Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

No problem, the athlete shouted back; she said, as if rushing to his help with placating excuses, how could he have, when he had taken such a fall with his bicycle. It’s a good thing his injury wasn’t serious. But now it’s time to decide whether to stay or go, because he probably wouldn’t want to expose himself to the unpleasantness of being considered an intruding Peeping Tom.

While the two of them were shouting to each other, the Ethiopian girl awoke with a start.

If he were accused of something like that, Döhring called back to the woman, almost cheerfully, he would most vigorously protest.

They were so steeped in their altercation, each of them enjoying the dual militancy, that Döhring could not move from his spot and could not resist stealing stealthy glances at the awakening girl. As if to prove that though he knew he should be leaving, he was handing the sportswoman a touchy defeat. At first it seemed that an electric shock, a current, was coursing through the brown body; the sharp elbows trembled, as did the closed knees pulled up to the breasts, and small spasms traveled along each thin limb.

She sincerely hoped, shouted the sportswoman, they would not have to go that far.

From the water, even strokes could be heard; the two friends were swimming side by side in all likelihood.

He hoped so too, Döhring shouted back, grinning.

As if he were shouting, I’m through looking at your ugly red cunt, and now one last time, shamelessly, indecently, despite all your warnings, I shall take a good look at this girl’s, I don’t even know what, her everything, so that I won’t ever forget it.

And this was very important, because he was fond of images. Images followed him or, more correctly, he followed and cherished images within himself. His memory had a large secret archive in which he indiscriminately stored everything that touched him. The waking of the Ethiopian girl: no matter how much he would have liked to conjure up this image, however hard he insisted it reappear, within a few hours the image faded so much that regardless of where he might begin or on what he might concentrate, neither from her thin limbs nor from her sharp features could he make the total image come together again. Even though he could have described her every move individually and in detail. The way she withdrew her clasped hands from under her head, or slowly raised her eyes to take in the world, spread her arms and straightened her long legs, yawned so contentedly that for long seconds her limbs froze into motionlessness within the movement. Like a swelling coxcomb, the pitch-black, curly pubic hair slowly became erect. Her body was like an overstretched shiny bow. Even a natural shout issued from her yawn.

To which the athlete responded by turning lazily to her side, getting up on her knees, and greeting the girl with a smile. In the sudden movement her breasts collided; she remained in that pose, eyes spellbound, as the awakening body before her trembled with a series of tremors. Following one tremor, the girl raised her arms above her head and, stretching even further, rolled onto her back and then relaxed completely. The athlete woman leaned closer, bent down and covered her, as if to whisper something in her ear, her two pendulous breasts swinging forward and touching the girl’s coffee-brown skin.

Döhring even thought of quickly undressing.

She may have actually whispered something, but she definitely planted a kiss right on the girl’s ear which made the long, thin, bony body grow taut. That very evening, Döhring was already unable to conjure up these images. He heard the girl’s yawning shout, but no matter how he tortured his memory, he could not see her. He would have liked to see the girl, the coxcomb-like hair on her mound of Venus; instead, he saw the other woman’s muscles, abused by much training, her squashed, swinging breasts and fire-red pubic hair.

That evening, as he was trying to fall asleep, he had to be satisfied with these images.

The next day, however, during his morning run he decided to go back there and take off his clothes. He figured he should arrive a bit earlier to be sure to find them. He did not notice that he wasn’t thinking of the two women but had the two men in mind. When, on that first day, he had finally left on his bike and looked back toward the lake one last time, he’d seen that the two figures were engaged in intimate conversation on the far shore. He looked toward the far shore to avoid looking at the solitary man who was still working on himself on the near side of the lake and who followed the bicycle with his eyes until it disappeared among the trees. And if Döhring was curious to know what bound people together and how lasting this bond might be, or whether this bond saved them from a howling loneliness to which others fall prey because of their nature, then he would rather identify with the Ethiopian girl or the dark-skinned man than with the red-haired athlete woman or the white giant. Döhring was shy, reticent, but by no means bashful or especially prudish. If he noticed someone watching him, he did not dare return the look, because he dreaded the contact, though he liked to expose his body to the eyes of others.

That in itself would not oblige him to do anything.

But he rode his bike into the woods in vain, because he did not find the fabulous little lake.

He didn’t even find the wider promenade from which he had strayed and which could have led him back to the lake. He rode across unfamiliar clearings, wound up in unfamiliar woods. It was a bright clear day, sharp breezes vibrated in the air; it was a pleasure to pedal hard. As if he had narrowly escaped a life-threatening situation. As if he were missing out on something, but compensating himself with the relief of an escape. Finally, as a substitute, he found a large body of water, a lake or river, he couldn’t tell, whose sunny banks were filled with people lying about. He didn’t have his swimming trunks with him, and he did not really feel like mingling.

It seemed to him that the large water had some movement to it.

He parked his bicycle, sat down at a respectable distance from the bathers and watched them, not so much the children squealing in the water or the adults playing ball among large beach baskets, but the water, the strange mass of air, the slow-moving sailboats, and the entire faraway high sky. This was the public world; he, however, was already familiar with the secret one. He had no doubt as to which one he should belong. The air was not free of vapors near the water, it was late afternoon, but above the greenish-blue woods on the opposite shore the disk of the sun was still very much present in its glowing yellow dazzle. And in the sky, very slowly, three tiny clouds were making their way toward the sun. Much time went by before one little cloud slid into the sun; everybody waited for it to move on.

But it would not go away.

Rather, the other two clouds slid into it. First, only the people who wanted to sunbathe sat up, looking about and asking what would happen now. A little later parents fished their children out of the water because a wind came up and it was no longer pleasant.

People had not realized that summer was over, but they began to gather their belongings.

Slowly, silence reigned and whiteness; and everything was sweet weightlessness.

First, they sat him on a bench, and then they helped him stand up. They argued a little as to what to do. He let them, did not care about anything, though he found it a bit embarrassing that it took two people to take care of him. They took off his coat. If he could have spoken, he would certainly have protested, because he feared for his coat. It wasn’t that good a coat, but without it he wouldn’t have gotten this far. They threw it aside. Freed his long arms from his shirt, loosened his pants around the waist. The priest who said it would be easier sitting up was right.