Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Along with his friends, he had been living the carefree life of the gentry for years, for which he deeply despised himself. At the same time, his appointment was so certain, he saw so many positive indications of it — and making him wait for it this long was so absurd — that it made no sense to move now. And where in hell would he move to. Not that he’d have the money for it, and anyway, in this country one couldn’t just go out and buy or rent an apartment. He was contemplating plans of revenge. For the time when he’ll be convinced that these people are truly as hopeless as they seem. He won’t do away with himself, no. He won’t any longer make it difficult to let the rival side know he was ready to work for them. Or for them too. He knew the ins and outs of such a move. He toyed with this adventurous thought but without sending out signals. Not yet. And not because he was afraid. Why not be a mole if he had to live his life underground anyway, une taupe ou un rat . He couldn’t have so much left of his life that it wouldn’t be more exciting spending it as a mole. Still, he preferred to count on his appointment because during the long years of waiting he had grown used to idleness. He counted on Paris, at least on Rome, but at a minimum on Brussels.

Then why rush. Out there, he’d be able to decide about his other affairs in much more favorable circumstances. And why should he have to listen to his mother’s superfluous laments.

He stood with his head bowed.

His thick, straight, dark hair fell onto his brow, he looked out from under his long lashes to see himself, however dimly. The sight of his own body always unsettled him. At any rate, more than other people’s bodies did. And he was aware how extravagantly and insanely Gyöngyvér worshipped every atom of it. Because of her astonishment, amazement, lethargy, and anger he disdained her immensely; that was, in fact, the reason he no longer desired her. After only a few days, he quietly ranked her with the servants, though for his comfort he continually needed her services. Ágost was one of those people who cling to the primal models of their earliest life experiences, from which no one can tear them away.

He was ten years old when, at seventeen hundred meters above sea level, his father left him on his own. At the treeline, where the pines end and only the snow-covered craggy peaks of bare mountains reach for the sky. He was not a short child, but suddenly everything became too large and too high. The mountains, the other people, the arched windows in the dormitory. In the thin air, he had no possession except his body. He shivered as if he were constantly cold, though his skin was hot, on fire. He’d wound up in a world in which he could no longer predict what would be good for him and what would be bad. And he didn’t even have the words to help him cope with his surroundings. They laughed at him, derided him because several times a day and in the most unexpected situations he would grow weak, become light, the heavy earth slipped out from under his feet, and he would collapse, unable to grasp at anything. Already on the first night they beat him. During the day he fell into quiet, white faints, as if hoping that through the whiteness they would take him back to that place. But he understood much more than he could theoretically understand; the words he heard for the first time as well as the novelty of the entire situation. He found himself among people who used their bodies and their language differently.

The moment they entered the shower room for the first time and had to get undressed, another process was also begun. A hitherto completely unknown current of life. It did not matter that within minutes they all disappeared in the steam, the tension and ardor of the body were simultaneously present in him and present in the others too, though none of them let on. He had the feeling that sheer vitality, radiating through the contours of his body and penetrating the steam, had an effect. It broke through the steam and the noise of the water spurting from the showerheads. And at night they beat him until he discovered how others traded in this effect, turned it into a commodity. Until he himself started to deal in these existing but unseen currents. By then he spoke French better, though the other boys continued to correct him or to pretend they didn’t understand him. It was the other language, their bodies and his own, he had to learn. And in fact he wasn’t doing it for the first time, even if he hadn’t done it so frequently in front of others. And it didn’t occur to him there could be a person who might not understand or indulge him, who wouldn’t admire his perfection or would fail to see what a profound pleasure it was just to be near him.

From below his half-closed eyelids he saw his smooth chest muscles, the slightly convex and taut, hairless abdominal wall, his sex organ, somewhat filled out and hardened because of the delicate touches but still resting between the hills of his testicles, with a prominent vein running across its spine. He saw his knees, his delicate long-boned feet; Gyöngyvér was mad about taking his toes into her mouth to chew and suck them. He stood there as someone engrossed in something, contemplating something, brooding over it, though in reality he is not here, does not want to be disturbed, he has floated over into another dimension, using his rising and hardening cock to lift himself over, he can’t see and couldn’t care less what is happening around him. He was repeating a single series of movements. He touched his spread fingers to his chin, which at this late hour was stubbly, enjoying the scraping sound of the contact, and then puckering his lips toward his nose he kept sniffing and turning his five fingertips as if smelling some special fragrance. No one could tell or understand what he was doing with this sniffing and why he puckered his lips as if for sucking. He did not question why he was doing it, but from the time he had started it, he kept at it. With his smile, he was hovering in the dense tale of his pleasures; more precisely, the pure patterns of an unexplored past took possession of his features, which appeared, but only to the uninitiated, as a smile. He experienced it as that wild and unpredictable current he should not fear, because it would continue to flow, always and in everyone. It was opened by the scent and now he could step through the entrance to his secret life. Although he perceived what he saw, knew what he could know, and various things still occurred to him, still, with the scent of his body he was able to set himself free from the world of reality. With his scent he floated over to the other shore and from there glanced back at everyone else and at himself, whom he had left behind; the current carried him along. Loyalty no longer had any meaning; betrayal was waiting with new delights.

On this far shore, nothing had a name, naming was not obligatory, the entire story had not a single date; thus, events had no weight. He could not go over at just any time he wanted to, but when he fulfilled the only and very simple requirement, nothing stood in his way. On his fingers, he had to preserve the secretions and exudations of his body. Not wash his hands after urinating. If they didn’t check up on him, he’d skip washing his hands at least once or twice a day, deceiving even himself. As if he were in a hurry or had forgotten what they had pounded into him. The omission was not unconscious, though he couldn’t have told when it was or wasn’t. Neither did he know whether others were doing things like that, though he discovered that some boys picked their noses. Secretly, they eat their dry snot or, when back from the sports fields and taking off their socks, they dig in between their toes and keep smelling the stench of the darkest excretions of their feet. The stronger he felt the morass of hopelessness under his feet and the deeper he became entangled in some lie or wound up in some trouble, the more frequently he turned to a oui, voilà , yes, d’accord . Who else could he turn to if not to himself. Though sometimes his desperation was so deep that he could not utter this yes, and then it turned into a non , no. Then, clinging to denial, he sank even deeper; from there at least he could not see out at anything at all.