Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

We were standing on the stairs in this cold, dim, filthy staircase, and the whole thing no longer had any sense, purpose, beauty, or charm. She wanted to go but she didn’t, because she didn’t want to offend me by pushing past me, leaving me high and dry. But I thought — for who knows how many times that evening — that I shouldn’t stay, despite the alluring promises of happiness, I shouldn’t stay with her, not even for a moment, no.

If I stayed, I’d be engaging with an impossible and unpredictable monstrosity, I would seal my fate forever.

Not for a single day could I endure that other man’s company.

She had begun the same game with me that the two of them had been playing together for who knows how long.

And even if I could put up with him, what would I do with my own lie. How could I correct it, make it right. Even if I confessed to her that I wasn’t studying at the School of Physical Education, what reason could I give for lying to her in the first place.

A lie I couldn’t sustain. Yet I could not tear myself away from it either, and every moment, whether we were talking or not, pushed me into something or shoved me on to something that was mine and also belonged to her, and these two could not be separated.

This something had no external signs; more correctly, I saw her looking for it in my face, on my forehead, my scalp. Her gaze rested on my shoulders as if at any moment someone might chase this something away. And I did the same in the same restless way on her naked neck, on her heavily painted lips, on the hillocks of her breast, on her shining knees and beautifully arched feet.

Our glances ran on rapid courses but they did not find what they were looking for, always finding something else; they found the beauty of another, strange body. Why should I have to swallow her remark about Jews. And I grew even angrier because my cock was sticking to my underpants. There is always that one fat drop of seminal fluid that bubbles up, smeared at the top of the foreskin, and then it doesn’t matter that the erection subsides, the smeared drop acts like glue. I should reach for it, pull the underpants away from it. I can’t do that without drawing attention to it. And my anger at this frustration somehow linked up with my anger at her words about Jews.

This is a Jewish neighborhood, yes, and this is a Jewish building, why did they move in here if they didn’t like it.

What did I want from this insensitive young lady from the country.

She should have swallowed my little insult of not letting her get past me, for I was acting with her exactly as her uncouth husband would have. There was something unpleasant in the parallel; I couldn’t tolerate it, and she couldn’t either. Selfishness was whimpering, I want to be left alone, to break off, to put an end to it. At moments like this one forgets one’s screaming, shrieking loneliness. I’d rather have no one. Our shared and desperate anger must have stemmed from this, because she was crying out against me and I against her. I was protesting that I very much wanted something of which I knew nothing. I wanted her but did not know who she was, and how is it possible to want a person; I didn’t know that either.

Then you’d better go. I finally stepped out of her way, let her go.

At the same time she must have reached the opposite conclusion. She’d rather surrender; she’d give up the game, whatever happened.

She said I shouldn’t be angry but she couldn’t tell me everything in one go. However much she wanted me to know, there was a terrible sense of decency that would not let her, or maybe it was her terrible Catholic upbringing. She is a good Christian girl from a good family, and this should never be forgotten. She admits that her question was unguarded or inconsiderate, and she understands my sensitivity, believe her.

I cut in, saying that we weren’t talking about sensitivity.

All right, so it’s not sensitivity, it doesn’t matter. There’s really no need for us to talk like this. If there’s one person I shouldn’t be afraid of, it’s her.

I’m sorry I spoke so harshly — and I heard my voice sounding more frightened than I actually was.

What surprised me was that I didn’t accept a single one of her sentences as true; I gave her more time, but in fact I wanted to challenge every one of her words.

Come on, she called back quietly. We can’t do everything all at once, let’s take our time. We can tell each other everything calmly, without getting upset. She gave the impression that in our deadly embarrassment she thought we were simply striking out in all directions.

That was true.

For lack of anything better to do, we took off; we had become like a defeated army. Her glitter was gone, her heels pounded hard on the stone stairs. I let her walk in front of me; as she was going down I saw her a little from above in the pale-yellow light; she moved as if she were being made to drag her discouraged limbs across an infinite desert of grief and mourning. All this was familiar, streaming into me like blood and aching, aching terribly. As if, with waning strength, she had to make her way from one place, where despite her hopes she had found not a mite of goodness, to another unknown place, and to do this without knowing what was in store. I didn’t understand where we were going or why in hell we were going anywhere. No, she is not hoping for anything, but I felt as if that too was my fault. If I didn’t go with her, if I didn’t accompany her, if I didn’t protect her, I would suffer damnation.

Yet what I felt was not empathy for but frantic curiosity about her.

Her beauty was gone, though I wouldn’t say that her being was any the less touching and engaging. As if the pores of her skin had suddenly shed the powder covering them, the lipstick had turned into foreign matter on her lips, the borrowed fur coat was hanging from her shoulders as from a hanger, and her stupendous hairdo showed mainly an effort to be eccentric. She became gray and crude, bare and undistinguished, depleted and needy. When she had first appeared in Andria Lüttwitz’s fur coat at the top of the stairs, she had shown how dazzling she could be. Now I could see how empty and futile her attempts at strutting and showing off were.

I also noticed that the leather on the heel of one of her shoes was torn and crinkled. That often happens when the high heel of a shoe like that gets stuck in a damn grating, hole, or crack. Her body was emitting rebuke. And I kept staring reproachfully at her shoes. She was waiting for something, she was hoping very much for something, and again she did not receive it. It was as if I had to sniff the air to learn her desires. Her fragrance was the only thing that had really changed.

I followed her and despised myself for this.

I became her servant. Ten minutes earlier I hadn’t been her servant. Why do I wind up serving everyone I meet.

We were inundating each other with blame and rebuke; we almost drowned in them.

I asked if she’d noticed that she had already used the word deadly twice this evening.

She did not reply but made a tiny movement that generated a series of other movements with which she once again managed to dazzle me. She just barely shrugged her shoulders and looked back at me with a single sharp glance. I’m talking nonsense. Then she grasped the coat collar with her gloved hands and raised it a little, maybe so from that moment on I’d see nothing but absolutely nothing of her neck, nothing uncovered, and she quickened her steps. That was her reply. That is how we crossed the stinking entrance to the building; that’s how she stepped out ahead of me onto the street, where the wind was raging even more strongly.

She clasped her arms above her head to protect her hair. The long fur coat opened and as she took off its two wings fluttered lazily behind her. Much as I disliked furs, I had to admit I was enthralled by how the soft, uniform longitudinal patterns rippled down her back. That’s how her own body became the image of an animal’s body. Then suddenly she stopped at the curb, turned to face me, I almost bumped into her, and we found ourselves only inches apart in the lashing wind. I had the feeling she was completely naked. I hadn’t counted on taking the car; I thought she’d lock it and we’d get on the bus. Her full, powerful, yet somehow still little-girlish body was straining toward me as from an opened shell.