Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

They did not even sing; there was no tune they could have danced to. And they did not congregate or assemble; after all, the alleged right of assembly had been suspended by order of the police, and any gathering of more than three persons was considered a conspiracy against the state.

They shouted into one another’s faces, showed one another their throats and fillings, whistled grinningly and tooted into one another’s ears, spun their clappers next to one another’s ears — and most of them were far from being preadolescent youths.

Silently they offered each other drinks, to make the other person drunk, turn him into an animal, the kind of animal I am.

The whistling at one another, the tooting and yelling at each other were only for themselves; they made the noise for themselves, not for someone else. While silence reigned in the farther reaches of Buda, in Pest the city was once again out on the street. But nothing happened; the light traffic petered out; no one expected or counted on anything, and the infernal noise people were making may have helped them suspend their fear, which is why they didn’t give a damn about the curfew. Everybody drank from everyone else’s bottle without even wiping off the bottle mouths. This was probably the first great dress rehearsal, the dress rehearsal of passive resistance. Well, what infection should they be worrying about. It was impossible to know where all that booze suddenly appeared from, cheap table wines and stinking home-distilled brandies.

This wasn’t a cheerful event; it was anything but pretty; it didn’t even try to flaunt its foulness. It became loudest at midnight, or rather, it just became louder, since no one had any wishes to make and they weren’t going to sing the national anthem. Long years had to pass before it occurred to people that one might want to wish somebody something good for the New Year. It wasn’t that this gloomy event was not forbidden, but that it would have been impossible to give orders to fire into the midst of so many drunken people.

And what if it was possible, so what, who gives a shit.

It was getting colder, well below freezing, and the number of people kept growing even after midnight; the noise as well as the crowd’s unbridled inner muteness steadily increased.

They were camping on top of ruins, lighting smelly little signal fires along the boulevards, using flammable parts of the debris. The snow, which had begun to fall around ten o’clock, became quite thick by midnight and was trampled into slippery slush by many shoes and boots. Snow remained at the peaks of ruins and on the charred guts of buildings and vehicles, and it shone brightly in the light of the fires.

Around two in the morning, the boulevards began to empty out, and slowly the snow could settle on the sidewalks, deadening the sounds of the few insistent shouters.

When dawn came, one could still hear some lone tooting in the distance.

Only during the following day, the first day of the New Year, did one have the impression that in the wake of all this there would follow only eternal night and deafened streets.

But all this happened long ago, and it might not even be true.

Kristóf crouched down on the stairs, close to the boy, who was a few years his senior but similar in build. He grasped his shoulders and shook them, told him to stand up, even threw in a few obligatory swearwords so they’d better understand each other’s bewildering, overflowing feelings; he kept shaking the boy gently, asking him what had happened, while his heart was jumping with joy at seeing him again.

What he wanted most to say was, my sweetest pal, if you only knew how much I’m in love.

It was a good thing Klára had disappeared upstairs in the throng, though he’d have a job finding her.

And he would have told his story on the spot, to give the other boy part of his happiness.

Because he loved him so.

Suddenly he couldn’t remember when and in what circumstances he had seen him last. But he did remember Podmaniczky Street, where the boy had been carrying his ammo box on his shoulder and the water had been turned on again.

But his friend would not let himself be handled, not then and not now, no, he pressed himself against the grating and Kristóf had to struggle with him.

It wasn’t the mere physical contact and not even the pleading but rather the earthly tenderness that convinced him; he broke into a loud, drunken sob, to which the staircase instantly responded with a drunken echo.

As though in reply, someone upstairs whose nerves could no longer endure the sobbing kicked or slammed the hallway door shut.

For God’s sake, tell me what’s happened to you.

Left me, his friend cried, then shouted the words: just up and left me.

Kristóf could not conceive of anyone leaving his friend — about whom he had heard nothing for many long years. This is one of those moments when, of all the things he could not anticipate and from which he felt shut out, what confronted him most clearly was his own naïveté, exposing him to senseless, blunt nothingness.

He recognized instantly that this was not some ordinary lovesickness, not one of the many kinds he was familiar with. The boy’s shirt was white, but his lovesickness stank of tobacco and alcohol. And in his drunken obstinacy he was strong enough to keep from being dragged away.

It was as if he were doing penance with the barbarity of his soul.

The alcohol level keeps him on the surface of pain, maintaining a sufficient degree of physical torment, that is why he has to stay here, that is why he is shouting so destructively.

Kristóf looked at him, amazed and fearful, yet he cradled the familiar shoulders and back on his knees with a certain restraint, since at any minute it might turn out he had made a mistake. The boy might turn around, or he would manage to turn him over, and it would be revealed that he was not Pisti whom he had met on Podmaniczky Street.

Now he was yelling down the elevator shaft that he had been deserted, bawling through the grating.

No matter how hard Kristóf looked, there was no part of the boy that he could have mixed up with someone else’s.

He’d seen him last in Wiesenbad on an ordinary summer morning when, just as he was, in shirt and pants, he’d been taken away from the place under the giant pine trees by a military vehicle with Russian license plates; he resisted and kept pointing to the third floor of the Wolkenstein house, indicating that he wanted to get his things, but he was expertly shoved into the car, with extra care taken not to injure his head; and only the crunching sound of pebbles, the silent peaks of the pines, and the sky with its clouds remained behind him.

Upstairs the boys found all their belongings on the stone floor of the dormitory, the mattresses overturned on the beds, only this boy’s locker was empty, they had taken away all his things along with him.

Left me forever, he shouted. I know it’s forever.

Then Kristóf called him by his name, he no longer had any doubts but wanted to be certain, and he did not feel like swearing anymore.

He would rather be exposed by his blind love.

Pisti, please, he said, pull yourself together, stop making so much noise.

It’s me, knocking on your door, he said, and he was indeed knocking on the boy’s back.

Give me some sensible explanation, what’s happened, who has left you.

And why on earth are you lying on the stairs here.

The drunken figure suddenly swerved, as if to throw his entire stiff body at Kristóf; he probably only now recognized Kristóf by his voice or by the knocking on his back, their old game.

He stared intently, could this really be Kristóf; the strain wrinkled his face.

My dear Pisti, please get up.