Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Don’t be scared, yuh ugly worm, I said don’t be flustered, she hissed, beside herself, swearing in foul language, cursing mother and god, as she hauled her back to the middle of the courtyard, where under the merciless sun both soap and sand burned on her face.

Plague eat yer guts, yuh worm.

She protested, kicked.

Y’think, yuh little worm, y’really think what yuh want is what’s gonna happen.

And again she was carried in the air and slammed into the dust, the air knocked out of her; not only could she not speak for long seconds but she could not even breathe; she lost the guiding rhythm of life.

Yuh’ll drop dead right here unless yuh open yer trap. Hey, y’hear me, I’ll lock yuh up again with the chickens, or where in holy hell should I lock yuh in, yuh stubborn mule, yuh. Yuh’ll choke to death when I stuff soap in yuh.

Gyöngyvér still would not speak. She heard herself whimpering or, more precisely, along with her whimpering returned the quondam crying and, with the crying, the courtyard, its dazzling light, the glimmering gray shades of the acacias reaching to infinity, the unquenchable thirst, the taste of the soft soap, and the choking. From this she understood that the moment had come. When she would finally take her revenge.

All she had to do now, to keep the man from making even the slightest move inside her, was to raise one hip. She fastened herself to the root of his cock. Me, me. Don’t. And no longer heard her own hateful whimpering. At last. She’d have to choke, after all.

But at least not for lack of air, but because of the water, that would do it, she’d choke on the water; she’d been thirsty for so long.

In the water I’ll get lost, finally. And when she thought about this and really wished it, she saw how sane and cold the outside world was.

The familiar ceiling of her room.

They were scratching and stroking the pig, kept slapping and patting the horse’s neck, she really remembered this. The young bride pressed the goose under her enormous thighs and hacked away at the bird’s windpipe, everything crunching under the knife, and then tore, ripped, and scraped at the gristle. She closed her eyes while the blood poured into the bowl and the bird was kicking and convulsing under her with its slippery large white feathers. And then she pushed it off the stool. Spoke to it gently, calm down now, stop kicking your mistress so much, cooed to it more emphatically, it’ll be all right, little goosey, you’ll see, you’ll be all right, while the headless bird thrashed about until it bled to death.

The young woman was silent for a good long while. Feathers were flying.

In the meantime it probably turned evening.

And this is not something she imagines but is a memory she doesn’t really remember. How interesting. The hog they killed at dawn, the small livestock at sundown. She didn’t know when it might have been morning, if now it was evening. Until she grew up, she would have preferred to be an animal like a hog or any other beast.

Not this kind.

The children must have already been sent indoors, for they were no longer making noise in the courtyard. From somewhere a radio could be heard, and the sound of someone tenderizing meat or of some other muffled pounding.

Luckily, she wasn’t the one being beaten. Smack, thundered the raw meat.

That is how loud the pounding of her heart seemed to her, and on the ceiling she saw the mute, reflected lights of the warm summer evening. But in that instant it also became clear that somebody else was in the room. A sudden current of air and a strange smell could be felt.

A slight clink on the window. Her heart skipped a beat. Quickly she raised her head — oh my god — to look out over the man’s tensed-up shoulder.

The maid’s room was barely longer than the bed. Only now did she come to her senses enough to see where she was. This was not a trick played on her senses.

Mrs. Szemző, Dr. Irma Arnót, had indeed opened the door on them. Her white lace glove glowed on the doorknob; her white face hovered in the shadow of her hat and at the same time seemed to be nodding approvingly with each of her words. This means something entirely different. Indeed, this must mean something very different. Yes, that’s how it is. I’ve opened the door and now I am here.

Gyöngyvér made desperate belated moves. She would have wanted to pull the cover over them but it had slipped off some time ago. She found a corner, but the cover was stuck in or on something, and she had to yank and tug before it freed up enough to cover only partially the bottom of the man kneeling over her. There was not enough to hide his broad, sopping back, flashing in the light now entering the room, or the shoulders, the tousled hair and dark head.

She could not make him disappear.

My dear Gyöngyvér, my sweet, said Mrs. Szemző from the doorway, her voice at once grating and sugary, I just dropped in to tell you I’m leaving now.

She spoke in such a natural conversational tone, perhaps a bit higher than necessary because of the darkness, as if she hadn’t seen anything or didn’t want to acknowledge what she was seeing or perhaps did not believe her eyes.

I definitely won’t be back before two, she added more softly.

But with these words she destroyed the confidence with which she had entered the room, and it was as if, after all, she should acknowledge something of the sight and the vaporous smells that assailed her. Genuine alarm stole into her voice.

If I’d thought you were asleep I wouldn’t have come in. To tell you the truth, oh god, I thought you were listening to the radio.

She regretted this foolishness the moment she uttered it. As one exposing herself. After all, I did see it was dark in here.

Yes, I could have sworn you were listening to the radio, she added quickly. Please forgive me.

Oh, please, no need to worry, go ahead and leave if you have to, Gyöngyvér replied, her voice barely audible, as if still hoping that this was nothing but a hallucination or dream, and that if she behaved properly and produced appropriate sounds to indicate that nothing was going on everything would turn out well.

The old lady would evaporate, vanish. And she would unexpectedly wake up and forget the whole thing. But how could she produce acceptable sounds. The man was stiffened into himself, as if he had turned into a piece of furniture. Because of his incredible weight and mass, she could neither budge nor breathe properly, could not speak as if he were not inside her.

At the same time, there was a touch of indecent flirtation and derisiveness in his immobility. And why not, seeing that his face was concealed. However alarmed he may have been, he was enjoying the embarrassing situation.

Obeying some incomprehensible command, he had to behave like a bug; he became motionless, stiff, as though he understood the limitations of anthropoidal behavior. Yet he did not mind that his naked body was revealed to someone he’d never seen before and, to his great good fortune, was not seeing now.

In fact he was sorry Gyöngyvér had so quickly and adroitly covered at least his ass.

In his rectum, in his swollen testicles, drawn up high in excitement, there slumbered the wish and the pleasure of exhibitionism, as well as its recurring concomitant shame.

In truth he didn’t know why he did what he did and why he desired his own shame. In the boarding-school shower room it had reached his consciousness, what was expected of him and what commercial value a shameless exhibition had, and, realizing how high a price the sight of his body was quoted at on the secret stock exchange of his inmates, he accepted their undisguised glances; he ceased to have serious doubts about his naked body’s effect on others. His self-confidence was reinforced by the interest not of women but of men. However, liberating and slightly hasty waves of lovemaking had barely flooded his body when, at the threshold of his youth, he was surprised by a depressing fantasy that refused to leave him and accompanied him into manhood. The harder he objected to it, the deeper the fantasy cut into him. And it came with a powerful sensation; the larger his doubts as to whether all this fucking was worth anything, the stronger the pleasure became, or at least the painful imagination of great pleasure. Which made him sink even deeper into depression.