Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Gyöngyvér’s hand rose properly above the keys as if she were certain what she must do with the conjured-up phrase. But everything happened differently. Could she accompany the sounds issuing from her on Mrs. Szemző’s piano.

Mrs. Madzar grumbled a bit more but then decided that she’d pick the string beans no matter what. She would prepare a good tomato sauce, brown the roux nicely no matter who came to visit; she’d serve that with boiled chicken and steamed string beans. In the seventh-floor apartment, it grew light earlier and dark later than down in the street, under the shade of the elms and above the insanely yellow pavement. With her keyed-up imagination she was moving forward in the pale light of Madzar’s remaining lamps, her flawless naked body caught up in the momentum.

In the end, she had the courage to hit only the lonely F sharp, waited patiently for the F sharp to address her body and then let her voice sing out, nice and round.

Well, at least it came out right again.

Again but only once and only by chance; she was actually preparing for something else, not this. She was preparing to take Mrs. Szemző’s impossible idea seriously: now I may be talking nonsense, but you tell Médike that not only should you sing Monteverdi, but you should also switch to contralto. And with that, Mrs. Szemző rose from the piano and began excitedly to look for the right sheet music. In the escritoire, the only piece left of the furniture Madzar had built, from which the unknown saturant was still emitting a faint scent.

Gyöngyvér also got up from the piano to get the sheet music but in the meantime she remembered where Mrs. Szemző kept the blankets. And the black dog on the bridge attacked Kristóf, knocking him against the railing and licking his face again with its huge tongue. The young man instinctively shoved the dog away; the touch of the strange beast inflamed his mouth, but his move came too late. His palate turned blistery, he thought he’d choke to death on the spot, but the dog thought that now they could begin to play.

It was snarling at him in happiness.

The next morning Mrs. Szemző arrived in Mohács, and not alone.

Then Ágost was startled by the sound and noticed with surprise that he was alone in the bed in the maid’s room. At least he could make himself comfortable. He was a little cold, he realized, irritated, where is she with that blanket, he thought wistfully, but then he fell right back to sleep.

At 11:20 in the morning, four minutes before the expected arrival of the woman, the unsuspecting Madzar was already waiting on the platform at the old railway station shaded by aged chestnut trees, sporting his father’s best summer suit, a light-green tropical worsted. He had worked until dawn in his father’s workshop so he could show Mrs. Szemző at least the sketches of all the objects he was making for her. He held his father’s panama hat in his hand, twirling it nervously. During the long night he had managed to assemble roughly every piece of furniture except for the desk, the folding screen, and the davenport, including the all-important delicate couch of which they both expected so much. If only he could put together in fitting layers the experience of several centuries. The practical question he had to answer was this, in what manner does a relaxed body lie on a couch. His body shuddered in the early dawn light; the weird exhibit he had prepared surprised him. The hastily assembled pieces of austere furniture were propped up with other objects and implements and stood forlornly among the machines. He knew that no one in the world had ever received such a worthy confession of love, and fortunately no one besides him could know this; a stranger could not possibly understand. Mrs. Szemző will not understand either. Yet secretly he hoped she would.

The panama hat, however, was too small; until the very last minute, his mother begged him not to put it on unless he wanted to become the laughingstock of the town.

Come on, Mother, then what the devil should I do with it.

Hold it in your hands.

The sky was a little cloudy on this Wednesday but the heat was great, with hardly any breeze because of the heavy humid air.

A real Hungarian summer, whose smell and heat he had thought so much about when he lived in Germany and Holland.

His ability to discipline himself notwithstanding, he felt he would have a long wait for any anticipated fulfillment. First the train had to deliver Mrs. Szemző, then the two of them would have to stroll back along sunny Danube Row to the parental house, and only then, finally, in the workshop could he show her the neat, elegant objects so enriched by their inner life. Beyond the railway station, beyond the black hills of the coaling dock, on the estate of Archduke Frederick of Lorraine two harvesting machines were at work; one could hear the harvesters’ drawn-out shouts locked in the machines’ monotonous noise. In the summer seasonal laborers from Göcsej worked on the archduke’s land. Perhaps those were not shouts but the singing of laborers as they lay in the shade of acacias waiting for the midday sun to relent a little. Here, on the flat expanse of Sátorhely, where according to the old historians the Turkish and Hungarian armies had marched against each other in 1526, the fertile, much envied fields stretched all the way to the grape-growing hills. Madzar was not alone on the platform; other people were waiting for the train too. In his excitement he paid no attention to the exceptional human sounds, and there were many other kinds of noise as well. The tipcarts at the coaling dock were rhythmically clanging and clicking; from the loudspeaker at the nearby swimming pool the melody of a popular tune radiated as far as the station. In the surrounding landscape irregular pulsating shouts sounded like a work song filled with accusations, or like a recitative proclaiming the desolation of fate. When the short train with its stocky engine approached and then pulled into the station, activities intensified; railway workers and porters moved out from the shade, and to his astonishment he quickly recognized, in the slowly moving window of a first-class car, Mrs. Szemző’s two sturdy, aggressive little sons, surrounded by young girls or rather young ladies. They were literally hanging out the window, eagerly showing something to the brightly dressed girls who in the wind created by the train were holding on to and waving their hats. One could also see two well-fed rats running between the basalt track bed and the concrete wall of the platform, along with the train. In the noise of the braking train, Madzar had no time to become used to the thought that Mrs. Szemző was not alone.

He felt like blaming Mrs. Szemző for this first surprise, as for a serious misdeed, and also like making excuses for her.

When the conductor finally opened the doors, Dr. Szemző’s bald head and beaming face shone down on Madzar.

In his utter confusion he did not understand anything. He had been through many things, but for the first time in his young life he felt he would perish, he could not bear it.

He felt as if he had been caught with his desensitized feelings showing, without time even to blush. Mrs. Szemző cannot be without her sons and the sons cannot be without each other. What should he do now, he wondered, but he had no time for such questions. At any rate, his familiar world was turning upside down, about to fall on his head. Something was happening, or was beginning to happen, independent of him, which he could not comprehend. It was as if in this very exceptional moment he confessed to himself that he could not be without Bellardi. First, he had to greet Dr. Szemző, to acknowledge and reciprocate the man’s obvious pleasure in seeing him, which must have been genuine, seeing that Madzar was building a big new home for him with the best available materials and equipped with the highest achievements of modern technology. At last he glimpsed Mrs. Szemző, who, in the company of a very fetching, fragile woman about her age, was coming toward him.