Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

And if this was so, if she was going to betray everything and everyone, then she had better not see what she was doing; she closed her eyes.

But she would not give up, could not accept that there was no way back. When she spoke again, the voice coming from her throat was unpleasant, meant to be used with a disobedient servant.

Geerte, would you mind bringing the pump from the other room.

Their hands met on the wet cloth, and the silver tray rattled slightly at the sudden touch.

Geerte had meant to put the folded garments there because she wanted to free her arms and hands as quickly as she could.

She clasped her arms around Erna’s hips, though she did not immediately draw her close. Her swollen lips, which seemed so strange and out of place in the white face, were quivering.

Please, let me go, said Erna, gasping, feebly.

Her protest would not have been laughable if a man was forcing himself on her. But this was a woman, which made her feel she had no place to run to, no way to escape. Seeing Geerte’s approaching lips, she quickly turned her head aside lest the lips reach her mouth.

As if saying to herself, this won’t do. Which meant that anything was possible.

Something was really breaking through and opening up.

She was standing in such a small space, she had no room to back away. The baby was cooing and perhaps not entirely innocently. She tensed with elemental resistance, but the moment Geerte’s lips touched the skin below her cheekbone, her body went limp. There was no external sign of protest. But it wasn’t the contact of the lips that loosened her — it only turned the feverish shudder into shivering heat and back again — but, rather, feeling each other’s pubic bone strain and pulse through the fabric of their clothes.

But it could not disturb what one might call inner sensation or sober thinking.

She thought she saw more clearly than ever.

From a distance, she heard the baby cooing, the dim thud of horses’ hooves on the tree-lined path, her carriage flying between patches of light and shadow. One protuberance registered on the throbbing other as if it were within its own rhythmic beating; that was why each felt the other’s body pulsing through their clothes. The earth in Jászhanta is dark, heavy sand that becomes clumpy in the spring rains and condenses in the summer heat. Luckily I haven’t lost my mind yet, she thought to herself. She found some comfort in her alertness. Perhaps it was Geerte’s heartbeat, or her own, that she heard as thudding hoofbeats on the sand.

For the first time they felt each other in a way that was inseparable from their feelings for each other. As though she were observing from afar and would not dare experience her own findings, while the other person could no longer see out of herself. That was the difference between them. Or as though it wasn’t she who was feeling the other woman inside her but her husband, of whom she was constantly and not baselessly jealous. As if in contact with the other woman’s pubic bone she’d have to feel her own, yet as if not she but a man were thrusting against her.

At last she has the chance to feel what her husband feels, this man, these men, and to experience her own desires in their stead.

In her fear, she called him by his name, István, as if summoning him, the only one, asking for his help. She exchanged herself for the only man whom she had come to know through her body and to whose two children she had given birth. Which immediately reassured her that she loved him.

I love him, I love him, he is the one I love, no matter what happens. In reality, it wasn’t the woman she loved, the one she was now clasping more forcibly than the woman was hugging her back. This will turn into a mere episode in her life, she need not take it seriously. However, she hadn’t noticed when she had embraced the woman, so while her consciousness must be functioning well, she might not be aware of her intentions.

And that meant there was another self inside her.

Geerte was the stronger, or her feelings guided her more profoundly and confidently. Almost coarse and very common. The pubic bones thrusting against each other did not come to satisfactory terms. Erna was not certain whether she could want anything this other woman would not want from her. Her search for excuses and her doubts completely occupied her mind, though this did not decrease her pleasure.

At most, she enjoyed the other woman more slyly, enjoyed the way the other woman took pleasure in her.

Geerte had a definite goal.

A fantastic image hovered before her and she was determined to follow it. As if she were trying to force living matter into an ephemeral vision.

Erna pressed her body against Geerte’s, but Geerte thrust back as if to oppose her.

Erna felt clearly that Geerte wanted something. And this aroused a clear image that quickly washed away all other images. Even though the baby was still cooing evenly and by way of warning.

There was only this plump protuberance with its pubic hair when they rolled under each other. Only a kiss was missing to make it all possible; the contact of lips, the full taste and sensation of hollows opening into each other; and it was this lack, all that was missing, which now appeared to her as an image. Precisely what a moment earlier she had denied herself.

No, she shouldn’t deny anything. To open up, like two slow-turning, rippling, muscular snails sticking to each other.

She had long imagined Geerte’s pubic hair as fiery red. If she rolled down, their labia would open and nestle against one another. Her imagination mixed, mingled, and blurred the horizontal with the vertical, lips, kisses, and labia. She saw how Geerte’s opened up at her touch, and how her own opened into the welcoming hollow.

But she could neither move nor roll anywhere, because Geerte’s lips took aim at her tense, resistant neck — a snail, clinging, leaving a shiny film on tree trunks in the dim park; and simultaneously she shoved her back on the chair where she had just finished suckling her baby. The chair wobbled under the double weight, swinging a little on its back legs.

Geerte had a kind of grip on her, and she, for lack of anything to grasp and because of her fear, held on to Geerte, trying to keep them from falling.

She would have liked to laugh.

Then, in a flash, she saw Geerte’s frighteningly agitated face above her; her rounded lips, the darkening countenance, strands of her mad, reddish, scattered curly hair, and many other things ran across her mind. This is war, then, touched by the whirlwinds of horrible plague and conflagration. And now she will say something, now. And just as Erna wondered whether at moments like this every woman is repugnant, as repugnant as men are, the chair tipped over.

She fell, but not only on her back. The back of the chair hit the floor before her head did, which prevented a hard impact, and the two of them, arms around each other, were hurled from the chair. This happened more or less because of Geerte’s clever maneuvering. With their legs intertwined, they rolled onto the rug. The tipped-over chair remained where it fell.

As if they had been running alongside each other for a long time, they panted together.

Did you hurt yourself, my dear, asked Geerte, fearing her clumsiness might have caused Erna pain; her face returned to its former state, her features cleared.

How laughable the whole thing was.

Last time she had been involved in such horseplay was when she was a little girl, and always with boys. Arms around each other, they were lying lazily on the cool floor. And how pretty she is. As though this were happening to strangers whose warmth she could feel.

No, I’m not hurt, she replied, as if breathing words into the other woman’s breath. But you were about to tell me something, Geerte.