Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

But Balter’s hearing could not reconcile itself with the dense silence, with its personal characteristics, as it were, because he was counting on flitting and crackling sounds, on footfalls and familiar rhythms, on his son’s huge build, large beefy nose, and grinning face sporting a Hungarian mustache.

He was familiar with the logic and mental state of crime but not that of insanity.

That night, Dávid was visited by his dead father.

There was no image to match Balter’s feelings. And the same thing happened to Dávid that night. His experiences and expectations did not match the reality of the apparition. With his breathing, he whimpered audibly into the impossibility of his feelings. At which point he could not separate his desire from his dread, and this was the happiness necessary for confirmation. He could still hear his own breathing. The shadows in the armchair did not move. He was able to straighten up in front of it, a move that instantly emptied the chair, however.

It was not empty because no one had been in it before.

Rather, it became empty as if only now something was missing from it. The peculiar quality of this emptiness, like a blow to his body, annihilated his hope and, by the same measure, increased his fear.

He had to flee from the accursed room, which had once been his father’s nursery.

And Balter’s apricot fell when the tramp shifted.

Then he also remembered he had to get started, couldn’t stay with Imre’s aspic and let the greasy food sober him up. He remembered sliding his arm down the woman’s downy neck to take a heavy breast into his hand and weigh it while his other hand slid into the crack of her ass and then farther to the front. He had no time to waste, had to pull the woman’s hot cunt onto his stiff cock. He took into his mouth the muscular curve that takes the neckline to the shoulder and nibbled on it. Meanwhile she was pulling her stockings off her feet, in which there was a little indecent resistance. He knew her cunt would be sopping wet and hot but did not yet dare dip his fingers in it.

Instead he let go of the tasty mouthful and whispered into her ear, come to me, for the sake of your mother’s good goddamn lord, come here, I’ll give it to you.

But the woman shook her head in protest, which Balter could not see but he felt resistance in her body.

Stop fucking around with your pants, damn it. I want you to do it this way, the woman said soberly and from a great distance.

The forgotten sensation of having to do it this way hit his brain like a nightstick blow to the skull. Like the blows that, even if not of his own will, he had dealt to other people’s heads. If fate gives one enough time, one learns how to remember. Defenselessly he received the inappropriate image. What he saw was a rubber nightstick though it was his cock that became erect by remembering; involuntarily he buried his face in his hands. Not to see what he could not possibly feel any more strongly. He stayed like that for a long time. There was nothing to be done about it; the enjoyment of the horrible image sought refuge in his loins. And Dávid stopped in the doorway of the adjacent room. This was the pastor’s office. This was where the learned pastor held his Bible studies, from which the local youth had been staying away of late, and where during the winter prayer week members of the thinned-out congregation gathered. Although the pastor thought he had put his heart and soul into his job, nobody was interested, not even the ones who showed up. A few old benches stood along the walls, an ancient creaky harmonium, and the old rosewood writing table that, with the matching bookcase, had allegedly been brought here from the legacy of the pastor’s maternal great-grandmother Duchess Odescalchi of Braccano, Italy, and of which he was very proud. Holding his arms defensively before him, in the darkness slightly illuminated with stripes of blue moonlight, Dávid was hurrying on his way to the exit when his grandfather spoke up behind him, asking where he was going at such an hour.

To take a leak, Dávid replied.

Why are you going outside, the pastor asked quietly from near the harmonium. Why aren’t you going to the toilet as you’re supposed to.

The boy did not answer these questions; he felt for the key and turned it in the lock. He could not say to his grandfather that he had met his father and was now following him on his otherworldly travels.

When he stepped outside and carefully closed the door with its trembling glass panes behind him, he was not disappointed. The shadow that had disappeared from the armchair was not leading him on, but it stayed behind him and followed him. He had no doubt: it could only be he. He had not even been a schoolchild when they’d executed his father, and the family knew nothing about it. He did not dare reach into the fly of his pajama pants, how could he do that in front of someone. Even when they found out they did not talk of it; they had not been allowed to know the charges against him. The wound was open in all of them; the pain remained.

Dávid did not know that one could urinate in the presence of one’s father without hesitation, that some boys very proudly urinate together with their fathers, making awareness of their manhood all the stronger.

He’s your father, you stupid boy.

At this invitation, he took a long deep breath of air filled with the mist coming off the river and, feeling quite relieved after urinating for a good long time, walked slowly back into the shadows. His feet took him along the lukewarm brick pavement that led to the shed, but he did not stop there. The light carried and guided him, as well as a secure feeling that his unknown father was with him. Until he turned onto the footpath leading out of the parsonage garden onto the low-lying, molehill-ridden pasture at the edge of the village.

He could not continue on, because realizing where his feet might take him turned him into an immovable knot. He had vowed several times that he would never again go to the pond. He remembered this vow, as if seeing the madman waiting for him there, making him come. Dávid did the simplest thing in the world; he dropped to his knees, pressed his forehead to the ground, and with both arms protected his head from the moonlight and his imagination.

Actually, the madman wasn’t waiting for anybody. Wearing Balter’s shirt and Dávid’s pants, he was perched on a forked branch of the apricot tree. He sat on one of the large crotches and thrust his feet up against another. Now and again he reached out for an apricot to quench his thirst, and then a number of other apricots would fall to the ground. He was quite comfortable; he could even support his back. He followed Balter’s every tactical move with great interest, and watched as he sat, sunk into himself, his face buried in his hands.

They both felt on the nape of their necks the lunatic hooked face of the quarter-moon.

It was not a delusional feeling; this is how the figure stood before Dávid, wearing the stolen pants, challenging him.

To go on, to go out to the pond where the madman was waiting for him.

Never, he kept repeating to himself, as if speaking to the moonlight and, via the moonlight, to his dead father. As if wanting to convince his father that everything would be all right and he would not yield to temptation. He had rattled the man’s madness when their glances had slid into each other’s and, like two oil stains, blended into one. It was so good to speak in his own language that the shirt in his hand hadn’t mattered at all. He did not protest; his mouth simply stayed open in astonishment when the shirt disappeared from his hand and then, along with it, the mate of his own watchful countenance. Dávid ran away with it. When the noise of running had died away, silence ruled in the thicket. He stared at his extended hand, his face grew pensive, almost somber, and then he started toward the water as if looking for his lost mate. Dávid’s pants were too tight and too short on him. He waded into the peaceful water up to the top of his thighs and still he was looking at his empty hands. On his pimply face appeared that certain smile indicating that he knew what he had to do.