Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

She was standing in front of the church as if she had meant to flee there in the first place. One wing of the heavy door was wide open.

She could see that I was virtually running after her. And I, at last, could see that she was waiting for me, nobody else, because in the middle of the broad sidewalk she turned around to face me. I couldn’t slow down, and I couldn’t have said how far I’d go in my daring now that she had gone this far. As a feeling, it was as if, unable to brake my momentum, I’d plow into her — but my courage abandoned me at just that point. I had a chance to live through one of my life’s most lucid and delicate moments. There was no room for deception or falsehood in it. It was a brief flash preceded and followed by thick fog. She stood there, stiff within her own obstinate decision. She would wait for and, with a single blow, bring the insane attacker low; that’s how I saw her, determined, wild, and aggressive. But the closer I came, the more nicely she smiled, as if welcoming the attack with the joy of brutality come true. Which meant that she was no less insane than I. Her smile was so refined, so soft, so unalterable, yet expanding and spreading so that her face almost swam away with it, but the obstinate decision with which she planted herself on the glistening sidewalk was not nice.

It was crude and uncouth, and my overhasty running wasn’t nice either, as if my limbs were flying away from me, leaving me unable to control or aim my movements in the right direction. The eagerness, this greedy fear that I might lose or miss out on something, was not aesthetically pleasing. And neither was my alarm that I might smash what I wanted to seize and hold on to. But it was nice that I wasn’t ashamed of all this, of my desire to possess. In what way would it be possible to possess an entire human being — in no way. There was nothing I could ruin. For at least a single moment to grab her ass with both hands. And that’s what she responded to with her smile because she wasn’t ashamed either. She said, I’m not playing hide and seek with you. She said, what do you want. She said, here I am. She did not say, possess me, but now I shall crush you, tear you apart, devour you, possess you. And that, after all, was a different kind of beauty, though a little funnier too, or cruder. Until then, she had always seemed rather fragile, transparent, anemic, and sad. I could not yet see clearly that she had physical characteristics in which the cruelty of her soul was engraved. In her there was room also for the ugly; on her the lovely also had its place; madness took up space in her, as did shameful cunning. Ultimately we both knew what we wanted from each other, and we even knew that we were unstoppable.

Yet I had been counting on something entirely different.

She had to be beautiful; that’s what I had counted on. Nothing should be left that wasn’t nice, harmonious, or aesthetically arranged. Although nothing had a real explanation, things did not happen that way. And then there was no explanation for the way things did happen either.

Drizzle shone on her hair and shoulders. The entire street glistened around us.

Here, at the corner of Nagymező and Király streets, the wind swept up everything, blew and scattered things everywhere; the streetlamp’s light was swinging on its cable above the pavement, the wet branches trembled nervously.

I asked her if she’d known I was following her.

She said she knew and shrugged her shoulders, as if she didn’t consider this interesting or significant enough to talk about.

Drizzle sat on her eyelashes too, and much more interesting than the meaning of the words was that we were speaking to each other. That some kinds of words were coming out of her mouth and I had answers for them — this was something completely new and completely incredible. And we were speaking loudly too; we had to, over the noise of the wind. But it wasn’t nice that I wound up so close to her. As if I were forcefully invading her, giving her no way out; at the next moment she’d have to back away from this exaggerated closeness. It was not appropriate to the situation. As if, after all, she might have wanted something other than I did.

I said that even though she’d known I was following her, she pretended not to notice me.

Because she had to hurry. Her whole boring life is nothing but one big hurry, oh God how boring. Even now, she has to go on running.

But how did she know it was me and not someone else, seeing as how she didn’t look back.

She knew I’d understand without an explanation, she answered, and from her smile I understood that this insane woman really knew everything in advance. I shouldn’t be angry with her, but she could not go into explanations. We wouldn’t have time for a regular conversation this time, anyway.

But I still don’t understand, I said. I really couldn’t decide whether to show up or not because she hadn’t really answered my question that morning.

She shrugged her shoulders again.

But I could see her ring, she said, I am a married woman, she said. She had seen clearly that several times I had looked at her ring. In her opinion, it was very obvious that she was marked as belonging to someone else, and she wasn’t kidding.

I had looked at her ring because I didn’t understand the situation.

I had to decide about everything else.

And I thought I was only imagining things, I moaned. I made myself imagine, fantasize things. What I was looking at was the question whether she was engaged or, I don’t know what I’d thought, maybe recently married, or whether she was wearing the ring on her right hand or on her left.

She can’t arrange a date like this in front of her boss, could she. They’re on deadly bad terms, she said emphatically. Which is bad enough as it is, no point making it worse with some stupidity.

One can see that, I said.

See from what, she asked suspiciously.

From the way you two go around avoiding and watching each other all the time and relax a little only when the other woman’s husband or fat little son comes into the store. Then they manage to be more polite, considerate.

Although our eyes were flitting around each other’s eyes, I was watching her mouth. And how she too didn’t know what to do with her hands. I didn’t know what to do with mine, and because of that I was standing so stiffly in front of her that my legs trembled.

The trembling did not let up; it kept on, gentle but steady.

She speaks nicely to everyone. She never wants to hurt anyone.

Nor I, I replied, in which there was a good dose of coquetry.

Not you either.

With these three words in the daring informal mode, everything changed again. Until then we had been politely using the formal address, now she changed the rules and we had to look at each other in a new light. As if we were looking at the three words receding, which calmed and slowed us down. It was impossible to decide whether she’d said this deliberately or the way she thought about me had just slipped out of her mouth. But I think she said it deliberately. She wanted to test me. And it was like pulling aside another curtain so we could see each other better.

Still, I asked her about her boss, what problems did she have with her, because I thought it was better to talk about someone else instead of ourselves. And I used the informal address also, straight off. What’s your problem with the boss. Only I didn’t know what to do about the trembling of my legs. I was afraid my knees would knock against her and then I couldn’t hide the insane, humiliating shaking. What would she do with a shaky-kneed idiot like me. It was as if suddenly, with this trembling, my entire terrible former life had caught up with me and flooded me. She shrugged her shoulders again, and to see this third shrug wasn’t nice anymore. I don’t know how else to put it, but it seemed to indicate a pettiness in her character; it wasn’t that I had embarrassed her, she was embarrassed for herself. She turned her head away a little as if she preferred to look into the distance, and that once again evoked for me her unfathomable sorrow. Or maybe she turned away so our faces would not be so close. And again I felt she didn’t do this because of me, not because of my breath, but because of her. She was gauging her closeness to me; it wasn’t my closeness to her that bothered her. Or she wasn’t trying to avoid my closeness, anyway, but wanted to give herself time; she wanted to gain time to decide what to do or what she might do. And in the meantime she didn’t do what she might have done of course, and I didn’t do it either.