Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

But this came as a hovering, uneasy feeling, something that seems to be on the tip of one’s tongue, not fully formulated, then vanishing and reappearing out of reach.

Of course I understood a lot of it, she thought bitterly, laughing at her old naïve self, at the entire brutal prewar world that had pretended to be so innocent, clinging to strict traditions and rules of etiquette. And all the while she pondered what the subject of their conversation might have been on that snowy evening, what indeed, and whether she should ask the leather-capped cabbie, who probably had not been an ÁVH but an Arrow Cross man but in either case was very chatty.

The help shouldn’t be chatty.

He was an Arrow Cross man, yes, now she was certain of it, an Arrow Cross man who later became an ÁVH man.

Geerte’s strong arms were again around her waist. It’d be better not to get into a conversation.

She was looking at this male head and she was looking at this memory of hers, observing the fleshy lips closing in on her nipple, tugging it away from her fingers. She released it, let her take it.

As if it were not pleasure but a noble deed to quench the thirst of these deformed lips. The gesture of nourishment acquired new meaning in this carnal pleasure. She sank the thrust-out fingers of one hand into Geerte’s woolly red hair; she thrust the other hand, a little clumsily, as much as the stiff, striped cotton dress allowed, and a little bashfully, between Geerte’s thighs. Still, for a little while she wanted to feel as if she felt nothing. She deflected her senses with thoughts, or rather, she seemed busy with something other than what she was experiencing directly.

What she was thinking about was the question of how the painting of a given era could deflect itself from the horrors of that era.

And that is why several minutes may have passed before she let out a loud moan.

She was thinking so hard about all this that she did not see the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck, did not notice when she had gathered the pills from the ribbed rubber mat and when she took her place again on the taxi seat. It was very painful to immerse herself in this old pleasure. She even berated herself for having torn herself away from Geerte. Though the years had passed the memory had not faded. She should have stayed there.

If not in Groningen then in Venlo, where they traveled together with the children. Then, maybe her little girl would still be alive. Why can’t one stay in the moment.

Why must one leave?

Or why doesn’t one know which moment to stay in and never move until one dies.

Besides, the cabbie shouted cheerfully toward the backseat, I don’t mind telling you I hear a lot of things from my son. He was one of the professor’s favorite students, and he’s been to your apartment many times.

To this day he goes there often.

I see, responded Lady Erna, who wasn’t especially fond of her husband’s favorite students and found interesting only those who visibly disliked or positively detested him.

Now I understand, she added with a certain reserve. And what’s the name of the young man, she asked. I mean the name of your son.

He could not go back during the next few days because of the steady quiet rain. Or rather, it was as if the fog were drizzling. It did not want to stop. On days like these, the city fills up with vapors, heavy clouds settle on it, and under the wheels of automobiles the rain sizzles steadily.

Döhring waited for it to stop.

Standing by the window, he was staring at the slowly bursting bubbles of the raindrops. He was gazing at this simple phenomenon obeying the simple laws of physics, and drew the conclusion that he had not gone out of his mind. He could endure this. Perhaps he’d manage to separate his continuous dream from his normal life. At least he had left no trace of anything; he’d cleaned up everything. He hoped there’d be no consequences. No telephone rang. Even if it did, he wouldn’t pick it up, because the state of emergency still made his soul shudder. He did not go downstairs to check the mail. He wouldn’t find anything but junk mail anyway. Before stepping out of here into the hostile outside world, he wished to return to that rational self of his that perhaps never existed.

Now he knew.

He took out a map to study his innocent outings of the previous days.

Maps are rational objects; they deal with physical differences based on observation and are checked with precise measurements.

The body of water he had discovered on his first day in Berlin was probably Teufelssee, Devil’s Lake.

He found a similar small lake on the map called Pechsee, Pitch Lake, probably because of its dark water. He couldn’t decide with absolute certainty which of the two was the one he had been to. On his second excursion, however, he definitely rode as far as the Havel river, next to the Grunewald Tower. While studying the interconnected blue spots of lakes and rivers on the map, he had an irresistible urge to go to the water, to be on the move, to swim, to feel his limbs.

Let the water wash the night out of his skin.

Not to smell the shit anymore.

There were other kinds of lake on the map. But the rain would not let up. His aunt’s top-floor apartment was just under the roof. It had only five rooms and only one of these was disproportionately larger than the rest. An empty, evenly bright, barn-size room that the sun never penetrated. One wall, sectioned by densely set high windows, faced north, and from here one could step out on a balcony larger than the floor space of the entire apartment.

The rain clouds were coming from the north, hopelessly and heavily, one could not see their end. The northerly sky was divided by the dark stripes of the vertical structural beams. He could see far above the roofs, but nothing else. For security reasons, the solid white brick baluster had been built high enough to make leaning over it impossible. Originally, this is where his aunt wanted to store her collection of paintings, but then she and her agent found the bank in Düsseldorf more secure. Only a single, rather insignificant item from the entire collection was placed on the empty white wall, under the dark-colored, arced beams.

It felt as if one were standing in an empty church nave. And what was interesting was that on the painting itself there was nothing to be seen but white walls and beams, a fire and colorful flames, or something like that.

On this long and eventless rainy morning Döhring purchased those small, translucent underpants he has been wearing ever since. More precisely, that’s when he bought the first two, a purple one and a sulphur-yellow one.

Later he returned to the store several times to buy himself a turquoise one, two different red ones, more in black, green, purple, and even silver. And they were not inexpensive. He was sorry he had to leave all the others in the store. Buying them had become a mysterious passion that he was trying to keep a secret from himself.

Already on the very first occasion, he would have wanted to purchase a pink one but didn’t dare, not then and not afterward. There were colors he simply denied himself.

Had he bought it, he might as well have changed his skin.

But that was exactly what he didn’t dare do; instead, he bought the others.

Perhaps, originally, he did not even go out that morning to go shopping. He did not need any underpants. In general, he did not buy things for himself; he wasn’t even present when shoes were bought for him. His stepmother, a passionate shopper, especially at big sales, bought everything for him, and from his aunt he kept receiving finer items. This apparently sensible division of labor between the two women was also a kind of sly competition. One flaunted her frugality, the other her generosity. He had to do nothing to maintain and enlarge his wardrobe, and he wasn’t really interested in it; he had grown used to being cared for by the two women. Perhaps this is what made him so dependent and was also the reason he eventually let himself be seduced by a third one.