Parallel Stories: A Novel Read online

  They made cutting remarks; they would not suffer the boy. Ilona, why don’t you put that child back in the kitchen, the mistress of the house would say. I’d hate to have him break things here.

  The hall was the only space in the apartment, by the way, that revealed the changing times and the unpleasant deterioration of circumstances. Originally its sole function was to be the place from which to reach the bathrooms, the two bedrooms, the dining room, and the kitchen—a kind of inner corridor but much wider than similar passageways found in other apartments. In an earlier interior arrangement of the apartment, this is where large linen closets had stood and it was the place for ironing clothes. For the last few years, however, it has housed an old sideboard of imposing proportions and a matching large dining table with stern-looking chairs. Yet not even by mistake did they refer to the space as a dining room. Necessity and expedience do not necessarily make life friendly, and that is why they couldn’t call it by that name. Although the hall window, kept shut at all times, was concealed by silk drapery and the glass in its panes was opaque, it gave on to a narrow airshaft, and the air was often filled with the stench of sewage or equally offensive smells from strange kitchens, not to mention embarrassing noises emanating from toilets and bathrooms. During meals, the most they could do was to pretend not to notice any of this, to pretend they did not hear, let us say, that somebody on the second floor was groaning, pushing, and evacuating while they went on discussing cultural topics and enjoyably consuming their beefsteaks. It happened once, while they were at dinner, that somebody on the fourth floor heaved a burned and still smoking milk pan out the window and into the airshaft, where the pan unluckily hit the wall, ricocheted, broke through the double glass of the opaque window, and landed at the diners’ feet.

  For long minutes no one at the table could speak.

  In their unpleasant situation, it was no help to them that an oriental rug covered the floor, that the table settings remained more or less intact, and that two exceptionally precious paintings were still hanging on the walls. These paintings, by the way, could hardly be discerned in the dimness. They were old, darkened pictures in heavy gilded frames, and only a single unshaded wall lamp provided some light in the hall. It was kept on day and night to keep people from tripping on the wrinkled rug or from bumping into an out-of-place, stern-looking chair. The many-branched gilded baroque chandelier dangling from the ceiling, with its complicated tendrils appearing as a shapeless shadow capable of endless metamorphoses, was turned on only at mealtimes.

  The ringing of the telephone reached all the way into the hall, but now there was no one in it. On the larger painting one could just make out scenes of a battle, the shiny deep-brown haunches of rearing English thoroughbreds, a Hungarian banner as it fell from the standard-bearer’s hand, half-naked human bodies trampled under hoofs. Glimmering vaguely from the recessed gilded frame of the other painting were the rosy cheeks of a young man’s face, painted in glazed colors; he was József Lehr, a captain in the Hungarian army of 1848, who with dreamy eyes looked out from the space in the parted silk drapery into the eternal dimness of the airshaft. From the bathroom one could hear running water and the quick, rapid squelching sounds of soap.

  And the person who could have picked up the receiver without any trouble, an attractive, tall young man barely nineteen years old, with nearly ramrodlike posture, was simply not in a position to do so. He saw everything, weighed everything, clearly heard the phone ringing, yet somehow, for quite some time, had not been present anywhere. At any rate, there were many things he could have done but did not do because he was busy with other, much more important matters. As if he had to have a complete overview of his entire future life before, from his imaginary distance, he would consider what he could and could not do.

  Who is capable of taking on such a great responsibility; it paralyzed him.

  People in his milieu sensed a passing absentmindedness at most, but not his threatened mental state. He had a flawless education, and when he talked to someone he smiled persistently, paid unflagging attention, showed interest, and asked questions without being intrusive—all of which was enough for people to consider him truly endearing. Even his own relatives ignored the unpredictability of his behavior; they thought he was a bit of an eccentric but essentially a fine fellow.

  He was now standing at a front-room window looking out at something, while leaning with his hip against the windowsill. He kept his eyes on something; his eyes were submerged in something that no one but he could see; with his eyes he seemed to have grown into this something, but this was revealed only by his unnatural posture, the stiff little half-turns he made. When he leaned forward and felt the pressure of the wood on his loins, he almost touched his temple to the window; simultaneously he had to retract his neck lest his head press the glass from the window. Nobody could have understood what he was doing here. Had he simply stopped at the window without paying special attention to anything, he would have seen the festively deserted square with an occasional yellow streetcar crossing it; or the trees swaying in the wind, their bare, glittering branches knocking together; or perhaps the enormous sky in which cracks of white incandescence had opened up and clouds, heavy with rain yet flying swiftly, were effortlessly chasing one another without piling into a thunderhead.

  The vision did have a sort of unpredictable rhythm.

  The rain shower did not necessarily batter the windows when the sky grew dark. Up above, the clouds were moving more rapidly than would have seemed possible while also releasing the rain to swoop earthward; so it seemed as if the water were flowing through the white incandescent cracks.

  He saw this too, though he wasn’t looking at it, just as he also looked at things that he could not possibly have seen. And one cannot even say that he was thinking about something. He was not thinking. With his body, he responded to the rhythm of the gusting wind, and thus he adjusted his rhythm to match any thought or any other form of sensation that crossed his mind. As if inside him too, the elements had taken control that day, as they had in the entire city. He became gloomy and then cheered up, he found supporting arguments for his mood and in a little while discarded them; they seeped away from him; then suddenly his feelings ran dry, he grew despondent and became hopeful. He had no explanation for the simultaneous diversity. Out of this embarrassing lack, the soul’s chaos was yawning at him, his own. But not a single feature of his face became distorted; on the contrary, self-discipline made his countenance seem frighteningly indifferent.

  There was somebody else in him, another being who was not a person but who followed his every thought and movement. Whatever he missed, whatever he did or intended to do, this someone was watching impassively, voicing no opinion but not leaving him alone either. When trouble was grave, it would register in the young man’s face with its neutral countenance. It waited for the moment of action; it did not interfere with anything. As if to claim mutely that every moral command or consideration is secondary because it is always preceded by action or resignation. But with the tenacious carriage of his head and his petulantly pursed lips, the young man showed that he was not just gazing idly out the window, that he wanted something or there was something he could not not want, that he sees something; maniacally he is keeping his eyes on something, he cannot let go of it. And this something is down there on the boulevard, on the opposite side. Occasionally a passing streetcar obscures it. Maybe in the bus stop. When a bus stopped he got on his toes as if to see through the bus. Maybe somebody is supposed to arrive, he is waiting for somebody, that’s why he can’t leave his post.

  While he was waiting for this or for something entirely different, and enjoying the windowsill’s rhythmic pressure on his loins, the young woman in bed in the inner back room did make a move. As if impatience, or some protest, or perhaps a sensual bodily excitement had coursed through her naked arms. Her brownish skin twitched but in the opposite direction from which her arm muscles contracted. It was the last beat of her sleep, which
included the temptation of the unwanted awakening.

  She had been alone in bed since early morning; the telltale signs of the absent person included a hastily turned-up eiderdown and a few scattered articles of clothing, dark socks on the floor near the bed, pajama pants a little distance away, and a pair of white underpants on the rug; a shirt and a cream-colored pajama top on an overstuffed chair at the far end of the room. Since he had left in a hurry, the young woman alternately forced herself back to sleep because she wanted to forget what had happened during the night and dozed off, or was startled to wakefulness again. Not because of the morning noises and not because of the persistently ringing telephone. It was as if she were taking a ferry across a river flowing in a flat landscape and the ferry docked now at this shore, now at the other. It seems she must have really been dreaming; she dreamed of crossing over. She dreamed of shores that did not differ from each other; no bushes or trees, not a single tree anywhere, only farm wagons, jostling cattle, and people wrapped in clouds of dust as they streamed forth from the vast lowlands. The last images of her dream remained glued for a while to the surface of her wakefulness. The river was enormously wide, murky, the surface of its dull, glistening water almost convex. From one shore the other shore could not be seen. But I should see it, she thought half-asleep, remembering the shore she had left, but it’s impossible, this is an impossibility. At the same time, she did not know what she should be seeing. The words clattered hollowly in her head; she did not comprehend their meaning even when awake.

  As if to look out from under the pillow, she lifted it slightly from her head and at the same time raised her head. Instead of listening to senseless words, she wanted to hear whether anyone was going to pick up the receiver, or maybe she’d have to after all. Because of her little movement, she suddenly smelled something that was at once strange and familiar. What is going on here anyway. She was happy to register the fact that despite the old lady’s demands, no one was picking up the phone. And neither would she. She had nothing to do with it. After all, Kristóf must be in one of the front rooms. Each time she awoke she would traverse the entire apartment, concentrating her attention on each detail, going from room to room with her awakened senses, as if to palpate the physical and mental situation of the people found in them, and in this activity there was most definitely something blatantly animalistic.

  The young man named Kristóf had in time become her obsession.

  She spied on him with her imagination, she pursued him with her sensuality, she wanted to know what he was doing, when and where.

  Kristóf lived in the adjacent back room, and it was frightening to contemplate that he might know more about them than was proper.

  They did not always manage to keep their voices down; mutual pleasure was the only thing that still kept them together. She probably wouldn’t have liked to admit to herself that she was gradually breaking away from Ágost and becoming more attracted to Kristóf, if only because of the men’s strong resemblance. And she wasn’t just eagerly following him in her imagination: sometimes the sounds Ágost elicited from her she deliberately intended for Kristóf. She’d have her orgasm a little for him. She would come a little more loudly than necessary so Kristóf in the adjacent room could have some of it. At the same time, she could not be sure that she had achieved her aim. Ring, go ahead, go on ringing. Somebody was constantly talking inside her head. She wasn’t sure whether the nagging female voice was real or part of her dream. She could catch Kristóf with her desperate imagination but the woman shouting from the bathroom she dreaded both awake and asleep.

  The fire was burning, practically roaring, in the tile stove, and from her bed she looked straight into the blazing flames.

  As if she were looking at fire for the first time. On this shore, everything was stranger, more distant, than what she had to leave behind on the other, more familiar shore. She was amazed; she did not know where in the world this dream had come from; she could never have seen such a huge river in her life. I couldn’t have seen such a river, never have, this is as big as the Ganges or the Mississippi. Her head was reverberating with her own voice. She should have gotten up a long time ago. She felt her pillow emitting the apartment’s strange smell, which she had never been able to get used to and which urged her out of bed. It wasn’t the bed that held her captive; she saw the day ahead of her as hopeless. All her days were hopeless. And the ferry shuttling between the two shores must mean that she does not, never has had, and never will have a home of her own.

  Her mother, of whom only her name has remained, Borbála Mózes, left her in the maternity center of Nagykőrös when she was but a few days old; on her birth certificate the newborn was registered with her mother’s last name and given the first name of Gyöngyvér. She did not know who her father was, whether she looked like him or her mother, or if she resembled them at all. Her mother must have requested the hateful first name. She persistently and darkly hated her unknown unmarried mother because of this name, because of the gyöngy, meaning pearl, and because of the vér, meaning blood. She was raised first in parochial and then in state institutions; she lived with foster parents, in boarding schools and finally in college dormitories. And the words with ambiguous meaning must have rattled in her head, because her forehead was throbbing with pain. But between the two friendly shores of the mighty river all the unpleasant feelings dissolved, the obstinate pain melted into the landscape. The early morning sunshine glowed as if through a fine mist, it was summertime, a summer that she did not recall while awake; a short, soft, early little happiness that still managed, after all these years, to compensate her for the painful headaches. In secret, she sometimes drank a great deal. The only thing that clouded the erstwhile happiness was that she had to wait for other passengers while she wanted to get across quickly. Her hunger and thirst were insatiable, as befits one who always longs for another shore.

  But now she could tarry no longer; she had to get up. Her bladder was tight as a drum; she had sharp little stabs in her stomach urging her to make a move.

  The room was wrapped in a pleasant dimness that begged her to stay; she pressed her thighs close together. Despite the late morning hour, no one had opened the shutters that kept the room dark. I’ve got the chills again, she declared with evident annoyance. Light came in only through the open door, and on the walls were the long shadows of reddish flames.

  She stared at the flames but did not see what she was looking at because she kept reaching out with the feelers of her imagination, casting about in vain; she could not decide of what her dream was reminding her. A memory, this is one of my memories, she repeated to herself, and she almost caught it but then missed it. Before fleeing the rattling words in her head and angrily turning over to make the pain dissolve, to disappear finally in the landscape, she instinctively clutched at wakefulness; she longed not for an empty dream but, perhaps, for the empathy of the other person.

  Ilona dearest, she shouted to the other room in a weepy singsong, couldn’t you open the fucking window already. If you keep the stove smoking like that, I’m going to suffocate.

  Her plaintive tone did not lighten the brutality of the sentences, of course. She really wasn’t asking for much; still, she always overshot her target, and because of that she was often dissatisfied with herself. Sometimes she thought she was too lenient with others, sometimes too aggressive, pushy, or hostile; she couldn’t find the right proportions. It’s not that she had no standards of proportion; she had too many different standards, which could not be easily reconciled and often clashed, making her emphases and her behavior offensive.

  The other woman did not respond for a good long time. Not because she might have been offended; she kept leaning back and then forward, first to escape the flames lashing out of the stove and then to blow on them, with her bare breath, to keep them from dying. To build a fire every day in six different tile stoves and keep them going evenly was no easy task, even without a crazy storm raging outside.

  I’v
e had this terrible migraine since the crack of dawn, came the words from the other room, my head’s about to split open. I don’t know why it’s happening again. Maybe because of the wind.

  The complaint that could possibly pass for an apology hovered helplessly in the air between the two rooms for a few long seconds.

  The domestic help, whose full name was Ilona Bondor, understood and to some extent even felt the young woman’s difficult situation; she needed no explanation as to how one winds up with a migraine at the crack of dawn.

  Either she’d drunk a lot in secret again, or Ágost had failed to satisfy her again.

  And, perhaps not as the other woman would have liked, but she decidedly felt empathetic toward Gyöngyvér. There was something touchingly awkward and vulnerable in Ilona’s asymmetrical round face, in her dense, pale freckles that nearly met under her eyes and on her nose, in her thin, carefully frizzled red hair and narrow shoulders. She gave the impression of being an undeveloped slip of a girl, perhaps suffering from a mild case of rickets, but she was neither an immature nor an irresolute person. Judging by her exterior, she was more resolute than others expected or were willing to accept her as being. She knew exactly what to expect from everyone. Now, too, she looked up only when the kindling finally caught fire.

  I think the healthiest thing would be if Gyöngyike got herself out of bed now, she shouted back over her shoulder. And she could even pick up the phone. Gyöngyike told me yesterday that she’d have to get up early this morning. She meant to go swimming before her singing lesson because she said she’d like to make full use of her days off. And that would be a very nice thing, but how can she do that if she stays in bed. That is not very nice of Gyöngyike. Gyöngyike thinks that her migraine will pass by itself. Well, it won’t. She should get up right away and go out into the fresh air.