Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Bulla turned to him, looking at Kramer with his wide, clever brown eyes, the man who had saved his life and who, because of him, must now go. If he didn’t want to go — he obviously had turned obstinate — they’d be there in a few seconds with their dogs and take him away.

Bulla thought Kramer might put up a fight.

Perhaps Kramer would approach them, embrace the little Huguenot, and then leave. Perhaps he would graze the nicely ribbed feminine lips with a kiss. Which would have irritated Peix extremely, as did almost any human contact or feeling.

Now he understood Peix’s intention, but this time he’d come too late.

He did not have time to shout or interfere, because Peix had already grabbed the low-hanging, heavy lamp, pulled it back as if taking aim, and with one staggering blow crushed Bulla’s skull. The skull opened from Bulla’s ears to his forehead, they heard something that might have been the beginning of a whimper, and for a split second the strong lamplight illuminated the soft, gleaming, pink, and motionless brain until, with a short thud, the body collapsed in the light.

Peix let go of the lamp, which, skirting sprays of blood and yanking its beam of light in all directions, swung back into place. While the Hungarian countess’s voice continued to crackle and soar, it kept swaying fitfully.

We can go then, Peix answered the loudspeaker, somewhat later, and in his joy he let out a loud neigh of a laugh. He rarely laughed aloud, but when he did he sounded like a whinnying horse. Kramer particularly liked his infernal laugh; it was as if he were shouting to someone, good job, man, well done. And that’s how it really was, they could go because at that instant the loudspeaker fell silent again.

Obersturmführer Döring, who had just called Kramer to the south gate, now simply said, Peix to the south gate.

Across the vast Appelplatz they could go side by side, heads bent sharply down; they never looked at each other, not for a moment. They looked like two mutually offended people parting in extreme anger though neither of them could have named the reason for it. On the other side they were waiting for them with their dogs; from there, they accompanied them farther but separately. Out the large gate that was always brightly lit by floodlights, both its wings, unusually, open. Along the darkly glittering asphalt road for a while, their wooden shoes clacking between the leather boots. They turned off the road where the floodlights faded almost completely. The sky was slowly brightening. Out here, the loudspeaker could not be heard clearly anymore. All one could tell was that somebody, a woman, kept singing the same thing over and over again. But they could hear the cannons more clearly and they could see, at the bottom of the lightening sky, the reflected lights on the western horizon that preceded the flash and blast of firing. For Kramer, these images made it clear that what they were doing to them was being done in the penultimate moment. The huge cauldrons would not be brought again; there would be no more turnip soup in the camp. That’s why today there had been no morning Appel , which usually lasted for hours. He was a bit amused that he’d managed to glean this bit of fateful information but could not pass it on to his comrades. They will kill the two of them and then, in orderly files, they will lead the entire camp out the wide gates and away from here. The Krankenrevier and the Karanten , together with the sick and the convalescing inside them, they’ll simply burn.

And that is how it happened.

But even Kramer did not imagine that they wanted to drown Peix in front of his eyes.

When Döhring raised his cane under his chin and the other man twisted his arms behind him, a position that, as the result of having been tied down for so many months, immediately caused him terrible nausea and involuntary retching, he understood this too. He could endure this much pain only if he could go on retching. Peix had to undress; no matter how badly they were beating him, the undressing progressed very slowly. His nakedness emerged from the darkness before Kramer’s eyes. He would have preferred to suffer Döhring’s blows to seeing what they were doing to Gregor. In his mind, he was praying for him like a child. By now no man could have held Kramer up. And Döhring could not at the same time prop up Kramer’s chin and hit him. Several men rushed to help him, the dogs were raging on their short leashes, and they beat him — but not so that he would lose consciousness.

He did not look.

No sound passed his throat either; he was retching silently.

That was all he could do; in his mind, though, he was shouting his prayers for Gregor, for him he was ready to address God and even call for His help.

No matter how hard they hit him, how loudly they yelled at him to open his eyes. The pain made him vomit. They had to leave off for a moment. They even let go of him. But he had to open his eyes and he saw what they were doing with Gregor’s body. They had to jump back to avoid his puking on them. Salivating bile, he kept yanking his head in their hands and felt his pain for Gregor as if, along with all his innards, his entire physical essence were turning inside out, pouring through his throat and mouth, and he no longer had air to breathe or a voice with which to speak. He ended on the ground. He barely felt the blows, they pressed his face into his vomit, but more strongly than anything else he felt the frozen ground and the rich wet fragrance of the grass. For a good while he could still see the green, only the green, a thunderous green, nothing else, such a lively, vivid green that he could never before, and particularly in that moment, have possibly seen.

They realized they were torturing a corpse only when Gregor was no longer breathing under water; with one huge heave they lobbed his lifeless body into the river.

You won’t be the first in the history of the world, my pretty one, don’t be so conceited, but I can tell you now that you’ll panic as badly as if you were.

She must stay on top, must not slide back. If she can’t find the notes and be confident, if she keeps sliding back, she can say good-bye to a singing career.

Take my word for it.

Randomly she hit a semitone on Mrs. Szemző’s piano.

Again, the same F sharp.

The living soul of destroyed people and objects made themselves heard in the summer evening, and she followed them willingly with her voice.

After a beat she sang the note and then hit the key again and sang into the sound. She was very sensitive to sounds her own hearing longed for. She had ideas about tonality that she tried to formulate with her own vocal organs. But producing sound always kills hearing; she could not hear herself from the outside when singing. Once again, as if to double-check, she hit the key and paused, but the pause turned into emptiness and she quickly told herself, no, this won’t do, not like this, not this.

I won’t find it, she said to herself, I can’t find it.

She would have had to synchronize different elements.

She was also struggling with an urge to weep because of Ágost.

Yet she couldn’t have said why, since she was happy with him.

I simply blame him.

Why is everyone allowed to humiliate me with what they know, she shouted to herself, torn by doubt, even though she was so happy that nothing could crush the strength swelling in her body at this moment, spreading and working in her cells.

Everything was swelling and expanding.

You, Gyöngyvér, she admonished herself in Margit Huber’s voice, you keep on blaming others for your own weaknesses, and she readily owned up to this recurring error for which her teacher often rebuked her.