Parallel Stories: A Novel (181 page)

He had been daydreaming about those woods.

So he hasn’t seen his mother since then.

How could he have seen her.

They don’t even correspond.

What on earth could she write to him about. My dear son, I think about you a lot, or what. And what could he write to such a mother. Although once in a long while she and his aunt secretly write to each other, they seem to think it best not to show him their letters.

But why doesn’t he read them anyway, why not steal them, why is he such a coward, damn it.

If they don’t want him to see them, why would he.

Why is he so submissive.

He shouldn’t be so tolerant.

He made the excuse that he was merely curious.

Curious, what could you still be curious about.

Kristóf had no answer to this, though the question touched him deeply; indeed, about what could he still be curious.

Anyway, Klára did not believe him about its being curiosity; she thought it was plain cowardice.

He is a coward, doesn’t want to acknowledge his own situation, and prefers to daydream.

It was time to get rid of this great cowardice of his.

It embarrassed them both to have Klára so annoyed with him. She was ready to explode with the anger she felt about him, that is to say on his behalf.

He should rebel, why put up with it. Why doesn’t he rebel against his family. They must be a terrible bunch, at least judging by what he had been telling her. At the very least he should rebel against them, if he does nothing else. Nothing sensible, that is. And why, actually, doesn’t he do something sensible with his life, she kept crying out in a low voice, shaking the steering wheel with her gloved hands.

Kristóf asked her in vain what he could do, against whom and how and what for.

She could not calm herself down.

Let them feel the crack of his whip, why must he suffer everything without saying anything.

He chose to tell her quickly about Ilonka Weisz, about his unspeakable shame, as if mentioning his silent suffering had reminded him of it, and he told her almost everything about what they had done to him on the fourth floor when, because of his pathological curiosity, those Weisz boys had managed to entrap him. He also told her about the mutilated man on the rolling board, in whom he had recognized his hauled-away father, and whom he could not follow on the sidewalk as the man propelled himself forward among the people.

Among their feet.

He could not really tell the story; that is how great his humiliation was.

And really, why does he put up with it all.

That is why he kept babbling instead about his grandmother’s women friends and the autumn weeks spent in the Grand Hotel on Margit Island, so he wouldn’t have to tell this story either, down to its painful marrow, not to let it hurt so much.

When he had followed his father or, who knows, perhaps a total stranger through the bustling city.

And he wanted very much to ask the woman how she saw this pathological curiosity of his; she should tell him, just this once, exactly what she thought about it, honestly. But this too was only a substitute for another question that he wouldn’t have asked of himself. He would have asked it of the woman, except that her silence was so belligerent, so he decided not to risk the question about his curiosity either. Had he gone out of his mind, how else could he do such a thing, keep spying on a total stranger for weeks.

Does she see signs of insanity in him.

What should he do.

Or what does she want from him, from such a madman, and what does her obstinate and reproachful silence mean.

He was not hallucinating, why would anybody hallucinate about such a thing; his curiosity guided him to the right place because that miserable wretch was his father, in his bones he felt identical to him.

What idiocy, how could he feel someone else’s missing limbs.

Yet he did, no matter that he knew it was insanity and he shouldn’t be doing a thing like that.

He only regretted—and he could not possibly talk to the woman about this either—that because of the black dog he hadn’t had the strength to get undressed at the right moment. That he could not throw his clothes, soaked with strangers’ piss and jism, off the bridge and then jump after them into the Danube.

He felt as if he had deprived the universe of a painfully beautiful scene.

In the name of the universe too, he felt sorry for himself.

But though it hadn’t happened then, it might happen tomorrow.

One more thing I have to tell you, he said, surprising himself a little, when he wanted to jump into the Danube from the Árpád Bridge, it was perhaps the devil that held him back.

But why did he want to jump.

His rotten black dog held him back. It had broken out of the garbage bay and come after him. He literally ran him down, literally shoved him against the railing in the joy of finding him and started licking his face with his big tongue.

But what kind of black dog and what garbage bay.

As if he had not heard the woman’s questions, he kept telling her about his disgust, his shameful weakness. When animals get too close to him he begins to choke up, he doesn’t know why. The roof of his mouth begins to blister, he retches, and he has to pull himself away from the animal. He cannot share anything with them, not even with a lizard or a porcupine. So for him to do what he had planned long before, he first had to free himself of the dog. But he could not chase it away. The dog simply wouldn’t acknowledge that it was being chased away. It was happy, it wagged its tail and barked hideously. Throw it over the railing, kill it—he really couldn’t think of anything else. It would have fit between the uprights of the railing, he could have shoved it through, but the dog thought he wanted to play.

Klára listened to him for a while, morose and silent, as though disapproving, but from her face it was impossible to tell what she disapproved of, the entire story, his way of telling the story, or the subjects of his story.

She had lowered her gloved hands from the steering wheel and into her lap some time ago.

What garbage bay, what dog, she asked again. She worried, forlornly and quietly, about her own questions.

Kristóf had not yet told her the whole story, how was she to understand it.

They were standing in the middle of Aréna Road, which hadn’t been called Aréna Road for a long time, just as Queen Vilma Road did not stay Queen Vilma Road and Stefánia Boulevard was no longer Stefánia Boulevard, though decades later people in the city were still referring to them by the old names.

The cambered surfaces of the cobblestones were shining.

The dog would not let go of him, it kept barking, jumping, snapping at his hands, in the end they were rolling on the pavement. The dog was literally writhing with joy because finally they were playing together. But he had to get away from it. He had really had enough, and he didn’t want to prolong his life just because of a dog. He was not so curious that he was willing to put up with everything. He lifted the dog by its forelegs, it wasn’t easy, its large body was heavy, but he managed somehow to gather it up and raise it over the railing to hurl it down. The dog didn’t know what was happening but looked down and saw the drop. Although it sounds improbable, the dog seemed to understand that this was no game but that someone was after its life, and it jumped out of his arms. And as the dog did this it was digging its nails into his shoulder bones, ripped my shirt to pieces, he shouted, laughing; as he went on with his tale Kristóf became louder and louder. He was guffawing, not to mention my skin. As though he were reciting a saga of heroes, or as if his own death wish had been the greatest amusement of his life.

With its hind legs it succeeded in clearing itself of the railing.

Pushing me away and whimpering. It stumbled across the sidewalk, I flopped down and it ran away with its tail between its legs.

It fled back to safety on the island, whimpering the whole time.

But he did not tell her that he kept hearing the dog’s whimpers even when he could no longer see it, nor did he tell her that he stayed there on the pavement with his face pressed to the asphalt and went on screaming.

Sobbing so as not to hear the fucking whimpers.

In truth, he was summoning God; he couldn’t kill that dog, let alone himself. He didn’t notice that he was bleeding from several wounds. And he didn’t tell her that later Ilona was the one who washed his wounds and that now, if she wanted to, Klára could still see the two four-pronged scars.

But how did you wind up on the island that night in the first place, and why did you take your dog with you.

And he did not tell her how sorry he had been ever since that he had chased away the dog, and how sorry he felt for himself for having to live.

He does not understand anything.

Klára repeated her objective questions as desperately as if she had known or at least had an inkling of the whole story, and as if she preferred not to know why he had wanted to die or why he thought he must kill himself.

This astounded Kristóf.

That other people wanted to go on living and he did not.

But what’s the connection, for God’s sake, say something I can understand, the woman begged him, though actually her curiosity was not quite serious. As if she felt compelled by social convention to mock and make fun of painful facts and unpleasant truths but actually found it amusing, most revealing, to witness another person in the midst of senseless turmoil. Having heard so much confidential information, which suddenly enriched her and which she would certainly use, she should have been embarrassed.

And Kristóf noted with surprise how many things he had told her against his will. He couldn’t
not
lie to the woman from whom he couldn’t escape. He did not want to escape from her but expected nothing good from her. Yet he revealed his chaos to her as if he were begging to be freed from his prison.

It became clear to both which of them was the stronger. Klára could free him, but not the other way around.

And without taking a deep breath before telling another lie or giving any thought to what he was about to say, he cheerfully told her he had gone dancing with a girl at the casino and that was how he’d wound up on Margit Island the evening before the incident with the dog.

But it wasn’t his dog, he explained, only a stray dog that had joined them, and then for a while he could trot out genuine details from his rougher tale, as he had done before. She was quite pretty, the girl, he said in a loud voice to make the words sound genuine.

And he was devastated, he told Klára, when this girl left him for someone else, whom she loved, which she explained while they were dancing.

Actually, there was such a pretty girl and there was some similarity between the story about her and the one Kristóf was telling Klára, but it was not there that she had pressed her hip to his, and it was not then that she had held him in her arms and whispered into his ear, forever, forever.

So that’s how it happened.

But one doesn’t want to jump into the Danube because of a little affair gone wrong.

That’s true.

Then why.

There’s always a last straw, it was because of the last straw.

And you were so scared that you roamed the island all night long because she had left you.

Yes, that’s what happened, it was a little more than being scared, and he hoped Klára understood the connections.

Then he must still be in love with this quite-pretty girl, Klára said provokingly so she would not have to doubt Kristóf’s words.

Of course she understood this banal story. Because of that girl, he had been ready to throw the miserable dog into the Danube.

It was as though she wished to announce well in advance that she was jealous and would keep track of every one of his secret thoughts.

So now they were both left with a promise of jealousy, which in fact was her doubt about the authenticity of his story.

They were sitting in the friendly old car in which the heating system didn’t work. There was no island, no quite-pretty girl, no dog, the dog’s story was very different, and the giant was nowhere. Klára’s malice was deliberate, she made no secret of it, and why shouldn’t she protect herself. Wasn’t she justified, after what Kristóf had involuntarily revealed to her with his assorted lies and profound confusion. Now everything was very clear, layers of undisturbed and unsympathetic reality resting neatly on and behind one another, and the two of them could not extract the deceits in this: that was the naked truth. As if Klára were able instantly to avenge things she didn’t even know about.

Kristóf could not take offense, with the giant being his one and only, no doubt about it; compared with the giant, nobody could be a more significant one and only.

And how could he tell her about the giant. That was a dream, a madness, a nightmare.

How could he be hopelessly in love with anyone, how would hopelessness fit into the picture. He preferred to be quiet. He could not say to her, those poor girls before you, I’ve never been in love with any of them. Under the protection of this phrase,
in love
, we tested and used each other a little, that’s all. He preferred to be quiet. He did not weigh or evaluate his laughable attempts at love, did not compare them with what actually happened. He was beyond all realistic hope that he would ever live with the giant. His hopelessness resided in a region very different from the one in which Klára discovered it. Even if he could ever find him again, and he couldn’t. Sometimes his mouth became filled with the giant’s powerfully odorous cock, it made him retch, it was hard with his tongue and lips to thrust back the meaty, almost fat foreskin rising like waves from the rim of the bulb, helping it carefully with his teeth; and this would happen when he wasn’t even thinking about the giant, the cock would simply pop into his memory. How could he be hopeless once the giant and his mustached assistant had taken hold of him, mercilessly tasted on him everything that was delicate and worth touching in a person, had turned their tools on him and brutally satisfied him, helping the young man over his first shock, and then, the job well done, had quickly left him.