by Peter Nadas
Of course my sober self cautioned me not to acknowledge these passionate feelings; it was as if two separate beings coexisted in me, totally independent of each other: at times the joys and sufferings his mere existence caused me seemed like nothing but little games, not worth thinking about, because one of my two selves hated and detested him as much as my other self loved and respected him; since I was eager to avoid giving any visible sign of either love or hate, I was the one who acted as though he were but an object—divulging my love, much too desirous and passionate to let him in on it, would have rendered me totally defenseless, while my hatred drove me to humiliating fantasies that I was too scared to act on—and it was I, not he, who acted as though I was unapproachable, impervious even to his accidental glances.
When he was no more than an arm's length from me and we both stopped, he said, "There's something I'd like to ask of you," calling me by my name, his tone cool and matter-of-fact, "and I'd appreciate it greatly if you could do it for me."
I felt the blood rushing to my face.
Which he, too, would immediately notice.
The affable artlessness with which he uttered my name, though I knew he did it only for the sake of good form, had a devastating effect: now not only were my legs too short but I felt like one large head hovering somewhere close to the ground, an ill-proportioned repulsive insect; and in my embarrassment I blurted out something I shouldn't have: "Krisztián!" I said, pronouncing his name aloud, and because it sounded too tender, frightened almost, anyway humble and out of tune with his own resolve to wait for me and even approach me with a request, he raised his eyebrows as if he had heard wrong or couldn't believe what he had heard, and obligingly leaned closer: "What's that? Come again?" he said, and I, finding some unexpected pleasure in his embarrassment, made myself sound even softer, even more amiable; "Oh nothing, nothing," I said quietly, "I just said it, just said your name, anything wrong with that?"
His thick lips parted, his eyelids flickered, his light brown complexion darkened slightly as if from repressed excitement, his black pupils contracted making the pale green irises seem dilated; but I don't think it was the shape of his face, the wide and easily knitted forehead, the lean cheeks, the dimpled chin and disproportionately small, almost pointed, perhaps still undeveloped nose, that made the most profound and most painfully beautiful impression on me; it was the coloring: in the green of his eyes, beaming out of the savagely sensual brown of his skin, there was something abstractly ethereal, clamoring for heights, while his chapped red lips and the unmanageably curly mass of his black hair were pulling me down into dark depths; the animal boldness of his glance made me recall our intimate moments together when, lost in each other's looks, which always suggested open hostility as well as hidden love, we could accurately sense that our mutual attraction was based simply on uncontrollable curiosity, which was only an illusion of something, though strong enough to draw us close, bind us together, deeper than any so-called dangerous inclination could ever be because it was undirected, insatiable; yet the synchronized narrowing of our pupils and harmoniously dilating irises surely disclosed something in our eyes that made palpably clear that our supposed intimacy had been a sham and that in reality we were irreconcilably different.
Looking into his eyes I seemed to see not another person but two terrifying magic balls.
This time, however, we couldn't hold each other's gaze for long; though neither of us tried to avoid the other or look away, I saw the change: his eyes lost their inherently brilliant openness, they filled with purpose and motive, and their surface became dimmer, glazed over; they took cover.
"I must ask you," he said quietly but sharply, and he stepped closer to keep me from interrupting him again and roughly gripped my arm, "I must ask you not to report me to the principal, or if you already have, go and try to take it back."
He kept biting his lips, pulling my arm, and blinking his eyes, and his voice lost its self-confident soft depth; he was thrusting out his words as if he wanted not even the air that carried them to touch his lips, wanted to expel these hated sounds, had to feel he had done all he could, although he must have had as little faith in the effectiveness of his own words as he did in my amenability, and for this reason alone I don't think he was very interested in my answer; besides, he didn't make it clear how he thought the report was to be taken back, so I think he knew all along he was treading on slippery ground; he was looking at me, but it may have been too much of an effort to make his voice sound so thin and humble, and it's very likely he didn't even see my face: in his eyes I must have been a mere blot, dissolving in its own vagueness.
But as far as I was concerned, a wonderful feeling of superiority made me more self-assured than ever.
A request had been put to me which I had the power to grant or refuse; the moment had arrived when I could prove my own importance, when at my own will and pleasure I could either reassure or destroy him, with a single word avenge all my secret injuries—injuries which ultimately were not even his doing, but which I had inflicted on myself because of him, the bitter pains of being ignored he induced in me, unwittingly and innocently, by simply being alive, by wearing nice clothes, by talking and playing with others, while with me he was unable or unwilling to establish the kind of contact I so yearned for and didn't even know what it should be like; he was almost a head taller than I, but at this moment, in the clearing, I was looking down at him; I found his forced smile distasteful, and as my body regained its normal dimensions, it assumed the lightness of that secure state in which our consciousness stops playing and struggling and, with a careless shrug, surrenders to all its contradictory emotions, rendering outward appearances and shows irrelevant; I didn't care anymore how I looked or whether he liked me or not, and while I felt the chill of cooling perspiration on my back, the dampness in my leaky shoes, the unpleasant prickles of my cheap trousers clinging to my thighs, as well as the burning in my ears, my smallness and my ugliness, there was nothing hurtful or humiliating in all this, because in spite of the unrelieved misery of bodily sensations, I was now free and powerful, felt free within and for myself; I knew I loved him, and no matter what he did I could not stop loving him; I was completely defenseless, and for that I could either take my revenge on him or forgive him, it was all the same; to be sure, he didn't seem just then as beautiful and attractive as he had been in my fantasies or when he'd overwhelm me with his sudden presence—his dark skin had turned sallow; he seemed to have eaten something with garlic in it and I didn't want to inhale the smell of his breath; to boot, the humility in his smile was so twisted, so exaggerated, that it betrayed his fear, which may have been genuine but which he was anxious not to show, preferring proudly to conceal it, to substitute mock humility; he was playing up to me and deceiving me at the same time.
I blushed and yanked away my arm.
But I did not, after all, have a choice; I couldn't simply tell him anything I felt like, since as far as my emotions were concerned every possible response led to a dead end: it hadn't occurred to me to report him, but if I were to, if now I really did, I might alienate him forever and they might even take him away; if, however, I pretended to be swayed by his plea, I'd be letting myself be misled by his clumsy show of humility, in which case his victory would be much too easy for him to love me for it; I wasn't ashamed of blushing—if anything, I wanted him to notice it, would have liked nothing more than for him to discover my feelings and then not mind them—but feeling myself blush made me realize all too clearly that nothing could help me now, that regardless of what I'd say or do, he'd slip through my fingers again and I'd be left with nothing but another unclarified moment, which he couldn't understand, and with my futile fantasies; but if that's the case, I suddenly thought, then I must be true to my convictions and act sensibly and cruelly, although this alternative would bring me close to my father and mother, even if I didn't actually think of them at the moment, because much as I would have liked to have my own convictions, I knew they
weren't all mine; still, at the same time, the situation was much too unique and personal for my parents' faces or bodies to appear in my mind's eye and whisper in my ear specific words that I could then go on confidently repeating, like a parrot, but they were there all right, with the warm persistence of feeling at home, hiding out in my thoughts, ready to jump in; that's how I knew that there was a form of human behavior capable of eliminating emotional considerations and acting purely on the basis of principles known as convictions—except that I didn't have the strength to stifle my emotions.
"I'm not asking for myself!" he said even more sharply, and his hand, from which I'd just withdrawn my arm, was still in the air, hesitating; he had long fingers, a slender wrist, but I didn't let him finish, didn't want to, because I didn't want to see him like this, and I cut in: "First of all, it would be nice if you could tell the difference between denouncing and reporting."
But pretending not to have heard me, he continued the interrupted sentence: "I'd just like to spare my mother this latest unpleasantness."
We kept interrupting each other.
"If you think I'm a squealer, we've nothing further to discuss."
"I saw you go into the teachers' room after class, I did!"
"What makes you think I'm always busy with your affairs, especially yours?"
"You know my mother has a heart condition."
I burst out laughing. And there was strength in this laugh. "When you have to face the consequences of your words, then she has a heart condition."
His eyes regained their sparkle, they seemed to be illuminated from within by a cold flash of light, he was screaming, and the garlic-smelling thrusts of his words hit me in the face: "What d'you want, then? What? I'll kiss your ass, if that's what you want!"
Something stirred nearby and almost automatically we both turned our heads: a rabbit darted across the snowy clearing.
I wasn't looking at the rabbit, which having reached the edge of the clearing must have vanished in the thicket; I was watching him; in our anger, we unwittingly ended up so close to each other that if he'd paid attention he could have felt my breath, which I failed to control, pounding on his neck; the casually tied knot of his striped scarf was coming loose, the top button of his shirt was undone, and its collar must have slipped under his sweater, because his long neck appeared before me like a strange naked landscape: a vein embedded in tightening muscles and showing faintly through the smooth skin seemed to be pulsing evenly, and at slightly irregular intervals the tip of his gently protruding Adam's apple bobbed up and down; the blood that had rushed to his face while he was shouting was slowly subsiding; I could watch as his normal coloring gradually returned and his fleshy lips again parted slightly, the pale yellow light of the sun, sinking behind the woods, glimmered through the green of his eyes, his gaze following the rabbit's path, and when his eyes came to rest at a certain point, I knew the rabbit had disappeared; the persistent chatter of the magpies, the incessant cawing of crows, the smell of the air, even the tiny rustling noises of the woods seemed to have the same tangible certainty as his face, which was sharp, hard, mobile even in its immobility, with no emotions reflected in it, it simply existed, giving itself over easily and gracefully to whatever unfolded before it; for me, at this moment, it may have been not so much his loveliness, the harmony of his enviable, captivating features and coloring, though ostensibly that was what I longed for, but his inner ability to give himself over to the moment, totally, unreservedly; whenever I looked into the mirror and compared myself to him, I had to conclude that though I wasn't ugly, I really wanted to look like him, to be exactly like him; my eyes were blue, clear, and transparent, my blond hair fell on my forehead in soft waves, but I felt my sensitive, vulnerable, and fragile features were deceptively false because, though others found my face positively charming and liked to touch it, to caress it, I knew myself to be coarse, common, sinister, insidious; there was nothing nice about me, I could not love myself, I shielded my real self with a mask, and so as not to disappoint people too much, I made myself play roles that fit my outer appearance more than my inner self, trying to be pleasant, attentive, and understanding, lighthearted, cheerful, and ingratiatingly serene, though in reality I was sullen, irritable, all my senses hankered for raw pleasure, I was irascible, hateful, I would have preferred to keep my head bowed all the time, not to see or be seen by anyone, and I looked right into people's eyes only to check the effectiveness of my performance; I managed to deceive just about everyone, and yet felt comfortable only when I was alone, because the people I could easily fool I had to despise for their stupidity and blindness, while those who became suspicious, were not so gullible, or simply could not give themselves to anyone, I would cloy with such excessive attentiveness and solicitude—the effort taking up all my strength and energy—as to make myself absurdly, deliciously nauseated, and for this very reason I sensed most keenly my slyness, slipperiness, and urge to dominate when I succeeded in winning over people who were otherwise alien, even hateful or indifferent to me; I wanted everyone to love me and I couldn't love anyone; I felt beauty's seductive deception, knowing that anyone with such a fanatic craving for beauty, paying attention only to beauty, was incapable of loving and could not be loved; yet I couldn't give up this obsession, for I felt as if my allegedly handsome face were not mine, though it was useful in deceiving people; the deception was mine and gave me power; I steered clear of people who were crippled or ugly, and this was all too understandable, for even though they kept telling me I was good-looking, which I could see whenever I looked in the mirror, I still felt ugly and repulsive; I could not deceive myself, for my innermost feelings, more than the power lent me by my good looks, told me precisely what I was really like; therefore, I longed for the kind of beauty in which external and internal traits meshed, in which a harmonious exterior shielded strength and goodness, not the disarray of a twisted soul—in other words, I longed for perfection, or at least for a total identification with my true self, for the freedom to be imperfect, to be infinitely mean and wicked— but that far he would not let me go.
"I had no intention of denouncing you," I told him quietly, but he wouldn't even move his head, "and even if I wanted to, you could always deny it and say you were thinking of your dog; it would take some explaining, but you could have been thinking of your dog."
My whispered words were no heavier than the cloud of mist forming around my mouth in the cold light, and each one of them reached and touched his motionless face; I couldn't have been more cunning than this—holding out the possibility of doing something I had no intention of doing and, to counteract this mild threat, immediately offering a handy explanation with which to slip out of the net I might cast over him—but by doing this, I also betrayed my own supposed conviction: because I should have denounced him, yes, then and only then would I be strong and tough, and I just might, I just might—I couldn't possibly sink lower than this; by then I had lost all feeling of my body, I was hovering somewhere above myself yet way too low.
Words were of no consequence; nothing was more important than this mist, my exhaled breath touching his skin, but it seemed that even that wasn't enough, because his gaze became suspended; he must not have understood what I was getting at.
"It never occurred to me to do it, believe me!"
He finally turned his head to me and I could see in his eyes that his suspicions were gone.
"No?" he asked, also in a whisper, and his eyes again became open and penetrable, the way I liked. "No, it didn't," I whispered decisively, although I no longer knew what this denial was referring to; because I could finally penetrate that glance and no longer had to playact and, even more important, felt my own eyes opening up. "No?" he asked again, suspicious no longer but like one who wants to be sure of his own love, and the puff of mist accompanying the word touched my lips. "No, not at all," I whispered, and then suddenly there was silence between us, we were looking at each other, and we were close, so close that I hardly needed t
o move my head forward, with my mouth I touched his lips.
My mother, who had been brought home from the hospital three days earlier, was still bedridden, and when I was left alone after Krisztián disappeared behind the bushes, this was the first thing that came to my mind: Mother lying in her big bed and reaching out to me with her long, naked arm.
I could still feel his lips on my mouth, the chafing of that unknown skin, the softness and scent of the fleshy lips that stayed with me, on my mouth; I still felt the slight quiver of the two lips, their slow parting under my closed mouth, and then the slowly exhaled air that became mine, and the air he inhaled that was taken from me, and though I may seem to be contradicting myself, I don't think this could be called a kiss, not only because our lips had barely touched or because this touch was for both of us highly instinctive, and its purposeful, I might say erotic, application neither of us could have fully understood, but most of all because at that moment my mouth was but the ultimate means of persuasion, the final, wordless argument; with his last exhalation he breathed his fear on me, and when he inhaled, he drew in his newfound trust from me.
I don't even know how we finally separated, for there must have been an infinitesimal fraction of that moment in which I totally gave myself over to feeling his lips, sensing at the same time that with his breath he was also giving himself over to me. Being aware of this, I'm not about to claim (it would be ridiculous to do so) that our contact, our unique form of reasoning, lacked sensuality; no, it was very sensual but free—and this must be emphasized, it was purely free—of any ulterior motives with which adult love, in its own natural way, complements a kiss; our mouths, in the purest of possible ways, and regardless of what had gone before or what would follow, restricted themselves to what two mouths in the fraction of a second could give each other: fulfillment, comfort, and release; and that's when I must have closed my eyes, in that instant when no sight or circumstance could possibly have mattered anymore; when I think about that moment now, I still must ask myself whether a kiss can be anything else or anything more than that?
