Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

No matter how he looked at things and events, this other possibility, this should-have-done-it-differently, planted itself before him, constantly, demandingly. The way things did not happen and wouldn’t have been decent if they had. To achieve another story, he most likely would have had to do things about which, without information concerning the giant or himself, he could not know. How many things they had missed. One after the other they’d mishandled every illusion. Perhaps they missed another story. But lacking the necessary information, how could he describe his misses, or how and to whom could he complain about the lost illusions. His body had revealed much more of the giant than he could factually be aware of; his palms, his thighs, everything, the scent of his hair revealed him, and for that Kristóf did not even have to know his name. Perhaps he had come to possess knowledge of his soul. But he remained unfamiliar with his ordinary weekdays and couldn’t share his own with him. And what if he could. Did fate’s plan, if fate had a plan and if there was human fate at all, include impetuosity, profligacy, and enormous omissions.

And if these latter were taken into account and his fate could not be imagined without them — because the Creator, let’s say, built them into the plans as a gaping lack — is it worth talking about misses and omissions.

Why would it be.

Is it worth trying to make up for his omissions and to pursue his pleasure to the point of exhaustion. Or, to put it the other way around, one should ask how the giant could have known him well enough to hit all the right keys on the keyboard of his guts and take possession of him just as he wished. How could there be such congruence in nature. He did not understand this. Perhaps there are no differences between men because they are nothing but stupid mirror images, which is why they immediately recognize themselves in one another. And in that case, men’s life stories are nothing but repetitions and empty experiences. Any intelligent mind can foresee everything that might happen to them. Sometimes primitive things are harder to understand than complicated ones. And how can he hope to make up for his omissions with a person whom he’ll never meet again, no matter how hard he searches day and night all over the city.

He had the same difficulty imagining this never-again as he had with infinity, or with space, or the complete emptiness at the original place of creation: the Beginning. He made several attempts but did not succeed, because he saw that the vessel of space might be infinite, and then what sort of a beginning would it have, would it have a limit, could it fit into a larger vessel; he could not imagine that there was nothing before the beginning and therefore there wasn’t a beginning either. Or it happened that suddenly the giant was there, standing before him in his corporeal reality, even though he hadn’t found him in the city. As if he knew his name, János, his name was János Tuba. And if not the man’s corporeal self, then his memory stood before him, a picture, the memory of a gesture or an odor, the giant’s thinking emerging as his own.

And as if in the darkness he were blinded by the dazzling of days, he buried his face in his hands.

In the light of day he never would dare ask anyone out loud, but now from behind his hands he did ask.

Locked inside the friendly darkness of the old car he felt secure.

It was a special pleasure that the question he addressed to Klára Vay referred to the giant.

With whom can’t one talk of such things, what one calls philosophy.

He would have to leave him, and reflect and meditate on him with the woman. Philosophy must be a painful activity, then. Had he told himself forever, he could not have borne his pain, infidelity, and betrayal of the giant without Klára’s noticing it.

She must not notice it.

So he tried to keep some of the cheerfulness he had appropriated from the giant.

And he managed to surprise Klára with it; she was unprepared for it after his serious questions; she stammered — a bit mockingly and not completely free of her earlier banter — as she took a new hard look at the young man, seeing him as for the first time, at the height of his physical and mental powers, at the border of insanity, perfectly composed.

Have you gone out of your mind, she asked angrily, but her eyes flashed with joy when she heard the splendid questions.

Why would I have gone out of my mind, moaned the young man, and for a moment he looked out from between his fingers.

Klára Vay had inherited her improbably large eyes as well as her persistent and neutral attention from her father.

And what if I’ve gone mad, so what, he added so as not to sound too childish.

How did he know from whom Klára had inherited the physical texture of her eyes. And the organic world was presumably based on these silly resemblances and relationships.

Your response depends on it, Klára replied, beaming, and now it was she who ignored Kristóf Demén’s banter and disregarded his viewpoint — and in her great excitement didn’t realize she was addressing him in the familiar.

First of all, you should be able to formulate your response, she corrected herself, speaking formally.

But I’m the one who’s asking, I’m the one asking the questions, cried Kristóf in the darkness, at least this once I am.

To show what your viewpoint is, whether you’re a determinist — in which case the world is a strict system with no room for faith or chance, that’s the question you have to answer — or maybe the opposite.

How should I know what my viewpoint is, the reason I’m asking is because I don’t know.

Do you think that vital life processes, or life’s phenomena, even your own, are absolutely and exclusively in a causal relation with one another. Or in your view is there no such relationship among them. That’s another big question.

The young man lifted his head from his hands, looked out at the pavement glistening in the rain as the moving car gradually devoured it; amazed at how many stones he had tried to move in his great spiritual quest, he preferred to remain silent.

First he must answer these questions, after that they could talk about anything.

Klára answers questions with other questions, he replied, dissatisfied; this was too trite even for a trick.

Why should she need a trick, or what sort of trick did he have in mind.

To avoid things, to go around them.

He may not be aware of this, but asking questions is a classical method used in philosophy.

Then he’d rather take back his dangerous questions.

Does he believe in predestination, answer that one quickly. What does he base his faith on. Does he believe in free will or believe that the Almighty conceived and decided everything well in advance.

With the same effort she might as well have asked whether he believes in free fall.

Exactly, because he can imagine the universe as a gaping void, with not a living godhead anywhere, a kind of desolate metaphysical wasteland, and in this void he would attribute greater significance to contingency or chance than to will, decision, necessity, and so on.

He doesn’t know; how would he know.

Doesn’t he understand that people must talk over these things among themselves, people have to show one another the way and make one another realize things, why doesn’t he want to understand this.

He often has the feeling that one acts before thinking, though it would probably make sense to do things the other way around, Kristóf continued after a brief silence. At any rate, he says things first and then thinks about them, and as a result he justifies them only later, which makes his whole life kind of laughable.

Klára did not respond for a while, but clicked her tongue admiringly.