Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Seeing him mute and motionless, the two men slowed and, after a few involuntary steps, halted, uncertain.

Shouting from his spot, the larger man asked whether Balter had seen a tramp in the area.

Balter felt that a very long time passed before he understood the question, and he could signal only with a shaking of the head that no, he had not.

But this apparently long time did not remain empty; a great many things happened during it.

The bespectacled man’s wild look settled mainly on Balter’s pants. First, he looked over the lower parts, then, a bit embarrassed, his eyes glided past the groin area and up to Balter’s deep chest, as if to gauge its size and strength should he have to fight the man. As if Balter were the tramp they were looking for so hard. Or as if a similar, even more impossible assumption were making the air vibrate around them. Suspicion and blame: these two were suspecting him of something. Given their physical attributes and age, a fight between them would not have been uninteresting. The pastor’s wrath restrained by his moral stance, and the jailer’s cool competence based on much experience; the pastor’s short temper and his strength refined by spirituality, and the jailer’s raw strength and inexperience in spirituality — these made for measurable differences that rendered the outcome unpredictable. And they weren’t in it alone, face-to-face; there was the third unpredictable man too.

Realizing this, Balter’s eyes moved to the picket the smaller man was holding in his hand.

Balter’s realization could not have escaped the pastor’s attention.

The pastor’s suspicion and urge to find blame persisted, but there also arose in him a vehement wish to revoke them. He had no means to do this but by staying at a respectable distance and repeating his question, this time more gently, whether Balter really hadn’t seen anyone suspicious around.

He got no answer this time either.

One can’t engage in complicated explanations when shouting, anyway. He continued to gesticulate and yell as if trying to make himself understood by a retarded person. Which once again fired up his words.

It was impossible not to hear his disdain for slow-witted people.

There was a boy here earlier, in bathing trunks. That’s his grandson. And this tramp must have gone by here too. So why does he say he hasn’t seen either of them, he shouldn’t go on saying that.

Balter shook his head to indicate he had not, and kept looking at the picket.

Two nails were sticking out from one end of it.

How could he not see someone prowling about. Why wouldn’t he help.

Even if he asks the same thing three times, the answer is still no. I didn’t see anybody, I’m telling you.

Well then, you’d better take good care of yourself, the pastor shouted, and keep your eyes peeled, though it was not clear whether Balter should be wary of the two men or of the tramp they were looking for.

They turned around, plodding back on the sand again for a good distance, and picked up their bicycles practically on the run.

Balter slowly lowered his shoulders, which made him feel the shirt in his hand; slowly he put it on. He watched indignantly as the two men were swallowed up by the low-lying dirt road.

When they disappeared he looked furtively around his garden and took off for his house. As if expecting that the sight of well-tended plants would reassure him that it was nothing, everything was all right, peace still reigned.

In this peaceful state, noisy with the rushing of blood and the buzzing of bees, he saw that the cabbages were nicely acquiring their round shape and the potato stems were beginning to dry in their evenly filled rows. Tied to their stakes, heavy green tomatoes in tight, darkly fragrant bunches were getting ready to turn red in a few days; looking at it all, he felt an aversion bordering on disgust. His plot of land had a very good exposure, the soil was favorable because it rested mainly on former tideland, and the barren sand hills, which the low-lying dirt road sliced in half, blocked the wild winds, absorbed the fire of the sunshine, and after sundown poured out the accumulated heat. He had to grab something quickly, anything. He went about his business as he did on any other day.

But he was seized by an urge to escape. To lock up his house and vanish in the fields. The air was coming to life; a merciless struggle was taking place in the heart of his peace.

He could no longer find his bearings.

All right, his wife hadn’t died, but his senses hadn’t tricked him completely. Somebody had been lurking for weeks. Tramp, they call his son now. And if they only knew what sort of scoundrel he really was. At the same time he couldn’t wholly disregard his supposition regarding his damn wife’s sudden death.

Why can’t he evict her from his heart; why can’t he forget her forever.

His dead mother was also shouting into his thoughts, though she was usually soft-spoken.

He grabbed a round wicker basket that he had filled with string beans early that morning. The midday heat and nervous fever conspiring against him had accomplished their mission. The beans were particularly beautiful, long, butter-yellow, and tender. The richness of his garden was due partly to the high level of the groundwater and partly to the basin behind the sand dunes, chiseled to barrenness, which filled with thick vapor all night long and sometimes even in the morning.

There were several varieties of harmful pests, but nothing ever dried out, not even in the worst heat waves. He took the basket inside and dropped it on the floor.

The house, built of planed wood, had two small areas, one room and a kitchen; a small alcove opened from the kitchen, no larger than a closet, which he used as a pantry. He tore open the pantry door. Of course, he found no one behind it. Empty bottles and jars of preserved fruit lined the shelves, strawberry, currant, and gooseberry; he was particularly proud of these. In the stifling dimness the cellophane covers on the jars were tight as drums.

This was about the time he usually prepared his lunch; and he wanted to put up the string beans for winter while they were still fresh.

He could not find his small knife.

Military order reigned in his new house. Everything was bare and cheerless. As if a putrid belch had come up into his mouth from a queasy stomach, he cursed the disorder and filth he found here but blamed not himself but a third person for everything, including the missing knife he could not find. He saw the furniture and other objects as dusty, downright grimy.

They stole my little knife, he said to himself. He saw that the fingers of his strong hands were filthy; crescent moons of thick dirt sat under each nail.

Everyone but he would have seen these objects as clean, if a bit worn. He had collected them from various places over many years.

The small knife he was looking for now, for example, he had stolen from his own house in Budapest.

To free himself of the humiliation, he tore the shirt off his body.

But he no longer wished for calm and he did not think he had gone mad either.

The sound of his every movement was as if somebody or something else had produced it. A prowling wild beast or the murderer spying on him. He tore open the door to the room, and its dusty emptiness hit him like a blow. There was the strictly made-up bed; a draft ruffled the faded linen curtain on the sunny window.

He threw his pants on the bed; they landed with the legs spread.

His mother cried out in his ears.

This is not right for you, my son.

In his drenched apron, leaning against the wooden washtub, he held the scrub brush in his hand, puffy from lye; not right for you, not right for you, son. Of course it wasn’t right for him, but how in hell would his mother know what was right for him.