Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Come on, you could still talk to me about it. And that would divert me, said Gyöngyvér a little later, her voice sounding much deeper.

This was her natural register when singing.

Divert you from what, asked the man, surprised, as if awakened from a vanishing dream.

Oh, from nothing, I don’t know, actually I don’t know, replied Gyöngyvér, though she knew.

She was afraid.

She could not say it out loud because she was afraid there were words with which she might instantly spoil everything. True, she was the one who forbade the man to move, but what she really wanted to say was please for once fuck me properly. Which, according to some higher judgment, might have seemed as if she meant that what they were doing was not the proper thing. If they keep stopping. If they keep talking. And she had no words at all for a whole lot of other things. For example, to explain why she wanted to say this out loud so much. Or, if they were talking already, to ask who had the right to forbid them from saying something.

The worn bedsprings creaked under them. With a single brief twist of his hips, the man thrust farther inside her, as though he understood her mute wish, producing a muffled, soft, rich squelching sound from under the cover; it hurt her; the move was rough. It wasn’t pleasant for him either, because his cock had become too erect during the protracted delay. The ribbed wall of the tight vagina crammed the unusually ample foreskin under the crown of his bulb, pulling harder than the small sensitive frenum could manage. Slowly, hissing a little, he withdrew a bit, backing away with his buttocks, whose taut cheeks were in the woman’s grip, barely letting them budge, he could feel her fingernails, until finally he sensed, on the collar of his bulb, swollen to the limit, the keen, cooler entrance of the vulva.

They could not have known what they wanted.

He remained like that, still inside, on the border of outside. As if somehow he’d gotten caught in her. One little move and he’d either slip out or back in. The frenum was burning under the crown; it might even have ripped a little.

I wanted to tell you something entirely different, said the man in a surprisingly even tone, half aloud and while breathing brief, hasty kisses into the woman’s open lips.

And while he was breathing these tiny kisses, Gyöngyvér’s swollen and protruding clitoris was banging rhythmically against the hard crown of his penis’s bulb. Because of which they had to end the exchange of tiny kisses.

Neither of them knew what to do with these little exaggerations of pain.

But the extraordinary, incredible, and sharp sensation that could extinguish all other sensations was forever seared into both their minds.

And neither was it possible to determine what the man would reveal or conceal, and by what means. Was it because he wanted to get past the little kisses as quickly as he could that he moved so hastily, almost inattentively, or was he hoping to forsake the sobriety of live speech as soon as he could, to evade the quiet reasons of the mind and perhaps find a balance between ecstasy and sanity. A sane mind is praiseworthy, and good for nothing.

This is how it must feel when physical bodies melt into one another.

Their common pain is wrapped in tenderness, but it soothes nothing. He was convinced he found the woman with whom he should live his life. Their parched lips, at any rate, stuck together longer, and parted with short little pops.

Which made them laugh again.

As a matter of fact, this is not what I wanted, he continued, articulating each syllable clearly so as to overcome their giggles. What I wanted to tell you was that I did see everything in advance when I was in the Zurich train station. With words, he wanted to raise himself above their physical madness. That friend of my father, you know, the one I told you about, was waiting for us. But again, try as he might to resist, the face he remembered was not Gustav Grassère’s but that of Lecluse.

He understood himself, and knew why he couldn’t get free of it.

And the silver-gray Delahaye with its black fenders, he said aloud, feeling how dangerously close the two names approached each other. In those days, a car like that cost forty thousand Swiss francs. But you wouldn’t understand what that means. Well, back then that was the price of a large country house.

Why wouldn’t I understand, said the woman very calmly, though she was still trembling a little. Some automobile that immediately made you fall head over heels in love with that wonderful man. The man lay before her like a landscape of the Great Hungarian Plain without a single hidden corner. And that’s how much it cost, she said, her teeth lightly clinking. No big deal, why wouldn’t I understand.

From the surface of her skin, the trembling was sinking into ever-deeper regions.

No, no, protested Ágost instinctively, but, surprised, he fell silent, surprised that the woman had so easily made the connection between objects so far apart and not easily imagined. He perceived this as an ominous, treacherous danger. In fact, he thought it coarse, even blunt; his taste rebelled against this sort of directness. She understands things he doesn’t talk about, in which case where is the border between them.

Their faces lay close together, sunk between the upturned peaks of the pillows, they barely saw each other’s eyes; they each looked from below into the other’s pupils.

He really became more important to me than my own father, that’s true. Some light fell on them from above, as much as the ceiling could reflect of the waning twilight. But what I really wanted to tell you was that not me and him, but the two of them were head over heels in love with each other, he said quickly, as though chastely excusing her.

I’ve seen plenty in my life, Ágost, you can’t surprise me with anything, said the woman, laughing, and this slightly theatrical omniscience caused Ágost’s voice to allow a more indulgent smile to accompany his next sentence.

Still, an unpleasant feeling remained. The woman must have seen through something, must have interfered with something.

The moment they saw each other, they began to talk, quickly, feverishly, quietly, always in German. And they would leave me alone. They put me in the backseat and then forgot about me. Picture for yourself a very tall, very massive, very blond man. How old could he have been then, maybe thirty-eight. He had so much thick curly hair that his daughters could hold on to it and he’d lift them off the ground like that. They’d just hang off him as if he were a tree — isn’t there a Hungarian poem about something like that — I imagine it wasn’t painful for him.

Like fruit on a tree.

Everything about him was strong, and that can impress a boy. Massive. It was good to touch him, to wrestle with him because he was like steel, like stone. His neck, his arms, his thighs, you couldn’t budge his legs. And while he talked he felt he wouldn’t be telling Gyöngyvér all this if she hadn’t already known it. She knew it. Of course you’re right, I really liked his car. It was at least as impressive as he was.

With other people on other occasions, he refrained from speaking much because when speaking one unavoidably conforms to the situation.

Sometimes, all four of us would fall on him, that was the game, but we couldn’t wrestle him down unless he let us, to make his daughters happy. On the whole, a quite attentive, patient man, but sometimes rather hysterical. When he got mad, he wouldn’t scream or roar but screech like a shrew. This trait made him rather amusing. Imagine living with five women. When he screeched, the women simply laughed at him. I saw right away, it was obvious, that this was a good man, what should I say, a reliable man, and really wonderful, and then how would I tell them that I didn’t want to stay there with a stranger.