Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

When I was little, for a long time I couldn’t speak either. Nobody could make me, whispered Gyöngyvér, overcome by her own words, even though girls, as you know, learn to speak much earlier and much more simply than boys. I don’t know, she added, you probably liked your father’s wickedness. Then she quickly stopped, and Ágost felt he might lose her in a moment.

And he did.

She stopped not only because the other one was still talking but because she felt hurt. Still. The pain would not pass. Since they had been regaling each other with stories, day after day, speaking right into each other’s face, many things had occurred to her that she had had no idea were still in her memory. Recollection itself caught her unprepared, all the things the mind keeps in reserve as surprises for just such an occasion.

It still hurt her terribly that she knew what adults were expecting of her, although she understands that she still cannot bring herself to talk. And this hasn’t changed, perhaps because a person doesn’t change. The other person is open, she’s seen that, or at least he willingly opens himself up to her, but she remains closed, which torments her. She’s afraid of punishment, of having to see the vengeful little girl in herself, the one who does not speak.

They were constantly giving, only giving, everybody was giving, and still I felt these strangers were taking away everything I had. To this day, I can’t say that Gustav is my foster father or Clara my foster mother. Even though it is registered in a notarized document that I am their adopted son, and believe me, he pleaded in the voice of the unfamiliar little boy, they are much more familiar to me than my own people.

And now he managed to compose himself.

I was left with nothing, that’s what I sensed in advance. Nobody, I had nobody. That big cold body of water and that big cool house of theirs, the nearby mountains and the brisk air were all stronger than I was. The sun shone right into their dining room, the silverware made gentler noises, maybe that was more impressive.

At home, sun didn’t shine into the house, I know that, but I no longer know what my home was like.

They completely appropriated me.

On the very first afternoon Clara took me along with the girls to ballet school. Upstairs they gave me a room that would be mine during vacations. But where was our dining room at home. Imagine, a few days went by and they still didn’t take me to the school, which they kept promising to me like a big reward because there you will learn everything but absolutely everything, and forget the face of your mother. Which is nothing but revenge, of course. Let her drop dead, be no more. You can’t ask your father to give you her picture from his wallet. How would you know he has such a picture in his wallet in the first place, and you’d have to confess to him that you need the picture because out of revenge you can’t remember your mother, out of sheer revenge.

And me, you know, through all my years as a little girl I couldn’t get free of that thought. Sometimes I thought I’d go out of my mind, like you, Ágost, with that ballet school where they took you. This was an obsession, because I was thinking about it all the time — after all, my mother did see me.

As if to say he should see how lonely I still am. But she did not say this out loud. Gyöngyvér wanted to talk but couldn’t. As though asking herself, where is the knife to cut my breast open with. She was paralyzed by the other person’s life being replete with details she couldn’t even imagine properly. How could she have hated her mother, or what sort of picture could she have asked for, and from what father. Her voice kept stumbling, sliding between different registers. Since she had not had similar experiences of her own, she could not penetrate other people’s thoughts, and that is why she had to keep returning to her obsession.

She is somewhere, she exists, she should remember me, she said, as if suddenly she’d run out of breath. She had seen me, you understand, and I also saw her.

You’re wrong, Gyöngyvér, one can’t remember even the person one loves. So why would they expect one to be faithful. To whom, I ask you, to whom, if one forgets everybody and everything. Tomorrow you won’t remember me. There is no faithfulness. It’s only a word.

I don’t know if you can understand, I have never seen my mother. At least I can’t remember her. I don’t have any kind of picture, and that’s a pretty big difference between you and me. I can’t expect pictures like that from anyone. I should have seen all along that this was very simple. Everyone has a mother. There is no animal in the world that doesn’t have one. Piglets have mothers, calves, colts, she said, our cats licked their kittens to pieces, she said, and licked the man’s attentive eye.

Gyöngyvér.

Yes.

Hush for a while.

Go on.

There is no mother. That is a pitiful illusion. I understand you, but you are longing for something that does not exist. God does not exist either. Sooner or later, one has to come to terms with these illusions. There is neither protection nor authority, autoritás , or however you say it in Hungarian.

I don’t miss God, or my mother, she was an unfortunate woman, my mother. An ingrown toenail torments me more than her fate. I mean it. But I didn’t express myself well. What torments me is that others have something I don’t even miss. That they have somebody I don’t have. Even though my mother is alive, or most likely she is, I can’t be absolutely sure. When she dies, I won’t know about it, I won’t know anything about anything. But then what do I know. Not that it would hurt — how can something you’ve never experienced hurt you. It doesn’t hurt. But I don’t know whom I might be hating because of her. You hate yours and at least you know exactly whom you hate, and that hurts. I’ve got a life, but the whole thing has no shape. I can look at myself in the mirror, yes, she’s probably like this, maybe exactly like this, the way I am, but it’s possible she’s very different. That’s why I need the children so much. I wouldn’t dare think of having one of my own. If I could not see them every day, I’d smash my face in the first mirror.

You’re a very smart girl, Gyöngyvér.

Say that again.

Wanting to hear it twice is a sign not of being smart but of being stupid.

Who’s interested in being smart. I want my name to roll off your lips.

Maybe you still don’t understand, but with my accent I can’t find my way back. It may be something like your mother. She no longer exists even if she still does. The Hungarian intonation got lost somewhere, disappeared, and we no longer know where it is. And it makes no difference that I live here in Budapest again or that you can make fun of me. And I’m not worried about how once, a long time ago, they pushed me out from among them. You’re right, who’d be interested in that. My concern was somehow to find my way to the first place in my life, and in this lies something impermissibly accidental. This is ridiculous, irretrievable. If they’d taken me to China, I would have had to find the Chinese in me there.

But why wouldn’t I understand it. These are the things other people call homeland or homesickness. Far, far away is my homeland, she sang into the man’s face — a song that had once been forbidden. But for some reason you are ashamed of it. And so you rather overdo this too.

I don’t know which of us is more prone to overdoing things. I think it’s you.

Shall I sing it to you?

No, don’t, said the man quickly, I don’t think it has anything to do with homeland, it’s more like the rhythm of life. At least I’m not deaf to it. This is part of every language, has a special place in every one of them. You pick it up in childhood, along with the rhythm of life, and never forget it. At most, you can transfer it once, but then there’s no way back. It can’t be done twice. The needle will get stuck, keep jumping back, play back a different melody, always, which makes everything sound off-key. What always remains are the new overtones, and I’ve chosen those. Anyway, I don’t want to be at home here, I can’t be.