Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Mention of the bread caught his grandfather’s attention.

One must be truly a madman or criminal to throw away bread, he thought, but his thick, muscular back did not respond even when he crossed the high threshold of the shed door; reason could not assuage his agitation so quickly. Grabbing the bicycle by its handlebars and seat, with a single motion he lifted it out of the clutter of tools and turned around with it; spades and hoes, shovels and pickaxes thudded and knocked together in the wake of his violent movement.

Dávid stood in the bright opening of the door; the pastor’s wire-rimmed glasses flashed at him sternly from the dimness inside.

Where are your shoes, he asked the boy because he needed time to divert himself from his original goal.

Dávid looked down at his bare feet as if only now discovering the missing sandals; with this, he too meant to gain time, to thwart his grandfather’s revenge.

He didn’t take them. They’re still there.

Which shoes did you have on, the pastor asked sternly.

I wore my sandals today, the boy hastened with the answer.

The pastor rebuked himself unsparingly. Which increased his agitation instead of lessening it. Anyone who at the sight or sound of the slightest trouble lets his mind jump to the most extreme conclusion must face his own criminal character. Nature had endowed the pastor with enormous physical strength, which forced him to be careful with his temper, not to lose it, to nip it in the bud. This habit was not, in the end, alien to his gentle disposition, but it filled him with complacency, and thus did his moral precaution lead him toward the greatest danger lying in wait for him: arrogance. When he yielded to the temptation of complacency, as he frequently did, he committed the mortal sin of arrogance.

He seemed more like a shy man than a stupid one.

With the benefit of his long spiritual experience, he reproached himself most severely; he prayed fervently. But a single remark offending decency, or cursing or swearing or an obscene gesture, sufficed to upset the fastidiously guarded equilibrium of his conscience.

And everyone sensed that something was not right with his conscience; the village too made him feel it. They openly laughed at him when he stood before them, red in the face, having a temper tantrum, driven to the edge of his self-control.

He readily used his physical strength to help people; he rushed to their aid with self-sacrificing zeal, as if to alleviate his shame by doing something, as if to conceal some physical flaw. It was not that these people along the Danube were unfamiliar with the concept of self-sacrifice, but rather that they saw through the trick; the pastor wanted to redeem mercy with caritas . Behind his back they told one another that he behaved like a Catholic. The transgressions of his youth seemed to be presiding over his present efforts. He still desired the woman in Vésztő, whose temptation, so long ago, in his days as an assistant minister, he had been unable to resist. He carried luggage, heavy sacks of anything, he uprooted stubborn stumps with a pickaxe, he moved the bulkiest beams; the peasants took advantage of his gentle humility, at times abused him. And because of his willingness to serve them they did not like him.

One prefers to disdain a person one abuses. They watched him, observed him, spied on him, hoping to figure out what the pastor wanted to achieve with his behavior.

The Christians who live in these parts have never even heard of monastic humility.

Ever since his wife died, and that was more than four years ago, no day passed without his being tortured by the old feeling about that woman from Vésztő. He could not be rid of the scent of that woman’s strong body. He felt as if he were losing the meaning of his life’s entire work, even though he had been truly self-restrained since his wife’s death; he had exiled all selfishness and considered his life as a service to others. No agitation and no hope could shift the heavy apathy that settled oppressively on his heart at times like this and remained there for hours, sometimes days or weeks. What could he do, what could he give, what could he offer as sacrifice, if with the labor of his entire life he had not overcome his most sinful desires. He did not argue with the Lord. One receives God’s mercy or forgiveness not as a reward for one’s deeds. His doubts about Calvinist doctrines of faith and predestination were not based on theological considerations. Rather, he had practical problems with his own life: how to lead others to the point where at least they would not stand in the way of mercy with their evil deeds; how to lead young souls to the command of love when his own body searched for nothing but the physical desires of others.

All right, he has been restraining his body’s desires since then, if one can put it that way.

However, a young soul recognizes no obligations regarding others except those that please that young person’s body.

But doesn’t a young soul follow the divine plan when it satisfies its urges.

He became aware of his naïveté after his wife’s death, when he was past his fiftieth year. Her death took away the faith that had served him steadfastly for decades. He willingly reconciled himself to this, yet he still faced the question, from where would he draw the strength necessary for his calling if not from his faith. He was on his own with his physical urges and no person to attach them to. The practical mind has no general ideas for a man past fifty, so he could serve only himself, whom else, with his remnants of the procreative instinct — and it wasn’t even the instinct of procreation; and he in the name of the Lord Jesus should have been serving the Almighty. His service was, at best, empty fervor turned into self-interest, which stupid people liked to see and which they counted on so as to get something for nothing again. Because of his good deeds people around him became like wild beasts on the lookout for prey. Nothing interested them except their profit; go on, call the pastor, he’ll take care of it. He’ll pull it out, cut it down, uproot it. That pastor is strong as an animal; all you have to do is tell him. The possibility of even the smallest profit made them feverish; what else could be torn or ripped from what. They rolled their eyes frenetically in their eternal, insatiable pleasure. And these characteristics of his, which he recognized in other people, reminded him again of that insane woman of Vésztő with whom, as a young man engaged to be married, he had cheated on his bride.

He saw their disgusting greediness, yet he could not help following them like a calf. He could not do otherwise; he went on serving them.

Since then he knew, from experience, that sin gave much more pleasure than perspicacity or even moral purity.

He was spared a public scandal and his secret was preserved in the village, albeit at the cost of the terrible tragedy: from the moment the crazy woman and her husband drowned in the Tisza in their wagon, along with the horses, he could not free himself from the tormenting thought and agonizing self-accusation that he had caused the fatal accident. Burdened with these thoughts he successfully repelled all temptation, which was not so difficult since the water had taken from him his only beloved woman, the one from Vésztő.

He knew he should not try, but he wanted to understand the divine plan. Or at least he was curious to learn it as a theological guide for life. Ultimately he had been the one who forced, who convinced the woman to undertake that final journey. He had not done so with criminal intent; he wanted to save the little waif from her. He had discovered by accident what she had been doing with the foundling. It was not he the woman loved, he thought; she did not love anyone, she was insane. He came to think that desire burned so brightly in her because she was possessed by the devil. And he too was taken in by the devil. With his own eyes he had had to witness the woman torturing the little foundling with the same passion that she made love to him.