Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

But why so much disdain toward him on the woman’s part.

No, his great-grandfather had not built pretentious or grandiose buildings, no, not in that style, no, he wanted to have nothing to do with that sort of architecture. He disdained ostentation; being in proportion, that was his hobbyhorse, always talking about what was and what was not in proportion, what had to be made proportionate to what, and that’s why he was shoved to the periphery of his profession even as a young man. He could say no but not yes. But he was the one who had the idea for those crazy yellow tiles at the Lukács Baths and later for the paving on Pozsonyi Road. He was so headstrong that in the end he preferred to serve others. All his life he was ashamed of not having become a great architect but only a very rich contractor, a nobody to whom money stuck because he worked to please other people’s tastes and quickly squandered everything he earned. He built his brick factory on the outskirts of the city, in Budakalász, and from there he shipped his crazy yellow bricks everywhere, even to Vienna. He had one other great patent, the coke basket, which is used to this day in big construction jobs when they want to dry something very quickly. At a high temperature, the sulfuric content of coke becomes gaseous and engages the hydrogen and oxygen of water, burning one and precipitating the other, thus extracting the water from mortar.

How could it have remained the family’s property. Why does Klára ask such stupid questions. In 1944 there was no longer such a thing as Jewish property.

Leave off with that already.

Why does she think she can provoke him like that.

Lucky for the old man that he did not live to see it.

The last Jewish transports were taken away to their doom from his brick factory.

Anyway, he ruined everything at the right time, when everything was still in its heyday.

At last they could have a laugh at something: that the great-grandfather had managed to ruin things.

There was no inheritance.

As if they were saying that nothing could be more uplifting than penury, when one is free of the dread of ownership. And one has to have a certain talent for ruining things, a sense of rhythm.

They too will become worthy of their own doom, they too will squander and ruin everything in good time.

He has nobody and never has had anybody.

And why does he lie so shamelessly.

Maybe some stupid affairs.

One right after the other, probably.

But he didn’t dare tell her that he didn’t really desire anyone. Didn’t want to. Instead, so as not to bog down in this uncomfortable subject of love and also to keep himself from thinking about the giant, whom he loved, yes, loved, or his mustached assistant, he quickly told her about standing in line at Glázner’s, but the woman had no idea where Glázner’s was or who Glázner was, and he told her he had stayed there after the bombing, how could he have left. The bread was more important. In emergencies one’s conscience narrows down its area of activity. He told her about the unknown lady who in the dust cloud and general chaos around the Duna movie house had disappeared from his life forever, about her injured face, her eccentric hats and cashmere turbans, to show that he understood the secret signals of feminine fashion in the city of his birth and if he had had his way he’d be still searching for his mother, which had become his obsession. Even in his sleep, he knows where she lives. From the Gare de l’Est he’d have to get to Châtelet, there take another métro to Saint-Mandé-Tourelle. Then go past the School for the Blind on République and it’s the first little street on the left, 3 rue du Lac. Looking at it on the map, he figures that the windows, at least on one side of the house, should face the Bois de Vincennes.

He had been daydreaming about those woods.

So he hasn’t seen his mother since then.

How could he have seen her.

They don’t even correspond.

What on earth could she write to him about. My dear son, I think about you a lot, or what. And what could he write to such a mother. Although once in a long while she and his aunt secretly write to each other, they seem to think it best not to show him their letters.

But why doesn’t he read them anyway, why not steal them, why is he such a coward, damn it.

If they don’t want him to see them, why would he.

Why is he so submissive.

He shouldn’t be so tolerant.

He made the excuse that he was merely curious.

Curious, what could you still be curious about.

Kristóf had no answer to this, though the question touched him deeply; indeed, about what could he still be curious.

Anyway, Klára did not believe him about its being curiosity; she thought it was plain cowardice.

He is a coward, doesn’t want to acknowledge his own situation, and prefers to daydream.

It was time to get rid of this great cowardice of his.

It embarrassed them both to have Klára so annoyed with him. She was ready to explode with the anger she felt about him, that is to say on his behalf.

He should rebel, why put up with it. Why doesn’t he rebel against his family. They must be a terrible bunch, at least judging by what he had been telling her. At the very least he should rebel against them, if he does nothing else. Nothing sensible, that is. And why, actually, doesn’t he do something sensible with his life, she kept crying out in a low voice, shaking the steering wheel with her gloved hands.

Kristóf asked her in vain what he could do, against whom and how and what for.

She could not calm herself down.

Let them feel the crack of his whip, why must he suffer everything without saying anything.

He chose to tell her quickly about Ilonka Weisz, about his unspeakable shame, as if mentioning his silent suffering had reminded him of it, and he told her almost everything about what they had done to him on the fourth floor when, because of his pathological curiosity, those Weisz boys had managed to entrap him. He also told her about the mutilated man on the rolling board, in whom he had recognized his hauled-away father, and whom he could not follow on the sidewalk as the man propelled himself forward among the people.

Among their feet.

He could not really tell the story; that is how great his humiliation was.

And really, why does he put up with it all.

That is why he kept babbling instead about his grandmother’s women friends and the autumn weeks spent in the Grand Hotel on Margit Island, so he wouldn’t have to tell this story either, down to its painful marrow, not to let it hurt so much.

When he had followed his father or, who knows, perhaps a total stranger through the bustling city.

And he wanted very much to ask the woman how she saw this pathological curiosity of his; she should tell him, just this once, exactly what she thought about it, honestly. But this too was only a substitute for another question that he wouldn’t have asked of himself. He would have asked it of the woman, except that her silence was so belligerent, so he decided not to risk the question about his curiosity either. Had he gone out of his mind, how else could he do such a thing, keep spying on a total stranger for weeks.

Does she see signs of insanity in him.

What should he do.

Or what does she want from him, from such a madman, and what does her obstinate and reproachful silence mean.

He was not hallucinating, why would anybody hallucinate about such a thing; his curiosity guided him to the right place because that miserable wretch was his father, in his bones he felt identical to him.

What idiocy, how could he feel someone else’s missing limbs.

Yet he did, no matter that he knew it was insanity and he shouldn’t be doing a thing like that.