Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

He only regretted — and he could not possibly talk to the woman about this either — that because of the black dog he hadn’t had the strength to get undressed at the right moment. That he could not throw his clothes, soaked with strangers’ piss and jism, off the bridge and then jump after them into the Danube.

He felt as if he had deprived the universe of a painfully beautiful scene.

In the name of the universe too, he felt sorry for himself.

But though it hadn’t happened then, it might happen tomorrow.

One more thing I have to tell you, he said, surprising himself a little, when he wanted to jump into the Danube from the Árpád Bridge, it was perhaps the devil that held him back.

But why did he want to jump.

His rotten black dog held him back. It had broken out of the garbage bay and come after him. He literally ran him down, literally shoved him against the railing in the joy of finding him and started licking his face with his big tongue.

But what kind of black dog and what garbage bay.

As if he had not heard the woman’s questions, he kept telling her about his disgust, his shameful weakness. When animals get too close to him he begins to choke up, he doesn’t know why. The roof of his mouth begins to blister, he retches, and he has to pull himself away from the animal. He cannot share anything with them, not even with a lizard or a porcupine. So for him to do what he had planned long before, he first had to free himself of the dog. But he could not chase it away. The dog simply wouldn’t acknowledge that it was being chased away. It was happy, it wagged its tail and barked hideously. Throw it over the railing, kill it — he really couldn’t think of anything else. It would have fit between the uprights of the railing, he could have shoved it through, but the dog thought he wanted to play.

Klára listened to him for a while, morose and silent, as though disapproving, but from her face it was impossible to tell what she disapproved of, the entire story, his way of telling the story, or the subjects of his story.

She had lowered her gloved hands from the steering wheel and into her lap some time ago.

What garbage bay, what dog, she asked again. She worried, forlornly and quietly, about her own questions.

Kristóf had not yet told her the whole story, how was she to understand it.

They were standing in the middle of Aréna Road, which hadn’t been called Aréna Road for a long time, just as Queen Vilma Road did not stay Queen Vilma Road and Stefánia Boulevard was no longer Stefánia Boulevard, though decades later people in the city were still referring to them by the old names.

The cambered surfaces of the cobblestones were shining.

The dog would not let go of him, it kept barking, jumping, snapping at his hands, in the end they were rolling on the pavement. The dog was literally writhing with joy because finally they were playing together. But he had to get away from it. He had really had enough, and he didn’t want to prolong his life just because of a dog. He was not so curious that he was willing to put up with everything. He lifted the dog by its forelegs, it wasn’t easy, its large body was heavy, but he managed somehow to gather it up and raise it over the railing to hurl it down. The dog didn’t know what was happening but looked down and saw the drop. Although it sounds improbable, the dog seemed to understand that this was no game but that someone was after its life, and it jumped out of his arms. And as the dog did this it was digging its nails into his shoulder bones, ripped my shirt to pieces, he shouted, laughing; as he went on with his tale Kristóf became louder and louder. He was guffawing, not to mention my skin. As though he were reciting a saga of heroes, or as if his own death wish had been the greatest amusement of his life.

With its hind legs it succeeded in clearing itself of the railing.

Pushing me away and whimpering. It stumbled across the sidewalk, I flopped down and it ran away with its tail between its legs.

It fled back to safety on the island, whimpering the whole time.

But he did not tell her that he kept hearing the dog’s whimpers even when he could no longer see it, nor did he tell her that he stayed there on the pavement with his face pressed to the asphalt and went on screaming.

Sobbing so as not to hear the fucking whimpers.

In truth, he was summoning God; he couldn’t kill that dog, let alone himself. He didn’t notice that he was bleeding from several wounds. And he didn’t tell her that later Ilona was the one who washed his wounds and that now, if she wanted to, Klára could still see the two four-pronged scars.

But how did you wind up on the island that night in the first place, and why did you take your dog with you.

And he did not tell her how sorry he had been ever since that he had chased away the dog, and how sorry he felt for himself for having to live.

He does not understand anything.

Klára repeated her objective questions as desperately as if she had known or at least had an inkling of the whole story, and as if she preferred not to know why he had wanted to die or why he thought he must kill himself.

This astounded Kristóf.

That other people wanted to go on living and he did not.

But what’s the connection, for God’s sake, say something I can understand, the woman begged him, though actually her curiosity was not quite serious. As if she felt compelled by social convention to mock and make fun of painful facts and unpleasant truths but actually found it amusing, most revealing, to witness another person in the midst of senseless turmoil. Having heard so much confidential information, which suddenly enriched her and which she would certainly use, she should have been embarrassed.

And Kristóf noted with surprise how many things he had told her against his will. He couldn’t not lie to the woman from whom he couldn’t escape. He did not want to escape from her but expected nothing good from her. Yet he revealed his chaos to her as if he were begging to be freed from his prison.

It became clear to both which of them was the stronger. Klára could free him, but not the other way around.

And without taking a deep breath before telling another lie or giving any thought to what he was about to say, he cheerfully told her he had gone dancing with a girl at the casino and that was how he’d wound up on Margit Island the evening before the incident with the dog.

But it wasn’t his dog, he explained, only a stray dog that had joined them, and then for a while he could trot out genuine details from his rougher tale, as he had done before. She was quite pretty, the girl, he said in a loud voice to make the words sound genuine.

And he was devastated, he told Klára, when this girl left him for someone else, whom she loved, which she explained while they were dancing.

Actually, there was such a pretty girl and there was some similarity between the story about her and the one Kristóf was telling Klára, but it was not there that she had pressed her hip to his, and it was not then that she had held him in her arms and whispered into his ear, forever, forever.

So that’s how it happened.

But one doesn’t want to jump into the Danube because of a little affair gone wrong.

That’s true.

Then why.

There’s always a last straw, it was because of the last straw.

And you were so scared that you roamed the island all night long because she had left you.

Yes, that’s what happened, it was a little more than being scared, and he hoped Klára understood the connections.

Then he must still be in love with this quite-pretty girl, Klára said provokingly so she would not have to doubt Kristóf’s words.

Of course she understood this banal story. Because of that girl, he had been ready to throw the miserable dog into the Danube.