Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one’s expectations crashing down. There was some noise from the second floor, followed by a laughing female voice. I paid little attention, the usual sounds filtered out from a kitchen, but I quickly buttoned my fly. Then I heard the piano teacher’s door open, but it was immediately closed, very quietly.

I didn’t understand that.

Maybe it was closed from the inside.

Then for a long time nothing happened, the wind kept booming. And when I was certain that only my useless waiting would continue, and while I heard the pervasive patter of women’s shoes, someone turned on the pitiful staircase lights. It barely made a difference, but it was a little less dim around me. My first urge was to flee. Like a miserable bug. She called after me; she called me by my name in the echoing staircase.

I wasn’t sure I’d managed to finish buttoning my fly. I froze, as if naked; I looked back and her voice made me happy. I hoped my coat covered everything. Suddenly I had many things to say and to ask. How did she know my name, but in my shame my heart stopped beating. It was as though she could see not only what I had done but also what I would have liked to do. And she was standing there, at the top of the stairs, in a long fine fur coat, shining like silk, and I saw she was nearly bursting with her triumph.

I would have asked her but I didn’t have the courage — or enough air.

She raised her gloved hands lightly above her head as though playfully asking, with a modicum of self-mockery, aren’t I wonderful, and what have you to say about this transformation, and isn’t the fur coat wonderful too; look how nicely it falls when I spread my arms like this. She raised her head as if wearing a crown, and look, what a wonderful hairdo, created all by herself. It surely was wonderful. My wish had come true. The most wonderful thing was that she so easily transformed herself; there was no end to the surprises and transformations. I forgot everything; I forgot all the anger and shame of having had to wait, and they dispelled my presumption about what they had been doing in their bathroom or bedroom; I forgot all my accusations.

Her beauty made me forget my entire meaningless life.

I did notice, though, how unsuspecting she was, how preoccupied with herself or with something I could not have known, and therefore she did not care what was happening to me. As though she weren’t interested in that or not interested in me. I was only some odd decoration on her completed life. But I had to forgive her for this instantly. Nothing could possibly have happened to me that would be of any interest to other people; I realized that right away. I had nothing to complain about and I had to keep my joy on a short leash too, lest I become overexcited by something that might disturb others. I had learned that I could not burden people with my feelings and, having no choice, I made myself believe I was indeed someone who not only wanted to avoid being a burden but who positively tried to please everyone at least a little.

And it seemed that in her own play she had cast me in a role that called for my presence but did not cramp her style.

She was wearing black antelope shoes with incredibly high heels, and under the fur coat a tight-fitting unadorned black dress at once soft and tight, which left her knees and thighs exposed — shockingly so by the prevailing standards of good taste. Her snow-white neck, her legs shining in their stockings, and the power of her knees and thighs were her jewels. Her strength was her most conspicuous feature, showing how strong that body was, carrying the proportions of her strength as some kind of armor. Her maddeningly blond hair, now done up in an utterly new coiffure, was her jewel. The glittering of her eyes, her plump lips painted blood red were her jewels. I wouldn’t have dared touch her lips, though I wanted to take them into my mouth, I ate them, I reveled in them, and they threw me into terrible confusion.

It had been in the air already that women were wearing short dresses, but until then only a few had dared to go this far, and right away I worried about being seen with such a striking woman. Although I had never seen a hairdo like hers, it reminded me of someone, I didn’t know whom. Not knowing somehow felt good. I would have started up the stairs for her, but I took only two steps because of another struggling impulse within me.

She would sweep me off my feet if I touched her.

I was left with words colliding into one another, a stammering, which happens usually when one is trying to do something against all odds.

I asked where she was coming from.

And she latched on to this, to the raw words, as though in doing so she could rescind the exaggerated gestures she had made.

She said, what do you mean where from, where could she be coming from.

And how did she know my name, I asked. It’s a pretty insane thing, but actually I had never introduced myself.

How does she know. Well, she knows everything. In other words, she knows what she wants to know or has to know.

She started down the steps like a scheming prima donna. She must have seen someone do this in a movie or something.

Indeed, we hadn’t been introduced, so perhaps she couldn’t talk to me now.

But she was quickly embarrassed by her revealed beauty which she had just shown me. Her temperament proved weightier and more somber, so she was able to ignore the fact that she had already shared it with me.

And where did she leave Simon.

She said, we’re going without him, because suddenly something cropped up that he had to deal with; he was furious, ranting and raving, would probably break everything in the apartment. Can’t do much damage, though, they have hardly anything. This time they had a really terrible row, they weren’t talking. Until tomorrow for sure. If he wants to, he can come after us; if not, he can stay home and then he’ll drink himself under the table.

He’ll throw up; she’ll have to wash everything he’s wearing.

While her words echoed impassively, bouncing dully off the stained, filthy walls decorated with graffiti and bullet holes, she kept coming down the stairs as if to demonstrate that she was granting me the grace of her approach in well-apportioned doses.

She made me feel like a stupid little kid.

I said I’d told Simon that I’d known this house for a long time.

I asked her if she knew the Weisz family, did she know Ilonka Weisz. Because while I waited I had plenty of time to check the list of tenants, and it seems that almost everybody still lives here.

Protecting herself from my childish flood of words, she laughed. Then, slightly taken aback, she asked what Weisz family, what Ilonka, and she was sorry she’d made me wait so long but she’d thought I was sitting downstairs. They hadn’t lived here long enough to get to know everybody in the building.

Of course, I continued, and I’d be happy to tell her about it one day, but now I had something more important to ask: how was it that she came out of the apartment on the second floor when they lived on the third floor.

Because a friend of hers lives on the second. And was I a police detective. To interrogate her like this.

She couldn’t have thought that seriously, and I asked if her friend was renting a room there.

This really got her going. She protested, why should her friend rent just a room; she lives there, it’s her own apartment.

But my old piano teacher lives in that apartment, Andria Lüttwitz.

There were no more steps for her to take during these superfluous sentences, because now she was standing right next to me on the step above. She flooded me with her fragrance. I should have stepped back, but I could not make myself do that and stayed put like a dumb obstacle. Nor could I keep myself from touching her fur coat, at least with my fingers.