Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

She stopped fuming.

As if she knew what had happened and as if she were reinforcing her realization with a clumsy nodding approval.

The maid replaced the receiver and remained where she stood, facing the wall. She had to turn away, not to see anyone, for at least a second. Not to let them see her face. Everything that had happened between her and the professor during the past year was way beyond anything that conventional human relationship recognizes or allows.

For a long time, this little transition into silence, this click of the receiver, lingered as the last noise in the room, or rather, they all felt that a very long time was going by. Outside, it was a moment when the sky became lighter, even though rain was whipping the two windows. All three of them were watching Ilona, watching her thin, unnaturally raised shoulders.

They waited for her to speak. And they wanted her to remain silent for a while longer. Gyöngyvér Mózes’s teeth knocked together several times but luckily no one heard that. She had no idea what she was doing, and her movements were uncontrolled; she pressed her thighs together, grasped her short nightie, kept tugging it as if afraid for her loins.

The rich darkness of her pubic hair glimmered through the light material.

Is he dead, Lady Erna asked cautiously after a time.

For hours after her attacks, her voice was usually colorless, and now she sounded hoarse from the first syllable. Of her listeners, only the young man discerned the sober calculation in her question. More precisely, the dread that her plans would crumble. He could see it on his aunt’s face, which without makeup always seemed offensively bare. Her boldness frightened him so much that he tore his gaze from her. In fact, this was his greatest concern: the boldness of human emotions. He did not want to hear Ilona’s response. And to see the effect of the response.

Not a word, nothing.

No, please don’t be afraid, cried the maid, choking and stammering. He recovered half an hour ago. The doctor told me to tell you they won’t be able to keep him conscious for long. He said he felt he had to say that unfortunately it won’t last long, he could not give any reason for hope. As far as it was humanly possible to make a prediction, they said. But he is exceptionally lucid now. He wishes to see Ágost, he wishes to see Nínó.

And please hurry.

But whom did you talk to, for God’s sake.

In response Ilona gave her shoulders a little shrug. She didn’t know, did not understand why suddenly this would be important or interesting. Actually, her next sentence would have been a request to accompany her mistress.

Some man, she answered, and her voice trembled with the effort, he said he was speaking for the head physician, because Lady Erna had discussed something with him that now would be absolutely necessary.

And with this she turned away, she could not continue, and because of the frustration at not having voiced her request — I’d like to say good-bye to him, and she was losing her courage to say it now, I’d like to see him once more — her shoulders trembled silently.

Even though she did not want to cry at all. What had she to do with all this. I don’t want to cry, she shouted within herself.

Where is Ágost?

I don’t know, I’m very sorry but I don’t know, Gyöngyvér replied too loudly to the threateningly quiet question. I can’t help it, she added as one caught and accused of gross negligence who must make excuses. He jumped out of bed at dawn, she muttered, got dressed without a word, wouldn’t tell me where he was going, and ran out.

You were probably fighting all night again.

We were. Unfortunately, that’s true.

Ilona, please bring me my dark gray suit. Kristóf, you’re coming with me. Somebody order a cab.

Her recent fury was replaced by this cool, patronizing voice used to giving orders, which the three people before her could not easily oppose.

It was difficult for her to master not her emotions but her lack of strength. She really had no time to lose, and she had an aversion to unpleasant scenes. Luckily no one noticed the corner of her mouth quivering, her knees shaking and her long fine fingers trembling. Not so much from her own shock, because for her this matter had long been considered closed, but from what she had not counted on: that now it would indeed come to pass, what until now seemed to be impossible to finish.

Her breath was accelerating; she had to slow it down.

Otherwise, everything had been properly prepared for the moment that now managed to surprise her after all. She only had to take out of her desk drawer the sales contract requiring the dying man’s signature. She knew where to find it. And luck would shine on her after all; her little good fairies would be with her. A heart attack must not interfere now. She turned to leave for her room.

And it was not the five words that Kristóf called after her that stopped her, but the shock and indignation that anyone here might have an objection or hold a different view about something.

I am not going anywhere.

What are you talking about.

I am telling you, I’m not going to escort you anywhere.

You’re out of your mind.

This was an attack she would never have thought possible.

She had no illusions about her own son. But this boy, in whom she daily saw her murdered younger brother, which she considered a precious gift of life, was the most gentle and attentive human being she had ever known. During the past six years, she had never for a moment regretted taking him into her house instead of putting him back into some filthy orphanage. Involuntarily, every person makes such selfish calculations. Whom can I trust when in trouble. What benefit will I have by doing this. Him I can truly trust. Neither her body nor her soul had any appropriate sense organs with which to comprehend what she was failing to comprehend with her mind.

She did not understand what was happening.

Not going anywhere, no, repeated the young man almost impassively, and softly rather than loudly.

But why not, for heaven’s sake, why are you telling me this, or what is this supposed to mean.

She could not conceive where this voice could be coming from. And then there was one long moment from which the two other people present were excluded. A peculiar situation. If objects had eyes, they’d be looking at one another as neutrally as Nínó and Kristóf were looking at each other now, and that made them similar, turned them into almost identical beings, or more precisely, brought into daylight their common familial features.

Their egomania grappled with their sense of justice, only to force both of them to retreat, defeated, into the protection of illusions.

Kristóf found no appropriate moment to explain. He didn’t even know what signals he should be sending to make others understand his intentions. It was not possible to understand; he himself did not understand it. When in January, in the business district near Café Abbázia a few old stores were reopened on the boulevard, there also appeared a saleswoman with whom he unaccountably and senselessly fell head over heels in love. So much so, that he never dared to speak to her. He wouldn’t have known what to say. Of course, things like this happen to young people almost on schedule; the adventures of their instincts, however, are not without dangers. Although no one noticed, and he did nothing to attract attention, for some months now he’d been teetering at the edge of the steep slope of clinical madness with his helpless and ever darkening passion. His aunt was close to the truth. What in January had promised to be nothing but a playful little adventure by now paralyzed him, and his conscience did not have a sober spot or a sane corner left.