándor Fürst Street to Lipót Boulevard. That’s where I had to go to join it. But then it went completely around the entire block, turning back on Imre Sallai Street to reach the bakery entrance on the boulevard. And it wasn’t moving at all. There was no bread. No one knew when a new batch would be baked. Some people had brought small chairs or stools with them. Others just kept standing, shifting their weight from one cold foot to the other, resting now and again by leaning their backs against the building. I no longer had doubts. Going back to take my place, I wondered what would happen if I walked all the way to Petneházy Street, to the bread factory.

Not that I had any forebodings.

Here, at least, things were calm, and perhaps that’s what stopped me from becoming independent. After my very long delay, I took a place at the edge of the curb on the boulevard. The person who came after me had to stand in the street. We could shuffle and edge forward a little, not because they were finally starting to sell bread but because silent impatience somehow compacted the line.

A half hour must have gone by when something happened in the store as a result of which things began to happen along the line too. At first only some restlessness, soft murmurs, people being pressed more tightly together. Everyone wanted to move forward, but there was no place to move to. Where would you like me to go, my dear madam.

In situations like this, everybody has to say something.

My dear sir, a little patience, please.

Well, if you think you know what will happen.

Then a helpless shuffling of feet and, in the hum of exasperation stretched to the limit, the first solitary shouts.

Everybody looks down on the shouters, and for good reason.

To push my way into the store, I’d first have to make way for those who happily, with their loaves in hand, were trying to leave it.

People unfamiliar with the psychology of a queue would think this the most natural thing; after all, it would be in my best interest. If people can’t come out, nobody can go in either. However, everybody has to put up with a number of different pressures simultaneously, and this simply cannot be done in a crowd no matter how well intentioned a person may be. Rationality, a sense of justice, and crowd pressure must fight it out, and no individual has control over these forces. Rationality becomes the most fragile of the three because the farther back one is in the line, and ignorant of what is happening at the head of the line, the greater the urge to move forward, that’s what one’s animal instinct dictates. But a move of even a few centimeters or millimeters unavoidably creates tension. Whether instinctively or deliberately, you shuffle forward, because if you don’t, someone else will, or others will goad you on impatiently, and then your sense of justice will suffer. No matter that one cherishes one’s rationality and sense of justice, there is no way to hold off with one’s back the will of so many people, just as one cannot stay balanced against the pressing weight of others. Suddenly everyone tries to resist and push back against some of the pressure, people in general being well intentioned and sensible, but no one can overcome the treacherous designs of his own animal selfishness. One can’t help it if one is weak and lacks the strength to withstand the beast who has climbed on one’s back, but if people don’t have the strength to close ranks and uniformly resist the pressure at their backs, then the small gap I can create with my own strength can become an opening for the weak and swept-away or, just as easily, for petty self-seekers, cunning foxes, leeches, and greedy profiteers.