Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

It brought along a typically urban odor in which they recognized the vagina’s abundant ejaculatum and the dripping sperm’s strange, heady smell and their intermingled perspiration. It warned them of something that remained permanent around them, with hardly any changes.

The darkness no longer smelled of sausages in stewed onion and tomatoes, that was certain. The redolence of the cooling walls and watered plants, the sugary smell of decomposing garbage steaming up from the courtyard bins grew stronger.

Ecstatically, intoxicated with admiration for the man, Gyöngyvér was the first to speak in this exceptional, somewhat strange summer night. Because she did not exactly know to whom she was now talking, she wound up sounding a shade too distant.

You were like, she panted, her eyes wide and round in the strange darkness and a bit out of focus because of the closeness of his face, you are like a technician.

And as she spoke she rather forcefully hooked her graceful feet into the crooks of his knees.

Her relaxed limbs seemed to be gathering some indefinable, cheerful, unbridled strength. Her strange, separate spirit was in a frenzy. She was especially glad to have finally said this. Even though it couldn’t have occurred to her earlier, because she hadn’t yet had enough experience to give the man shape with words for herself. Perhaps the word felt appropriate because she surprised herself with them. She tightened her loins, thrust her hips forward, her whole body arching upward. In her slackened vagina, she already felt him as an immovable keel.

She will sing.

With it she could sail out to the open sea. Without it she would sink. He’s yours, her soul whispered to her playfully and extravagantly. And with a single vigorous movement she flipped and turned the body so much larger and heavier than her own, and now it was under her.

The bed creaked again, but it no longer mattered; their bodies were banging and thudding on each other. The complete turnabout was almost successful.

Perhaps the man unconsciously yet firmly helped her; still, they slipped a bit off the bed. To keep from slipping out of each other, Gyöngyvér had to kneel above him, opening her lap completely. Perhaps from the sudden change of position, the general physical exhaustion, the protracted excitement, or from something entirely different, she felt nauseated. Although she managed to suppress it, the cavity of her mouth filled up with a sour taste. Her entire body convulsed with the effort, her stiffened body, especially her arms, back, and breasts broke out in goose bumps, as if she were realizing in retrospect what had happened in the previous hours. As someone whose hairs stand on end, she shuddered at what was happening.

Holding on to the bed frame with both hands, she literally sat into him.

Just as she had done earlier with words, she was now overcoming him with her body and looking down on him from somewhere very far away. As if they hadn’t reached a final destination, she did not lower her full weight, only kept sinking and rising. She also opened her mouth; let the unpleasant smell leave, even if through a loud belch; she yawned into him with her pelvis, with her expanded loins.

The entire woman was a surprising revelation.

Ágost could not avoid her and could not get enough of her, though he felt sated. He felt sick, did not really want her, wanted to urinate, was thirsty, ached all over, wanted to flee from and out of her, his mouth was dry, and it would have been good to move his limbs around a little.

Simultaneously, they broke into deep laughter. They both felt at the same time that in their common satiety they were now each other’s prisoner.

You’re completely out of your mind, said the man, recovering from the laughter, which is all right, but why say something so stupid.

Say what.

That technician thing.

What’s the matter with that.

Shallow.

I like it. On the nail, that’s all.

You wouldn’t say it if you didn’t like it, replied the man, taking on her clipped rhythm. What I want to know is how you think of such a thing in the first place.

He was thrusting more strongly; at last, again he knew what he was doing.

He saw that Gyöngyvér shrugged her shoulders slightly. And strangely, it was in this slight shrug of hers, more than in anything else, that he recognized himself.

Her hot, odorous, slushy, softened loin stubbornly stuck to its own rhythm, which did not abate. They were similar in their stubbornness too. She made a deep circular pass, and when she reached the end of the circle, the man should have thrust into her, but then she was already rising.

Did not wait for him.

It’s very simple, she said languidly. I feel I am always being serviced. Nothing more.

It was strange she did not need to decide to say it like that, to characterize the situation with such hurtfully emotionless words. And since the surprised man could not respond, though he was also always ready for dry and illusion-free responses, the woman added, after a while, well, that’s why I said it.

It’s a good thing I’m not a fitter.

What is that.

You can’t be serious. You mean you really don’t know.

How would I know.

It means a mechanic, if you really think I’m some kind of technician. And in our case, I’d have to be a pipe fitter.

They both giggled at this and attentively, almost distrustfully, a little incredulously, scrutinized each other in the darkness.

Strictly speaking, they were already past everything anyway.

It was impossible to spoil retroactively the pleasure they’d gained from each other or to take it completely away.

The way the man saw it, this strange being was unattainably far from him. As before, he still hadn’t understood how anyone, from another world so different from his, could get so close to him, and a woman to boot. She was swaying above him like a dark stain, with her tousled short-cropped hair, a wild medusa head. A moon dweller.

And in the woman’s face the sharp glitters of his similarly unattainable features; down in the hot depths the thick mouth, the cleft chin, the forehead, and the strong ridge of the nose. What could she possibly expect from someone like that. Then why is this constant desire of hers, if from women, if only for a brief moment, she would always get more.

Nothing bad, nothing hostile; they were both being very careful to say nothing excessive or final.

All right, then, make it an engineer, and I humbly beg your pardon.

You can’t make it up like that.

Chief engineer then, she shouted cheerfully, that’s my last offer.

No, don’t. Think carefully about what you’re saying.

This must mean I really hurt your feelings badly. But that’s the truth.

She let go of him with her vagina, though the man hoped she would mend things with attacks of tenderness.

But what she seemed to be saying was that if he was going to be so unreasonably touchy about the truth, he might as well leave, go wherever he wants.

His aching member slipped out. It literally jumped out into the air, shaking in its regained freedom.

He would have reached for it right away, mercifully to pull the foreskin over the head because even contact with the cool air was painful, but he couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t calculate the length of this motion, couldn’t calculate anything.

Gyöngyvér threw herself headlong on his body, their contact ending in a loud thud. She clutched his shoulders with her sharp fingernails, her fine featherweight torso and pelvis pressing down on him. The cock became stuck between their slippery bellies. He could barely retrieve his hand so it wouldn’t get stuck there too. There was a slight cool breeze. Ágost with his heels, Gyöngyvér with her toes made contact with the cool, sobering, and indifferent floor.