Parallel Stories: A Novel (201 page)

There is no human being without a functioning presentiment. He wanted to overcome his penchant for this sort of special knowledge and experience, but for that he would first have had to ascertain the falseness of his experiences and the incorrectness of his knowledge. He found no finer tools than those already at his disposal. The greater ascetic authority he acquired over himself, the greater his awareness became that this was still not adequate knowledge or experience. The rectitude of presentiment can be checked only over time; one has to look back on it from the distance of decades.

He began resorting to trickery and double-dealing, and not only with his grandfather but with himself too.

He wanted to reach the point of having no wishes, since they color all exact knowledge, and thus he could not imagine what the world would be like without him.

He wanted at all cost to keep from going to the pond; and if he did go, he had to do so as if it had no significance, with no continuation or consequence. The deep, slightly inclining former wagon trail led him into the dense thicket. Uninitiated eyes could detect no road here. The hard clumps of grass covering the erstwhile wheel tracks never sprouted into bushes or nettles. A forward-moving body brushed open the loosely bent shrub branches, which would then close gently behind it.

He met with his death and with rebirth.

He would hide for good from all human eyes; nothing would reach him. With these words did the unavoidable feeling address him. If he succeeded in withdrawing himself from the world, he would see what he’d become.

Everything was part of this single feeling: the touch of every branch bending aside and closing behind him, the soft squelching of his steps, the silence made vaporous by the midday heat, the alarmed screeching and awkward flight of pheasants startled from their cool hiding place, the gooseflesh gently invading his skin, and the blind certainty with which his feet led his eyes to the sight of the calm water revealing itself to him. And his feeling was not changeable, depending on what happened; he reached it differently on each occasion.

He entered a place, he arrived at a place whither he never need return.

A sense of mortality addressed him with words like these. He could not want anything else or anything more, because the peculiarity of his feeling was that no compulsion or wish could touch him.

The poplars tilted up their leaves with their silver undersides, the rich undergrowth under the willows dripped their sap, saplings reached for the light, dwarf elders, sharp grass of tussock, bulrush, meaty-leaved saltbush, and emerald-green moss completely covered the pebbly soil all the way to the edge of the small pond. That the pond’s seemingly motionless surface still moved somewhat could be measured on the narrow strip of sand that with its brimstone-yellow edge encircled the water. It was as if the water were breathing; its inhalations and exhalations, rising and falling, left telltale wet traces, though it was impossible to know if it was secret waves or a flood tide.

Of course he lied to his grandfather; he had not swum across the pond that day, he had simply walked around it on the wet sand. He had to protect his feelings from every strange opinion. This was a pagan ritual into which he could not initiate his grandfather, who officially and passionately persecuted all superstition and paganism. Out of necessity Dávid gave himself up so he could keep the main thing a secret.

It began when he slipped out of his shirt, kicked off his sandals, and then took off his pants and laid them on the green. But he did not take off his bathing trunks or underpants. He had to be very precise when stepping on the wet gray sand; he allowed neither his heels nor his toes to touch the dry yellow sand or to slip into the water. His soles could sink only deep enough to leave a discernable trace in the wet sand. From time to time he looked back. Moving this way he circled the pond, and by the time he stepped out of his masterfully calculated last footprint, the outline of the first one had faded almost to invisibility. Now he had to step into this one so the wet sand would not drink or swallow forever his former steps. He stepped exactly, precisely, into his own footsteps; this peculiar passion, to continue his way around the pond in his own fading footprints, was so powerful that he may never have missed a step.

And when he returned for the third time, the once-reinforced traces had not faded as much as they had the first time. As the number of completed rounds increased, the deeper the traces of the eternal metamorphosis became, though they always lost some sharpness in their outline.

This was no game. The story behind it was no more than the story of a mathematical problem solved with numbers.

He paid attention to nothing except making sure his steps precisely covered his previous steps. That is how the glowing imperfection of every step on the wet sand became permanent.

There was a direct connection between the depth of his footprints and his own imperfection.

He worked himself up to a ritual concentration, seeking nothing in the world except the most perfectly matching footprints, satisfying his need for perfection by nothing but flashes of light gliding on the water, the dense thicket, and the swishing of the giant trees’ green wall, everything he caught with his peripheral vision. He had to place his feet in the previous footprints with increasing decisiveness because with every step he was approaching the bottom of the sand. When he reached silt, the silt always spilled into the hollows where water had been forced out by pressure, between the empty footprints and his toes.

From then on he destroyed something with every step. First his steps made the upper rim of the footprints cave in; later, the entire sand wall of the print collapsed too.

He could not stop or in any way give up this ritual undertaking.

It turned into a cold, pure intoxication that removed from his consciousness the image of beginning or end.

His feet were squelching in tiny muddy puddles.

Earlier he had taken off his pants so that no possible traces of muddy silt on them would betray his secret activity. He would have felt his sense of honor violated if he’d voluntarily stepped out of the circle. The pleasure was so pervasive that even the sight of the muck pressing up between his toes, its smooth matter, and the stench rising from the gray bog, which nauseated him, was part of his peculiar feeling, as was the gentle grazing of the wet sand’s surface with his first steps. He did not quicken his stride, but the silt welling up between his toes made his steps grow heavy. Slowing down held the threat of having to return to the outside world.

The closer he got to a sense of finality, the more unsatisfactorily his feet carried him.

Until, hurling himself onto dry grassy sand, he collapsed.

He always made sure he fell on his side, not to leave traces in the sand of his eternal defeat.

That is the sum of a young body’s share of sobering lessons. He rolled onto his back, lolling on the green with outstretched arms, his temples and his heart beating to an upset rhythm.

He could not hope to go higher or lower than this. He could not tell how much time had elapsed. It was impossible to imagine what would happen to him or where he had come from.

It must have been around noon, because for some time his hearing registered the combined sounds of the cathedral bells coming from the other side of the great river. He could not have said who had suffered defeat as the result of his victory or what sort of defeat had cast a shadow on his victory. He did not want to die, neither his body nor his mind had sufficient reasons for it; still, he did not manage to die. He did not want to return; having been reborn, he had no good reason to traipse back on the old dirt road; still, he was alive.

His sadness was stronger than his other feelings, but that is what made the feeling so uplifting.

He kept closing and opening his eyes.

How beautiful the blue of the sky.

He had been engaged to death ever since his birth, which he knew well because his mother had passed away during it, her heart had simply given out.

How could he understand that he need not feel guilty about his birth.

He filled the distant emptiness of beauty with the original darkness of his consciousness.

While his breathing did not subside, this darkness was filled with velvety red and sharply vibrating yellow images. If he wanted to be free of them he could open his eyes on the motionless blue sky, and then nothing bothered him, he was free, truly free.

He was too busy with these special feelings to notice the approaching noise.

When he first heard it far off, he assumed an animal was making it. It ceased for a long time and then recurred without sounding any closer.

By the time he raised his head, he wouldn’t have had time to jump up and disappear into the thicket unnoticed.

A strange young man was standing under the trees on the other side of the water, where Dávid had taken off his pants, shirt, and sandals. It was most peculiar that the stranger had not noticed him or his clothes. He had a whole loaf of bread under his arm; he was deeply engrossed in munching on it. Before he swallowed one mouthful, he bent down like a bird reaching under its wing with its beak and tore out the next bite with his teeth. He did this eagerly, but chewed very collectedly, his eyes roaming all the time. But he didn’t see what he was looking at. He did not notice the boy watching him from the other side. Mixing his saliva with the bread was good, swallowing was good, grinding his jaws was good, ripping the bread felt good on his teeth, the mildly salty taste was good, the crunching and the gentle fragrance were good, and every good had a shining picture.

These pictures probably blinded him. And because he so passionately strove for the good, paying no particular attention to the circumstances, his petty thievery did not cause him any moral problems. Bad was something that prevented the existence of good. The taste of sour cherries was good but the smell of bread instantly wiped away the shining pictures of this good and the picture of fragrance emanating from the tarp-covered truck became the good. He did not compare one good with the other; he did not brood over things or weigh them.

Bread was transported from the bakery in the neighboring village in airy crates. The loaves were regulation-size, pale brown and plump; knives liked to crack their crispy crust. The driver would push the high-piled crates to the edge of the truck bed and his assistant would carry them on his shoulder into the store. A large loaf cost six forints. The assistant called in sick that day, but everyone knew he had to go to Kisoroszi to hoe corn at his stern mother-in-law’s place.

That is why the truck was unguarded for a few minutes. When the driver jumped out of his vehicle, shipping bills in hand, and flung the tarp up to reach the crates, he barely glanced at the approaching youngster. While the driver was busy with the papers in the store, the youngster had no difficulty in taking a loaf out of the nearest crate. He did not move on right away; standing by the truck, he kept sniffing the pointy ends of the bread. Where should he bite into it, here or there. Where should one bite first if the bread offers two tempting ends at the same time. Finally, he did not take a bite but carefully put the loaf under his arm and took off.

And the rather delayed shouts reached him only when he was already walking slowly along the empty road.

Neither the elderly presbyter mending his fence, Jani Rácz, nor the women looking out of the store could have confused him with anyone. After all, they’d seen him eating somebody else’s sour cherries off the tree and already had wanted to shout at him then. They tarried because he was wearing the same kind of worker’s clothes that the driver’s assistant wore and even reached for the loaf with the same movement. He lifted it out as a person well within his rights, about whose pure intentions there could be no doubt. The presbyter did not believe his old eyes, as he said. He put down the hammer and seemed to be taking out of his mouth the nails he’d been holding between his lips, and then he opened his mouth wide with amazement.

It occurred to the women that the driver might have been assigned a new assistant, at least some of them claimed that later. Sometimes one thinks contrary to one’s knowledge or sensory experience. The first sound came from the old presbyter. He didn’t think it was necessary to take off after the thief, but inaction offended his sense of justice. Then the women, interrupting one another, shouted thief and swarmed out of the store. The presbyter dashed to the street, brandishing his hammer, as if to knock the thief dead on the spot, and, pointing the hammer to the other side of the street, yelled that somebody had stolen some bread. It would hurt his prestige to repeat himself. A person of consequence cannot run after a thief in plain sight of the villagers just because of a few sour cherries and a loaf of bread. As he related later, in the inn near the bridge, at the sight of such impudence he felt his feet rooted to the ground. Meanwhile the chaos in and in front of the general store grew to such proportions that it was as if, God knows, the women had been witnessing a major crime.

The baldheaded little driver, in his rakish cap with a too-small visor, did not understand what the women wanted of him.

What should he do now.

He grinned at them, showing his healthy white teeth.

At this time, Balter was sitting under the apricot tree with his head hung between his knees.

Dávid was rounding the pond for the second time.

When the driver caught on, he ran out of the store along with the shouting women, but by then the thief not only was far away but, because he sensed something bad in the shouts, had finally broken into a run, taking his bread with him.

The main square led to the end of the village, which was bare, not a forest, not an orchard, not a bush anywhere; he could not disappear into empty pasture. He made the choice a pursued animal would make: he jumped into the roadside ditch and made his way thence to a lower-lying dirt road.

The driver could have either run after him or, jumping into the truck, caught up with him on the dirt road, producing enormous clouds of dust, probably. He waved dismissively with the shipping bills in his hand. Later, by way of explanation, he said he didn’t have time for things like that; he had to deliver fresh bread to six stores in four villages within two hours.