Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Hungarians did not work at such hard and ill-paid jobs.

When Tuba joined the team, he had scarcely been older than Jakab was now. The other men hadn’t wanted a Gypsy on their team for anything in the world, but because of his appearance and behavior they just swallowed hard. They did not even discuss among themselves whether they should say no to Bizsók’s choice. As things turned out, Bizsók made an effort to get to know these Gypsies, but he did not really succeed. And he couldn’t even be absolutely sure that his foster daughter, Gyöngyvér Mózes, for whom, at his wife’s urging, he might buy an apartment in Budapest, was not a Gypsy herself. She sang nicely, and it was probably her blood that drove her into the arms of so many different men. Even if she did not bring every one of them home with her. They had found out, or heard, that Ágost Lippay was no longer with her; he’d run away from her while they were abroad somewhere, and now she was with some poet who had helped her to get radio work. In time, Bizsók realized that every Gypsy was different.

But he did not know what to do with this realization of his.

Actually he should have; after all, he had been together with Gypsies in the POW camp. Whether or not she was a Gypsy, he balked at buying the apartment, yet he could not say no to this little woman.

The Gypsies had customs he did not comprehend but instinctively felt it was best not to pry into.

They had heard Gyöngyvér sing on the radio twice, on Sunday mornings, old folk songs, accompanied on original instruments. She bent and stretched her voice and made it tremble. Bizsók did not like it at all.

He liked Vera Jákó more; she sang regular Hungarian songs.

And then there was this Jakab whom the others had sheared bald for some reason.

Bizsók heard what they were doing, saw that the boy’s curls were gone, but he did not interfere.

They’re young, that’s the time for foolishness.

When the giant Tuba joined them one summer, in the great heat Bizsók ordered the men to park the two trailers in the shade of a gigantic, solitary tree. Tuba had just mustered out of the army, along with a friend who was with him and who also was a well-built strapping lad, probably not a Gypsy.

And he said that before the army he had never worked anywhere.

Which made a big impression on the others. Bizsók did not like to remember this.

And how excited this calm boy, this János Tuba, became when he said, right in front of the others, that lightning might easily hit that big tree. He flouted Bizsók’s authority not with opposition but with excitement. If they didn’t steer clear of trees like this, then the lightning wouldn’t steer clear of them. And he turned his dark frowning face away not only from the men but also from the gigantic, solitary tree. He moved among them with his head bent as if his prediction might come true at any moment, as indeed it did two days later.

They never talked of these events among themselves, not then or later. But Bizsók could not forget the centuries-old giant tree splitting in half right before their eyes. How with a frightful clap the brilliant light struck among them, and its flame, sizzling and whimpering with living sap, burst up to the sky raging in the darkness.

And who could tell what Tuba remembered or forgot or what he was thinking about all the time.

The man fascinated everyone, not just with his size and behavior but mainly with his beauty.

What anyone could see with his own eyes was, oddly, the thing everyone chose to keep quiet about. Perhaps it was better that way. Beauty is not something worth talking about with anyone. Bizsók had the reputation of a man who loved fairness and equality. Then why would he concern himself with another man’s looks. Everybody should do his job properly, that was all that counted. Some people believed he was a member of some sect in the Alföld, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Anabaptists. It was rumored that Anabaptists had to immerse themselves, one after the other and stark naked, in the waters of the Tisza or the Túr, at midnight, while other members provided light with tar torches. Of course, the compelling characteristic of a good reputation is that it binds to the person concerned even if that person hasn’t the slightest inclination to be fair, say, or even if the notion of equality goes contrary to his personal interests.

Bizsók treated others with unusual consideration, so his men counted on his considerateness and wouldn’t have allowed him to be inconsiderate.

It was also rumored that men and women did this contemptible obscene thing together in the Tisza and the Túr. And they took young girls there too.

They too could feast their eyes on my old man’s balls.

Bizsók knew that no matter what people believed or said, there was no one who knew more about old machines and motors than he did. Maybe as much as he, but not more. Since there wasn’t a whit of show-off in him, he remained modest about his knowledge. Whenever he became absorbed in his work and the irrelevant sounds receded from him, in the pleasant giddiness of work he caught himself feeling on his hand and on the nape of his neck the weight of his father’s stern regard. He did everything as his father taught him, perhaps the way his father had learned from his father, stealthily watching him work. But he could not hide from his father the new techniques he developed using his own common sense. He had to introduce these methods in defiance of the paternal surveillance, as it were.

Or perhaps it wasn’t that he felt something but that suddenly his neck began to itch and he had to turn around.

These moments became even more peculiar if it turned out a live person was observing him.

In Tuba’s silently observant huge eyes, Bizsók discovered his own hungry childhood face. Whereupon he reverted to being the unpleasant but reliable father, the eternal master who keeps on teaching his sons. He had never bothered with his sons as much as he did with Tuba. And though he wouldn’t officially give his name to his foster daughter for anything in the world, and would have preferred to pay for only half of her apartment, no more, yet he loved her more than he did his boys. Passion is not something a man can will; at most he can be on the lookout for it and make sure it won’t engulf him.

In everything that required extraordinary physical strength, inventiveness, or quick-wittedness, this young man was better.

For example, nobody could light a fire out in the open more adroitly than he. The wind could be blowing, rain falling, no matter how wet the firewood was, his fires burned clear and smokeless. He knew which wind carried rain, how the shade would shift, what the arc of the birds’ flight meant, which well had stale water, and, when necessary, what could be made out of what.

He was also the first to find common ground for trust with strangers, even though everyone was averse to Jews and Gypsies.

Or they’d hardly have arrived at a new place when he’d be bringing to his fellow workers a capful of mushrooms, wild strawberries, and pigeon eggs, and rolling them out for the others.

Bizsók did everything to keep the men from seeing how deeply this touched him.

During the last months, when on quiet evenings, having stared at the dying fire’s random flames for long minutes under the majestic night sky and the stars spread over them, and then amid groans and yawns and cracking of numbed joints they turned in, Bizsók closed his trailer door feeling he had failed to take care of something important.

Perhaps because in his family he had taken care of almost everything.

The fire’s heat and light fed a feeling of closeness among them, but this could be sensed only when the fire died and it became dark and cold and they missed the closeness.