Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

It was as if we were mutually forcing our secrets on each other.

Later, we urinated together, which he initiated.

He said, fuck, we were already buddies forever, weren’t we. Why would we be ashamed of showing our cocks to each other.

There was some profound truth in this because, thanks to our jabbering, we had instantly lost our independence.

Whenever he said something concerning which he counted on my confidence, I had to reciprocate by saying something with which I would gain his. I couldn’t tell him that I wouldn’t urinate with anybody and certainly not because of my cock. This was the hardest thing, to trust each other, to entrust him with something secret that would make life riskier than it already was. Because you had the feeling you were becoming somebody’s friend not of your own free will but because of a compelling necessity, and that is not a pleasant feeling at all. Or as if you were flaunting your own candor and confidence so that you could appease the other person or bring him to his knees with his voluntarily accepted vulnerability. This kind of chumminess could be nauseating. But now, the train and the insane journey had somehow lifted or torn us out of the conventional, shadowy world of compulsions and unpleasantnesses, had somewhat lessened the force of its strict regulations.

The train was taking us on a vacation so exceptional that we could not know in advance when it would end or even where exactly we would spend it. Everything would be decided in Dresden, where they might put us on a different train or not; some kids might be taken to the sea, others to the mountains.

Sister Klára talked of these things in big generalizations, as if she herself was not quite certain of them.

In brief, although the general emergency condition continued in uncertainty, no authority or person could come up with surprises, at least until we reached the border.

We were still clattering across the landscapes of our country; our train didn’t stop at any stations but sped through them, blowing its whistle, or stopped for long periods in open areas. A special train illuminated by pale lights in the sweltering summer night. We were truly free on the train.

When the train suddenly braked and stopped in an open field, the night around us, resounding with crickets, seemed to pulsate.

Or if we were not quite free yet, we would be somewhat free out there, beyond the border.

That year, the sizzling summer had burst on us suddenly just as the school year ended.

The official notification said that one should report at such and such a time to the departure hall of East Station; having to be in the departure hall was itself a good sign. Assembly at train number 2; length of stay abroad undetermined; group passport in conformity with ticket of participation. Didn’t understand a word of this. The only difference in our papers was that some had to report to train number 1 or 3; I had to go to number 2. But nobody knew what this meant or how a ticket of participation would turn into a group passport. I had never been abroad. It felt as if I were going to Paris to see my mother, who of course was not expecting me, was not in the least interested in me, and whom I did not even remember; I didn’t even know whether she was still living in Paris or if she was alive at all.

I yearned, I thirsted for the sea because abroad meant not only my mother but also infinity.

The two distant objects of my yearning had somewhat blended together the night before my trip, and because of that, like a child, I developed a temperature and fell asleep at the table, my head buried in my arms. As if along with the sea, I might have my mother again too. Or if I couldn’t, I’d be given an even larger body of water, one unknown to me but whose grandeur I would remember. Nobody knew of this pipe dream of mine, just as I had to keep secret that I had a temperature. They might have noticed, though, that I was paler and even more reticent than usual. Nínó felt my forehead. I was still shivering in the rapidly warming morning as we hurried to the railway station with Ágó.

In the huge, glass-covered sunlit station several thousand children and even more relatives were thronging and grumbling. Since my grandmother had died nobody had kissed me, nobody had touched me, nobody had hugged me. Beautiful Ágó and I could not stand each other. I did not have to fear tenderness from him; he would definitely not have noticed that I had a fever. He did not care much about anybody but himself. Just then he was preoccupied mainly with his ancient Mercedes Nürnberg, left parked in the blazing sun, which he claimed had been made especially for Pope Pius and in which for days the radiator water had been coming to a boil.

As soon as we set foot in the station, the sight of the crowd made him even crosser, he mentioned his car again, and my yearning had to subside, perhaps my temperature too. In the throng there was no longer room for promises made to individuals. I knew what I could expect; the collective dread would continue. Neither of us felt like wading into the crowd; I set down my suitcase at my side. It would have been better to be sick and stay home. Who could have known that the children’s vacation operation in East Germany would be so enormous. We were counting on being offered some privileges to cope with our problems.

Ágost kept looking around to see whom he could turn to in the crowd, wondering what he should do among so many disgusting human beings.

The glass-covered part of the station was completely empty that morning; the usual traffic had been redirected to the outer tracks. Only three long trains stood on the indoor tracks, but the police had cordoned off the way to them. Even the railroad workers couldn’t tell the hysterical relatives where these trains were going, or maybe they were not allowed to say. It seemed there was no information to be had from anyone. Ágost did not move; he stood like a statue. I asked people what was happening here, what was supposed to happen to us. Only people who had registered earlier could cross the police cordon, which meant people who had turned over their participant’s tickets at the table where the crowd bunched up and everybody was shouting. A child’s name would be looked up and checked off on a list, then the child’s papers would not be returned, and instead they gave the child a number, whereupon the boy or girl had to say good-bye to the accompanying adults.

The German sisters practically tore the smaller children away from their relatives or escorts and pushed and shoved them along with their luggage across the cordon, from where they staggered to their trains, mainly by themselves, while the sisters kept yelling after them in German, there, not that way, the other track. These were stern, disinterested women, though some gently smiling deaconesses were among them.

If you didn’t understand German, you couldn’t understand anything of the chaos, of the German commands echoing through the huge station.

The little ones were bawling, did not want to be taken from their families, did not want the language of this other chaotic world. Parents and relatives tried to explain things to the children, waved good-bye to them, and implored the shouting, impassive women who were urging the children on and trying to calm them, but no matter what they said or explained, the way the nurses stuck to their orders seemed ominous and incomprehensible in this emptied-out railway station.

From the railway people one could learn at least that the three long trains had arrived the night before from Dresden and would probably return, as they put it, to their home base. And there something would happen, they explained patiently, because passenger trains of this length usually did not run on domestic routes — they would be rearranged, we’d be transferred to other trains, some of the cars would be detached — and then we’d continue our journey. The adults were running around discussing things, showing their papers to one another; maybe somebody else could find some secret and decipherable sign or cull something intelligible from them, something promising. The excitement was understandable, given that the adults were being asked to relinquish small children in their care without knowing where the children were headed or for how long.