Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Not that he couldn’t find the pen; he was enacting for himself an entire scene created by himself about having to look for it.

Although he possessed exceptional mental abilities, Ágost was not taken quite seriously in the family. Probably Szilvia and Viola were the ones who began calling him Gézuka— Gay-zhoo-ka , they would say — which he vehemently protested. He was a very good-looking young man who with his sheer presence made the two girls very excited and threw them into no small confusion. He was also a highly skilled diplomat residing in some mysterious place abroad. But it was impossible to exchange three sentences with him without the infantile traits of his character rising to the surface. Because they were attracted to him, the two cheeky girls quickly took appropriate revenge. Renaming him, picking a particularly soft-sounding name and ending it with the diminutive given to a child, helped them to maintain a distance from him and consider him below their rank. They pumped him with questions, set traps for him, spied on him, ferreted out his weaknesses so that they could pick on him; they made fun of him and imitated him; and no sooner did he turn away from them than they’d mimic and ridicule him.

He had made his decision, but I could see that every moment that he could still possess the cherished object, every moment the expensive pen was still in his pocket, was precious to him.

Or he had gone mad.

I did not understand, I stammered and giggled like the girls that no, please, really. I wouldn’t dare dream of owning such a valuable thing; please, don’t embarrass me with it.

But he, mellowed by his own generosity, insisted, though he went on not being able to find it.

I’d look upon it as something borrowed, I said; he would merely deposit it with me for safekeeping.

I was given new clothes only if and when my aunt Irén tired of the family’s miserliness.

We’d go from store to store. Sometimes her anger was so great that she would dress me from head to toe and I was the one who’d have to insist on some balance, since in her fury she could pile all sorts of superfluous nonsense on me. Aunt Irén was an exceedingly careless woman, things dribbled through her fingers, she loved to spend extravagantly; sometimes she was simply gripped by an urge to splurge; but buying clothes for me also meant a chance to compete with Erna, which she obviously enjoyed doing. Erna hated unnecessary expenses and very strictly determined what was necessary and what was superfluous. In a mildly reproving voice, she would claim that Irén was weirdly similar to my mother in all her traits; I heard this with great alarm. And that the relationship between my mother and Irén had been exactly as intimate as that between my two cousins Viola and Szilvia, who were inseparable. I watched the girls as one who looks not only into his corporeal past but also into his possible future. With these insidious assertions, Nínó cautioned me that I would grow up in the world as irresponsibly as this nice set of females had, both of whom were probably lesbians. If I wasn’t on guard, if I didn’t resist the temptation of squandering and extravagance, inherited through the maternal branch of the family, I would wind up a big good-for-nothing.

However, she justified her son’s expensive tastes by saying that Ágost was a diplomat and having an elegant, smart wardrobe was part of his profession.

But Gézuka had no profession.

Ever since he’d been recalled from his position abroad, he had been working as an interpreter in an ordinary government office, and in his free time he translated stupid, boring political speeches and all kinds of strictly confidential diplomatic papers into foreign languages. I myself had no interest in this man or in his doings. I don’t know why, but my impression was that, compared with his father, he was an inferior mutation, and I found the old Hungarian Nazi more interesting. Irén called the lecherous old man, straight to his face, an old fascist or evil Arrow Cross man. She liked him, and he often slapped her behind; she drank much red wine with him; and because of Erna’s pettiness, she had only contempt for her. Her view was that, Jewish or not Jewish, what she looked for in a person was character. My husband is a Jew, so I can afford to hate the flaws in their character.

Believe me, I know everything about them, inside and out.

Still, I felt that everything was the other way around.

Because of her ruined marriage, Irén took her revenge on unknown people. In Nínó’s character flaws, she was looking for acceptable explanations for her own unbridled emotions. When we walked around the city, I had a chance to observe her close up, yet I failed to develop any liking for this strange trait of hers that was so intimately familiar to me, even though I sensed that my mother must have had the same trait if, as Nínó claimed, Irén and Mother had lived in a symbiosis like the one between Irén’s daughters.

Perhaps she abandoned me so heartlessly because I’m half-Jewish on account of Father’s side of the family. But then, why did both she and Irén choose to marry Jews.

The sight of our excitement and enthusiasm when we returned from one of our shopping sprees, flushed and talking loudly, throwing the packages down in the spacious hallway of the apartment on the boulevard, must have seemed to Nínó as a frontal attack on her personal convictions.

Her carefully, lovingly maintained apartment was flooded by a wave of confusing irresponsibility.

She’d say she couldn’t for the world understand why all this was necessary.

Shamming surprise, Irén responded, come, come, Erna, forgive me, but I couldn’t bear watching our favorite nephew walking around in outgrown rags any longer.

She was the only one who did not address Erna as Nínó.

Nínó was indignant, turned red, pardon me, what rags are you talking about.

His wrists are hanging out of his jacket sleeves and his ankles do the same from his pants. Maybe Erna hasn’t noticed how the boy has grown, and wasn’t she glad that suddenly he has turned into such a handsome lad.

I had been given Ágost’s best clothes, and my wrists and ankles could not have been showing or hanging out of the jackets and pants, for he was taller than I by at least by six centimeters. Unless I had suddenly grown since the previous Saturday morning.

Irén had a tendency to grow pale; she would never raise her voice, not for the world.

She said she had no intention of arguing but, sticking to the facts, she had noticed that my socks were wet. She had been noticing it for two weeks by then.

I slept in their house on Saturdays.

Which means you’ve let him walk around with holes in his shoes for two whole weeks. This wouldn’t be a problem in itself, no one would see the holes, but it’s autumn and it’s wet. On Sunday we couldn’t even go to City Park because of those shoes. And I don’t think there’s any point in hoping for a completely dry winter, either.

Then I have a suggestion.

Go ahead. I’m eager to hear it.

I see that you are dissatisfied with me.

I won’t deny it, sweet Erna.

I am ready to entrust the child’s care to you without further ado. If you take him to yourself, I’ll have no objection.

I assume you are willing to give me, along with him, the appropriate portion of the inheritance.

Frankly, I don’t know what you’re referring to with this sly insinuation. I am a sick woman, I’ve lived though a lot, and I don’t suffer baseless reproaches easily. Take it back. Please take back your last sentence.

I won’t take it back, but if you wish, we can discuss it in more detail.

Absolutely, but it would probably be better to pick another time for that.