Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

The great summer heat remained motionless in the air, despite the proximity of the water.

What madness had they got themselves into now; there was no other name for it, madness, insanity.

Not even a childish or adolescent madness, because neither as children nor as adolescents would they have started something like this so late in the day.

And now it was Madzar who headed for the water first, Bellardi following him only when, fighting the strong current along the shore, Madzar popped up to the surface. Then Bellardi took off too. It had often happened like this in their childhood; Madzar would be first to throw himself into some madness that Bellardi had cooked up quietly and treacherously, just so he didn’t have to follow Bellardi.

A good ten minutes must have gone by before they began to look for each other in the water. They were well into the middle of the river, where speed is speed and water is water. There is nothing but water and speed. One can feel how much energy is lost by a careless movement of the head or a searching look, and how the place of the lost energy is filled with the all-powerful force of the river. Which within a split second can change irreversibly, setting back one’s personal situation and chances. Though here, in the middle of the mighty water, the river is harmless.

With its innocently smooth current, it can take one straight to eternity.

In the middle of the river, where the enormous mass of water with its changing surface and refraction of light blinds everyone, Bellardi had to be careful that nothing he wanted to tell Madzar would reach his consciousness, especially Elisa’s dying.

He had to keep himself on the surface of his consciousness and to continue with his strokes on the surface of the water.

It seems that the opposite shore, bright red with the last rays of the sun, toward which you are heading with all your most efficiently dispensed strength and strictly controlled breathing, is being pulled away from you, taken farther and farther away with incredible alacrity. They wasted much energy, had no idea how much, did not find each other on the endless surface of the water for the longest time. It’s the vigorously changing mass of the surface water that blinds one. Eyes cannot cope with so many consecutive and overlapping changes. And the mind gapes vacantly when it has nothing to comprehend over the terrible depth below it. While in fact one should feel most secure in the middle of the river, where there is no whirlpool and seemingly nothing needs to be done in order to progress.

One begins to fear and tremble.

Theoretically one should not look around until one is close enough to the wildly retreating opposite shore, let alone think or rise out of the water.

Not become paralyzed by the terror of existence.

And then they both ascertained each other’s location. Madzar seemed to have risked more.

If you break the rhythm of your strokes for even a second when swimming upstream, the current will begin to carry you back, and then it is very hard to reclaim your physical independence from the mass of water rising from the depths of the river.

Not only are you afraid, you also begin to feel cold.

When they looked around and acknowledged each other’s position and instantaneously gauged the necessary reference points on the impossibly reddish shore, still retreating, they both knew they had as much ahead of them as the distance they had already covered. Bellardi had always been faster, he was a little closer to the shore but affected more by the current, while Madzar with his stronger, more stubborn strokes remained more or less on the course he had set with his eyes; the current had not deflected him too much.

It must have taken another eight minutes before they reached the shore. And there, in the heavy silt, they had to walk lifting their feet high.

They felt happy when the warm air fully embraced their naked bodies.

There they stood again, basking in the paradisiacal abundance of warmth and gentleness, jumping, hawking, spitting, shaking the water from their ears, wiping their eyes, their bodies shivering foolishly, of which they were ashamed before each other, they were slapping and rubbing themselves, both of them thickly covered with goose bumps, their teeth chattering.

In their momentary condition, they did not seek each other’s closeness.

That is when the last red trace of twilight vanished from the shore, though an orange reflection turning into hues of lilac remained, which made the moon shine more brightly and show its outline more brightly in the blueness.

They looked at each other from a distance, only to see if the other was there, all of him. That’s all they wanted to see; though, a little bit, this was like mutually acknowledging their physical condition that had let them run aground in their mad adventure.

To see if there was still a way back.

The water must have carried them about a kilometer and a half from the tip of Cigányzátony. On foot they would have to cover twice that distance to be back again at their starting point.

But it was better not to think about it.

It would be dark soon. There would be hardly any reference points in the water. And when they happily reached the other shore, they would still have to swim across the river’s smaller channel.

Now, however, they must warm up. They should not jump and run around too much; it was important to preserve energy and keep from cutting their feet on shells.

When their teeth stopped chattering they lay down at a respectable distance from each other. They did warm up a little on the slowly cooling sand, and Madzar even dozed off after a while. He opened his eyes to see Bellardi squatting at his head. The world around them was somewhat cooler and full of stars; he felt the warmth emanating from the other’s body. That he was lying on the sand in the heat emanating from his friend. Stars now penetrated the still-blue sky.

He sat up. Down here, on earth, it was dark enough for them to start out.

For a while though, he observed what this male image of his own soul was looking at.

In truth, already in April I wanted to tell you, Bellardi repeated, his words heavy, that Elisa left me for good, and you’ll be surprised to know that she did it because of Mária Szapáry.

Madzar said not a word; he would not have had the strength to breathe enough air to form the words.

They looked at the moon together, not daring to look into each other’s eyes, at the glowing of its cold outline above the water.

She called me at dawn yesterday to tell me Elisa had had a cerebral hemorrhage. That I should hurry if I still wanted to see her.

Madzar cried out involuntarily, or rather he moaned.

Bellardi had to get up in response to this so the other one would get up too.

Now they looked at each other, also held each other somehow, but their nakedness stopped them. They could not have known what the other one was thinking; no one could ever know. They were standing in the warmth of each other’s skin, and Madzar felt very fortunate, though he tried to talk himself out of this feeling because it was inappropriate just then. The movement begun could not be completed. There was so little chance of completing it that he thought it better to get away from the place.

He thought that regardless of the occasion, regardless of Elisa’s death, touching each other should be repeated at least every ten years, so that his life, despite all the misfortunes, would be a fortunate one. Bellardi, however, thought he should continue what he had started.

And then, as they were, they set off, up on the darkening riverbank.

Neither of them could squeeze out a word.

As Bellardi followed Madzar, who was finding his stride, and could see nothing but the powerful thighs, large buttocks, and stooping back with its slabs of muscles, he felt that, yes, this was when he should continue his story about Elisa. Because of the enormous happiness that was his now, he could no longer keep his secrets locked within himself, the terrible suffering he had to endure in the last months.