Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

His sadness was stronger than his other feelings, but that is what made the feeling so uplifting.

He kept closing and opening his eyes.

How beautiful the blue of the sky.

He had been engaged to death ever since his birth, which he knew well because his mother had passed away during it, her heart had simply given out.

How could he understand that he need not feel guilty about his birth.

He filled the distant emptiness of beauty with the original darkness of his consciousness.

While his breathing did not subside, this darkness was filled with velvety red and sharply vibrating yellow images. If he wanted to be free of them he could open his eyes on the motionless blue sky, and then nothing bothered him, he was free, truly free.

He was too busy with these special feelings to notice the approaching noise.

When he first heard it far off, he assumed an animal was making it. It ceased for a long time and then recurred without sounding any closer.

By the time he raised his head, he wouldn’t have had time to jump up and disappear into the thicket unnoticed.

A strange young man was standing under the trees on the other side of the water, where Dávid had taken off his pants, shirt, and sandals. It was most peculiar that the stranger had not noticed him or his clothes. He had a whole loaf of bread under his arm; he was deeply engrossed in munching on it. Before he swallowed one mouthful, he bent down like a bird reaching under its wing with its beak and tore out the next bite with his teeth. He did this eagerly, but chewed very collectedly, his eyes roaming all the time. But he didn’t see what he was looking at. He did not notice the boy watching him from the other side. Mixing his saliva with the bread was good, swallowing was good, grinding his jaws was good, ripping the bread felt good on his teeth, the mildly salty taste was good, the crunching and the gentle fragrance were good, and every good had a shining picture.

These pictures probably blinded him. And because he so passionately strove for the good, paying no particular attention to the circumstances, his petty thievery did not cause him any moral problems. Bad was something that prevented the existence of good. The taste of sour cherries was good but the smell of bread instantly wiped away the shining pictures of this good and the picture of fragrance emanating from the tarp-covered truck became the good. He did not compare one good with the other; he did not brood over things or weigh them.

Bread was transported from the bakery in the neighboring village in airy crates. The loaves were regulation-size, pale brown and plump; knives liked to crack their crispy crust. The driver would push the high-piled crates to the edge of the truck bed and his assistant would carry them on his shoulder into the store. A large loaf cost six forints. The assistant called in sick that day, but everyone knew he had to go to Kisoroszi to hoe corn at his stern mother-in-law’s place.

That is why the truck was unguarded for a few minutes. When the driver jumped out of his vehicle, shipping bills in hand, and flung the tarp up to reach the crates, he barely glanced at the approaching youngster. While the driver was busy with the papers in the store, the youngster had no difficulty in taking a loaf out of the nearest crate. He did not move on right away; standing by the truck, he kept sniffing the pointy ends of the bread. Where should he bite into it, here or there. Where should one bite first if the bread offers two tempting ends at the same time. Finally, he did not take a bite but carefully put the loaf under his arm and took off.

And the rather delayed shouts reached him only when he was already walking slowly along the empty road.

Neither the elderly presbyter mending his fence, Jani Rácz, nor the women looking out of the store could have confused him with anyone. After all, they’d seen him eating somebody else’s sour cherries off the tree and already had wanted to shout at him then. They tarried because he was wearing the same kind of worker’s clothes that the driver’s assistant wore and even reached for the loaf with the same movement. He lifted it out as a person well within his rights, about whose pure intentions there could be no doubt. The presbyter did not believe his old eyes, as he said. He put down the hammer and seemed to be taking out of his mouth the nails he’d been holding between his lips, and then he opened his mouth wide with amazement.

It occurred to the women that the driver might have been assigned a new assistant, at least some of them claimed that later. Sometimes one thinks contrary to one’s knowledge or sensory experience. The first sound came from the old presbyter. He didn’t think it was necessary to take off after the thief, but inaction offended his sense of justice. Then the women, interrupting one another, shouted thief and swarmed out of the store. The presbyter dashed to the street, brandishing his hammer, as if to knock the thief dead on the spot, and, pointing the hammer to the other side of the street, yelled that somebody had stolen some bread. It would hurt his prestige to repeat himself. A person of consequence cannot run after a thief in plain sight of the villagers just because of a few sour cherries and a loaf of bread. As he related later, in the inn near the bridge, at the sight of such impudence he felt his feet rooted to the ground. Meanwhile the chaos in and in front of the general store grew to such proportions that it was as if, God knows, the women had been witnessing a major crime.

The baldheaded little driver, in his rakish cap with a too-small visor, did not understand what the women wanted of him.

What should he do now.

He grinned at them, showing his healthy white teeth.

At this time, Balter was sitting under the apricot tree with his head hung between his knees.

Dávid was rounding the pond for the second time.

When the driver caught on, he ran out of the store along with the shouting women, but by then the thief not only was far away but, because he sensed something bad in the shouts, had finally broken into a run, taking his bread with him.

The main square led to the end of the village, which was bare, not a forest, not an orchard, not a bush anywhere; he could not disappear into empty pasture. He made the choice a pursued animal would make: he jumped into the roadside ditch and made his way thence to a lower-lying dirt road.

The driver could have either run after him or, jumping into the truck, caught up with him on the dirt road, producing enormous clouds of dust, probably. He waved dismissively with the shipping bills in his hand. Later, by way of explanation, he said he didn’t have time for things like that; he had to deliver fresh bread to six stores in four villages within two hours.

That is how a moment in which many other things might have been decided came to an end.

Later Dávid did not dare move, even though there was nothing frightening about the stranger. He saw him as both gentle and wild.

Yet he felt as if he had been caught doing something wrong. As if people were saying, well, well, you’re up to something terribly bad and are rotten to the core. It was as if he discovered in the fugitive’s face the pitiful guilelessness of his own life thus far.

That is when, at Vác, the pastor stepped onto the ferry ready to depart.

And Dávid was frightened not so much by the possibility that the stranger might have observed him but by his being the one doing the watching and observing of an unsuspecting stranger. He wanted to shout something, a friendly greeting. As is usual in such cases, no sound issued from his throat.

And that reminded him of his negligence, the bell-ringing.

Thanks to his objectivity, by the way, he was the only one not taken in by the fugitive’s appearance. Twenty-five years old, he later told the police without thinking, and he was off by only a few months.