Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

He was struggling with madness, though he did not realize it, because he thought it was all the salesgirl’s fault. Maybe it was desire that hurt so much. He must have believed he was upset by this whole fashion business his aunt dealt with too. Perhaps there were sentences that hadn’t even reached his consciousness. Let the sweet pleasure of fingernails plowing his skin remain. In this bathtub-cum-steamboat that has sprung a leak.

So then, this is the reason I had to come here.

Words and sentences were showering on him.

And then he had to undress, after all. Yesterday, he couldn’t find what he found today. He was left with the desire, with which he always runs aground.

He knew he should somehow rid himself of these thoughts.

The salesgirl saw his deep confusion; in the dimness in which she sometimes spent her ten-hour workdays she had to get used to many surprising things. By profession she was an undergarment seamstress, but she hadn’t worked for long on the assembly line. And for the last few weeks, she had been running the company’s Berlin store. She was cautious, understanding, and much more sentimental than she let on.

And don’t worry either, she said to Döhring, that you might be trying on underpants that others have tried on before you. Don’t. You’ll never have a surprise like that in our store. If for no other reason than each packet is factory-sealed. They are aware how delicate an item male underwear is, and therefore they always offer to first customers the chance to try it on. There’s no risk involved. An item once tried on and not bought will never get back in the sales loop.

She guarantees it.

At last, Döhring managed to comprehend these sentences fully.

Of course they don’t throw the items out, the salesgirl continued hastily, as if to deflect a possible objection. They couldn’t do that in good conscience. These items, after being properly disinfected, find their way to reliable charity organizations.

She kept pouring out her words on him.

Experienced as she was, she worried that he might have too complicated a personality; as to shopping, he might be a difficult case. As she had done before with his body, she now surveyed his face, his not yet fully formed features, and then she added that these superfluous items were forwarded mainly to religious organizations.

Döhring caught on; this wasn’t the first time he’d been taken for a seminarian.

He was fascinated by the woman offering commonplaces and at the same time becoming alarmed and fed up with him. He tried to restrain his emotions somewhat, but he lifted out one of the packets and held it up as if it were evidence in a criminal case. The salesgirl’s darkly shining lips parted; they looked at each other, unaware of what might be happening.

He asked whether they sent the magenta (bishop purple) ones to church organizations. Did they send the canary-yellow ones to blind people.

The salesgirl must have decided either to endure these questions or deliberately to misunderstand them. She brushed across the color line with her clotted-blood-red nails, laughed lightheartedly, and begged his pardon; they had no canary yellow, but she’d be happy to suggest the sulphur-yellow one. She lifted it out of its wrapper and gracefully indicated to Döhring that he might try it on.

Döhring would have to turn around to go behind the folding screen, but he stayed put.

Both colors are in the category of best choice, the salesgirl continued enthusiastically. At first glance, she felt that either one would go well with his skin color.

But why, asked Döhring, in what sense would his skin have anything to do with this.

In the sense of choosing colors, replied the salesgirl patiently and in her most confidential tone, though she sensed that no matter how temperately she spoke, the irritation between them kept increasing; try as she might, she’d be unable to reach the young man’s skin with her voice. Suddenly she could think of no way to diffuse or avoid the tension between them. She felt the way Döhring did: she wanted to attack, jump in, and clash head on. She could no longer help herself with her smile. She did not understand how this situation had developed. She had no idea what she could do with such a crazy man. That was what now popped into her mind.

Although she saw that this was not a man, and wouldn’t become one either, only a boy. The thought persisted. The company in which she had become a leading member in a few short years worked with scientific methods; a psychologist prepared its sales personnel. And the psychologist told them to follow their first impression, always, and blindly. Now, however, this salesgirl was helpless, regarding not this boy but her own judgment. She had the feeling she had erred the moment they met. Some challenge or tension of unknown quality emanated from him, against which the company’s sales philosophy gave her no adequate countermeasures.

To be more precise, it was very confusing that sometimes these countermeasures were completely adequate and sometimes not at all.

Perhaps she was mistaken and this customer was actually a good boy.

She had thought of herself, perhaps not baselessly, as someone who could cope with any need or challenge, even if often with the help of blind good luck, but ultimately she was a meticulous listener. This time, however, something was definitely amiss.

She was among those young and ambitious co-workers who during the last few years had extricated this company from the quagmire of its exclusivity. They were convinced that its exclusivity and idiosyncrasy should not be concealed. As if to say that if people were supposed to forget the company’s reputation in this regard, the company had to forget it first.

Your faultlessness is not the result of surrendering to the hopelessly boring, everyday crowd and enduring the confused torture of all your inhibitions, the shame of your desires — no. Your faultlessness feeds on your ability to gratify all your desires with your head held high. Everyone can come to this conclusion because everyone has well-guarded secrets; one needs only refer to these secrets, and then everyone can be branded with his or her own mark.

The salesgirl rightly felt that for long minutes now she hadn’t uttered a sentence or made a gesture to which Döhring didn’t have a serious objection. She even thought of asking for help because she couldn’t cope with him on her own.

They were standing face-to-face, unmasked, each with a half-completed sentence. Döhring checked quickly whether the salesgirl wasn’t taller than he. But neither of them could have said what they had unmasked in each other or in themselves. As though they had both claimed to see through the other’s game, but their situation was mutual only in that neither of them could really see anything, not of themselves and not of each other. The cause of their feeling good had been the embarrassing ignorance into which they had strayed unsuspectingly and could not get out of. Not only muscles but the soul too cannot tolerate unfinished movements.

Simultaneously they began to speak, as if speedily to talk past their feelings, and at the same time they lowered their arms. With that movement, however, came something unintentionally and disturbingly tempestuous. Döhring in his confusion retreated behind a little-boyish alarm, mumbling that he should be forgiven for never having taken a look at himself with that consideration in mind, while the salesgirl, in a rather harsh and unpleasantly screechy voice, apologized that, oh, she doesn’t mean to appear forward, but ever since this new material arrived, all the sales personnel have been in a feverish professional excitement, which they like to share with everyone. And now that we’re at it, continued Döhring undisturbed, he wouldn’t mind asking why exactly did she think the magenta or sulphur yellow was the best choice for him. He had to ask. A professional should certainly be able to answer him. Seeing he’d had no idea until now what sort of skin he had. In the meantime, however, the salesgirl also went on with what she had started to say; she’d gladly withdraw those suggestions because there were plenty of others where those had come from. They completed simultaneously the two entangled sentences whose meaning they couldn’t really comprehend in the chaotic cacophony.