Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

We did not fall on each other or bite each other, as animals in heat would have done. My knees went on shaking uncontrollably.

By the way, you’re wrong about me and my boss, she said, staring into the street, spotted with lights; actually, they got along pretty well. Only she didn’t want to spend her whole life in such a miserable shop. She hates candy and sweets anyway. She wanted to take evening courses at the university, since she can’t study during the day. But she hadn’t gotten a recommendation from her workplace, thanks to her boss, so she can’t go to night school.

I can’t study anywhere.

She must have been thinking of something else as she spoke, or else didn’t really want to talk about this. And then, pretty absentmindedly, she asked what I was studying and she glanced at me. Her expression remained serious; perhaps she envied me for being able to study. Maybe she was truly interested. Just as it really interested me why she couldn’t. I didn’t dare move my feet or do something, anything, to stop the shaking, in case the movement might disturb her closeness to me. And then she might retreat. As if there were a territory I’d already conquered and now mustn’t give up any part of. But I couldn’t understand how the words were coming out of me or what I was doing, because suddenly I lied and said I was going to the School of Physical Education. I don’t know why I said that. And as if I had just then decided that, despite my own well-understood interest, I could not expose myself to her. Maybe because she was a married woman and took it all seriously. As if to say, this can’t last more than two days, maybe today and tomorrow, or maybe only this hour, but definitely a short period, which she could end anytime, or I could; nothing more than a passing fancy. Because it wasn’t easy to extricate oneself from a lie like that. I probably wanted with my lie to keep control of a situation I no longer controlled. I could not escape my situation, yet I managed to let the dread make itself heard in it. And when she glanced at me, she no longer made her eyes flitter around mine but looked at my forehead only, or my hair. And maybe that’s why she believed my lie. It was a little disappointing and surprising, that she was someone I could deceive. She was grasping the strap of her shoulder bag with both hands. As if only something very little separated her from stroking my stubbly face. I don’t know. It was as though I didn’t want what I wanted. And as if I’d said what I’d said, resorting to an impossible lie like that, only because my hair was cut short, like a crew cut. Or I simply didn’t know why I did it.

But that sentence again changed everything, turned things into a different direction, and it was irrevocable.

One always feels clearly these turning points in one’s life, and nothing can be done about them.

I quickly asked her what she wanted to study, just so she wouldn’t ask me more questions. But this was very strange, because the lie that had simply appeared in my mouth, independent of my will, now seemed to be erasing my embarrassment. As if I needed some ignoble advantage to collect strength for an attack of uncertain outcome, and the lie indeed gave me strength, and my legs were no longer shaking.

Philosophy.

I looked at her; this was not to be believed.

Philosophy, I asked incredulously. What, I asked, as if I hadn’t heard well.

As if I were hearing echoes of my own lie.

And I didn’t even know what philosophy was. What had philosophy to do with a beauty like this woman. Philosophy was something my uncle talked about with his colleagues. I had the distinct impression that this branch of science was a means by which old professors could use one another in some dark business or trap one another. They fuss around in this language to disguise their true intentions and so as not to frighten others away before it’s time. It had never occurred to me that philosophy could be anything but the thieves’ Latin of these old fogies. When they invoked philosophy too frequently, Nínó would get up without a word and leave the men to themselves, or she’d chat with the ladies.

But the woman didn’t even acknowledge my insulting shock, except now her anger opened up, her helplessness, and she pelted me with her bitterness.

If her life is being ruined, it’s thanks to that miserable Jewess.

She hit me with that word, which she may not have noticed, or perhaps she meant to hit me with it.

But she’d outsmart them. If she had wanted to enroll in the Academy of Commerce they’d have unconditionally supported her application. She should have taken them up on that offer. Dumb as she was, she refused it. And what was she jumping around for, she didn’t have a very good social background for the current regime. Downright terrible, undesirable. But if there was one thing that did not interest her, it was commerce, business. She’d leave that to the Jews. She laughed, and with her beautiful teeth laughing into the darkness, she cried out that they couldn’t defend their philosophy against her. With her mouth and teeth she was shining like a French chanteuse. And I should believe her, she’d prefer even the School of Physical Education to a business school.

She had played basketball regularly in high school, they had a pretty good team, and sometimes they still got together to play, and she was a good short-distance runner but had to stop that too.

As she talked, I tried to think how I could take back my insulting remarks. What can I say about philosophy when I know nothing about it; it seemed more urgent to distract her with something lighter. I could have asked her, but I didn’t, what distances she ran and what her best times were. I couldn’t have asked anything else about running; I knew almost as little about running as I did about philosophy. But I wasn’t afraid that my ignorance would give me away, all I could think was that the whole stupid conversation was going in the wrong direction. The longer we talked, the farther I drifted from where I wanted to be, and we were drifting farther away from each other. She was taking me into dangerous waters, or even thrusting me out of the main current. And I didn’t understand why she used the expression Jewess , which in Budapest parlance was definitely a pejorative.

It was pretty clear to me that good manners required something other than what my mind needed and my mind was busy with something other than what my body desired. All three strong sources flowed simultaneously, but each was taking me to a different place.

I should have rejected something in her, but it was impossible to do everything at once.

We could not refuse to have this conversation, and I can’t say I wasn’t interested in what she said or might have said. I was carried along by a current of curiosity, and with her unfortunate expression she carried me even further, but while she spoke, my mind kept weighing something else and it felt as if I missed, individually, every one of her words. My mind was assessing what would be better and more comfortable for my legs and hands. And if I didn’t know what to do with my limbs, then it was pointless for my mind to want this conversation, which could not be halted, if only out of politeness. The further she carried me along with her words, the more strongly I felt there was something I hadn’t done with my hands that would be more natural, actually more necessary, than all those superfluous, flawed, and insulting words. But neither politeness nor my mind allowed my hands to do anything — I just couldn’t touch someone who abuses Jews at the drop of a hat and whom I don’t even know. Perhaps she had made me talk to her so I could get to know her. Yet I didn’t want her to speak, so I interrupted her, spoke into her speaking. I had to extricate myself from the dangerous current of my lie, and I was deadly afraid that she would literally make me drift away in the current of her words, that I would miss or already had missed something important. I wanted to get back to the place where we’d started, where my legs and hands had been condemned to idleness and were busy either taking me toward her or trembling. In other words, I felt I must not lose time — not a place, not a conquered territory, but time; time was the possession I might lose. It was as if we had already enjoyed a brilliant golden age, and if she carried me further with her words it would be like accepting a paler, silver age. As if in the former it was possible to touch each other’s face with our hands but now it no longer was.