Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

And to prove that the opposite of this was true, because the situation was indeed embarrassing, they cut into each other’s words again.

Your skin has a certain delicate tone, the salesgirl explained, that looks very good with bright colors. Because there are two basic skin types. At first glance most people would say, for example, that Döhring has white skin. A very fortunate skin type. Its base is indeed white, yet it is dominated by swarthiness. She’d be ready to bet, continued the salesgirl, and she had to be on her guard now not to look anywhere except into Döhring’s eyes, she’d bet anything that sunshine catches his skin on the very first bright spring day, though he’s never had a sunburn.

She asked if this was so.

They looked long into each other’s eyes.

Döhring really didn’t want to answer this question.

If he did, he’d be in big trouble. Then he’d have surrendered to the shameless, calculating world of commonplaces, the world that now stared at him expectantly through the salesgirl’s eyes.

He said to himself, so what if she’s beautiful, I don’t like her.

To avoid dealing with this thought, he took the cellophane packet and walked behind the folding screen. He owed no explanation to this woman. It’s better to consider women of this kind as servants.

During these moments the salesgirl indeed had to behave very cautiously. Some customers sometimes had to be left alone for a good space, while others, on the contrary, had to be kept continually busy, even above the folding screen.

She stepped behind the counter again, pushed a button, and instantly a spotlight lit up the space behind the folding screen which Döhring had just entered. He saw a small table on which he could put the packet, and in the large mirror he could see himself. He saw a gray chair on whose backrest he could fold the items of clothing he would take off. He had no idea why, but the mirror immediately and absurdly distorted his image. It made a spool out of his head, unnaturally elongated his body to the point where neither his figure nor features were recognizable. His image in the mirror made him feel all alone. As though he had not even a body, only a bundle of sensations.

Of course the music had a role in this impression, as did the silence and a few male voices in the distance.

While absentmindedly unbuttoning his shirt, he looked around carefully for the first time. It felt pleasant to be standing on a carpet. He could look out from behind the folding screen with greater confidence. He was getting used to the spacious, soft dimness lined with black and gray. The store’s space was immense and very high; massive, solid, rectangular columns supported and divided it. In the depths of the store, behind the black-painted railing on a mezzanine balcony, a slender figure was bending in various directions among pulled-out and shoved-back drawers. The light barely touched these drawers, painted gray and neatly labeled, which filled the whole of the balcony’s back wall from floor to ceiling. The bending figure was hardly more than an outline. It would pull out a drawer, occasionally two at a time, thrusting them onto a ledge, where it would count something with lightning speed; it was probably making an inventory. Sometimes it jotted down something in an invisible ledger that must have been resting on the balcony railing too. Whenever this happened, the figure glanced down below. Döhring didn’t remove his shirt right away, he wasn’t sure it was appropriate; he began to undo his pants. He was beginning to feel that he had strayed in here by chance, yet here nothing happens by chance. That he was standing in the middle of a scrupulously planned, constantly supervised world.

And he wasn’t alone with the salesgirl, either, as he’d thought at first.

When he realized this, he saw that other people were also moving in the darkness, among the distant lights, other salespersons and other customers.

Heads were hovering above folding screens just as his was, constant prattling, brief shouts and laughter could be heard over the soft music, or they may even have been part of the music, which pervaded and penetrated everything. When he threw his pants on the chair, he glanced at himself in the mirror again. All he could do was stare, he was so surprised. The mirror, which until then had absurdly distorted all his limbs, now gave not only a greatly sharpened but also a much enlarged view of the area between his navel and the top of his thighs. As though the world rising from the darkness and chaos had only one spot, a blurry-edged island. He had never seen the outline of his groin, the hairs curling out from his underpants, the hummock of his genitals so enlarged. He had lived in the same room with his twin kid sister for fifteen years. As if suddenly and unexpectedly he could see himself from closer up than he was really able to. He was bowled over like a child who sees things in a magic mirror. The moment he stepped closer or farther away from the mirror, his body either crawled away or stretched out of view, which is to say the loin area conformed to the general distortion, yet there remained a secure point in space, and when he found it precisely, he could feast his eyes on his mercilessly sharpened and greatly enlarged self.

He enjoyed this, as if it were an unbelievable game returning him to his childhood. It was good to hit the precise point. The better to see what was happening to his body in the mirror, he threw off his shirt as well. The white shirt flew, flared out, and landed on the back of the chair, one billowing sleeve hanging down. This wasn’t the first time he had scrutinized himself so thoroughly, but never so close up. The salesgirl remained nearby, though he did not feel her gaze. And she couldn’t see anything more than the nape of his neck or his naked shoulders. And if people were watching him, well, let them watch. Without moving from his spot, he slowly swayed his hips in the mirror. He didn’t notice that he was doing it to the forever repeating rhythm of the music.

He knew that if he took it off, he would irrevocably rebel against his own people. He’d be obeying alien rules. He could not resist it. In a totally strange place, totally without reason, he would take off his worthless underpants.

The salesgirl still did not go away, did not leave the customer by himself, but she no longer kept him busy with words. She remained at the counter but did not even put her hands on it. Her posture indicated that she was ready to resume her work at any moment, but now it was the turn of the customer’s taste. She was not even watching Döhring, not the nape of his boyishly shaved neck, not his shapely shoulders, but rather she stared, skillfully, somewhere into the darkness. Which did not mean she wasn’t staying with him. She was paying attention to him; in reality, she did not leave him for a moment, and this too belonged to the high art of selling. She had to sense, to feel something very personal from the other human being that would allow her to keep him captive. At the same time she was not supposed to feel anything personal for him, which is to say she had to restrain all her possible feelings and value judgments, to the point where she’d evoke an impression of neutrality.

Now I know, now I understand, Döhring was saying to himself as he turned around. But the moment he formed the words in his mind he no longer understood anything, nor did he see himself in the mirror. As though he had no idea just where he was in his continuous dream. He was staring at his shoes, at the rubberized floor of the phone booth, on which squashed cigarette butts were mixed, everywhere, among wet leaves; yet what he saw was the steamboat. He had no more time then, after all; he had nothing to think over, there were no more excuses, evasions, even if he understood nothing.