Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Perhaps her heart pounded so loudly in fear.

Somebody was shouting in the stairwell, imploring others that if they knew any kind of god, if you have any soul in you, you would not do this.

Do this, it echoed.

At least have mercy on my elderly mother.

My elderly mother, derly mother, mother, other, it echoed.

Then everything fell silent in the stairwell.

If it had been Mrs. Szemző coming up in the elevator, Gyöngyvér would have left the piano and quickly returned via the bathroom to the maid’s room, which Madzar had turned into an office for Mrs. Szemző’s assistant.

It would not have been the first time for her.

No, they would have no mercy.

And it was as if she heard a single piercing scream, then again a rattling and a crash. In her many sublet situations, she had learned how to listen to and hear things above a general noise, sneak and scurry through hallways and corridors, take furtive bites out of other people’s food, use strangers’ belongings silently and unnoticed. Towels, the landlady’s cotton, a few tea leaves, soup powder, break off a piece of bread, slip a couple of cigarettes out of a pack, take a swig out of the milk bottle. Leave no traces.

Had she known she was listening to the past, she would have turned to stone.

Not to make the floor creak.

But it was not Mrs. Szemző now, and Gyöngyvér did not move from the piano stool.

Mrs. Szemző said, Gyöngyvér, listen to me, you should probably sing Monteverdi, the sweet, seductive, and terrible Gorgone, for example, yes, and she asked if Gyöngyvér knew that role.

How in the name of cunt could she know everything. Why was Mrs. Szemző asking her such dumb things.

Sure, Irmuska believes they were playing Monteverdi for me in the chicken coop, right.

Madzar had carefully worked out who was to go where in the psychoanalytic clinic because Mrs. Szemző’s patients should theoretically not ever meet even in this unpleasantly echoing but otherwise most attractive stairwell. At least that was the demand, which Madzar kept well in mind: that patients should not encounter each other. But the pounding increased as they approached from floor to floor, step by step, with their rifle butts knocking on the apartments’ thick oak doors.

If you listen for the inner world of your voice, Gyöngyvér, you will turn to stone, that’s how strong the primal force is in it, and the horror. Your voice cannot be loved, Gyöngyvér, don’t ever expect that, but you will be idolized, your voice is einmalig , I can tell you that much, einmalig .

Don’t mind me saying this to you, you must make use of your terrible thirst for revenge rather than being ashamed of it, don’t be afraid, if things turn out well you’ll be paid a bundle for your vengefulness.

It’s best for me, Mrs. Szemző explained to the architect at the time, if my patients remain ignorant of one another.

There are nights, however, when the walls of Budapest apartments reradiate the sounds they once absorbed.

The architect questioned the woman in detail, tried to follow her. Based on what he had heard, he figured out where her patients could wait for a few moments to avoid unexpected confusion.

Gyöngyvér could not have known anything of this, of course, which is why she did not believe her ears. That night, the Arrow Cross thugs led by an eager theology student named Mayer threw every piece of furniture out of the apartment windows and, so that Jews in hiding could never use any of the other apartments either, they turned on all the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom. The water rose for a while and then spilled over the threshold and began streaming down the stairs, at first only at the sides, and during the next days it froze, getting thicker and thicker.

With the double-edged characteristic of visibility and concealment in mind, the architect decided that a folding screen should be put here, or something reminiscent of a folding screen. The moment a person entered the clinic, she or he had to be reassured that one could find refuge if the need arose in this bright space. He placed the screen where the black concert piano stood now in the hallway. He also arranged for more seating than one might expect in this space, using only the chairs and armchairs he built himself.

He asked Mrs. Szemző to please observe which seating accommodation each patient chose.

These objects must stand on their own in the space, he explained, and Mrs. Szemző had to concentrate hard to understand him.

As if they each had an individual personality and, believe me, they will. I don’t try to make my objects beautiful, but they should be independent, with a strength that is uniquely characteristic. One of your patients might sit only on this chair, while another would prefer the armchair.

That’s my observation: different chairs, different human types.

Come on, my dear architect, don’t irritate me with talk of human types and my patients. You know very well, and I’ve explained it several times, for me there’s no such thing, for me these things do not exist.

It’s a good thing you haven’t started in on theories of racial purity.

There are no human types. At most, people’s socializations differ. Or there are problems in their social interactions that make them behave oddly, but that doesn’t make them sick. Both of us should intervene with a person’s systems of interaction. Believe me, we are traffic police, nothing more. I cannot cure anyone. But sometimes a single inspired suggestion is enough to change the inner conditions of mental functioning and for the change to have an impact on the historically altered surroundings.

At least in theory.

Madzar had to focus hard to follow the woman’s words. He also laughed at her a bit, making his own analysis a little easier.

Well, now, don’t be so afraid of me, he said, laughing at both the woman and himself, in theory I’ve understood and noted everything, but I can’t say your concepts are finding their way easily into what I say.

Or into my mind, of course. That’s true.

I only take my patients on a journey of discovery. Your space and the objects in it should give them similar impulses, and you can leave the words to the patients.

Mrs. Szemző’s strictness made Madzar chuckle. He recognized himself in her asceticism adopted in the interest of utopian ideals, and this irritated him, yet she remained a woman, and that also irritated him.

We won’t get anywhere with ancient concepts such as ill patient and mental illness, symptoms and human types. You can’t work against me so obviously, or if you do we might as well say good-bye to our shared ideas.

Stop, please, hold it. Madzar was laughing.

Don’t go so far. Sometimes one assigns certain borders involuntarily, but I take it back, I beg your pardon, I take it back and join you in declaring that there are no limits.

Between ill-being and well-being there really isn’t a border or bright line, my dear architect, no matter how often you joke about it.

But why would I be joking.

Even the classical scientists admitted that at most we can speak only of degrees. It’s a nice romantic idea that there are borders between people or even within a single human being. An individual has permanent traits, yes, but the essence of humans is easily permeable, and the traits themselves are malleable, showing different faces in different situations, which means that they offer us different inclinations. What else would make people so accommodating. I willingly admit that this lack of borders or limitations is very difficult to grasp or follow linguistically. Linguistically we are always pitting something against something else. If I say black, you add the thought of white but not the many hues of gray, one more beautiful than the other. If you say madness or speak of mental illness and its opposite, then you also have the murderous commonplace, the stereotype, the destructive linguistic convention, and you don’t even notice that you’ve passed off a culturally well-prepared sentence on others and yourself. Using that concept separates you from what is archaically common to us all, which none of us can escape. Using stereotypes and conventions, you gloss over the collective traits of individual humans. I hope you’ll forgive me for accusing you of such common crimes.