Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

A movement that took place only inside their bodies followed this. And they laughed happily.

Why, who died.

How should I know. Everybody. Nobody.

Laughter would have overtaken them if they hadn’t stopped up each other’s mouth.

Get a hold of yourself, until she leaves.

Their tongues glided inside each other’s mouth and they thrust them in deep. In place of one forcible pleasure, they found themselves another. There was nothing to fear, they could trust themselves because they were intertwined, they could not be torn away from each other, and this seemed to be an unexpected, unhoped-for, very pleasant bonus. They could not be tamed. Their tongues linked, embraced and danced, each very considerate of the other. They were retching at this depth and sank lower, becoming aware of things turning into sharp pain as they trembled, freely, unashamedly, rhythmically, as the bed bounced, creaking, under them.

She’s going, I know, she’s going right away.

And again they held themselves back a little.

Though they did not exactly know what they were holding back, they did, along with their breath. One shouldn’t do such a thing. Absolutely not. Except that the brave decision made both of them feel, and they felt the strength of the feeling, that their bodies might become completely independent of their will. This was something neither of them had ever experienced.

Everything is falling and tumbling and pouring and running; running, though they are lying here as quietly as you please, waiting politely for the old woman to leave so they can finally lose their sanity.

Maybe she’s gone already. But she’s not, she’s still fiddling about in the hallway.

Oh heavens, she has no intention of going, the pest is eavesdropping.

No, I know her, she wouldn’t do that.

They kept whispering and listening.

She’s looking for something she can’t find.

Again they laughed.

It would be impossible to tell which of their worlds was more uninviting or more vulgar — the world admitted by their faces, mutually blinded by their wide-eyed proximity, a nearby world that alternately brings the twilight-colored walls closer and moves them farther away; or the world that sternly conjures up, in minute detail from head to toe, the impersonal acts of male-female copulation and mercilessly compels them to perform them.

There is probably no perfect symmetry in the world; it would be insanely utopian, vain, to hope for one, yet they might have come close to it precisely because at this moment, even with the indifferent imaginations, they succeeded in complementing each other harmoniously. No, not quite yet, the last obstacle would be overcome in a moment. They were pushing it before them and rolling along with it.

Their body positions did not change yet did not remain as before.

Cautiously, just a bit, as if he were not doing it at all, the man began to slide, as if he had to keep this little action a secret not only from the old woman making noises in the hallway but also from himself and the woman in bed with him. After a brief pause that was more like a brief surprise, he slid back to his former position, and because of the sharp clash of the two merging sensations, he had to reconsider everything. Which the woman’s countermoves and carelessness did not permit.

He could not resist repeating it.

Again and again.

But exact repetitions didn’t work, because the woman’s challenges grew longer and her almost arbitrary carelessness sharpened the clash of merging sensations. What they were doing made no sound because it could not. They and they alone could hear the dim thuds of their thrusts, the slurps of sucking, the sloshing of slimy secretions, the resounding thumps of their colliding abdominal walls. But the knot that tied to each other what they saw and heard was loosening. Being surprised at themselves seemed to fix their eyes and glue their eyelashes in one position. They saw things from different places.

The sounds around them receded and slid down beneath the horizon.

A face in ecstasy is frightening; the reason one can look at it without aversion and disgust is that in the distortions of another person’s face one can catch a glimpse of what one’s own greediness and selfishness look like. It is like stepping into a hall of mirrors. A person can see his or her own visage even if it is stronger and more violent, or perhaps weaker and gentler, than their own self-image. At the same time, their inner pictures were becoming so powerful that looking at each other steadfastly was to no avail; seeing each other so exposed, so devoid of dignity, beauty, and charm; they couldn’t keep their independent inner pictures from ceasing to refer to — no, almost completely excluding — each other. And there was more. They were both thinking very actively and clearly, and this also seemed to have little to do with their amorous activities, or in any case they could no longer locate and secure the contact points of thoughts and sensations. The redoubled double worlds of sensation and thinking, which otherwise blend, seep, flow, soar, vanish, or absorb each other, so that one can make way for the other or, put another way, so that the stronger may gain ascendancy and the weaker humbly relinquish its position, these worlds were progressing by clambering over each other, making their way forward over and inside each other like a coarse greased cogwheel, or like fine clockwork whose gears and levers unconsciously drive a system much larger than itself, something with no name, something the mind cannot comprehend, whose boundaries are invisible and whose enormous mass cannot be measured.

From a very short distance, Gyöngyvér could see into the depths of two strange dark eyes, or rather, she could look out to an abyss with no physical dimensions or light of its own, if only because it blended into the lighter sight of her own nose. No matter how strange the man’s childhood had been, she still managed to find something mutual at the bottom of their differences, in the face dripping with perspiration that shone around her darkly, or brightly, along the steep line of his sparkling eyebrows.

His eyebrows, she said to herself. And that could have been one explanation. Because their eyebrows were indeed as similar as if they had been siblings.

And she was thinking about this with her tongue while spreading and pressing herself over him and licking the beads of sweat dripping off his brow, because what she tasted was very different from what she’d anticipated from the smell of his sweat. Which, translated into normal human language, meant that she probably didn’t understand or misunderstood the other person after all, and was again chasing an illusion of her desires. And the ceiling was arching over her more imperiously than ever, which brought on another thought association — the ceiling’s little cracks and ominous reflections of light.

A fine time for the ceiling of her rotten little room to come crashing down; let it, let the whole rotten room fall apart. It would too, if she let it, if she didn’t cheer herself up, find an antidote. Every little interior movement was a protest. A place she couldn’t break out of; they wouldn’t let her. Because she’s not happy, because she ruins everything.

She was pushing it, stretching it; let her room crack wide open, its walls have always been too confining and have always chafed her skin. If only the old woman would drop dead soon, she could put in a request for the whole apartment.

She sank a little, and then rose a bit, all right, let it be, the way he wants it, all right; she yielded to the man again.

It will never end.

But she couldn’t tell where her glances, thoughts, furtive looks, her very countenance roamed; where, on which level of sights or sensations, she was with those fractions of words and sentences. She was floating in the glittering water murky with mud, and was sitting in the dusty courtyard, sitting where they dumped her, and she could hardly breathe.