Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Correct me if I’m wrong, these measurements are for sleepers used on secondary lines.

That’s right, no need for me to correct the gentleman. You may not know, but between Verőce and Kismaros the railway has a branch for forestry work, and that was the one whose capabilities had to be strengthened, how should I put it, in order to make it possible to reach the new border station.

They turned Mohács too into a border station, he added, but then cut short the plaintive sentence.

Hold on a moment, Madzar said, that secondary line has a narrow-gauge track, which as far as I know would need two-meter sleepers. These here, according to you, are two forty.

If the gentleman does not believe me, we can measure them. But it’s not me who says it, I’m telling you what my good man told me, and the insulted merchant giggled a little, then went on in a whisper, my man at the railroad. For troop transports, the gentleman understands, the man said the line had to be suitable for transporting troops. And the job has been completed.

With his index finger, he pointed triumphantly to the sky, indicating that it was done at a higher command that saves us all from damnation, and then he silently spread his arms.

We put down larger and more durable sleepers than regular ones, but nobody could tell the difference.

I see.

They did not want to attract unnecessary attention, you see.

Well, then, that’s the explanation.

So the gentleman understands now. To avoid any accusations that we might have violated that part of the peace treaty.*

During the pause that followed, in which neither of them could think of anything but the injustice done to their country, its territory dismembered by the peace treaty, the architect, deprived of the last morsels of his distrust of the sleepers, thought it was going to be very hard to get through the next few hours patiently. He glanced at the elderly merchant with tenderness, affection, and almost as if asking for help. He had a good mind to have him cut into the wood. He wanted to slice off a piece at the end to see the cross-section, and then another piece lengthwise to look at the radial section. Perhaps Gottlieb had not dismantled the machines in his workshop; they might still be working. How could they be working, there was an ominous, bleak silence above the embankment precisely because they were not working. Anyway, one is better off alone with such ideas. In retrospect, he understood every word of the Jew’s meaningless jabber and saw through it, but he could not find the words with which to reciprocate.

He was as happy as a lark.

He was back at the reassuring feeling of bourgeois equality.

To rush forward with gratitude was not advisable since they had not talked about the price yet.

The price could not be too high, though the mere thought of it gave him a fright, again.

The Jew must have set a trap for him.

He asked whether Mr. Gottlieb could have one sleeper delivered to his workshop.

By all means, gladly, of course.

Now he thinks he will need all ninety-eight after all, but for the final decision, he would have to examine at least one of them thoroughly.

The gentleman doesn’t have to worry about price, said the merchant, his tone suggesting that suddenly he didn’t understand things.

What workshop could this stranger have here.

But of course he understands that the gentleman can’t buy a cat in the bag, the quantity is quite large for that, he nodded, and in a voice filled with profound distrust he asked where to send the sleepers, because he would send at least three for the test.

On hearing the object of his earlier curiosity, the familiar name and familiar address, no surprise showed on his face, because he was not surprised.

Although he no longer had hired help, he would fetch somebody to deliver the material to the Madzar house.

In his soul, Gottlieb was crestfallen.

As he covertly and incredulously observed the blue shadows on the other man’s delicate white skin, always ready to blush, and his strong, darkly red hair, he could not chase away the thought that red-haired people were always sly foxes and mean swindlers.

They exchanged a few words about what the price might be, paving the way, so to speak, for later bargaining.

The mind could not comprehend what the young man was doing and why.

This young man’s father and even grandfather had bought wood from them, not from Roheim or Gojko Drogo, and in an instant he recognized in the young man’s face the long-forgotten features of those two older men.

After all, this young man had been a classmate of Gottlieb’s own boy in the school on Koronaherceg Street.

And because of these useless thoughts and unappeasable indignations, his fate opened up, his everyday life came crashing down on him. He saw before him his little boy as a grown man, the unlucky, miserable little boy. Never mind, we’ll have him study a trade, he’ll be a watchmaker; that’s what they planned for him.

Which made his soul whimper.

He saw his beautiful, strong wife at a time when she hadn’t yet gone mad. She had been not quite right in the head even as a girl, but no one would have thought that as a woman she would go mad. Still, he blamed himself. He was feeling the threat of the final hours groping their way toward him, a total darkening of the spirit. He hadn’t recognized the Madzar boy. Not only can I not find my hat and to my greatest shame I’m standing here without a head cover at the sight of my Creator, may His name be blessed forever and ever, but I don’t even remember whether I put my own hat on my own head this morning.

His negligence confused him, the other man’s presence and incomprehensible behavior upset and hurt him, and he must not allow any of this to show on his face.

When he was finally left alone with his desperation, limping back to his office, going across the yard alive with the chirping of sparrows, he began to whistle, but with him this was a sign not of jollity but rather of unbearable tension.

All right then, this hour too has arrived.

He could console himself that at least he managed to sell the wood after all.

And the architect strolled along the embankment to the boat station. He sat down on a large stone by the ferrymen’s small kiosk and watched the arrival of the almost empty ferry from the island; creaking mightily, it slid up on the paved shore. Serbian Gypsies in snow-white shirts were the first ones off, leading three restless horses amid a loud pounding of hooves. There was no feature of the landscape that didn’t bring back something of the past. The sun was very strong, and nothing was left of the early-morning mist above the lively surface of the river; the water reflected the current-driven image of the sky in vanishing brown, blue, and white spots.

There were moments when the landscape made a profound turn, because he felt that everything, after all, was referring to Mrs. Szemző.

It was for her that he fantasized about the darkening color of the oak, but he did not understand the connection between her and the color.

As for Bellardi, well, the sooner he forgot him, the better.

And what about that certain deep purple visible on the densest part of the surface, on the knobs and knots, would he find it on inner surfaces exposed by cutting the wood. Among the women, whether on foot or with bicycles loaded down with packed baskets, gabbing loudly and cutting into one another’s words as they followed the horses to the shore, he did not see a single one with a bonnet on her head. But it was too early for his mother to return from the island; she never came back before four in the afternoon. These women were Hungarian, he could see that from afar; Catholics and Protestants wore their headgear differently, while the Slavic women, who used their white linen kerchiefs only during work, spread them taut across their foreheads and tied them not under their chins but at the back of their heads. The most fertile lands belonging to Mohácsians were on the other shore, along with shepherds’ and fishermen’s accommodations and the so-called bush farms, owned by rich German farmers who moved there with their households for the summer months. In his childhood Madzar had frequently experienced a strange anxiety at the thought that among the uniformly dressed, constantly chattering women he might not recognize his own mother.