Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

Though she barely touched it.

She could open herself that wide. Then what was she talking about his being too big for her.

And she didn’t let him go completely inside her, as if her intense heat, smoothness, and depth could not possibly be filled up.

At this moment, they both seemed preoccupied more with themselves than with each other. They were sharply separated, maintaining only their contact points; they barely had anything to do with each other even though, in effect, their autonomy had dissolved completely, had ceased to exist. They consciously followed what was happening to them, but the person or persons involved in whatever was occurring seemed far ahead, with them following at a distance. As if they both had a hitherto unknown other self. Their wills also preceded them; only afterward would they say that that was exactly, precisely, how they wanted it. Now they both clearly understood that their own separate bodies were for the most part incapable of union, and something entirely different had, independently of them, already managed to unite.

That is what they both now comprehended.

Listen, this is painful, really, not pleasant at all, the man kept repeating; he would have gladly fled the sight before him, but for now could only paw and finger helplessly the light, hard, incredibly flexible and nimble body in his search for a handhold on something he considered familiar.

Why not put it on my mouth instead, he moaned. I probably did wreck you, I’m sorry about that. Forgive me, he moaned desperately. Please, give it here, I’ll make it all better.

But Gyöngyvér could not be stopped. As if she hadn’t understood what the other one wanted.

Or perhaps she really did not hear him because her body, home of hearing and seeing, was already very far from her. After all, it was the first time that something she wanted had happened, she had initiated, or would have wanted from a man. Or she remained in the boarding-school shower room with her memories, and used Irénke’s sweet tongue and sharp little teeth to penetrate herself and the man. For years, if she wanted to, this little tongue could make her feel like a princess; her devoted servants never looked, because they never had to, for what she wanted, they always knew her wishes. This awareness made her open up, rise high above him, with her labia barely touching the swelling crown of his penis as she arched over and bent down from the heights toward the man’s darkly shining upper body.

She gave back to the man what she had received from the girl.

The man’s beauty filled her eyes, a kind of pleasing proportion her loins could find by themselves. She was brimming with burgeoning praise. She just reached him with her lips. She sucked and patted his strong nipples with her tongue. That’s how she extracted an advance on his cock. She bit down, pulled on him, twice, quickly, which made the defenseless man cry out again. And he would have thrust into her harder but she did not let him. Like a spring, she was bouncing above him, enjoying his obstinacy. She was conducting him with a triple-beat rhythm that radiated humor and jollity.

This brave jollity, for which there was no substitute, she had also borrowed from Irénke.

It certainly wasn’t usual for her, and never with a man. She barely allowed the stubborn head of his cock to touch her clitoris — the second beat; it could just slip inside her vagina — the third, closing cadence. She was filling herself up not with his physical bigness, but with a rhythm of sharply separable beats and chords.

And then it started from the beginning, mercilessly, brutally; everything all over again. She became like a martinet who enjoys depriving a person in her charge of all means of resistance. Later it became clear why she hadn’t taken it into her mouth.

Come on, let me have it, repeated the man impatiently, give it here, as if he were truly thirsty for it, though he knew he had no hope his wish would be granted. Please, I want to do it with my tongue, my mouth, I’ll heal it for you.

He was also driven by a wish, a secret unavoidable thought like a visionary promise of relief, to take back some of his sperm from the woman. To suck and swallow some of it, while it was still possible, to scoop out the last drops with his tongue.

But Gyöngyvér had no intention of obeying him. For some reason she was certain the man was merely trying to trick her. And she was enjoying the hitherto unknown circumstance. She had the upper hand.

She wanted to hear him say he wanted her cunt. She wanted to force the word out of him.

Tell me what you want so much, come on, spell it out.

I won’t say it, moaned the man, I won’t.

Then how would I know what you want to heal.

Don’t tell me you don’t understand.

I don’t care how, in Italian, German, any language, just please say it. And she added angrily, in a low voice, like a person taking her full revenge, if it’s all the same to you.

Her sudden anger, which she underscored with a movement deviating from the guiding rhythm of her vagina, might have had to do with her lack of diligence in learning foreign languages; she’d begun to dabble in German and simultaneously studied Italian, but she bogged down around the tenth lesson. She didn’t even know what cunt was in Italian or German, though she could hardly expect to have a singer’s career without mastery of these languages.

If I’m doing something you don’t like, let me up, replied the man, who didn’t understand what was going on and would have liked to shove her off. If it’s all the same to you, find somebody else, and right away too. Or let’s see what you can do on your own.

A little while ago you wouldn’t let me talk. But this is what I wanted to tell you.

I prefer watching it to listening to it.

She did not respond. Unlike their aroused emotions and urge to quarrel, their loins remained indifferent. And it had never occurred to her to touch herself while a man was watching. Things like that were among her most closely guarded secrets, and she was about to share one with him. And she had never before talked, or been talked to, in the midst of lovemaking, about anything. Suddenly she was gripped by the unexpected realization that for hours, for days, or for who knows how long they’d been talking while making love without her truly noticing it. She didn’t understand herself or the situation; she had no idea who this other person was with whom everything became so distorted and transformed. It seemed impossible that everything could be so different. She thought it was positively repulsive.

She rose along with him, as if fleeing, wanting at the same time to lean over him. And while she sucked his nipple again and cautiously bit its hardened tip, she very lightly drew her vagina across the head of his penis. She was being careful that the man should feel nothing of what was coursing through her own body, the many unsettling thoughts, the alternating hot and cold excitement in her back and thigh muscles. Still, she gave the man the impression that she was bidding farewell to him gently and discreetly. At the same time, he couldn’t possibly penetrate her more deeply or fiercely; alarmed, he realized there was nothing he could do. He wanted to catch up with her; she mustn’t go away. Now he wanted to cause pain. With his entire body, with his hips, with the huge raised and contracted muscles of his buttocks, he jerked, convulsed, and thrust himself into her several times in succession. Several decades of fear and anxiety would have been concentrated in these spasms if the pleasure of violence had not dissolved them. And the woman understood this, precisely: he found himself very close to the moment when standing on the sunny steps at the boarding school he had called after his father, begging him not to leave him there alone. Because she felt the importance of that moment, she did not allow the man’s violent thrusts to enter her. She sensed unerringly the peaks of his unassimilated torments, the heights he aspired to, his frustrated desires. And as if propelling herself up from the familiar depths of sunshine-illuminated water, with her taut body spanning the distance between the riverbed and the faraway surface, she found, among her own images, a simile for what she felt emanating from the man. With a ready-to-bounce straddle above him, she was protecting him, giving him a home, and opening an umbrella over him, but when the man approached she moved away; if he wanted to withdraw she lowered herself on him a little, but never sat completely into him.