Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Beautiful she was not.

There was no trace of trembling anymore, but the light body shook and quaked gently to its depths. Her small, domed forehead, with its little-girlish hairs at the edges.

The man was thinking that perhaps his entire life, anybody’s life, was nothing but a constant search for advantageous and ever more advantageous situations. For a situation worth getting into.

This is ridiculous.

Why does one search, at whose command. And how can one compare one situation to another if one doesn’t know what new situation the next step will bring, and if tomorrow one has anyway forgotten the old one. But now he has found it: there’s probably no more advantageous situation than this. Simple physics, this is simple biology, he thought dispassionately and wryly, as if thinking that although this was lovemaking there was nothing personal about it. He heard his own panting. Had nothing to do with his personhood or that of his lovemaking partner, even if she makes me pant or I make her pant. Everything is only physics or mere convention.

For the sake of perfection, he had to cool himself down a little.

Even if he was in the middle of fucking.

It doesn’t happen so often, though by necessity it could happen to anyone.

It rarely becomes perfect, perhaps that much is personal. Nothing more. One aspect of the eternal imperfections. Nothing more. But before the woman could make a fatal or irresistible movement with her head, loins, fingernails, vagina, or any other part, he spoke in a loud voice.

We’ve found the most advantageous position.

Which of course sounded ridiculous. What the hell had they found. And it echoed for a while between the cold walls. A little helplessly, a little threateningly, because his voice was as dispassionate as the way he thought about himself, or at least he believed it was dispassionate. They hadn’t found anything, but they might lose something, and perhaps with his talking too loudly he might have already gambled it away, though all he wanted to do was keep what they had and share his joy with this strange woman, to make at least this moment last.

Yes, came the response from the agitated face, from the depths, from gaping, parched lips, hoarsely, perturbed, yes, what could be better.

But she could not laugh at herself or at the man.

Like a seriously ill person, she signaled — but only with her mouth, her strong eyebrows, the deepening, vertical little furrows of her smooth and domed little-girlish forehead — that she preferred to laugh at such silliness. But Ágost’s declaration troubled her, profoundly shocked her. It opened up an unknown perspective. For the first time in her life, she had to take a deep, hard look at her own bodily phenomena. Not before or after, but right now in the middle of it. No man had ever done this to her.

Maybe with Irénke, when they made their nipples touch and could see what they were feeling; they talked about it, how their nipples grew hard at the same time, look, yours too.

Her breathing became so strong because of this uncalled-for thought, the smell of her breath so pervasive, not unpleasant but hinting of skin, saliva, teeth, and stomach, that for a second the man was shaken by a cold nausea of revulsion and disgust.

I could even make a child for you now.

Indeed, her vagina was ringed around his cock, which, with its swollen head, filled her beyond the brim.

Her hips rose and sank, her vagina convulsed in contrary directions, she wanted to give some rhythm to the spasms but the man kept her down with his arms and elbows, pressing her with his hips, not letting her move, wrestling her down to where he wanted her; she could only thrash about with her head, tossing it from left to right. On her neck a vein bulged and twitched, the vena jugularis externa , running in the muscles under the skin. As though her fears gripped her again precisely when she had managed to get close to the other person. That’s why she was doing it. She wanted to show the man what indignities she had been subjected to, how they had crippled her pleasure, and how unjust it was, as was her entire miserable life.

Which, no matter how hypocritical or self-disciplined she was, she could not endure.

I can’t bear it, I can’t bear this either.

Because she couldn’t tell whether this was happiness or pain.

Can’t get any closer, the man heard too, inside him, in his own voice. It sounded like an interdiction. Don’t try, you’re not supposed to. As if forbidding himself something, and the cosmos would crumble if he did not obey. He eased his hold on her a little so he could withdraw himself a bit, his cock. He felt as if he had fatally miscalculated something at that moment and could not see the situation clearly. Gone was the cool self-assurance, because not only did he not withdraw, but for a withdrawal he’d have to penetrate her even further, and he felt the length of the way he was to make inside the woman’s vagina.

Which his mind conjured up as a cave the color of congealed blood, where he had once before found refuge.

He could not resist forcing his way back to a place from which he should have been withdrawing. He reached a space that was in the time neither of memory nor of imagination. The light summer blanket must have slipped off some time ago.

If that’s the case, then everything happens uncontrollably, unguardedly.

Finally he found it.

Finally he left something in himself uncontrolled.

He saw an unguarded gate in the night.

It could be fatal. I am complaining like a child. Certain segments of time are falling away.

Though the possibility of something fatal made him happy. He had found it, at last.

You might even be able to make a child, yes, now, that’s right, whispered the woman; she seemed to be trembling and struggling for air.

Please, I beg you, she would have wanted to say this clearly.

Finally found it.

He should have taken her whispering, full, flesh-smelling lips into his lips to suppress in himself his idiotic exultation, the uncontrolled times, the open gate, his aversion and his nausea. Moreover, why shouldn’t he be able to complain; after all, he was complaining to a kindergarten teacher. He was ashamed of himself for thinking of such an idiotic thing. And carefully he took into his mouth the woman’s lips, which were still slightly blue, and began cautiously and slowly to withdraw himself. He was still trying to protect, still feared for, his independence. He could not adopt, could not conform to her rhythm, though for a long time he could not avoid it either. He wanted to keep a little reminder of his own.

At least not to let his own pulse dissolve in her throbbing.

But Gyöngyvér denied entry to the fleeing man’s tongue; with her strong tongue, trained in her voice lessons, she shoved it away.

She wanted to talk.

The man tried again. He sank his teeth into her lips, bit her, but the woman shoved out his tongue and pushed him off her so she could talk at last.

The taste of the strong tongue was salty, very salty.

Driven by anger at being rejected, he arched his torso upward, the woman’s arms willingly let him, so with his lips he could leisurely inch across her neck and take a bite of the rearing tip of her breast; he barely reached it and was ready to suck it into himself — softly, not rudely. But the woman hardly felt his thick, parched lips and sharp teeth, she gave her body a yank.

Yanked it out.

Didn’t want to.

Didn’t want anything.

Vainly the man’s tongue snapped after her.

But now it was as if she had to puke out her every stifled word.

I’m flowing away, flowing in every direction. I feel it. For sure, now. Help me, I can’t hold on, I can’t.

Ágost caught sight of the precipice’s edge where the woman could not hold on.