Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

They had barely shaken hands when he changed his tone.

Welcome, he said gently in a low voice, as if withdrawing the tone he had just used publicly and implying that this low tone was his true timbre.

At times like this, he spoke with the impersonal love of a priest, ready at every moment to share with almost anyone his most heartfelt emotions for the Almighty. Of course he never shared them; he never shared anything. Perhaps he had nothing to share. To tell the truth, he whispered in a voice full of emotion, your arrival is most opportune for a number of reasons. Whenever Bellardi hit this tone, Madzar knew from his childhood that he should stay away from him, tolerate him if he had to, but keep contact to a minimum. Now, after all these years, he also realized that this tone was not Bellardi’s but that of the Franciscan priest who from time immemorial had been the Bellardi family’s confidant and the son’s spiritual guide. Bellardi allowed no time for sulking or reticence, because with another change of tone he put the previous dissembling one into a more desirable perspective. Very soberly, he added that later they would talk more in detail about all this, au coup ; they would find time for everything.

I’m certain we shall, Madzar answered, no doubt about it, but he was aware only of standing there again, in front of Bellardi, awkward and clumsy, and this made his limbs feel heavy.

Yet he could not get enough of the playacting.

There was a crack through which he gained an image and some sense of his own heavy disposition.

It was as if he were saying to Bellardi, you never fail to amaze me, when in fact it was his firm intention to demand that he stop, leave off with these tiresome and superfluous appearances, this foolish masquerade. But Bellardi, encouraged by his success, did exactly the opposite of what his friend expected. First, he took a step not toward, but sideways before his guest, coming so close as to make Madzar inadvertently recoil, not unlike a horse held short by its bridle. And then he took another step, beyond the necessary or possible, thereby issuing a challenge, a provocation.

He could not let go of his friend, patting and squeezing his solid but helpless body, which made Madzar, who carried this body on his powerful soul, blush deeply.

Don’t even hope, my friend, that the masquerade will end. Be honest with yourself, just this once. You wouldn’t like to see it end either. You’d keel over with the boredom oozing from your Protestant soul. You like it when someone plays theater in your stead. I don’t have a real face, you can see that yourself, but if somehow you had a chance to catch a glimpse of it, you’d die of fright.

I am your representative in everything you are too craven to participate in.

Perhaps you won’t hold it against me, he said, smiling at Madzar with benevolent, charming, and ironic eye beams, that I’ve disturbed your solitude so impudently. I too long for monastic solitude above all, but I can’t get along without your company, he said loudly, as if he needed this big sound to make himself utter the words.

The captain took pleasure in filing away his cruel little victories in the records of obligatory modesty and politeness.

On the contrary, replied Madzar graciously, helped somewhat by the routine politesse, I would hate being a burden to you with my importunity, and he enjoyed his lie as much as if he had spoken the truth. It did not even occur to me.

Come, come, Bellardi shouted, his face darkening for real, what are you talking about, old pal. How can you say such a silly thing, Lojzi. How can you even think such a thing, he said, and then, after a minuscule pause that took the edge off his indignation, he quickly added, I am profoundly shocked. All the while his huge eyes were flashing kindly and tenderly in the pleasure of the performance. True, he expressed a bit more umbrage with that sentence than his acting could plausibly support.

And even this ambivalence seemed intentional.

What should I say, what would I most like to do with you, he said loudly. Of course, my first choice would be to get off with you at Mohács.

He burst out with a sudden laugh.

We’d let the old ship drift away all by itself and spend the remainder of our lives in a sweet duet in Mohács, my dear. We’d listen to the constant barking of dogs, and you know very well I’d never let you go to America, he cried in the voice of a scorned lover.

He kept laughing, as a child would go on tasting the sweetness of revenge, for his very expertise in concealment allowed him to see behind every possible human hiding place.

With Bellardi, compared to Madzar, everything was the other way around. Bellardi’s huge, weak body groaned under the crushing weight of his soul.

We’d expose the mass graves, or we’d — oh, whatever the hell it was, but we’d do it, we’d realize all our old plans, he exclaimed. We’d do something utterly useful and noble. We’d support the destitute. Let’s leave it at that, he added, growing somber at his own jesting, which he also intended as a sort of gift. And now, as a gift to my dearest friend, I shall offer up a sight of my soul’s sobriety. He seemed to have drawn enough strength from himself with his irregular, solitary dalliance and now was ready to repudiate, with genuine feeling, his own noisy sounds and to end the public interrogation.

Alas, I can’t leave the boat, he said like a good soldier summing up his life situation, but we shall consume our last supper together.

What makes you think it will be the last one.

How does one know when one’s life ends.

Not only did they say things to each other they didn’t mean, but they compelled each other to analyze continuously and in several ways their deeply disingenuous words.

Conventional logic was insufficient to cope with their secret language.

Madzar was taken aback by the captain’s offer to get off at Mohács with him, though he knew it was only playing with words or, at best, only a playful thought. The captain was playing with their shared memories, with the mass graves, reaching back into dangerous depths all the way to the sweet duet and the tragedies. He wondered in the meanwhile what the captain’s intentions were, where they would be seated, where was the table set for the two of them. He noticed no such table in the dining room. From which Bellardi instantly sensed the effect of his words; he could see he had nearly gained his friend’s confidence or at least made him anxious. Madzar also found it odd that the captain spoke of dogs barking in Mohács when in fact they could hardly have heard any barks in the Bellardis’ mansion on Városház Street. Even now, he has that devilish ability to read my mind, he told himself. And since he himself had been thinking similar thoughts only moments before, standing at the railing on the upper deck, he wondered once again whether or not he was in the presence of the most significant friendship of his life.

No matter what, Bellardi always knows what I’m thinking about.

Because Madzar has always harbored suspicions toward men, he rejects him for the second time.

Perhaps this time I should make an exception.

By the time the cock crows thrice, you will have betrayed him at least three times.

How could one take seriously the proposal of the two of them spending their lives together. In dialogue between men, there is always an intention to search for a firm hold that reveals the nature of the relationship. Should I strive for a favorable position in what I say or should I just tell him that I already occupy a favorable position.

Try as he might, he can’t keep up with me.

Nevertheless, the captain reminded him of the longing and promise that every little boy wants to make come true at least once in his life, and if not as a child, at least as an adult.