Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

He could not keep an eye on everything from the door of his house or from the window of his small room. Because of the grapevines and the larger plum and morello trees, he could not see the lower-lying areas. Darkness made his ears the keepers of his attention.

A little later the moon’s pale-yellow waning crescent rose, but it only increased the chaotic picture before his eyes. He could not see into the depths of the long shadows. By midnight the air cooled off and mist covered most things, though the starry sky remained clear and the moon glowed blue in it. He took a firefly for an approaching lamp.

Nothing else happened during that beautiful night.

He had had enough experience in keeping awake.

Some prisoners screamed in their sleep; a good guard could not relax his vigilance, because this was when their charges would go for the pitcher, which meant to be fucked in the ass, or possibly get killed.

On this thirsty night, he remembered for the first time the first night of his marriage.

But he did not keep his mind on it and failed to notice the direction in which his thoughts were straying. As if he had found the source of his life’s bitterness. He looked at what the two of them were doing to each other, but before he could become fully absorbed in his terrible shame, he had to think of his desirable sister-in-law, of course. When for the first time they were finally alone in the kitchen of the super’s apartment on the mezzanine floor on Teréz Boulevard. Because of the heavy downpour he did not have to worry about anyone.

At the very same time, Dávid was lying on his stomach under a light blanket, knees pulled up, and had just opened his eyes in his dark room. Through cracks in the closed shutters, cold light entered in loose stripes. He saw a high, plowed autumn field in the wrinkled rug. He was listening to the rhythmic airy music of crickets and to the tipcarts’ hollow creaking in the distant quarry.

The cavernous easy chair stood in the middle of the freshly plowed meadow.

Protruding from beneath the shadows of his clothes strewn on the chair, the arching armrest was like a raised fist of a hand bent at the wrist. He knew he was seeing the armrest, yet he seemed to feel the eyes of the invisible human figure sitting in the chair.

A shudder glided across the surface of his skin but he could not move.

A man’s resting arm was attached to the apparition’s fist, and a strong shoulder to the arm. Dávid raised his pelvis a little to ease the pressure on his bladder. He should go to the toilet. But in this condition he could not entrust the sight of his body to the eyes of the ghostly figure.

The first thing that occurred to Balter was that the woman was undressing by the chair, which had been kicked aside. While, in fact, he was trying to figure out which of his moves he should change on this most painful wedding night to keep from ruining his marriage forever.

He began to ruminate on this, for the first time in his life, yet what he was seeing was his sister-in-law taking off her bloomers and later letting her skirt down. Which Balter thought was heartrending, and in his brain the blood simply stopped moving; he nearly lost his self-control. This wily woman was curving her back so as to offer the least surface of her skin to the yellowish light. Only then did she lift over her head the pink satin slip glittering wildly in the light. Her big firm ass slipped out from under it, followed by her undulating spine.

As though the big slut was struggling with her meager feminine modesty.

He also remembered the bones sticking out of the half-eaten aspic on the plates.

Gyula, stop gobbling up Imre’s aspic.

She was yakking too as she took off her clothes, as if she had been his mistress for twenty years.

But I will, dearest Aranka, I won’t leave a single mouthful for Imre, you can be sure.

She didn’t wear a garter belt but elastic stockings, the kind old women wore.

All I’m saying is leave him a plateful, that’s all.

Not only will I leave nothing for him, I’ll chew, look, everything off the tiniest little bones too.

The woman stuck two fingers under the elastic while with showy bashfulness she pressed her thighs together.

You’re doing that so I can’t see your pussy, eh, Balter yelled at her from the table, his mouth full. But he continued to chew and to tear off more bread.

The woman did not reply but with her hands and arms kept stroking her long curly pubic hair to keep him from seeing her pussy, which he wanted to see so badly his brain nearly exploded with his boiling blood.

Then for the sake of your mother’s ass, at least eat it properly, with the marinated onion. You shouldn’t leave him any of that either.

Balter was panting as he inhaled her powerful smell pervading the kitchen.

I’ll take a look at yours, don’t you worry, I will, for the sake of your mother’s good goddamn lord, he yelled at her, and his body kept swelling from the urge to take his revenge. I’ll surely fuck this one, he thought.

Meanwhile, though, he did not leave the aspic tray.

They both had been drunk for quite a while and he wanted to sober up a bit so he could fuck her with a cool head.

Then he asked her was she ashamed, seeing how she kept hiding her thighs.

Or maybe he asked her that before.

He remembered that in response to his question the woman shook her freshly curled dyed blond mane as a horse would when breaking into a full gallop. She looked back at him sharply, her teeth flashing as she laughed, and then slapped her foot on the chair, which made the ample flesh of her thigh tremble. Leaning on the chair with all the weight of her compact body, as though not caring about the man at all, she rolled the elastic stocking down to her ankle. The movement meant, who the hell would feel ashamed in front of you. The moment she reached her ankle, her breasts with their swollen nipples swung forward from under her arms and the enormous apple of her bottom opened.

The silence became thick indeed and remained so for the rest of the night.

At least there were some cells from which a heavier silence emanated, where they were preparing to do something or were already doing it, though not every activity was to be noticed. No prison guard strictly observed all the house regulations in every case. After all, one has one’s own interests; a prison guard is also a human being, isn’t he. Let them do it, it won’t make him either poorer or richer. At other times he didn’t let them do it, or maybe he knew in advance whom they were going to kill and he let them, or whom they would screw in the ass, and he didn’t interfere.

At most, he would look surprised in the morning when his relief found a dead body.

He always sensed things correctly, even though he didn’t always know exactly what.

As to the nature of a silence, Balter could not be fooled.

As it was, the tramp had been sitting in Balter’s tree since four in the afternoon, not too high up, and he too was thirsty but no longer could get away unnoticed. His animal-like attention made the silence tense, which Balter recognized with the concentration of an experienced but helpless man. He had already been sitting there when Balter carefully marked his fallen apricots under the tree.

But Dávid decided to act: he rolled onto his side and, preparatory to getting up, stuck his foot out cautiously from under the light summer blanket. After all, the armchair filled with human shadows did not seem hostile. He wanted to anneal himself to his false feeling or expose the feeling as false.

He had to put his courage to the test in the middle of the night. He will not grow up to be a real man unless he passes the test.

He let the chair alone for now; let it hover on top of the furrows in the cold light.