Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

He wanted to be there even when she was on the toilet.

You take me for a little girl, a baby.

They would fight at the door of the toilet because he kept going after her to let him in so they could have a conversation. But she thought this was an impossibility, even if a rather nice one. She wanted a few minutes of quiet in the fucking apartment.

Couldn’t we do it some other time. You want to have a conversation while I’m peeing.

She wanted a little rest from him.

Then Simon would plant himself by the door because, naturally, it wasn’t a conversation he wanted. He wanted to hear her little moans, wanted her little smells, her squeezes and tiny farts as the gas began to work or thrust the feces out of her.

Are you making poo, my dove, he asked from outside.

I’m taking a shit, you animal.

In the meantime she carefully pressed down the door handle because she also wanted to surprise the man with something, and in her excitement she let out a fart, just a short, sharp little fart, like a nun’s, but she kicked the toilet door at him, it banged into his stupid head.

That must have hurt him, but they laughed as they fought on, Simon yelling that that marquise was really doing it now, until Klára peed in her underpants, which she had just pulled back up into place.

Now I peed in my pants because of you, you hairy animal.

But Simon especially adored her for this; now finally the marquise had peed in her pants.

To say nothing of his cultic adulation, offered up individually, of her lips, teeth, and nipples, and the ecstatic admiration for the nacreous-pink crimps of her vagina. Of course he wanted to see how and where urine and feces issued from her. And once he had experienced something, he instantly fitted it into one of his idiotic global theories. Simon thought constantly and passionately about everything. They thought aloud to each other; every day brought at least one epochal discovery, each one increasing their hope that no unexplored area or secret thought would remain in either of them. Simon wanted to know everything about her, to be reassured of everything he already knew, yet he remained gravely bashful with his own body and bodily functions.

He would not show himself naked to anyone.

If he could, he would have hidden from Klára his body’s manifestations and their possible irregularities. And with good reason too, since he suffered from sluggish bowel movements and digestive disorders, but he would never mention these. He would have rather died of an intestinal obstruction than break wind in his wife’s presence. Deadly earnest, in full awareness of his responsibility, he would hold back as though their family happiness depended on it. Occasionally, he had to use his fingers to pry out the hard cork of his stool.

The harder he pushed, hissing with pain, the more the stool remained stuck.

During lovemaking, his shirt had to be torn off him because he resisted, protecting himself, and even with his shirt off he still kept on his everlasting undershirt, which he would never take off, night or day, for anything in the world. When his slightly lopsided but not unattractive chest was uncovered, he felt especially defenseless. He only let go of his shirt shortly before the last act when his mounting pleasure left him hopelessly unguarded.

And even then he would not part with his miserable underpants or idiotic undershirt.

Klára had no more days of grace for her big rebellion.

It slightly bothered her that Kristóf was deciding for her. Did not even hear what he asked or said; he made her nervous, definitely agitated. She was annoyed at being considered a silly country girl. She had a good mind to protest or to explain herself patiently.

Simon’s constant admiration increased her hunger and impatience. She should have left him a long time ago or together they should have immediately killed someone.

They had no other option, really.

Only a few days ago, she had had to throw Simon off her because he’d hurt her tongue; the dumb animal had bit it.

And not for the first time and not nearly by accident. In an instant, flavorful blood filled the hollow of her mouth, perhaps his too.

As she yelled, what the hell was he thinking of, and as Simon yelled back at the top of his voice, what the hell did you do to me again, you slut, she saw that their screaming had spattered blood all over his face and chest.

She could not believe her eyes.

She wouldn’t ever talk about such a thing to anyone but a mature, real man like Simon. But then why did he have to be such a rotten character.

True, although her childhood had been spent in senseless, forced wanderings, it hadn’t been as miserable as the childhood of this young man to whom she was now listening with a certain distaste. And she had become a country girl, the boy was right about that, even though she was born in Buda.

She and her family were lucky that as undesirable elements of society they had only been relocated, and even as relocated persons hadn’t been too badly off.

Yes, she is undoubtedly less familiar with Pest.

But he will never call her a slut again.

What d’you mean I’ll never call you a slut again.

You just won’t.

You shoved me off you, you slut, you rub my nose in the dirt, so why shouldn’t I call you a stinking high-class slut.

Your prole mother is a slut, you hear, you hairy bastard.

Great, now you’re calling my mother a slut. You’ve got the brains for that but you don’t even know when you’re humiliating someone.

I’m humiliating you, is that what you’re saying.

You’re a goddamn fucked-up slut.

You can’t even be humiliated.

You don’t even notice when you do. That’s the most humiliating thing about you people.

Don’t you-people me. I’m on my own, I’m telling you, I am not with my mother.

You people humiliate me several times a day.

How exactly do we do that, by not liking that you bit my tongue off.

Why should stinking sluts from Buda like you and your stinking egomaniac slut of a mother notice little things like humiliating people. You don’t even notice, period.

The man was simultaneously crying and screaming as he sat on the floor in front of the bed.

Your mother will also tell me, won’t she, where I should put my napkin ring, he screamed, pounding on the floor.

She would speak up about this much later — she thought about this in the dark car — but now she waded into her own life story at an entirely different place. And the man’s weeping never moved her, not for a second. If anything did, it was his entreaties, when he wanted her to forgive him and not move out. How could she not find him ridiculous when he lay there on the floor spattered with blood, screaming and crying, his undershirt pulled up to his armpits and his cock protruding from his ugly underpants, and whining about his napkin ring.

Why wouldn’t she laugh at him.

Two years ago you didn’t even know what a napkin ring was.

With which she humiliated him the more.

And now they were sitting here at the corner of Thököly Road, the faltering windshield wiper moving from side to side in front of them; she had forgotten to turn it off.

How in the name of fucking hell could you forget it, how can you be such a birdbrain.

And while talking to the young man, she remembered this about Simon, about how he had said these words; she watched the hollow clatter yet she would not turn off the wipers. Her lover would have had a fit of anger if he’d been sitting next to her. Why must a woman always forget everything, these birdbrained women. Every woman is a birdbrain. She felt a special gratification whenever Simon besmirched women in general by calling them sluts and idiots. With his weeping he tried to cover things up, but with his swearing and entreaties he exposed himself to her. That was the dumb prole’s speed; he couldn’t resist exposing his raw feelings.