Parallel Stories: A Novel (185 page)

Klára was on guard, though. She had read every work by Bakunin available in Hungarian and in Russian; she unashamedly used a dictionary when she needed one to understand what she was reading, and understand it well, and she did not hurry. She definitely wanted to be part of the conspiracy.
*

And in the darkness Kristóf kept his nose alert and trained on her, inclined as he was to a more sensual and sensory conspiracy, excitedly working his nostrils to absorb everything more and more deeply whenever he pensively fell silent while telling his life story. And what made him pensive was the woman’s insane selfishness—probably the result of having been spoiled as a child—and her aristocratic narcissism, her intellectual affectations, which she balanced and interspersed with obscenities and vulgarities. Kristóf was more at home with sexual pornography; transpositions of anarchistic political pornography were alien to him. The perfume was sweet and heavy, as multicolored as the segments of an open fan, not at all anarchic, and his abdominal wall and his testicles hurt because of the relentless tension of the last few days. Klára could not have known that he was uncircumcised, which in this or similar cases is a disadvantage for the man, how could she know. Her being so spoiled, her directness and proximity, this was all very unusual, unfamiliar, and alarming, and she seemed to be attracted to him. At the same time he had to sense the pervasive proximity of something in her from which he was excluded and in which he could never be involved.

It was not a political movement that Klára imagined, once she acquired some knowledge about the anarchists; such a thing would not have occurred to her, and in the middle of this catastrophe they had to go deeper than that. She had imagined rather that she was preparing by philosophical means for a sensuous and sensory root-canal treatment. She had to get past the personal because she wanted to escape pain, and at the same time, avoiding individual pain, she wanted to share with others the idea of personal freedom so that she would not be bound by that either.

However difficult their life together proved to be, Simon profoundly bewitched Klára with his steadfast admiration, his veneration for her naked childlike body and the prodigious cascades of her hair in which he passionately immersed himself, so that afterward, with him spitting and retching from hairs stuck in the back of his throat, they both could laugh long and loud; laughing at the slyness of the body, as it were, at how some body parts and limbs resist physical pleasure. Although she made imaginative attempts at escaping pain, it never occurred to her that she might free herself of pleasure in the same way.

And it was in this sense that Kristóf had to feel, in their close proximity, the very solid presence of the other man.

This was the constant and traditional object of his sexual subversion, which by now he should have given up for Klára’s sake: the other man.

The unknown person whom he recognizes in his partner and whom, in the very moment of recognition, he disowns. And because of Klára too, the two of them could not be alone. And the third person scarcely ever left them alone for even a moment. Klára would not let him go, just as Kristóf could not let go of the giant or the giant of Kristóf, instead playing along with his mustached assistant as the fourth or fifth participant. Because of this other human being, Kristóf could enter this sort of relationship, neither comprehensible nor transparent yet ineluctable.

Simon undressed this woman as one would a child with a high temperature who has become helpless and must be put to bed promptly.

To get close as soon as possible to her body, in form still childlike; and a few moments of being left to themselves sufficed for this. To rummage around in her skirt a bit, undo the clamps of her garter belt, plant kisses on her forced-open thighs, gobble up the maddening smell of her undergrowth.

And this had nothing to do with their nonstop arguing, cursing, and even biting and hitting each other.

It was thirst and an unappeasable impatience for each other that drove them this far.

No two people can really understand each other; at best, one can admit that one doesn’t; but the two of them decided they would mutually understand each other, and that determination in fact stood in the way of their own sensibilities and powers of comprehension.

Occasionally their fatuous alliance was as if eagles were tearing at their livers; such mythological torments were no longer unimaginable. During one obscene moment, Klára decided she couldn’t be satisfied with a free-love arrangement because she realized she could not eliminate jealousy, it would kill her; the pain of jealousy cannot be dissolved or avoided, and they would destroy each other with it. It was love itself that had to be assassinated.

Only by tormenting each other, by mental and emotional penetrations that became permanent, could they assuage their passion for getting to know each other. They continually cheated on each other, which, according to the relevant mutually accepted agreement, they were supposed to acknowledge uncomplainingly. At given moments they did this well enough, accepting it and not speaking of the pain. They swallowed their mutual reproofs.

Which they forbade each other to use in blackmail.

But there always remained a moment that, with the urge to blackmail and the swallowed pain, stretched into infinity. What the other one said or did in this infinity could never be good enough, let alone perfect, because, despite everything, they both longed for compensation or satisfaction. For solace. They followed each other around with arias of curses or icy silence, they were tormented by their own imperfections and tormented each other with their objections; yet even so they could not do each other out of their love, whether unacknowledged or denied outright.

Their love remained stronger and more sensible than their sensible vows against jealousy.

If they had managed to redeem themselves from the joy of possessing, jealousy would not have been an inevitable torment; it would have been the only sensible solution.

And there was something else beyond this that wasn’t working between them; they did not know what.

Perhaps they thought that in love this was how things had to be. And if it couldn’t be otherwise, what was the point of worrying about what the other one was up to when they weren’t together.

That became the crux of the matter, the free time; may he, or she, use it as I do.

Still, they could not stop themselves with mere reason from suspecting that the other one was with someone else, doing something that the two of them, Klára and Simon, should be doing.

Each felt that being with a third person took something away from the two of them.

Both of them knew it couldn’t go on like this.

Klára wanted to save Simon at any cost from the dangers that lay in wait for him—moral decay, madness, and alcohol. That is why she wanted to commit an unprecedented, love-driven, murderous attack on her own love for him. To fall in love with another and different kind of man, any kind, with utter irresponsibility and lack of restraint, a man whom she could not chase away or avoid, and to do this not for her own joy but to help him, Simon, conquer the world.

Not with this immature boy, though, not with him.

Because in her great love she was fully convinced that although Simon was a clumsy blunderer, cold, rigid, fickle, and stubborn—these qualities were conspicuous in him even among men—he was, of the two of them, the more valuable for humankind, though without Klára he would perish. She could not leave him, or rather, she would have to save him even at the price of her own destruction, and she found this severe and utterly selfless thought flattering.

If she could have formulated for herself her own idea of a suitable candidate, she would have come up with a fantasy simulacrum of Simon with the same traits as those of the original. Who with his hard palms paid tribute to her marvelous skin, admiring it, stroking and smoothing it with infinite patience, whose palpable admiration never ceased, who watched, spied, looked at, and followed her closely, deep in admiration of her indescribably sensitive features, examining her sternly with a sober, somber look to gauge how he might render his admiration more effective, to see what more he could do with his hands and tongue, his lips and teeth, what his pace should be, and somehow ascertain whether his admiration was satisfying and authentic in all its elements and rhythms.

Which he still could not express fully because objects and body parts always set certain conditions. But fortunately something always happened that allowed him to show his unconditional efforts and to roll with them. To do whatever could be done, even if sometimes it might create an obstacle. He wanted her to feel even better. His efforts authenticated his awkward proletarian admiration at every moment, and then he could admire her even more. They’d move on, ever higher and ever farther, with a chance movement from which could follow verbally inexpressible self-adoration. He worshipped her as if she were sacrosanct. And it must be said that he was not servile, not Simon.

His devotion to and admiration for this chosen female body radiated back to him; the moment his passion arose it transformed him, which he needed, and he could look on himself as a hero.

To disregard physicality.

Klára did not reciprocate his admiration for her body with equivalent attention or passion. It did not occur to her to ask whether her body might not be the object of Simon’s worship. Or how she might look for an object of reciprocity in a man’s body if she had not already found it; frankly, she did not think she’d find anything or had to look for anything, or should serve him in any way.

Perhaps the process of male erection interested her, or anyway that’s what she showed some interest in. The way the rising blood level makes the otherwise impalpable affect of the other person perceptible. First, it tightens and then slowly pulls back the foreskin across the increasing glans penis to bare it and expose it to the outside world, to the point of possible injury.

The emblem of universal functioning in reference to a single individual.

I shall be the almighty outside world; let my inner world be his outside world.

And so on.

Perhaps the man’s pathological bashfulness and penchant for concealment hindered her in the free admiration of the erection process. Or perhaps her profound distrust of pathos, her own inexplicable disgust at the sight of any organic function, any throbbing or pulsing anywhere in the circulatory system. They also sensed that they most misunderstood each other in this area, genteel prudery not understanding proletarian prudery; this they understood well. Moreover, Simon’s glans penis was not alabaster, not pale red and not deep purple but flaming red, which is not rare among black-haired, white-skinned men.

It bloomed garishly above his body like a scarlet flower.

They would have liked to stay away from the terrain of their constant misunderstandings, but given their constant compulsion to have contact, they could not help getting things wrong all the time.

They anticipated fear, yet they flooded each other with pure goodness and willingness to conform—to the point where they did not know what they were afraid of, what frightened them so much; perhaps their fear was groundless.

As if an evil angel were forcing them to name what was bad in the other and pay no attention to what was good.

When emotional words slipped out inadvertently, Simon quickly retracted them—no, beat them back, superstitiously trying to protect their shared perfection. He was protecting her not from pathos but from rotten petit-bourgeois expressions, which he could not tolerate. He would have been happy to bite them in half, along with his tongue, filter them out or swallow them; he did not cosset her with words, he left that to his tongue and his hands, and that way he could adore himself even more immoderately for being so infinitely firm and manly.

Klára very much needed this strong cosseting, though at heart she did not appreciate that it referred to her body. But there was no word to express what made her happy, it also being the source of her unhappiness. Or the other way around. Why would her happiness, of all things, stop her from relinquishing her unhappiness. There were no common, useful expressions for this feeling, and the most frequently used ones disgusted her. Why call her sweet; she was not sweet, or darling. She was not an angel; she was everything but an angel, even as a little girl she had never wanted to be an enchanting fairy. She was nobody’s little squirrel or ladybug, and most definitely nobody’s better half.

It is possible that the man’s gaunt, lean, powerful, and almost pathologically bony body did not impress her. Or men’s ungainly bodies in general. She would cautiously check which sensation belonged to which particular body part. As if she were indifferent only to those parts of the body that aroused her and made her feel passion. But she did not consciously recognize this; it was as if she diverted her attention, as it were, from certain parts of the body. The man’s sharp critical intellect, his microscopically focused attention which enabled him to retain the smallest details, that was all right, as were his rough manners, swearing, vulnerability, and brutality, which one could not take very seriously, all of his cheap proletarian mentality, his prudery, garrulousness, and even occasional physical violence, which she endured with a certain spiritual enjoyment as part of her rebellion; but no less than these, his openness, bluntness, analytic power, and tactical sense deeply excited her. She had no objection to his indecent jockeying for position, his intrigues, his elbowing aside of competition; not only did these traits fail to blur the overall picture, but she positively liked the man’s fighting spirit. Even his fist excited her. Love was stronger than physical pain; it was also capable of evoking humiliation or, put another way, it showed her what life without humiliation might be like. They broke up several times because of his seriously beating her; she would not live with a man who beat her, but she could not manage without him. She was lost. The objects of the world stared senselessly at her.