Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Then why talk about it so much, why don’t you shut your trap.

Kristóf was beside himself as he yelled, though he was pleading with her, against all his earlier vows; he wanted quiet and wanted the woman not to tell him about these things.

Why aren’t you happy that you’re pregnant at last. And let’s be quiet about it.

Yes, and I can keep standing at the counter all day, dreading whether I’m bleeding or not. And she’s aware that she shouldn’t be so scared. But she is immoderate in everything, in case Kristóf hadn’t yet noticed. What the hell does she need a baby for, what is this big fuss about a baby, she has no answer to this question either.

Why this fucking mushiness.

Don’t talk like that, please don’t.

If Kristóf is so smart, if he knows what she should do now and how she should talk, then let him answer the question. Or if she loses the child, why can’t she be happy about that, let it go if it has to go, it’s probably for the best.

But they wanted to have at least three children.

Have you gone mad, why are you telling me what the two of you want.

Then to whom should I tell it.

All right then, tell me.

Maybe it will be easier after the first one, people say it’s easier after the first one. She’s now exactly in her sixth week and very proud of it, and she’s hopeful again.

And she couldn’t even tell what hurts more.

She is so sensitive.

If Simon did not adore her so intensely, if their love and alliance had not meant more to him than his life — Kristóf should remember once and for all that Simon adores and worships her — then he wouldn’t rave and rant so desperately and probably wouldn’t have to drink and chase after women so much. And have pangs of conscience on top of everything.

He blackmails her with that too.

She doesn’t want even one from him, from such a fickle character, Kristóf should believe her.

Of course she understands him. Still, it hurts terribly.

This is the terrible, incomprehensible paradox in their relationship.

Kristóf did not know what a paradox was, though he had heard the word several times before.

When she bleeds for weeks on end, Simon becomes inhuman. Since they can’t do it — and they can’t, they tried a number of times — she could let him do it by himself, and sometimes she does, for a while. But she doesn’t feel anything then — someone plashing about in her blood, that’s all she feels, nothing more. It’s as if she’s slowly silting up, and why should she let this happen. And when she doesn’t, he goes to have intercourse with other women, gets angry and rebukes her for never but never understanding what’s going on in a man at times like that, and keeps throwing things around and swearing.

But she won’t tell all this to Kristóf, because she can’t humiliate herself so much with her story.

You’re a neurotic, selfish slut.

And maybe she was neurotic, if she couldn’t control her jealousy and couldn’t help Simon.

An indifferent beast, like your mother and your whole class and your entire son-of-a-bitch clan, egoist beasts, all of you.

I resent that. I am on my own.

You people don’t know what human warmth is, or self-sacrifice.

Then go fuck your own social class, you dumb animal, not me.

But that’s not even true, what am I saying, she corrected herself.

Saying things like this about herself would be unjust, because Simon was always a drinker. He had been a drinker way before he had met her, and he drank because he was so much in love or he drank because they happened to be breaking up, he always had a reason to drink. He’s a pig, a boar, she doesn’t know what else to say about him, Simon is a prole wild boar from Angyalföld, she said, as if bragging proudly with her negative judgment, so she could at the same time berate him and love him, love him and worship him. Kristóf must see what a wonderful man this man is. There’s not one man in his family who isn’t a drinker. They all drink, the women too. And why shouldn’t they. She has nothing against drinking; otherwise, it would be impossible to put up with this rotten life and with what sober people thought was reasonable drinking. They drink like fish but, Kristóf must try to imagine this, they don’t drink together on holidays because they’d probably kill each other if they did, so they go drinking separately and then come home one by one, all of them drunk. Let those dumb proles drink themselves to death. She understands them. What’s not to understand here. Now and again she joins them and tosses down a few, right along with them. Only their mother doesn’t drink, she’s a pathologically sober woman, she doesn’t need alcohol, not even to keep her mind sober. For a long time she thought that their love would save Simon from this swamp, this family morass, these wild boars who enjoy grunting and wallowing in their own filth. Simon would gain so much from her that would help him relax, calm down. She’d bear children for him, lots of little girls and boys. Or at least three. She had no intention of fucking up her life with too many stupid births. That’s how she said it, fucking up. This dumb prole family immediately accepted her, she said with feeling, even though they were all, except for a few stray Hungarian Nazis, reds. She needed this, and they sensed her weakness, what with her hating her own mother, and her sister really getting on her nerves with her unbearable habits. Her older brother, well, she feels sorry for him. She has no family, she walked out on them, disowned them all, doesn’t need them. And they’re fairly numerous too, when they come together for Easter or New Year’s it’s like a big funereal show of waxworks, and not a single live being among them. And these stupid proles are all fanatic atheists. But she doesn’t deceive herself. Her mother-in-law disdains her instinctively, in her heart of hearts, in her guts. What she thinks about her is, what is this little high-class cunt doing putting on airs with her permanent bleeds and her affectations, knocking herself to the ground and fainting left and right, pretending to have migraines; she said it like that, high-class cunt.

And that’s what I am, what else could I be.

Where does she get off claiming I don’t have migraines.

And I’m supposed to cast off my real self for these stupid proletarians. I’m not going to change myself for them, I can’t.

But where do you get all this contempt for others, where do you get the courage for it, what do you get out of it.

I do have migraines, yes. One can have migraines even if these people have never heard the term.

Come on, what’s the point of your hatred.

What hatred, what contempt, I haven’t any kind of feeling. I don’t feel anything for anyone. That’s the absolute truth, my lover has desensitized me, that’s the naked truth, what else, and that lover is my love, so there we are.

She kept quiet for a long time, staring somberly before her, and then obsessively began again.

Compared with him you are a coward, you milksop, you I don’t even hate because I have nothing to do with you, you’re a stranger, someone I don’t even know, and that’s it.

She could not solve her life. She thought she could, thought she’d have enough strength for it. And her mother-in-law keeps giving her advice that, despite her best intentions, she cannot accept.

She simply cannot.

And very quietly, then ever more loudly, she kept obsessively repeating that she cannot accept.

Kristóf didn’t know what she was talking about, what would she not accept, and what did her mother-in-law advise her, but that was no longer interesting. With her gloved hands Klára grasped the steering wheel as if to shake it; she could not accept it, no, no, she could not.