Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

That could make all hell break loose.

Stupefied, with her eyes growing wide, she comprehended what she had known before but refused to acknowledge. Perhaps it wasn’t even her eyes that helped her; rather, it was in her brain that she saw everything in its proper place. It hurt her. He is in love only with himself, no one but himself. He avoids what other men so violently, immediately, and continually desire. Ágost had many traits, but he was neither hotheaded nor inhibited. All the other men played with themselves but wanted only her.

Her face was burning with shame, her forehead throbbing with pain.

Because until now she had managed to make herself believe that this man was no different from other men. Except that she loved him more than she had ever loved anyone else. She’d picked him out, she was the one who insisted on him, and she was not ashamed of that. She has not regretted it. Perhaps she loved him more because his body had a more pleasant smell, because he spoke more gently, because he knew and had seen so many things and had different habits; still, in her mind she had him in the same category with other men. These other men with their traits and limbs became a big jumble for her. In the midst of lovemaking, there were moments, less or more pleasant, when she had no idea where she was in the progress of her life, with which man at precisely what time. A strange room, a man’s tense butt, pressing hard hip, wet and gasping chest: none of this spoke to her. Which was a rather good thing. At least it didn’t remind her of anything. And they wouldn’t notice any of her feelings, because there were no outward signs to show that she might have mixed them up. What really amazed her was how she could receive into herself the cocks of men so different from one another, and why her life’s pulse wouldn’t slow down enough for her to settle at last with one of them. But now she had to separate them quickly, very quickly, in her mind. She could see that what other men wanted or demanded from her, Ágost could give himself better, as he had done in the past. As though until now he had satisfied her only out of pity or mere politeness. This was part of his upper-class behavior, in which case she had misunderstood everything, but everything. That is why her satisfaction always remained a bit hazy. She shuddered at the thought. Then her place was with the others, after all. Then she should move back to one of the flea-bitten sublet rooms and start all over again. She could see with her own eyes that this character in front of her wanted neither reciprocity nor mutuality.

And that was impossible to bear.

He can get along just fine all by himself.

She thought the exertion would split her head immediately. Let him drop dead. She was fuming, seething. Even though she had already known that this man, as opposed to all other men, did not like to ejaculate; he avoided it if possible. With immense and painful, spasmodic efforts he almost always managed to withhold it. But this too was beautiful, this convulsive defiance. Moving and frightening, like an earthquake. He’d moan, prefer to tear himself out of her, roughly and unexpectedly, double over, bite his lips, but would not let it happen. Until now, Gyöngyvér believed that this had something to do not with Ágost’s nature but with his upbringing. She thought that since men lucky enough to be born into upper-class families were whimsical anyway, why couldn’t Ágost have a quirk like that. Everybody is different, yes, but not him. She liked to look as the sweat-soaked body, hideously tense in its struggle with opposing forces, turned on its side, writhing and growing rigid at her feet. She followed with her own body the man’s vehement rhythms as he convulsed in the pleasurable repulsion of his efforts. As if there were still a chance of fulfillment.

The pelvic nerve plexus can remember.

As if she were helping him, she could hear inside herself the rhythmic shouts of encouragement. Let Ágost’s willpower triumph over his pleasure.

Oh, no, please, don’t let him come.

She identified with him because the restraint wrenched her own throbbing away from its own rhythm, causing veritable explosions. The vagina’s oval muscles were already resisting with stronger throbs. And while she pressed her knees and thighs together, let out hoarse shouts, her orifice opened and contracted to the rhythm of the man’s writhing; while she was thus assisting him in not ejaculating, she often reached a retching orgasm of her own, thrusting her hands between her thighs.

She acknowledged that this was an odd habit, what else could it be. Other men could not convince themselves to do a thing like that even when they needed to, when they wanted it. Excitement broke through and overwhelmed their consciousness; more precisely, they would have found that kind of self-restraint humiliating. If they were able to control themselves and interrupt even at moments when the sliding and the touching were perfect, then they must not have wanted the woman, couldn’t have desired her so much. They did not want to be seen in her eyes as so petty as to stop their ejaculation; they preferred to take their chances. And if she could not yank herself away in time, things might become more than risky. She didn’t want to get pregnant all the time. She dreaded abortions not only because of the pain involved, but also because dread increased the pain and lengthened her periods. But with Ágost she could not become pregnant no matter how much she wanted him to come in her womb so long as Ágost didn’t want to. She was glad, at last, to see how a man denied himself a pleasure to which his own body responded with resignation. Why shouldn’t she help him if it’s good for him, and if it feels good. She did not admit it to herself, but actually, her own satisfaction was much deeper and longer-lasting than it was when the man, polite and attentive, tarried in her. And if that was possible, then fate was not inevitable. Then one could make a crack in even the thickest wall. Then she might become a singer. She did not know them, but she always learned from them, experienced more because of them. She wanted to be like them. Sometimes, unexpectedly, she’d get an idea from them. She observed their habits, imitated their cool behavior, and, although she could not use everything, she learned she could not hold their caprices against them either. And of course no one forced her to take those caprices seriously. Because no one could shake her profound, almost religious conviction that men and women were created to desire and find their gratification in one another. That was the way things had to be.

Anything else would be immoral.

But now she also saw, in the man’s beatific smile she saw that what he was doing was to give alms, all the time and to everyone. He does it when from under his lashes he looks at someone with his small piercing eyes. At the sight of the adored body, she was overcome with shudders of disgust. Even his most beautiful smile he keeps for himself.

And she struggled with an impossible nausea, as if not Ágost but she had gone mad.

In Ágost’s limbs, she recognized the bodies of other people. His arms, legs, and hard abdominal wall he inherited from his father, his joints, the shape of his fingers, and even their length from his mother. Something had rounded off his muscles, in their powerful bundles, including those of his shoulders and buttocks, and that was his mother in him. The shape of a woman showed in his musculature. Gyöngyvér looked at him and thought, oh god, it’s not him I’ve been sleeping with. With his mother’s fingers, with the hard pads of his palms he barely touched his father’s abdominal wall. Gyöngyvér stared at him as at a person she had nothing to do with, couldn’t have. While she seemed to feel his palm’s familiar hard pads on her breasts. Which meant that her nipples declared their independence; they did remember these hands. But she has more to do with the old man, when he soils himself and they have to bathe him, she thought, because she empathizes with him, feels sorry for him. And she could not understand what in the world she could have worshipped only moments earlier in this strange man.