Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

He was looking for a particular scent — not too surprising in a place like this.

They both had a good laugh, and she was already leading him toward the fragrances for men.

Do you have any specific idea of the scent.

Of course.

The salesgirl looked at him expectantly, but at this moment it became clear to Kienast that Annick was unavoidable; he didn’t have the words for characterizing the scent. To his surprise, when he telephoned he found Annick at home, and she eventually agreed that Kienast could pick her up and bring her into the city. He promised to take her home too. She had to help him identify a scent if such a thing was possible.

Why would it not be.

He did not reveal the circumstances in which she would have to carry out the identification, however, and then everything got complicated. He fumbled some of the official details. He had to go back to his car. To write an authorization for consulting an expert, which required a little cheating and fudging. To have it signed so he could bring Annick into the building.

Annick finally became very curious on their long ride in. He told her what she’d have to do, and she did not panic or wonder. When the corpse was pulled out of its compartment and lay there before her, she looked at it and said they had better wait until it warmed up a little. Then, looking around, she remarked that they surely did not heat the place much.

As if to say, let’s first look at this scent while it’s cold, she started to bend over each of the delicate parts of the body Kienast had named, one by one.

The flapping of the swinging doors could be heard again. Which meant that somebody had once again opened the fucking window in the hall.

Even though Kienast himself closed it several times a day.

If only he could catch the person doing it.

This was probably the moment when Kienast noticed the human being in her, the person he had not known until then. Which surprised him. He should have known her very intimately; after all, he had slept with her a few years before. If memory did not deceive him, they had both reached great heights of satisfaction. The mutual pleasure had its endearing little characteristics, as it were, which made both of them see and experience the other, and they could not have forgotten each other any more than they forgot other partners, but let’s say there was nothing more to it.

Occasionally one can very definitely feel something like this: unforgettable but nothing beyond that. And that’s enough for a pleasant memory. But not strong enough to make one go back. And the other one must feel the same way; after all, s/he’s not coming back either.

It was as if back then he had only seen something mechanical about her, and now he saw something essential, and there didn’t seem to be a direct connection between the two. He could not have told himself exactly what the nature of the mechanical pleasure may have been or, in contrast, what the nature of pleasure might be with this essential being. Or what her essential self would promise. But he saw clearly that the two were not the same.

Perhaps the essential in itself is beyond description, but seeing it enables one to describe the former experience as mechanical.

There’s no point in waiting to fall in love; one can’t resist surrendering to one’s own great mechanical pleasure, which may be the very thing that blocks falling in love.

Annick surprised him with her very fragile professional passion, though her manners were rather crude, like her voice and physique. In the brightly lit hall with its floor-to-ceiling tiles, she gave no sign of her passion. She may have swayed her head, pensively, raised her eyebrows a little, but even that she did cautiously. She must have captivated him with her professional objectivity, which in no way clashed with humility or devotion. As if he were saying to himself about the woman that he’d never seen anything so beautiful even though he could see she was not so beautiful. Just as one’s distance from and proximity to an object meet on the object, without which the object might perhaps not exist.

Conclusion, asked Kienast, impatient to know her findings.

We’d better wait a little more.

Kienast suggested they leave the corpse, go to his office, have coffee in the canteen or go anywhere, but out of here.

No, they’d better stay.

Just because they are staying Annick doesn’t have to look at the corpse, and out of politeness, he held her eyes.

Then he said that the scent had been properly applied, but it might also have been smeared on.

They could not have said what they were looking at with each other, but they remained like that for a long time.

Eventually they spoke of Annick’s exceptional vocation, which made it easier to remain in the mute and neutral realm and to keep the corpse from slipping back into their consciousness.

They did not sit down.

Two days later Kienast would not remember what they had talked about.

But they did not grow tired.

Then, just as Döhring had indicated, the barrier became visible, the small border station. Kienast stopped the car but did not turn off the engine, only lowered his high beams so as not to blind the border guard sauntering in their direction.

Kienast asked Döhring if he had his papers with him.

Döhring answered that he really hadn’t expected to cross the border.

He laughed irritatingly — literally neighed.

Well, then, tonight you’ll do that too, Kienast answered and showed his official badge.

They were on their way within minutes, but that irritating laugh hovered in the air between them for some time. A short distance from the border, near Venlo, they found an open restaurant overlooking the dark river, the Maas. At the far end of the hall, around a long table festively decorated with clusters of candlesticks, sat an all-male group, loud and jovial. The candle flames seen between their faces showed the direction of the draft.

Kienast and Döhring sat down at a table by the window where it was cooler, almost offputtingly so, but they stayed far away from the men at the big table.

The choices tonight aren’t much, said the waiter.

Tell us what you have.

Cream of asparagus soup.

They both laughed, which the waiter did not understand; he looked at them suspiciously.

No, thank you, we won’t want that.

Fish in aspic, and the waiter indicated the long table, what the friends there are eating.

What d’you say.

Made with river fish — bream, perch, tench, the waiter said, and he pointed toward the Maas.

They ordered the fish in aspic, some wine to go with it, and then looked out at the river, of which they could see only as much as the restaurant’s large window faintly illuminated, as though a motionless slightly cambered metallic mass were lying out there.

Annick returned to the corpse two more times. But even before that Kienast had asked her if it was possible to take samples.

Theoretically, yes, but for that it has to warm up more. And I’d need some blotting paper.

And if you can take a sample, can the sample be preserved.

Theoretically.

How.

We put it into a phial, seal it, wax it, and analyze it.

And would she give her expert opinion on it.

Why would she not.

An hour later they returned to the corpse for the third time. She was almost certain, and seemed to be excited about this, that it was a very expensive and rarely used scent, prepared by special request at the Paris perfumery of Eugène d’Estissac.

What’s it called.

L’Épice du Bonheur.

Standing at the feet and head of the corpse, they burst out laughing.

Perhaps they acknowledged that this might be the only spice of happiness.

It contains a few unrecognizable ingredients, which is only natural, probably some animal gland or secretion, then leather, bark, pepper, and coriander, which give the scent its male character, cedar, probably some hesperidins — lemon or orange, I think both — and hay and even some tonka beans, which dissolve and lighten the masculine elements, and then patchouli and vanilla, which give it a feminine tone.