Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

I really don’t understand what this is, maybe some kind of weltschmerz.

Their voices deepened and they spoke more and more quietly; the deepened voice of one made the other deepen his voice too.

Well, if you don’t understand, then you don’t.

After that, not another word.

They ordered different soups to keep their feelings for each other from being so alike. In small matters, being different means a lot.

The captain had the so-called pale fish soup that, true to its name, was given color only with finely grated carrots, turnips, fennel, and celery.

It looked back at him, pale bluish green, from the white soup bowl.

He can’t possibly think I’m complaining. An obdurate German like him is always more calculating and levelheaded than that.

Madzar ordered chicken soup for himself.

Na ja, das wird etwas deftiger , the old waiter clicked his tongue upon hearing the order. Unser berühmt, berüchtigter potage royale.

Bellardi, revived by his sense of gratification, explained as they spooned their soups that if this interests you, they make this famous, infamous soup by cooking a good-size hen on a slow fire, along with various vegetables, until it is very soft and tender. Our chef has a big pot of it on the stove from early morning on, which he moves to the edge to make room for other pots. When it’s done, they lift out the chicken and strain the broth until it’s clear; the meat on the chicken should be falling off the bones; they cut it in pieces and grind it up along with the vegetables. Then they put all of it back into the broth, along with a generous amount of slivered almonds, you can taste them in it.

He felt a kind of serenity, as though he had had a good cry on the other man’s shoulder.

Oh, so it’s the almonds, then, that’s right.

They also add a butter roux to it, and then simmer it for a bit.

Now all Madzar had to do was watch the other man struggle with his sobbing.

To look at the imposing uniform, the furrowed, strong face, the thickly drawn straight eyebrows, the traces left by the sun on translucent milky skin, the thin edge of the prominent long nose, and the way his face constantly changed in the hovering candlelight. The way he traced his explanation with his fine fingers, making it easy to see how familiar he was with culinary activities; the way he gesticulated, lost in the details, and explained things while holding back his impending sobs.

You’re not serious about this, are you, don’t tell me you know how to cook.

Why should I deny it, Bellardi laughed amiably. I could be a ship’s chef anytime, though in the first weeks I’d probably miscalculate the amount of ingredients you need to order.

You don’t have to deny it. It’s just that I’d never have guessed.

You mean because it doesn’t go with my manliness.

Nonsense, why would I think that, Madzar answered with a question, but he was thinking that within this mature man, considered very manly even as a boy, this man he had vied with to be most at home with the myriad details of the world, to know them in greater depth and objectivity, there surely dwelled a woman too. It seemed as if Bellardi were carrying all the Odescalchi duchesses within him, and not only with his contrived, polished manners. The face of Bellardi’s mother showed through in his face; he had his sister’s milky skin and sharp nose; and some of his manly features he inherited from his aunt. That aunt was an old maid, almost completely penniless, whom fate had sent to Mohács for a while but then she could not afford to move elsewhere. It was to her that Bellardi returned every summer from Trieste, until he started going to her parents in Buda.

The best chefs in the better hotels are all men, Madzar said.

If I can put your mind at ease, if you’d like me to put your mind at ease, replied the captain, laughing, I’ll tell you that I’m most comfortable preparing outdoor dishes. And you know yourself that that is truly man’s work.

If only because of the fire.

Roast beef, roast mutton, those are delicious dishes.

And so is slambuc , you know, noodles cooked in broth or water with potatoes, then baked, not to mention knuckle of veal, goulash, tripe, chowder.

Yes, chowder. Between you and me, chowder would be my main attraction.

They changed wine for the brandied snipe, listed on the menu as bécasse flambée.

It was getting late. The ship was to dock at Mohács at half past eleven in the evening.

Madzar did not want to look at his watch but he sensed the time approaching when Bellardi would have to leave the table to give orders preparatory to docking. And with that everything would be over between the two of them. Yet he no longer wanted these flat, embarrassing conversations. There didn’t seem to be time for Bellardi to carry out his confidential mission. While they had been dining, they could hear the helmsman’s commands as well as the shoveling of coal in the boiler room coming through the open brass cylinder of the communication flue; and those below could hear their conversation or at least snatches of it. Occasionally, Bellardi appeared to want to say something to the men. At the corner of his mouth and in the deep furrows on his forehead there played a kind of childlike or perhaps grown-up affected gravity; Madzar could see the high-minded, religious boy scout as well as the deeply disappointed man. He hoped this would break the icy silence between them, which could not be warmed with words. But he hoped in vain. The upright boy scout meant to do something good but did not do it. And the man who was disappointed in everyone did not make the confession of his life after all. The old waiter kept turning up to pour more of the simple Szekszárdi that, with its slight acidity and rough aftertaste, went well with the venison.

He came with his whistling breath.

The cabin boy did not return to help the old man collect the dishes.

With his whistling breath, he kept shifting the two men’s intended intimacy to different dimensions. Or he was busy with the desserts; in the end they both ordered baked peaches.

Large peeled and halved peaches, which out of season were fished out of a jar of preserved fruit, filled with finely grated gingerbread and, in a well-buttered pan under a thick layer of marzipan, cooked to a pale red.

Bellardi was going to order a third wine for this. Madzar parried the offer; he would stay with the Szekszárdi. Which was clearly not to the captain’s liking; it seemed to hamper his self-realization. He did not voice his dissatisfaction perhaps because by then they were both quite under the influence or at least pretended to be. They grew heavy, genuinely weary of words. They once again became rather bored with each other; or rather, they each gave this name to the icy calm from behind which they observed each other’s strangeness.

They pretended to be staring ahead or looking out into the motionless night in which the river gave signs of its existence only by sounds. The insult suffered by one of them inevitably offended the other, and so the muteness did not seem vacant.

It was as though I could hear again the faint, even banging on the rear walls of the cellars.

He was telling me about it as we stood on the platform at the end of our car in the speeding train; he told the story as I remembered it too.

There was cannon fire, with everything booming and trembling; mortars that made the ground heave; the impact of shells nearby, explosions far away or very close that seemed to make the building above us look as if it were shaking its head; blasts of explosions from which the walls seemed to lean away or somehow hide, while in the vaulted parts of the cellar the candles went out or their flames became eerily elongated; rattling and barking bursts of machine guns and submachine guns, now shorter, now longer; excited monologues and leisurely dialogues. Yet, easily distinguishable from these sounds and despite them or perhaps together with them, one could hear the continuous, regular sound of hammering as people wielding pickaxes, chisels, and hammers were breaking down cellar walls, simultaneously on both sides.