Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Where in the hell would he get a coat, could somebody from the Red Cross have given him one.

But Kristóf would not let go of him, he did not want to.

He doesn’t have a coat, he shouted, in tears, doesn’t even deserve a coat from the Red Cross.

For a moment Kristóf let go of the shouting person, but only to give in to an even more impossible compulsion.

He took the drunken man’s head between his cool palms and wanted to say something nice, kind, touching and encouraging. That he loves him and his heart is full of love and he would be happy to give some of it to him because he has so much.

Or perhaps to say no more than one would say to a grumpy child.

But this did not come to pass, because Pisti yelled into Kristóf’s face, suffused with love and deep emotion, that never, never would he get up from here, he would not do him such a big favor as to stand up, let his cock stand up for him.

He made the stairwell echo infernally again. Actually he was just a sack chock-full of infernal stuff.

I know more about you, little pal, than you might think.

Kristóf watched, observed how these unknown, humiliating, and painful feelings were being shouted into his face, emotions of which he had known nothing. But now at last he was getting to know them and he couldn’t claim to be disinterested.

Then he let go of the dear one’s head, made rather funny and pitiful by all the shouting.

However, it showed many frightening and shameful aspects too.

Then drop dead on your own. I just ask you to go quietly, without waking up the whole neighborhood.

He was done with him, but he didn’t have the heart to leave him there in that condition.

Though it was futile to plead with him in that condition.

Pisti’s big head dropped down dumbly, as if he could not keep it on top of his neck, there above the steps. And Kristóf, straightening up, ready to follow Klára upstairs, unwilling to waste more time on this drunken idiot, felt dizzy.

He hadn’t eaten for God knows how long. He definitely had had no breakfast and probably no lunch either. He let himself flop against the disgusting wall of the staircase, making tiny scales of paint fall off, and waited either to collapse or for the dizziness to pass, he didn’t care one way or the other, it made no difference.

Nothing made a difference.

Vacillating between the giddiness rising from the cavity of his heart and his inexplicable devotion, he went on watching this repugnant stranger.

What is he clinging to if there is nothing to cling to. To his own feelings or to the strange being’s beauty; but was this beauty, of what quality was this beauty.

He had to close his eyes a bit, not to think continuously about something other than what he could see in front of him; he should rather forget his own thoughts.

By the time he opened his eyes, Pisti had slowly sat up and now he looked very surprised. As if he had managed to understand his friend’s thoughts but with a slight delay; of course he did. He propped up his torso with his bare arms resting on his spread knees and kept relatively steady. His head hung down, though, exhausted and reproving.

His unbuttoned white shirt glowed above the filthy gray steps.

Still, Kristóf wanted to tell him what happiness had come his way today, and brag a little about the great future of his love.

The way he saw it, Pisti’s forehead was already radiant, and he felt that Pisti was waiting for a radiant confession.

He would have told him his story to console him but, to their great luck, he didn’t find a single word to do it with. And he now remembered that this rotten Pisti had stolen those girls from him in Wiesenbad, two girls, one after the other, the ones whom he was too shy to approach, which Pisti had instantly sensed, even though the girls were in love with Kristóf. He gave them to Pisti willingly; let him take them in his stead. Somehow his weakness and timidity were in the air no matter how hard he fought against them. His heart ached a little for the girls because, after all, they loved him and not Pisti, one of them, Bärbel Mengel, boisterously, and the other, Ingrid somebody, penetratingly and bashfully. But now, in his dizziness, the erstwhile ache about the girls felt good, that these girls had gone with Pisti instead of him, with nary a thought.

It was very clear that real life consisted of substitutions.

Without them he would not have found Klára, without his timidity, it was clear as daylight.

And he was very grateful to this beastly Pisti for taking them away from him. He was very curious to know what had happened to them.

For a while longer he watched the phenomenon of Pisti’s radiant forehead, and then without a word he left his newly found old friend, did not want to see him, and started up the stairs.

When he walked into the apartment, the throng, sunk in smoke and noise, accepted him, him with his heavy heart. But even years and decades later he was unable to piece together all the things that did or didn’t happen that night.

It seemed to him that he didn’t spend the whole night in the apartment but, along with others, might have gone out on the street several times.

Standing in the wind without his coat on, this he remembered, as well as the bare storm-battered trees, and standing alone among the buildings, staring up at the dark sky.

Perhaps they went over to the Gourmand Restaurant to buy more drinks, or only to have one there, who knows. The bar at the Gourmand stayed open until four in the morning. They wanted him to pay; all right, he paid, but he didn’t remember what he paid for and whom he treated. It definitely was not a place for redeeming bottle deposits.

He took account of these things only in the early afternoon of the next day, when he finally managed to wake up and get dressed.

He was literally startled into wakefulness; he wanted to leave and find Klára, no matter where she was, and that’s when he saw he didn’t have a penny to his name.

Either the people at the party had robbed him or the bartender hadn’t given him his change.

But he did not remember how much he was supposed to pay or for what, or how he got back to the apartment on Teréz Boulevard.

He remembered wanting to wake up while he was still asleep, so he could get going, but he did not know where to look for her, where to begin looking.

One thing was sure: he was lying in his own bed with his own nausea, he could see he was stark naked and without a cover, and if he wanted to avoid vomiting on the bedding he should sit up.

He heard no sounds from the adjacent rooms, everything around him was silent.

The Gourmand, for example, with its rich white tablecloths and gigantic damask napkins, was one of the Francophile places in the city not only because of its furnishings but also because of its unusually short but exquisite menu.

When he had first walked into the unfamiliar apartment and stood lost among the many strangers, he imagined that the space must have been not a hallway but some sort of reception room back in the heyday of the tailoring firm. He had never seen anything like it in this his own native city. And Klára, with a happy smile on her face, was pushing her way out of an inner room and coming toward him, indicating that he should find a secure place to put the mink coat she had borrowed from Andria Lüttwitz, a place where she could also find it; after all, she couldn’t spend the whole evening wearing the coat.

Not a coat rack anywhere.

It was so surprising to see her, to meet her again as if for the first time, even though he already knew what that felt like. What he wouldn’t give for a feeling such as he had for her. He was happy because of her; she filled his entire view so completely that he was positively grateful to himself for it. That is how infinitely laughable his happiness was. And as they went looking for a safe place for the coat the crowd kept pressing them together. It was the kind of thing neither of them had counted on. There was a chance to make contact again; they touched and grabbed each other, felt and cautiously patted and squeezed each other, they kissed and pawed each other quite roughly; they were forced to press forward across each other, and they laughed loud and hard. As if they were supposed to deny all this to themselves. Even if with their every little move they were making progress in this bashfully guarded nothingness, which had neither temporal nor spatial dimensions and therefore remained unfamiliar to them.