Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

The three men were thought of as merry, happy-go-lucky, amusing fellows whom people should not take too seriously and who did their best to live up to their reputations.

Their games were very entertaining.

It was to their advantage that around this time the dominant tones of the city were given not by strong personalities but rather by friendly societies, clans, tribes, associations, and secret professional alliances, all of them blessed with leaders of dubious character and, for that reason, bent on cultivating and strengthening their common reputations. As if there was not a single significant and independent personality left in the city, as if everyone had lost the last vestige of former prestige and had no more use for self-esteem. People lost their reputations because of petty betrayals, or they were bought very cheaply and used as servants. Still, life went on because what people lost in personal authority or dignity they cleverly cobbled together in a smaller circle or society they assumed to be private and safe, and which they joined to fit their interests and where, according to the momentary requirements of self-esteem, they could flatter one another a little. The inner tension of each group was great and that helped give it strength, at times sufficient not only for defense but also for offense or even for a bloody showdown with other groups.

The three men’s enviable and despised light-mindedness, their foreignness and outsider position, was their trademark. They were lounge lizards. This sobriquet gave them status, while their strength and rigor provided protection. Ágost’s own mother did not know or understand him well enough to explain his nerve-racking indifference to her. She disparaged him and constantly disapproved of him; weekly she tried to cast him out of her heart, hoping to make it less painful to acknowledge what had become of her son. Even though she really didn’t know what he had become. A ne’er-do-well, a nobody, a parasite. At the same time, she secretly consoled her anxious maternal heart that, on the principle of birds of a feather, at least those other similarly overgrown good-for-nothings took her son seriously. When they showed up in her apartment with their awful women, it was as if a benevolent wind were sweeping through the large rooms; when they disappeared again, Mrs. Lehr, née Erna Demén, against her better judgment, saw all her well-tended furniture as dead, her life as a desert, her miserable ambitions as meaningless.

What am I talking about, why am I grumbling so much against him, I haven’t been able to succeed in anything either, she kept telling herself. At best, I keep up the illusion of a meaningful life, but not its meaning, and I know the price I’m paying.

Why should my son live a life like this.

Except for the men themselves, nobody knew the richer, more refined, or more tragic and noble sides of their conspicuous traits.

At the next moment, when the irritated cabin attendant looked back from the far end of the corridor, the graying man was grabbing and hugging his apathetic friend huddling on the bench, and the other man was crouching in front of him, his bathrobe barely held closed in the front. They made no movements that didn’t upset the cabin boy. He really must scatter them somehow. Now with both hands André grabbed Ágost’s spread knees as if they were two strange objects and in desperate anger slammed them together, and when the two kneecaps clapped together hard, probably causing pain, he kept shouting in a choked, threatening voice.

Now what’s wrong? Would you mind telling me at last, what’s happening again? Answer me, damn it. What’s happened to you again?

And he held Ágost’s knees in with his hands, as if he had really decided to smash them, pulverize them, if he didn’t get an answer.

What’s happening, nothing. What might have happened, nothing, answered Ágost slowly, listlessly. I simply don’t understand what you’re going on about. I don’t understand your premise, your pitting modernization against progress.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not the one who pits one against the other. I’m not the one you have to beat. You must stick it out, and you will, I swear to you. Otherwise I’ll drown you in this pool with my own hands. You’ve endured six years, now you’ll put up with another few months.

If only you didn’t jumble up the principles. You mix up what you read in Pravda with what you read in The Guardian.

Don’t you understand that along with you, somehow I have to endure my own fate too.

What do we have here, when has there ever been any modernization here. The last time was just before or at the turn of the century, when my loony great-grandfather built this stinking bath. Look around you. Ces sales connards. What do you want from them, these serfs, these stinking ruffians from the puszta .

I’ll explain it later, Ágó, but you know perfectly well we’re not talking about political philosophy. Please spare me and be straight with me, no deceptions.

But I’m only interested in this, la guerre ou la paix . That there will be war again. La bourse ou la vie. Nothing else interests me.

Naturally, they couldn’t reply to this.

None of them knew what to do with such a statement, at once defense and provocation. The negative outburst accomplished one thing, however; it paralyzed the other two men. Let them be paralyzed, completely, like bugs in a beam of light. While he locked himself in, he silently hoped, nay, demanded them to help him, to save him from himself.

For the other two men, however, the question was always the same: but how. How can somebody be rescued from himself.

Come on, responded André angrily, you don’t even know what you’re talking about, how the fuck would you know what war is. You were sitting on your ass in comfortable Switzerland while your mother kept sending money to your uncle’s account.

They knew well how the final lap would be run; both of them were aware of its fast approach.

But they were late; at this stage it was a mistake to continue talking, and they always wound up being late. It was as if on his face they were seeing the approaching, threatening waves of a natural catastrophe. Occasionally they even talked about it among themselves, it was so strange, extraordinary, to see such a thing on someone’s face; alarming. It wasn’t more than a bright summer sky suddenly grown dark because of a large cloud. Who could avert it, who could prevent what happens inside another person. He became overcast; something set upon his body, his features, his mind, and overwhelmed him. Perhaps his skin darkened too; at least that’s how they saw it. And as if someone who is still talking, now for much longer and somewhat more loudly than usual, no longer sees out of himself.

And that ended too, he wouldn’t answer any questions either, as if he hadn’t heard them.

In the eyes of others, they were bound together not only because they each spoke with some sort of accent, but also because of their impressive appearances. André Rott was the oldest; his skin dark even in winter, if he stayed in the sun he looked as if a gray veil had been drawn over him, on his brownness. This appearance is sometimes called Gypsy-like, but he could have passed for a Yemenite warrior or a Bedouin tribal chief. Everything in his body was gothically elongated, his skull and his bones, also his muscles. He was the type on whom hair grows in abundance, but even in this, nature arranged things favorably: in proportionate, harmonious, energetic, but not exaggerated waves. As if from the mouth of a well-sculpted baroque fountain, hair from the packed bush of his loins sprouted up in a straight stream on his hard and flat abdominal wall until it bumped into the rim of the breastbone. There it split into two branches and with elegant waves surrounded the hard breast muscles that peaked in darkly purple nipples; evading the thin and nakedly protruding clavicles, the current of the two branches clashed tempestuously and, like a foamy froth or gaudy frill, shot up to his close-shaven neck. If he was not careful while shaving and did not go low enough with the razor, a few hairs would impudently remain and peer over his closed shirt collar, curling outward. He was an impeccable dresser — if he had to, he shaved twice a day, and carefully at that — so a small bodily disobedience like the peeking hairs, relating to his body’s more concealed territory, would indeed attract the attention of strangers.