Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Nínó kept very quiet, however, no longer feeling any pain.

And when the telephone rang again, Ágost went to answer it and in the name of the grieving family to accept the prompt condolences, whoever might be at the other end of the line. They knew this was to be expected, the phone would keep on ringing because the news had been announced on the radio. The others around the table sank back into reproachful silence, which is to say they pretended they had urgent remembering to do. Of course their silence was directed not only at Kristóf, heartless and ungrateful boy, but at death too, death which treats everyone so unfairly.

But how can anyone be so heartless.

And frankly, Nínó was at this moment rather curious to know who might be calling, because she had not yet heard from the prime minister, though he had informed them via his secretary that he would call personally.

Ágost stayed away for a long time.

The reproving silence did not touch Kristóf; he simply acknowledged it. Ilona cleared away his soup plate but then hesitated between taking the main dish from the platter on the table or serving Kristóf something hot from the kitchen. And nobody else handed him the platter on which lay, in the light of the baroque chandelier, the remnants of masterfully sliced stuffed beef, rare but crusty on the outside, surrounded by evenly cut potatoes sprinkled with parsley.

Ilona could slice any meat without the stuffing spilling out.

And when nothing happened, he stood up irreverently and pulled the platter toward his end of the table. He could have asked Viola for it, with half a smile. It was not enough that he was so heartless and now behaved so disrespectfully, but he also served himself while still standing up, helping himself to meat and potatoes much too generously. With his eyes he searched the table for the pickled vegetables. To go with this meat, according to custom, either pickled melon or pickled peppers stuffed with red cabbage should be served.

Nínó spoke again under the painting of the battle scene.

While you are looking for your cabbaged pepper, if you are at all interested in this information, the Hungarian Academy of Science is being draped in black in honor of your uncle.

She said this in a voice indicating that she needed all her mental strength to control herself, and she would control herself, for her mental strength was enormous; she was unable to say out loud that she wished never again to see her murdered kid brother’s son at her table. Even though this is what the others expected of her. That he should move out immediately. Growing somewhat hesitant, Kristóf sat back down. His hesitancy was due mainly to the conspicuous absence of cabbaged peppers, since eating this sort of meat usually began with a few bites of cabbaged peppers. No matter what his aunt might think of him, she too was capable of stuffing herself with things straight out of the jar. All right, so he started with the meat; it was fattier than it should have been, but it had been well cooked and had a good crunchy texture; he was stuffing himself, to get the meat inside himself as fast as he could and then do the same with the potatoes. But he had hardly put away a few mouthfuls, and the stuffing was as tasty as usual, when, thinking of his barely dead uncle, it occurred to him that he should have gone first to Buda.

Given Simon’s place of work, perhaps Klára had been taken to Kútvölgyi Hospital in Buda; how could he be so stupid as not to have thought of that. That’s where he should be looking. Involuntarily he swallowed the food in his mouth, wiped his lips, please excuse me, all of you, he said softly and properly, and then, to the others’ great amazement, he stood up from the table, nodded politely, almost amiably, and walked out.

That was the moment when Ilona would have brought him the pickled melon or the pickled pepper stuffed with red cabbage.

He crossed the empty rooms and picked up his coat; they could hear the front door close behind him.

They did not understand how Nínó could stand for this.

He took the steps down by threes; his great-grandfather also had not liked his steps too steep.

At Kútvölgyi Hospital, the porter refused to give him any information. He should come back tomorrow morning. Until then no one would tell him anything. It probably would help to get up to the ward and ask the nurse on night duty but the porter refused to allow that; he tried to give him some money, how dare you, shouted the porter.

The lobby was empty. For a while, he pondered which way to go, how to get around the burly man, but the porter was watching him no less attentively. He made one little move, and the man shoved him between the wings of the revolving door and then out to the street.

Shit on him, he’d look for the service entrance. He had to go around the building, climb across a fence, and then there were two such entrances, both closed with heavy metal doors.

Through one of these entrances he could get to the sixth floor.

This is where his dead uncle was too, somewhere inside this enormous building with its lit-up windows. But by then the old fascist had been taken down to the basement to be prepared for transportation. Kristóf stayed for a long time, leaning against the flue of the wheezing, puffing ventilating system; he tried to follow his uncle on his way.

But he did not find Klára on the gynecology ward in this hospital when he returned early the next morning.

In the meantime the sky became overcast again and March turned very wintry.

He got on the bus in front of the hospital and decided that no matter what, he would ring Andria Lüttwitz’s bell, she must know what had happened.

He did ring the bell, but he said not a word about the mink coat. They stood in the hallway where nothing had changed in the past decade and Andria Lüttwitz leaned on the same silver-handled cane. Klára was in the hospital on Üllői Road, after all, and it’s a good thing Kristóf showed up because, on top of everything else, Simon must go out of town early tomorrow morning. She can’t find Klára’s mother because she must have gone to Nagymaros. Kristóf went back to Üllői Road. Where everything started all over again. They did not let him in. He should come back tomorrow during visiting hours. The rear entrance was carefully guarded; a slovenly guard was stacking dishes full of leftovers. Kristóf took the streetcar to Újvilág Street, where perhaps somebody had found the mink coat in the meantime.

The house was wrapped in grave silence.

He rang the bell for a long time before a young man, about his own age, whom he must have interrupted in some engrossing activity, came to the door. Very reluctantly, he said he knew about the matter but nobody had found a mink coat.

Kristóf still wanted to come in.

The young man would not let him.

The next day, during visiting hours, he found a very pale and terribly weak Klára, a Klára whom he did not know but loved more insanely than ever, loved with bated breath. For a while, he sat politely on a chair by her bed, and then they held each other’s hands and stayed that way. Klára closed her eyes as if to doze off; he watched the wonderful vaulting of her eyelids, and when she started up from her sleep, they leaned against each other and cried, moaned, whimpered, and sniveled in the big ward, where seven other women lay in their beds in conditions similar to Klára’s. These women also had visitors, but Kristóf and Klára were so far away from them and everything was so stark, bare, and bleak that they did not reach them with their voices, pain, or looks.

He came at a good time, because she was going to be left alone for a while, she didn’t know for how long.

They could weep freely, nobody heard them, and if they did nobody cared. They were not very loud, anyway; they showed remarkable discipline with their pain.