Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Nothing could be simpler.

Because I have the impression that we are way beyond written rights.

Frankly I have the same impression.

I don’t want to give up on getting a clear response from you.

I may not look it, but I am capable with a little bit of luck of solving far more complicated problems than this one. I’d like you to tell me a few things in greater detail than you did before. After all, from the very first moment you’ve been very helpful, that’s why I bothered to come. If you still remember words like the common good or helping , and if they still mean anything to you.

Even my parents don’t know where I am. Only one person does, with whom you can’t have talked.

You must be thinking of your dear aunt.

She is everything but dear, but she’s the one I’m thinking about.

Why couldn’t I have talked to her.

You could have, but you didn’t.

It’s very clear there’s no trick here. At the examination in situ, you were the one, Mr. Döhring, who gave us the important reference points. After that it was quite easy to uncover everything else.

Not from the things I inadvertently blabbered to you, you couldn’t, I don’t believe you. You think I’m stupider than I am.

I haven’t made any direct inquiries anywhere, Kienast replied, I haven’t gone around asking questions, I can assure you, if that’s what you’re worried about.

Well, all right, you’ve found out whom I telephoned, where I made the calls from. Which I didn’t count on in advance, I admit. I made phone calls everywhere I could in the whole world so that I could talk to you as soon as possible. I did it unthinkingly.

And Döhring was terribly ashamed that he’d managed to say something like this; it was such an ignominy that he should still need anybody, especially someone who was nothing more than an ordinary detective.

This is a closed system, Mr. Döhring. Nobody but I and my immediate supervisor can get to your data, and so I couldn’t have given you a bad name.

Which for the time being would not even be justified, he added, yet in his words fluttered the hint of a threat.

I hope you don’t expect me to be grateful for that, replied Döhring quickly, trying to sound as crass as possible.

Kienast had to allow more time again for chat, if only to gain time, more time to catch up with or overtake him and keep him from slipping into his own well-established way of thinking.

He’ll jolt him out of it.

Yesterday you called from the gas station. That’s not a public phone.

The owner’s phone on the counter. I paid for it.

You mean you’d have left a message on my answering machine that the gas-station owner could hear. No, I don’t buy that, I don’t believe it.

You should. I waited until he was dealing with a customer.

The first time you called from a public booth, if my colleagues are not mistaken.

You can check this as easily as you can check anything else.

Well now, the detective said, directing his most charming laugh at the young man, slowly but surely you’re learning the trade. But I did have to puzzle out, and on the run, that the phone booth was in the Hofgarten, opposite the house on whose third floor madam Isolde Döhring has her apartment. Believe me, these are not facts one can’t easily find out. It’s not the person of the murderer that’s hard to identify — the final result is almost always there, ready and waiting for you, someone saw the murder, or some seemingly inconsequential circumstance will give it away, et cetera, et cetera — but gathering legally admissible pieces of evidence, that’s what’s sometimes almost impossible.

I understand what you’re saying. Maybe I can’t immediately adapt to the way the authorities think, but I understand.

Although my visit is a private one, we can’t put ourselves outside the law, Kienast said, and this time Döhring remained silent. From that moment we met at the scene of the crime, we haven’t been private persons, and I must in no uncertain terms correct your ideas about this.

He wasn’t sure Döhring understood him.

I am the one you called, your trust in me is truly touching, but I am the police.

This too had no response.

True, I had a free evening, or I made myself free for this evening, that’s also a fact. But anyway, based on your calls and no matter what the nature of your worries was, my professional responsibility told me I shouldn’t leave you by yourself.

Maybe then you’ll have time for me. You don’t have to leave so quickly.

This was so unexpected, sounded so gentle and convincing, so full of pure human hope, that Kienast was alarmed.

I can’t demand more time or attention than you are willing to grant me, I wanted to warn you about this.

But you wouldn’t give any more, either.

That’s something you don’t need to ask about. My personal feelings and professional sense of responsibility are not so far apart.

You must be every inch a democrat.

No need to mock me. A thing like this doesn’t happen to you every day.

No, it doesn’t.

Then how can you miss the personal sympathy, or empathy.

I know what you mean.

There, you see.

But you should know, said Döhring, embarrassed, that I’m a strange bird, a man locked into himself, restless, thinking, and I’m not a great democrat. I’m not on confidential terms with other people, I have only limited experience — I mean in the intimacies among people.

I can assure you right now that you’re not alone in this. Everyone has to learn anew on each occasion — I mean, how to gain someone’s confidence.

But this entire human confidence thing is nothing but a bad game, sheer hypocrisy.

Mostly it is, yes.

Like stepping into a terrible tunnel of mirrors. Nobody trusts anybody. It’s best for one to stay outside. It bothers me especially that people talk too much because they are incapable of even the smallest abstraction.

That’s almost completely true.

They keep lying senselessly.

No reason to reproach them, they need to defend themselves.

I can’t speak of anything but myself, of course, and why should this interest you or anyone.

So as not to hear one’s own lies, people are afraid of that too.

Yes, something like that.

You may think it’s a sin, but no one can exist without lies, I guarantee it.

I don’t know whether several needs don’t combine to do the thinking in one person. Whether one doesn’t have several selves, all at the ready all the time, and one can neither choose one nor express all of them at once — only one in place of another, or one after the other, or one in opposition to another.

The faces of young people are most revealing; he must consider this. Their instinct to hide tends to expose them.

Maybe you should sit where you sat before, please.

Thanks for your kindness, but I’d rather get up. Before you say anything you think is essential, it is my official duty to tell you that nothing you say to me here may be considered as a confession.

I understand, the young man replied, though at that moment what he truly did not understand was what, if that’s how things stood, the Creator’s intentions might be.

He was ready to make a confession, against his own family, to save all of humankind, and perhaps the Creator might say that he would not accept the confession as valid.

He faltered, shook his head as though trying to shake this disturbing formulation out of his skull, out of his brain, much as a helpless sick animal would.

No matter how much I’d like to change the situation, he moaned at last — his voice very loud or rather very penetrating, because he knew this was an obstacle — I can’t be familiar with anyone.