Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Sunshine was still glowing at the top of the pines’ loose branches; dark twilight covered the tall trunks. The forest breathed cool air and exuded warmth; the valley trapped the powerful scent of resin. Curled into herself, she slept on her side like an embryo turned woman. Her lips were like a languid purple moth, her hair a black dense forest of rings and curls. Her fingernails all but glowed. Her temple rested on her clasped hands, her tightly clamped bony knees were pulled all the way to her bosom and her thin arms pressed her small, firm, aggressive, and pointed breasts together so that one large nipple spilled out over her arm: raw pink, raw clotted purple on the bluish-brown skin.

He dared to graze these places with his eyes only twice, but he had to return to them; he wanted to return a third time. One more time, the last time, as if making a vow to the bespectacled woman and to himself.

He felt grateful, very grateful that he could sit here, because from here, from this higher place, he could see directly into the shady warmth of the Ethiopian girl’s dark lap, and her labia were open. And nobody gave him permission for this, for something like this there is no permission anywhere in the world. For some reason, the entire vision was like a forgotten summer afternoon to which, against his own wish, he would like to return.

He imagined seeing the luxuriant pubic hair.

Then all at once many things began to happen, frustrating Döhring’s anticipations and making it impossible to keep track of them.

The older man, who was bald and muscular but already tending to pudginess, and whose entire body was covered with graying hair, was stroking himself with ostentatious indifference, as though his hand had merely gone astray, or as if he were scratching himself lazily while impassively staring out into the great wide world. As if he were not trying to charm Döhring, but was merely looking over and past his head to where an extremely interesting occurrence was attracting his attention. He started his activity on his chest muscles, a spot to which he regularly returned. He kept filling himself with air, literally inflating his hairy chest, and then tried to stretch and elongate his thickset body.

At any rate, he tried to look like something other than what his natural endowments allowed him to be.

He had some kind of image of himself and he hoped to share his self-adoration with someone.

He was enacting how voluptuous it must feel to run one’s fingers over and squeeze a lean bundle of muscles such as his. Only this bundle of muscle was no longer so lean, in fact it was rather fatty. He pinched his nipples, shuddered, which must not have been very pleasant though the little nipping movement was very sensual. Then slowly down to his waist, following the inner rim of the hip bone along his pulled-in abdominal wall, just barely brushing the loins, the length of the thighs, then suddenly in, between the thighs, and with his hands, after they met, lifting his testicles. He did this too as if by accident; he wouldn’t mind airing them out a bit, and it would only be a physical necessity that along with the testicles his semi-erect prick would also rise.

He let it go, let it fall back, showing off its weight and size, let it appear prettier, larger, and stronger than it was.

And while he was obviously offering up himself, or his services, or one really couldn’t tell what he was offering or to whom, it became clearly visible that he did not care about anyone, that he was alone in this entire universe.

His hands in parallel motion, he was working on various parts of his body, demonstrating that pleasure was determined by the sensitive pads of the fingers. He was like a butcher sampling his own flesh who could not have enough of the first-rate merchandise, and was offering it rather nervously because it was very perishable and he should mete it out as soon as possible and as much of it as possible, to anyone. Just then, the crouching white giant shoved something, maybe a camera, back into the red bag already stuffed with all kinds of odds and ends, towels and clothing. He sprang up as if launched by his own feet and at the same time let out a kind of war cry that sounded something like just you wait, you’ll be sorry, which made his friend with the delicate body look back at him from the water.

Döhring couldn’t understand why the people lying on the shore paid no attention to these two.

The shout reverberated a long time over the water.

Why was he the only Peeping Tom.

At the same time, the female athlete turned to her side on the pink towel, showing off her intrusively strong body and fiery red pubic hair. As though she hadn’t done any of this, she calmly closed her book, used both her hands to take off her glasses and place them on the book.

Because she has had enough, time’s come for action. She was obviously preparing to do something. Her eyes captured and held Döhring’s uncurbed glances, without grinning at him unpleasantly.

Döhring was sure she was a shot-putter; he could see her stretching herself long as she threw a discus or javelin. Maybe she’s a coach and the Ethiopian girl is a short-distance runner. It seemed as if he could clearly see the two women’s intertwined lives on the sports field.

Then he was rebuking himself, my God, where have I got to.

His whining stepmother talked like this. Döhring had to call her Mother and he did not hate her less or have less contempt for her than for his father.

No, he couldn’t possibly have anything to do with people like that.

And that sounded like a paternal prohibition.

No matter how much he hated them, he still talked to himself in their voices. But maybe the country boy who had lost his way was talking now, the one who didn’t know what to do with so many strangers around him, could not make sense of so many strange gestures and movements popping up everywhere, could not even understand his own impressions.

Yet it did not occur to him that he should get up and go somewhere else; nobody was forcing him to grumble or be upset.

To soothe his agitated conscience, he told himself that although he was seeing these peculiar beings, and all their terrible doings were clear to him, he was not one of them. He was merely observing them from a respectable distance, did nothing more than peep at them, and therefore his parents had nothing to worry about. He was behaving properly.

But peeping was also forbidden.

And suddenly he realized that his conscience was not his own.

He was enthralled by these naked people who pretended to be indifferent to one another. He was discovering a part of the world he had been familiar with for a long time, yet he did not reckon with its reality and proximity. At last he was being allowed to peek behind a familiar picture that purported to be compulsively innocent and harmless, where every gesture seemed crude, coarse, nay, disgusting; yet for now he had nothing with which to oppose these crude forces except his own pretenses. For the first time in his life, he discovered in himself the eternal, incurable, and hateful deceiver, whom he despised in his parents and because of whom he had harbored so much resentment against them that he could not even talk to them anymore.

Because of whom he had to escape, no matter how much it hurt not ever to have had a home, and not ever to have hoped to have one. And here he was now, sitting inside the painting, forced to face the dread of nothingness.

But this dread could not frighten him away from his indecent gaping; on the contrary, inside, he was jumping with joy.

At last here it was, he had found it, the world does have such an indecent place, and it must be his place too. This is where everybody brings their deceptions and this is where they show them to one another.