Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Both Klára and Kristóf were used to going to completely unfamiliar places where people were celebrating a fiasco or solemnizing a devastation. Yet a few years earlier no one would have shown up uninvited anywhere. But these decorum issues had ended in Budapest. One could virtually name the hour when this had happened. It was not that no one now hewed to the old obligatory codes of behavior — some people did — but that it was impossible to know who would comply, when, or why somebody would not, or even what should be complied with.

A lean figure in a white shirt was lying on the steps, his torso reclining against the grating that surrounded the elevator shaft.

Hesitantly they stopped above him.

At the very same instant, amid noise and music, the tall wide door of the apartment upstairs opened, and along with thick clouds of smoke a loud group of people emerged, shouting back and forth.

Stop, how many times do I have to tell you.

Above their shoulders one could see that the apartment hallway was also full of people; the wonderful chaos was complete.

I’m afraid you’re dreaming.

Different kinds of music reached them simultaneously: somebody, in a whiny voice, was demanding love, a man’s voice on a tape recorder or record; and somebody deep in the apartment was pounding away on the piano with great conviction and screaming at the same time as if beside himself, or anyway it sounded as if the pianist and the screamer were the same person. People in the group streaming out the door were all talking at once, each taking great pleasure in speaking over the other voices. The group included young women and somewhat older men, all quite gentle, almost shy figures and all of them completely drunk. As they started down the stairs, they too stopped above the figure lying on the steps, held on to one another, swayed back and forth — which was not without danger because their hands and arms were filled with empty bottles — groping for support on the walls, banisters, and one another. They sobered up a bit in the drafty staircase and began to giggle at this other drunk stretched out on the steps, but what the fuck.

They not only appeared to be but were kindly souls, if a little too loud. They had banded together with the purpose of collecting all the empty bottles from between people’s feet, redeeming them, and, at the last moment before sobering up, buying more booze with the deposit money. If their hands hadn’t been full, they would have pulled up the figure lying on the steps and taken him back to the apartment. This would not have been empathy, goddamn it, but some kind of communal spirit, of sportsmanlike good will.

They all saw that this man was not only drunk but weeping, big dumb ass. One arm was wrapped around his head — maybe he had some injury — and he was pressing his face to the rusty grating of the elevator shaft, his back convulsing sporadically.

Well, let God put his cock where he wants to, but this guy sure has some big-ass grief.

Others fumbled awkwardly with their bottles, trying to put them down on the stairs, but in their inebriation they could not figure out which steps were closer or farther away, or they feared the stone paving was too hard for the glass, and the whole thing turned into an awful clanking and sniggering.

Hold it, Kristóf said quietly, I think I know this guy.

At the sight of his filled bottles, the ones above him on the staircase laughed loudly, cheered, and neighed that now they didn’t even have to go out because relief had arrived, looka here, damn it, they’re bringing vodka in huge bottles.

Klára fumbled with her bottles and, giggling along with the others, warned that she might at any second drop them both.

The pretty miss has nothing to worry about, they’ll be happy to help her.

When it comes to booze they’re willing to sacrifice the life of their friend.

They might sell their bosom buddy’s whore of a mother, but even Kristóf couldn’t do anything with this drunken animal.

A nasty piece of work, they laughed stridently, all of them together, they know him well.

A pale-faced small young woman at the top of the stairs spread her arms wide and, nobody knew why, yelled into the bare and echoing nocturnal staircase, her voice surprisingly loud, that she would kiss every ass, she’d do it willingly, there’s no ass she wouldn’t kiss and lick, but nobody should expect her to put a good face on it or be happy about it.

But people paid no attention, and acted as if they hadn’t heard her drunken nihilism. And the clinking noises increased as they quickly left their empty glasses all over the place.

Somebody kicked over a bottle, which set other bottles rolling, but none of them broke.

They left quickly with their booty and went back to the apartment with the wine and vodka; the clanking sound of their return echoed in the stairwell for a long time.

If not for Kristóf and Klára’s arrival, these people, at the risk of sobering up, would have marched across stormy Rákóczi Road all the way to Teréz Boulevard to get deposits on their empty bottles in the only food shop in Budapest that stayed open twenty-four hours a day.

Everything was all right — just as things unfolded in the simplest possible way in the following half hour.

By then, no one took the future seriously anymore.

The crowd in the big apartment readmitted the unknown company, along with Klára, and left the hallway door open behind them. And in a place like this, issues such as acquaintance or stranger or introduction or any other stupid formality simply didn’t exist.

Not because fellow feeling had suddenly become popular, but because everyone was equally indifferent to everyone else.

Simply shit on everything.

Fuck it, man. I shit on your filthy mug.

What makes you think I don’t shit on everybody.

To be exact, the magic moment had arrived late in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 1956, shortly before nightfall. The curfew was still very much in force, and because of piles of debris in the middle of Ferenc, József, Teréz, and Lipót boulevards waiting to be carted away, streetcars had not yet started running and there was only just enough room for buses and cars to get by. At some places collected debris was piled on sidewalks, at other places, where they had not even started to clear away the results of the bombing, bare beams, bathtubs, remnants of chandeliers and furniture were spilled and strewn everywhere, flowing and crashing into one another. The furnishings of collapsed apartments and burned-out businesses.

In theory, these streets and roads were supposed to be empty by eleven o’clock at night, because traffic halted at ten, superintendents were supposed to close and lock all main entrances by half past ten and check, no, report, on who came in at the last minute; during the night only the booted footsteps of police and special antiriot units could be heard.

Occasionally a shout — a solitary shot too.

But on that late afternoon the number of people in the streets kept increasing and they were vociferous. As if they had a common plan for everyone to head to the boulevards. It was cold and dry, the sky heavily overcast and public lighting sorely lacking. It was impossible to know where so many people were coming from in the rapidly descending darkness.

These people were not making demands or demonstrating against anything; they just climbed up on the dangerous piles of debris, and did so silently, not talking to one another or anyone. They drank; and those who were already drunk yelled at the top of their voices. To which the authorities could have no special objections, which is to say the yelling, which should have been quickly forbidden, was tacitly permitted because people were not yelling together; everyone was hooting or yelling for himself. Some brought their children’s toys with them, the ones that entrepreneurs started making anew only later on, and whistles, which could be found in families everywhere because there was no Young Pioneer* without a whistle and schoolchildren all had them hanging around their necks on red or blue strings; also paper trumpets, drums, baby rattles, clappers, small bells and cymbals, hissing paper snakes, rubber animals for bathtubs that whistled, quacked, or croaked when squeezed — anything that could make noise.