Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

It was as though she wished to announce well in advance that she was jealous and would keep track of every one of his secret thoughts.

So now they were both left with a promise of jealousy, which in fact was her doubt about the authenticity of his story.

They were sitting in the friendly old car in which the heating system didn’t work. There was no island, no quite-pretty girl, no dog, the dog’s story was very different, and the giant was nowhere. Klára’s malice was deliberate, she made no secret of it, and why shouldn’t she protect herself. Wasn’t she justified, after what Kristóf had involuntarily revealed to her with his assorted lies and profound confusion. Now everything was very clear, layers of undisturbed and unsympathetic reality resting neatly on and behind one another, and the two of them could not extract the deceits in this: that was the naked truth. As if Klára were able instantly to avenge things she didn’t even know about.

Kristóf could not take offense, with the giant being his one and only, no doubt about it; compared with the giant, nobody could be a more significant one and only.

And how could he tell her about the giant. That was a dream, a madness, a nightmare.

How could he be hopelessly in love with anyone, how would hopelessness fit into the picture. He preferred to be quiet. He could not say to her, those poor girls before you, I’ve never been in love with any of them. Under the protection of this phrase, in love , we tested and used each other a little, that’s all. He preferred to be quiet. He did not weigh or evaluate his laughable attempts at love, did not compare them with what actually happened. He was beyond all realistic hope that he would ever live with the giant. His hopelessness resided in a region very different from the one in which Klára discovered it. Even if he could ever find him again, and he couldn’t. Sometimes his mouth became filled with the giant’s powerfully odorous cock, it made him retch, it was hard with his tongue and lips to thrust back the meaty, almost fat foreskin rising like waves from the rim of the bulb, helping it carefully with his teeth; and this would happen when he wasn’t even thinking about the giant, the cock would simply pop into his memory. How could he be hopeless once the giant and his mustached assistant had taken hold of him, mercilessly tasted on him everything that was delicate and worth touching in a person, had turned their tools on him and brutally satisfied him, helping the young man over his first shock, and then, the job well done, had quickly left him.

Factually, he was not without hope.

He understood and comprehended everything very well.

How could he have wished for anything else or more from his fate.

Of course he had not forgotten it.

But how could he or why would he tell anyone about it.

It never occurred to him to tell anyone that those two had shared with him their most obvious secret. A curse would befall him if he did. The men knew that anyway, all of them, and would have killed him at the first word if he’d started to talk. And he hadn’t even had the chance to complete his research. If I had been born a woman, maybe then I could live with him, with the giant, without arousing suspicion; with some common sense, that was all he could think of to resolve the situation. But he was already very far from common sense, and this was something he took into account once he allowed himself to live. It would be better not to think about it, about the peculiar nature of his common sense, seeing as how he obviously had not been born a woman.

They didn’t want him, the men, that was the most painful part of his story, why would a giant like that want him, why would he want such a dark little lunatic like me, what for.

And he did not understand why not, could not fathom it no matter how hard he thought about it.

The most he could make his mind accept was that living beings in this world probably cannot simultaneously both understand the demands of their lives and satisfy them.

Those two people had appeared to be cheerful beings in the depths of the city night, yet sometimes he thought about them as obstinate and merciless Salvation Army soldiers. Mischievous elves, gleefully cruel in their loving. And why would they have wanted to take him on and lug his heavy historical baggage around. On the other hand, if they did not want him, why had they accosted him, why were they so steadfast in their seduction, or why had they disposed of him as they did, what did they gain by it. How did he fit in among other human bodies and souls. His rebukes were weighty.

He understood the accord between the two but how could he find his place between them.

Or why couldn’t he, with his sheer being, oust the other one. Perhaps he couldn’t understand things even when he knew them. And maybe he too should look at his life this way, enjoy its objects and themes to the full and then move on, however modest the return.

To not bother with getting to know things and making sense of them, to cast aside the more dangerous wishes since he’d get nowhere with them anyway and they had no satisfying outcome.

How could he get to know him better when he already knows him to the marrow of his bones, as though in the pain of pleasure he recognized him by the tissue of his bones.

Yet there must be something he does not know.

Not to keep still, not for a moment, and to plan things accordingly.

As if they had said, go that way, but how could he.

If he managed to comprehend this sort of existence, perhaps he’d understand why the others stay far away from curiosity about desire, from the nature of their physical common sense, from what their indifference to one another is all about. Why does the mind always want more. They had initiated him, why isn’t that enough; they had shown him the hidden, silently indifferent nature of the world, what else or what more could he wish for. For this moment right now, yes, we’ll take your body and show burning passion for every part of it we fancy, we’ll soften you up and bend you our way so you’ll obey us in everything, but not in the next moment.

But this thinking was pointless, inasmuch as he always got to the same place, and the most he could do was start brooding anew.

It made no difference what he did or didn’t understand. In his imagination the giant lived beyond all everyday hope or sensible condition; he had a life of his own with him, and for that he considered himself lucky.

What those two men had rubbed his nose in was precisely what he understood in this life of his. He’d follow the giant anywhere without giving it a thought; he understood that. And at any time; he understood that too, if only momentarily. Of course, his imagination did not bother with hope, madness, or norms. He would never again make the big mistake of not reciprocating the giant’s surprising and generous love calls and strange kisses, whether because of the giant’s lack of restraint or his own paralyzing dread. It took him a very long time to understand the sensual meaning of those kisses. But in time his imagination repeatedly completed or continued every unfinished movement and gesture. Nor would he behave differently; in his imagination he turned loose on the giant all his mental strength and physical cheerfulness. Perhaps the giant perceived his cheerfulness on his lips, perhaps in the kiss that was not an immersion but rather a brave staying on the surface. It was not a figment of the imagination that he had been living with him in his imagination ever since that first time. It’s not that without him there was no self-gratification, without his cheerfulness. They did it for each other, not he for himself.

How could he have thought he was hopeless.

He couldn’t think something like that because of Klára.