Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

She had to get hold of herself.

Haven’t you felt, and this is what I want to ask, as if you’d been thrust out of your own body, that you can’t find your way back to the old one because in the meantime everything has changed. That’s what frightens me, that’s what I’m dreading. Where have I got to, where is the me I was before.

Or who am I.

That’s what I want to ask, is that what you feel.

No, I never felt anything like that, answered Geerte dryly. Everybody must feel it differently.

You probably never got as fat as I have.

No, I didn’t get fat at all. I was surprised by that myself, that I could breastfeed all right from these little breasts and that my child was very satisfied.

Because you’re a good mother. And not unlucky with your body the way I am.

Geerte did not reply, because she thought this sentence was offensive and unjustified. How can somebody so rich and beautiful be unlucky. It was hard for her to take her eyes off the other’s body, because she could not get enough of it. With a single movement of her wrist, she indicated that she was ready to take the blouse and camisole from Erna and have them washed.

She may have been saved; she could leave now.

For that to happen, Erna would first have to stand up, because while sitting she could not pull the blouse or camisole out from the waistband of her tight skirt. She knew she was pretending to get up to do just that, but that was not the reason. In her excitement, her knees were trembling a little, and, although she knew perfectly well what this excitement was all about, she could not believe it.

As if she had but one impersonal passion, and what was happening now was only another, hitherto unknown variety of the same passion.

Had she not been talking to this woman about how, in the absence of physical excitement, she could not give herself to her husband, how she did not even feel the urge to expose herself, how she did not understand why she didn’t; yet now, in its other variation, the urge alarmingly and powerfully made its appearance. It was shaking her knees, and it was impossible to tell whether it was joy or fear. Geerte stood up too, as if to follow Erna in everything, so as not to make her late for brunch at the university, which every month was an important event in the small town’s social life; at least that’s what she thought of her own helpful effort, as she sought, even more desperately than Erna did, to conceal her real intentions. A faint smile appeared on her heavy lips and began to spread, as if to signal the opposite of her thought.

Contempt.

Or something she disliked in Erna’s behavior.

She is rejecting her.

Perhaps the awkward trembling that Erna feels in her body and that is now visible.

What do I care whether it’s visible or not, Erna said to herself. She was definitely angry at Geerte von Groot, now ready to take her leave with that contemptuous smile of hers.

Well, in the end you haven’t told me anything, Geerte. You’ve given me only empty words. You’ve cleverly evaded all my questions, she said, and laughed openly at Geerte.

The laugh was indecent and alluring, because with her lips she broke through her own bashful trembling, even though the lips kept quivering.

Geerte had a good mind to slap her.

Teeth flashing wetly in the mouth are precursors of a bite. She handed over her blouse, and then quickly slipped out of the camisole too.

I did the talking, she said, I always talk too much, and now here I stand before you completely ignorant and defenseless.

But with this reckless little coquetry she was unable to shake the other woman’s seriousness.

Geerte von Groot took the blouse from her and then the camisole, carefully folded one into the other, lifted the mildly starched batiste and the slippery silk, and attentively, slowly, buried her peculiar, flat nose in them as if to seek Erna’s fragrance. Or to kiss the wet spots left by the seeping milk. In the intermingled odors, it was the milk’s fatty bouquet she could not resist.

Not only was it clear what she was looking for but also what boundaries they had crossed.

What are you doing, Geerte, for god’s sake, moaned Erna reproachfully, beseechingly, her modesty deeply insulted; what are you doing, please don’t, yet her entire body, with shuddering waves of hot and cold, showed its approval.

Indignation, beseeching, and reproach emanated from the same pleasure.

In truth she had fallen into another world, and measured against the enormity of this event, the signs she gave of how she was shrieking inside, while everything was ripping, creaking, breaking up around her, were far too faint. Feeble groans and whimpers came from her. As a saw when stuck in knotty wood. She wanted to flee, to protest that what had to happen should not happen, and quite involuntarily her hands flew in front of her breasts.

From the garments raised to her lips, Geerte looked up at her, actually rather surprised. She seemed paler than usual. The curls of her freed, unruly hair were aflame around her gleaming white forehead. Her face turned coarse, grew demanding, aggressive and somber. When she raised her head and began to speak, forcing the sounds up from her chest, when evil appeared in her features — hate, raw terror, a profound desire for revenge — Erna should have turned away; she should have run for her life.

I’d so much like to help you, I can’t tell you, she moaned. I want so much not to hurt you, not in any way.

But I don’t have anything besides my body, nothing, believe me. In what way could I help. I also know so little, nothing really.

And then, in her own language, she screamed.

Oh, nothing, nothing.

The scream, somehow, remained very controlled.

Her face was no longer suffused with the quiet intimacy of a Dutch painting.

Silenced reigned between them.

She saw that this woman was really a criminal. As if the tenderness and kindness she had forced on her had another, hitherto unknown side. This woman is capable of anything. Nevertheless, her desperate scream became stifled in the absolute silence of the house.

She saw the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War on her features. To restrain her, to frighten her away, or to keep her from coming close to her, to steer all events in a different direction, she should have dressed very quickly. Too late, and she knew it. Horses were trotting with her under the elm trees of Jászhanta. Everything is plotted, written in advance. Nothing you can do about it. And none of her things were to hand. She felt cold, her arms and shoulders had goose bumps, her nipples twitched, and she trembled more and more violently.

Why haven’t I noticed how hungry she was. And I’m so starved for her.

No, there was nothing close by she could throw on herself. She was standing in a large cool space; no help anywhere.

There was no god to whom she could pray. A little help came only — at least for a brief moment — from the ability to see herself from the outside, as she stood in this strange, cool, and austerely furnished hall, caught in this truly absurd situation.

And suddenly she hears the baby cooing quietly and contentedly in the adjacent room.

The only object within reach was a wet cloth, lying on a plain silver tray at the edge of a small table. She bent down for it. To use this movement, for lack of anything else, to cover herself. Immediately the hope that she still had a chance to leave this scene gave her some strength. As if an invisible tentacle were reaching over from the adjacent room, a secret power, the binding umbilical cord; then what Geerte had claimed and what Erna had never felt before was true after all.

Her baby was indeed binding her to itself and would hold her back.

I think, she said moaning and stammering and feeling a little stronger, I think it would be best if first I pumped this breast, it’s so full. But she could already tell by her own voice she was no longer master of herself or of anything else; neither did the cooing bind her. Her baby could not hold her back.