Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Perhaps God was letting his body feel Jesus Christ’s suffering course through it.

If at the bottom of others’ suffering he feels his own, then his entire pantheism is a delusion; he has been mistaken. God does not reside in me; we are separate entities.

He could never resist the moon’s attraction, as if its light caused a cold shudder under his skin and pulled the hairs on his head skyward, individually.

There will come a time when I won’t be able to resist the moon; I will unite with it.

He listened and waited to see if he could detect the first sign of poisoning.

There was no person in the world in whom this sought-after someone might have taken shape. Everyone only resembled this possible person; more precisely, all too many people, both men and women, resembled this possible person. If at least he could endure loneliness; here he was, standing on the veranda steps in the midst of all this barking, and holding his penis, semi-erect from sleep, until all the urine emptied from him. What nonsense. What could be more boring than waiting for this to happen several times a day for one’s entire life. One would endure this only if there really was an independent self-interested God who, on hearing such skepticism, instantly struck one down or lifted one up. But this endless urinating was taking a long time; the urine had a strong inner pressure. As soon as a body is born it begins to function but without any reason, it merely functions; if, for example, it takes on liquid, it has to get rid of it. Or maybe physiological functioning is stronger than reason, in which case the universe is actually inert, making the reasonable labor of an entire life worth less than a farthing. The work of reason leaves no traces behind, in which case intelligence finds so little of worth in all of Creation that it might not even want to piss out whatever is superfluous.

Still, he has to piss it all out.

He could not step out of this vicious circle on the grounds that death was more reasonable or, put another way, that death appeared more valuable from reason’s point of view than existence did.

I miscalculated everything; funny, but now at least I comprehend it all.

He was deeply ashamed of having wrung some reciprocity out of himself.

Though he not only loved but downright adored this miserable Bellardi.

Out of sheer politeness he should not have reciprocated Bellardi’s confession with his own. Why did I do it; how could I have done it. Bellardi learned something I should have kept to myself forever.

And after he had urinated the superfluous quantity, he drank some more water, kept drinking, though in the mute kitchen’s cleanliness, more perfect than perfect cleanliness, he found the drinking mug unbearably smelly.

It’s possible that Bellardi is a lost man, but that doesn’t make me one too; why would I be a lost man. He struggled, protested against the idea that every Hungarian was lost, as Bellardi had claimed. All the while he felt the intense taste and scent of the Danube’s silt on his tongue and palate, and in his throat. At least Hungarians feel lost because the Turks took away their kingdom. I, however, am nothing but myself, nothing more. If I leave here, I can end this ineptness for myself. The Austrians at least recaptured what the Turks took from them. The Hungarians can’t even do that, they can’t do anything. If I leave here for good, I could at least end the constant stupid feeling of defeat and lack. Of this cursed pain that restrains the Hungarians’ stride, puts them at the mercy of Jews, of anybody, even of such idiotic has-been aristocrats as this Bellardi.

What have I got to do with them.

Bellardi hasn’t gone anywhere with his cock.

The bucket itself wasn’t smelly and neither was the mug — he had pointlessly nagged his mother about it, wanting her to wash them properly — which meant that throughout his entire childhood he’d drunk smelly water. In fact, the condition he cannot end is that of not being a Hungarian and not wanting to share the Hungarians’ painful helplessness and their permanent conspiracies and rebellions.

A place that one has grown used to for reasons beyond one’s control, that one calls homey.

It was always the water and not the mug that was smelly.

He won’t find out whom he should win for himself, for the sake of his peace of mind, or what he should end; and he won’t learn these things in America either.

He stood frozen in fear of himself.

The truth was that the last few minutes before the start of the docking maneuvers had profoundly exhausted and upset him.

When one is young, one does not realize that mental exertion means a substantial loss of general energy.

The wines and heavy food also did their share.

He had to admit that Bellardi deliberately timed everything so that he’d have no chance for a response, so that they’d both be drunk with the wine and each other’s presence. This too was a trick. With his dispassionate calculations, he could plow through everything. Madzar saw before him a view of life that made his own view seem distorted and inadequate. As if Bellardi in fact had not been acting at all but instead had transformed his intention to act into a clever trick and then waited for the results. Put another way, if Madzar wanted to hold on to his own view of life, he had to see Bellardi’s behavioral patterns as distorted and inhuman. He saw clearly enough what he had known about him since childhood, but he also saw clearly that his own thinking, desperately seeking escapes, kept manufacturing useless caricatures of either himself or the other man.

That is how I’ve transplanted into myself the eternal, hereditary mental anguish of the Hungarians.

Everything, but everything, about Bellardi — his sentimentality, his gourmandizing, his loyalty, his physical arrogance, even his recurring self-pity — is illusion; everything is an illusion. Either these Hungarians pace up and down in helpless anguish or they stamp on one another. Luckily, Bellardi can hardly cover up one illusion with another. Here is a man who makes everything genuine disappear among illusions.

Yet I can’t avoid him, for he bewitches me with his countless illusions, and he really sank his claws in me with his request.

But now he’s standing here in the middle of the night and can’t rid himself of the thought that in this part of the world people drink smelly water and don’t even realize it.

Madzar was one of those people who become incredibly sensitive and confused by all sorts of requests.

Of course he should have rejected this one, but then he could no longer conceal his extreme stinginess, which until now he had refused to acknowledge in himself and didn’t want to acknowledge in the future either.

All night long he struggled with the dogs’ barking, was tortured by thirst, and the next morning continued struggling because he was constipated; because of Bellardi’s request, he was still furious at midday.

He carried the shit inside him.

He did not understand how Bellardi allowed himself this sort of shamelessness, which is to say, he pretended to himself that he didn’t understand.

That way it would be easier to refuse the request.

No matter how poor they are, these Bellardis always swagger and consider everyone else as their servants.

But why is he taking it, and without a word of protest.

I probably take it without a word because in the depth of my soul I am their serf.

He was incensed.

Either I could be the servant of these rotten gentry or I could work for the dirty Jews, I certainly have choices, haven’t I. I should have taken the time to liberate myself. I want to be a Jacobin, a republican, he cried to himself, and his lips were moving as he walked. He could amuse himself with these sentences. Death to priests and aristocrats. He giggled. Hang your kings.