Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Now, because of Bellardi’s unguarded words about the future, that in the fall Madzar would have woodland mushrooms, the real pain felt at the long-ago loss returned.

He did not know what to think of this; for the first time in his life, it confused him to his core.

Maybe you don’t remember, he said loudly in a stifled, strange, trembling voice, as one calling back one last time from his childhood, desperately asking for help, I left my best leather slingshot at your house.

Something similar now happened to the captain too; it was very rare that something truly surprised him, but this was as if some rebuke or old rumor had caught up with him, accusing him of theft.

You forgot your what, he asked, shocked and threatening. I don’t remember a slingshot.

This hurt Madzar because he could see that Bellardi truly did not remember, the louse. But somehow he quickly awakened from his surprise that Bellardi couldn’t even remember this foul deed of his. He had the nerve not to return one of my best slingshots and he doesn’t even remember doing it.

Don’t be angry, I beg your pardon, it just happened to pop into my mind.

Sounds ridiculous, but I remember exactly, even today, where I put it that afternoon, he said, looking for his grown-up voice, placating.

You had a picture book, Hungarian Noblewomen , and I put the slingshot on top of it.

You mean I didn’t give it back, asked Bellardi with a modicum of obligatory remorse. It was as though he had a vague memory, after all, of Madzar putting his leather slingshot on the book. Just goes to show you that one always harms one’s fellow even though one is unaware of it, he said, indulgently self-critical.

What stupidity.

Madzar remembered well how he had to be on his guard against Bellardi at such junctures.

Bellardi’s lies were always convincing, he wove them out of modesty and arrogance, a fabric not familiar to Madzar; he was always late in realizing he’d been taken in again, and that it was best to be quiet about the whole matter.

You know, even if you did leave it with me, when I went home to Buda for my first vacation and not Mohács, I couldn’t find my old things in our new apartment. And I wouldn’t have dared ask about them. I imagine they simply threw it out along with my things.

Imagine, I could find none of my stuff. Nothing at all, he added after a short silence.

Forgive me, I really don’t know why I brought it up, why it popped into my mind.

Come on, what’s there to forgive, please don’t apologize.

You think you could offend me with something, he asked, flashing his teeth and pouring more wine.

This time only into his own glass, however, as if accidentally forgetting about the other man. There’s nothing in the world, you couldn’t offend me with anything. But when the mushrooms turn red, he continued relentlessly, they sprinkle them with lemon juice, salt them, throw in some bay and freshly ground pepper, a dash of saffron wouldn’t hurt either, that’s what makes it so crazily yellow.

Madzar was paying no attention.

Yet he heard that the dish was then cooked gently for ten minutes, uncovered, no lid. He was thinking about slingshots, that there were rubber and leather ones. It is cooled on ice, auf Eis sozusagen abgeschreckt. The leather ones were more valuable, and he saw Bellardi put the bottle back into the ice bucket. Of course, he preferred coarsely chopped black olives, he was saying.

He always needed some advantage, not a big one, just enough to feel a bit of gratification. It would suffice to drink more than the other man, even if only by one gulp.

For him, his life on the river is forever the Mediterranean, forever the Adriatic. The black olives are tasty too.

Forever, said the architect jovially, who began to pay attention when he heard this pathetic word.

Go ahead, laugh, my dear friend, forever, that’s right, forever, and I mean this seriously, said Bellardi, and his voice trembled. After all, he had deployed the concept of forever to regain Madzar’s attention, so that they could laugh together at his real sentimentality, which tied him to the other man and which, in this way, he was still willing to display.

Do you have any idea what a yellow night in Cyprus is like, he asked, growing subdued.

I’ve never been to Cyprus.

How would you know, even if you had been there.

Go ahead then, tell me about it.

You live in another world, a completely different world.

Perhaps that’s why I’m still curious.

You’re going home, let’s say with all due respect you are on your way home with your accidental Greek lover. What home. What you’ve got is a room, another fleabag hotel where everything is sticky and smelly. But at least on high the stars are yellow, the size of your fist. You’re only a lousy little sailor man, but that, my dear little Lojzi, with all your big ideas, you will never understand. A Hungarian who no longer has a sea, because they took his last lousy little sea away from the lousy little Hungarian.

You’re one big nobody. You have half an hour with your lover, and his arm has the fragrance of fried fish.

While he spoke, he kept staring at Madzar’s hand as it lay on the table. He looked at it as if his gaze was stuck to it.

And the cicadas are screaming in your ears, you can’t hear yourself think. That’s how things are, my friend.

As if he were waiting for the other man to raise a big fist and knock him down.

Madzar could see that on the gleeful face the long laugh lines had flattened out because Bellardi could not say what he wanted to say.

He had the feeling they were sailing into the empty night on Bellardi’s face, and he truly did not understand him. On the surface of his face, unfamiliar faces kept turning up, and Madzar could barely follow them. This is a given quantity, he thought, self-satisfied, as if he had indeed discovered something. He also saw what the other man was expecting from his fist. Bellardi’s expression was changing so rapidly that its various qualities were impossible to track. He could no longer weigh whether he should accept this behavior or not, whether what was happening would turn out well or whether he should reject it.

The essence of the other man was radiating directly into him.

I didn’t know stars were so important to you.

Now you do, Bellardi replied in a hostile tone, and he quickly lifted the wine bottle from the ice bucket.

To be proper, this time he refilled Madzar’s glass first.

What could be more important for a sailor than the stars.

From this point on, he could say anything at all, since he had that one-gulp advantage. He laughed bitterly, as if he were using his self-pity against the other man. But who’s a sailor anymore, he said. To you I don’t mind admitting I’ve become a common maître d’hôtel in a flea-bitten hotel.

I see the wine’s got to you, gone to your head. Or is it melancholy.

As much as you’d like to deny it, we Hungarians are a lost people, my dear Lojzi. You still believe, my pigeon, that you have something you can take with you to America and that’s how you’ll rescue yourself for the future. I don’t give a shit whether you go or stay, Lojzi, and don’t think I’m envious. You’ll pack your suitcase very nicely and discover when you open it that it’s empty. We are empty, my Lojzi, we’ve been drained of our blood. From here, you can take nothing with you except your emptiness.

Come on, you’re talking nonsense.

That’s what I was trying to tell you with those dumb yellow stars.

Maybe I’ll hire a guardian for you.

I shit on the stars too, including yours. You can take this as a manly confession, but I don’t give a shit about that either.