Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

I had to learn the old one again, that this was who I was, after all.

I didn’t know how long I’d be allowed to remain as this one, or when it would be my fault that I’d have to be another one.

I mixed up the two names frequently enough.

Instead of my real old-new name, the old one kept popping into my mind, the one that wasn’t my name at all, regardless of how the others in school yelled at me and laughed, saying, this little idiot can’t even remember his own name.

I suspected that besides that name of mine, I might have not remembered the boarding school because they had mixed me up with someone else, and in reality I wasn’t the person they or even I thought I was. By mistake my grandmother may have taken away another child, thinking she was taking me. I tried to feel who I was, whether I was really the person they thought I was. I had the definite suspicion I had been exchanged for someone else, I was someone else. But they mustn’t learn of this, so they won’t be disappointed in me, since they’ve accepted me so nicely. Or at least they pretend to have been taken in by this lie or sham. I must be on guard; I was terribly ashamed of the deliberate, premeditated deceit. Perhaps they knew what an enormous mistake my grandmother had made and they said nothing about it because they wanted to spare her.

I must make myself unobtrusive or at least useful, if I can’t be completely unnoticed and useless.

That’s why I didn’t care about the shooting, I was going to get bread. At last I could prove my usefulness. I saw how my aunt Erna feared my disgusting cousin and her famous husband, so I chose, unlike them, to behave as a grown man should and went to see about getting bread for all of us. They willingly believed that I was brave and self-sacrificing since that was safer and more comfortable for them.

Ultimately, I was as self-seeking as they.

That is why it hurt me whenever, on either Damjanich Street or Teréz Boulevard, either in the midst of huge quarrels or coldly and pitilessly, they dismissed a maid.

They would say the maid had not proved worthy of their confidence.

At times like that I felt it’d be better for me to find a fast-acting poison among the cleaning compounds and do away with myself. Or this was the reason that Grandmother’s words about Róza filled me with hope, since she was the great exception.

I couldn’t imagine where those dismissed, unwanted maids would go.

By the same token, where would I go, where would I find refuge for myself, or find a way to evade my pursuers.

One day the adults were sitting on the balcony of the Damjanich Street apartment, under the white sunshade, and I was staring out among the flower boxes at the trees on Queen Vilma Road bathing in the sun.

It was late afternoon and down in the Moszkva Garden the waiters were busy setting tables, dishes and utensils were clattering, the band was tuning up for the five o’clock tea. Large striped sunshades were lowered over the tables with hand-operated winches; they cranked them exactly as they did on Margit Island in the Grand Hotel or the casino.

Five o’clock tea was a strange expression, because it did not mean that people had tea at five o’clock or that this was a salon de thé , as Grandmother and her lady friends called the pastry shop; it meant that dancing started at five o’clock.

That’s what I waited for.

At ten after five, when they had finished their second number and there were a few people still sitting at the tables, everyone started to clap and shout when Hedda Hiller appeared on the little stage, which was almost completely hidden from me by the leaves of the horse chestnuts. She began to coo, hum, drone, buzz, and purr into the microphone in her deep mellow voice, and occasionally she’d sing out a crude tune with unexpected force, and lots of twists and turns and halftones; and she appeared each time in ever more wondrous dresses.

My aunt Irén was carrying on behind me about the girl she’d fired the day before, as if the scene she’d made the day before, which we had had to live through, was happening again.

Pack your bag, dearie, and get out of here. I give you five minutes to get your things together. Where could I go now, sweet madam, in the middle of the night. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, and she had the nerve to call me sweet and say it was the middle of the night. Please let me stay until I find a new place. Go, stay under a bridge for all I care, my angel, anywhere you want to, but make yourself scarce, get lost.

Grandmother quietly asked Irén whether she had really sent the maid away like that or upset herself like this only afterward.

If only she could be trusted.

Grandmother had come to take me home with her and now here she was, confronted with this story that visibly shocked her.

You don’t think I could possibly have stayed another minute under the same roof with such a creature.

Her voice receded from me on the balcony, along with the sound of the band tuning up, as twilight slowly approached. Then it became completely dark and although I heard the drums, trumpet, saxophone, and piano as they were looking for their correct positions in the ensemble, I was on my way to somewhere where things were not so musical.

Luckily they never found out why I fainted on the balcony.

They said the little fool must have stood in the sun for hours again and they shouldn’t let me do that in the future. I was too sensitive a child, which of course was understandable. Dampened cloths were put on my forehead and chest, and for a while longer I lay there at their feet on the warm stones. He always waits for Hedda Hiller, would you believe, and for some reason they all laughed at this remark. They always laughed at my enthusiasm for the singer. Then they lugged me inside, I let them, though I felt I had nothing wrong with me, I could have made it on my own two feet. They laid me on the sofa, everyone stood around me and I could see on their faces that they felt they had to do something with me or for me. Szilvia and Viola took turns running into the bathroom; they were in charge of changing the compresses. Grandmother fanned me with a newspaper; my aunt Irén took my pulse. The only unpleasant thing was that this sunny summer afternoon was pouring in through the many floor-to-ceiling windows, together with the jazz band music.

Hedda Hiller was crooning something about love into the microphone, then said a few words that made the men and women in the Moszkva Garden laugh, and then the saxophone kept wailing.

They asked if I felt better, because now my color was coming back.

I said I felt really good, though I had no idea how I felt.

They asked if I hadn’t eaten something on the sly that might have upset my stomach.

I said I thought there was too much light in the room.

Did I understand what Irén had asked me. She asked me if I’d nibbled on something.

I said I understood, but still there was too much light in the room.

But they were asking if I had eaten anything before lunch that they didn’t know about, whether I could remember what it was.

I said I hadn’t eaten anything before lunch, I remembered very well, and I didn’t take any pastry from the serving table.

That calmed them down but I was afraid I might faint again; I was afraid of myself.

I kept insisting — not that the air was filling up with something — but that the light was becoming unusually dense. My grandmother drew me to her, as if she’d sensed what was happening to me, and said, no problem, darling, the girls will darken the room right away, and with that, she may have kept me from fainting again.

It felt good when they finally shut off the light.

Let’s leave him alone for a while, Grandmother whispered, he’ll sleep now.