Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

He had no wish to chat.

Outside, sparrows went on chirping in the sunshine. Nothing had changed during the elapsed years, for birds chirping in the sunshine were always sparrows.

They scrutinized each other somewhat suspiciously for a long time, and then it seemed that Gottlieb, searching Madzar’s features and despite his own reticence, recognized the long-lost boy.

He laughed, quietly accommodating Madzar’s taciturnity.

He showed his old deformed teeth, atrophied gums, and bits of breakfast leftovers stuck in the grooves of the worn tooth enamel.

Every morning he ate goose fat spread on a slice of brown bread piled high with rings of red onion, which he considered very healthy, and drank coffee with it, no milk.

With his every word he exuded the smell of stale onion.

He said that without knowing what the wood would be used for, he was very sorry but could not tell the gentleman whether he had any.

He still hadn’t put down his pen. He meant this in jest; it was nothing but the peculiar curiosity of country folk: first he had to know who this man was, what wind had blown him this way, and whether his intentions were good or evil.

With your permission, I’ll take a look, Madzar said in the tone of one used to giving orders, even though he was shaken to the core by his joy in seeing the old man again.

His back and thighs were covered with goose bumps.

Though I see, he added, that you don’t have much wood at all.

Ultimately, this was an encounter with lapsed time at whose depths lay the disgraced corpse of the little boy cast out of the water, which Madzar and Bellardi along with the other boys had to look at.

They could not refuse; they looked at it as the other boys did.

Gottlieb, hearing the gentlemanly tone, put down his pen carefully and to be on the safe side closed the top of the ink bottle.

He saw the stranger’s face turn red, and, as if protecting his property against an anger of unknown origin, he rose, pushed the chair out from under him, though not too fast, and stood up. He was a robust man, and advanced years had made his shoulders stoop, but only a little; in the pocket high on his long dark-blue apron, one could see the tips of a slide rule, carpenter’s pencil, and folding ruler; he wore brown corduroy pants and had black elbow protectors on the sleeves of his striped flannel shirt.

With his knotty palms, used to moving and loading things, he blindly and absentmindedly kept touching things on the desk.

True, I can’t offer you much right now, he said with a helpful, almost humble mercantile smile, and then, as he continued to search for something, alarm showing in his eyes, he forgot to complete the sentence he had started.

Perhaps he’d find it on the blackened wood floor, swept every morning with oily sawdust.

Or perhaps on top of one of the open filing cabinets packed with receipts and account books.

Where is my hat, he asked half-aloud, as if in passing.

But the origin of this wood I’m talking about, he said, returning to the interrupted sentence absentmindedly and going on in a lively tone, I can verify for you. It’s the kind of material that I’m sure would meet all the gentleman’s requirements. I have never paid so much for driftwood, I have a witness too, I’ll show you now what I mean if you’d be kind enough to follow me.

Could I go without a hat, he asked himself half-aloud.

But if the gentleman does not care to see it personally, I’ll show you samples of everything else that is still available.

It’s not much, true, not that much.

Madzar did not understand what the Jew was talking about.

And then Gottlieb, unable to overcome his curiosity, interrupted his convoluted explanation, almost shouting, no matter how hard I look at you, sir, in my view you are not from these parts.

Madzar did not respond, he did not wish to fall into a trap or get involved in a complicated conversation, so he kept silent until Gottlieb finally started out with him toward the door.

They could hear the monotonous clatter of fulling machines in the nearby leather factory and, from farther away, a uniform thumping in the silk factory, as well as the engine of a military assault boat puffing and coughing on its way upstream.

There were so many new things in this world; behind the tall brick wall enclosing the lumberyard on the west, one could follow the noise of a horse and cart as it turned slowly into Farkas Street, where its creaking wheels began to squeak among the one-story houses with their pointed facades. Madzar could have sworn it was the cart of the horse-dealing Gypsies and that a foal was trotting alongside the near horse.

Everything was as if he had already lived through it once.

And only when they left the office did he notice that the Jew was indeed not wearing a head covering.

A sharp little breeze caught his thin graying hair and showed sickly shining spots on his scalp as they were going down the steps. Madzar had never seen him bareheaded. Abroad, he had come in contact and worked with many different kinds of Jew and for quite some time paid close attention to them, as if urging himself to notice at last what he was supposed to notice. Yet it never occurred to him that they were supposed to wear hats. He was seized by a childlike muteness. The Jew had violated the rules. As if noticing for the first time in his life that he had been doing everything that ritual demanded. Having returned to a once-familiar world in which nothing had changed, his childhood self had no idea what to do with a Jew whose scalp rarely saw the light of day.

When put this way, however, the question made no sense; he almost laughed at it aloud.

The ominous absence of the hat cracked the old-time magic.

At the sight of the pale spots and the tufts of sticky, oily hair, he felt aversion and repugnance. Still, he was able to behave according to the codes of his upbringing.

Or perhaps Bellardi had managed to confuse him with his damned chatter.

What the gentleman sees in the yard, Gottlieb was explaining artlessly, will all be taken away tomorrow, end of the week at the latest, because I’m making the final accounts and on Monday I close the whole business for good. Roheim will take over whatever is left, if you know who I mean. The gentleman may not believe it, but the firm Gottlieb and Company was founded eighty years ago.

And Roheim, as everyone can see, and I don’t begrudge him his success, has managed to stay in business.

Eighty years, that’s right, that’s how long the firm has been in business.

Madzar frequently thought that although he knew about different materials, had unconventional ideas and a good sense of space, and possessed a not bad sense of proportion, yet compared with his successful professional colleagues he was hesitant and came to his ideas belatedly.

The big doghouses were empty, he was late again; on the ground, richly dotted with barely sprouting chamomile and chickweed, the chains hanging off the runway wires were lying abandoned, just as they had been unclasped from the dog collars. He paid no attention to the Jew’s heavy remarks, not really; he was thinking about the komondors and about himself, busy with his own desperation.

Which meant that he could interpret existing conditions even in a strange environment but could not use them to foresee anything.

His vision was weak.

Of course he did not mean to lie, it would take two more years to make it a round eighty, but just the same, he will close the business his grandfather had opened, may his memory be blessed, it’s three generations after all, the work of three generations.

In that case, Madzar replied, half-aloud, I got here just in time.

Gott behüte , to say something like that or even to think it, the merchant responded with a scratchy little laugh and much waving of arms. Who knows when the last hour arrives, the gentleman can’t know either. Let’s not hasten it with anything we do.