by Peter Nadas
When I opened my eyes he was already talking.
"Do you know where rabbits stay in winter?"
And though his voice sounded deeper and perhaps even raspier than usual, there was no urgency in the question, asked with such self-evident ease, as if the rabbit had run across the field just then and not several minutes earlier, as if nothing had happened between those two points in time; as I watched his face, his eyes, his neck, the way he stood against a shimmering, opaline background laced with branches and treetops, as I took in this sight which seemed so very distant to me, I must have experienced momentarily the dread of a fatal, irreparable mistake: his question didn't mean that in his quite natural, almost obligatory embarrassment, he wanted to hide behind a neutral topic, for neither in his eyes nor in other features of his face nor in his posture could I discover the slightest trace of embarrassment, and he remained as poised, confident, cool as he had been on other occasions—or perhaps it would be more correct to say that after having been relieved of his fears by the kiss, he became his unreachable former self, which certainly did not mean he was unconcerned about or indifferent to what was happening to him; on the contrary, he was so open to each and every moment of his existence, always the very moment he was compelled to live in, that all past and possible future moments were forced out of him, so that he seemed to stand outside his own physical being, as if he were never really where one assumed him to be; but I forever remained a prisoner of what had already passed, and a single emphatic moment could arouse so much pain and passion in me that I had no time left in my being with which to create the next moment, and thus I, like him though in a different way, also remained somewhere outside; I could never keep up with him.
"I've no idea where," I mumbled listlessly, as if I'd just been awakened.
"Maybe they stay in the ground."
"In the ground?"
"I'd bet with some clever trap we could catch a whole brood."
Later, I must have opened the door calmly, without rushing, and most likely did not let my schoolbag drop as usual, hitting the floor with a thud, and the door didn't bang shut behind me, so people in the house had no way of knowing I was home; I didn't run up the polished oak stairs leading to the foyer, though I was not conscious of this alteration, of the skipped routine, and had absolutely no inkling that from now on I'd move about more quietly and cautiously, would slow down and become even more introspective, but of course that could not keep me from noticing everything going on around me, indeed from seeing everything even more keenly, only from the perspective of indifference; the dining room's glass double door was wide open, and from the faint clinking of dishes I could tell I was late, lunch was nearly over, though this didn't bother me at all, because it was nice and dark in the foyer, pleasantly warm, only a little afternoon light seeping through the opalescent panels of the front door, now and then the radiator giving out a scraping, bubbling sound, followed always by an echoing, metallic clang of the pipes; I must have stood there a long time, in the heavy smell of freshly fried beef patties, and could even see myself in the old full-length mirror, though at the moment the purple reflection of the rug was more important to me than that of my face or body, the black outlines of which faded gently into the mirror's silvery gleam.
I understood well—why wouldn't I—that by mentioning the trapping of rabbits he was raising the possibility of some joint undertaking, and I also sensed that, if he was expecting an answer, he was waiting for me to pull myself together, to revert to the customary norms of our relationship, to come up with a workable idea about what to do together—it could be anything at all, no need to insist on those stupid rabbits, any joint venture requiring strength and skill and therefore manly; but I found this possibility, offered to me with patient chivalry, much too simplistic and somewhat ludicrous, in view of what had just happened between us, not only because it no longer suited our age but also because its very childishness betrayed an idea born of defensive haste, aimed at ignoring what had just transpired; in short, it was a cover-up, an evasion, a diverting of emotions, though still a more sensible solution than anything I could have come up with in the circumstances; but at that moment, in that situation, the last thing I wanted was to be sensible; the joy of having been released, unbound, was pouring out of me like a stream of some tangible substance, something emanating from my body, rippling forward, seeking him out, and I had no other wish in the world than to remain in this state, the body yielding fully to everything that was instinctive, sensual, and emotional in it, losing as much of its weight and mass as was displaced by the liberated energies, indeed ceasing to be the body which we feel as a burden; I wanted to preserve this state and extend it to all my future moments; I wanted to break down all the barriers, the forces of habit, education, decorum, everything that robbed us of ordinary moments by preventing us from communicating the most profound truths of our being to others, until it is no longer we who existed in time but time that existed in our stead, vacuous, efficient; trying mulishly to preserve myself for this moment, unable to address him in anything resembling a normal, everyday voice, I had to feel that nothing I was going through could possibly reach him, though he had to marshal every bit of his apparently quite humane psychological skills to remain so calm and patient at the sight of such unbridled longing; he appeared to be a smooth, blank wall impassively deflecting and hurling back everything emanating from me in his direction, with the result that it was I, not he, who was surrounded by this emanation; I was encased in a shell, and I also felt that this shell and I were one; though I might quite pleasantly float around in it, I knew that one careless move and it would disintegrate, one emphatic word and everything that had erupted from the body would dissolve into thin air, as our breaths did; he was looking at me, straight into my eyes, and indeed we saw nothing but each other's eyes, yet he was becoming more and more distant, while I stayed where I was, because I wanted to stay where I was, and as I was, since only in this insanely defenseless state could I perceive my true self; I might say that there, and in this way, I felt for the first time the grandeur, beauty, and peril of the senses raging within me; this was the real me, not the uncertain outline the mirror may have shown as my face or body, but this; I could not help noticing his growing remoteness—first, the fleeting shock which, despite his good intentions and self-discipline, made its mark on his face, and then the tiny, childishly conceited smile with which, having overcome the gentle shock, he managed to move so far away that he could even afford to glance back at me curiously, and do it with a measure of compassion; but I said nothing, I made no move; for me, existence reached its perfect fulfillment in this wordless state, and I was so important to myself that nothing seemed to bother me, not even the disappearance of the last trace of smile, when silence once again became acutely perceptible and we could hear the woods, magpies, a creaking branch in the distance, a stream rushing over sharp stones, our own breathing.
"Come over later," he said, his voice a little higher and thinner, which meant a great many very contradictory things at once; the unnatural intonation seemed more important than the meaning of the words, suggesting that he was ill at ease, that nothing was as simple as he would have liked to believe, and that no matter how far he had managed to get away from me with his glance, I still had a hold on him, my very silence forcing him to make the kind of concession he otherwise wouldn't have dreamed of making, and also implying that our reconciliation could not be taken seriously, that therefore I shouldn't even think of accepting his vague invitation, in fact should consider it a polite warning that I had no more right to set foot in his house now than I had had before; but the words had been uttered, and they referred to an earlier afternoon when his mother had been shouting from the window and I was holding two walnuts in my hands.
"Krijztian! Krisztián, where are you? Krisztián, why must I keep screaming? Krisztián!"
It was autumn, we were standing under the walnut tree, the garden was glowing yellow and red in the twilight heavy w
ith mist, and he was holding a large flat stone which a moment earlier he had used for cracking walnuts, but because he hadn't even left himself enough time to straighten up, I couldn't be sure if the next moment he wasn't going to bash my head in.
"You people haven't managed to steal our house yet, you got that? And as long as the house is ours, I will kindly ask you not to set foot in it ever again, you got that?"
There was nothing funny about what he said, yet I laughed.
"You were the ones who stole this precious house of yours, from the people you used to live off; it's no sin to steal back from a thief; and that's what you people are, you are the thieves!"
Some time had passed while we weighed the consequences of our words, but no matter how deliciously pleasurable it had been to say them, it was clear from his anger and my calm though abstract satisfaction that all this was nothing but revenge, a reprisal for barely noticeable injuries that had accumulated in us during our brief but all the more passionate and stormy friendship; for months we had spent just about every hour of the day in each other's company, and it was my curiosity that had helped me push past the glaring inequalities between us; so our quarrel was the inevitable reverse of our intimacy, but, plausible explanations notwithstanding, this unexpected outburst took both of us so far afield that turning back was impossible; and as improbable as it may have seemed, I had to drop the two walnuts I was holding and hear them plop down on the wet leaves while his mother went on shouting, calling him, and I started for the gate, quite pleased with myself, as if I had settled something once and for all.
He looked straight into my eyes and waited.
But that final attempt, that ambiguously phrased last sentence, also distanced me from the moment which otherwise I could not and would not want to leave; I had to sense the growing distance not only through his eyes but in myself as well, even if his evasive invitation had no stronger an impact than a fleeting memory does, a sudden flash, no more, a mercurial fish which, thrusting itself above the motionless surface of the moment, takes one breath in the strange environment and, leaving a few quickly subsiding ripples in its wake, sinks back into the world of silence; still, that sentence was a reminder, marked out a turning point, emphatic and compelling enough to be a warning that what was happening to us now was but the consequence of a previous occurrence and would have as much to do with events yet to happen as with those that had occurred earlier; no matter how much I yearned or insisted, it was absurd to think I could remain in the moment that gave me such joy, such pleasure, even happiness; the mere fact that I was forced to experience the quick passing and disappearance of my happiness indicated that, though I may have thought I was bound to it, in truth I was no longer there, had already stepped out of it, and am only now thinking about it; yet I could not answer him, though his posture still suggested a willingness to accept a reply, and at this point I would have liked to, since I thought I could not go on without replying; and he was standing there as if he were about to take the first step, but then, flinging his schoolbag over his shoulders, he suddenly turned around and started for the bushes, going back in the same direction, toward the same spot whence he had first appeared.
A Telegram Arrives
My progress was far from steady—each new gust of wind forced me to stop, and it was all I could do to stay upright while waiting for it to subside—so it must have taken me a good half hour of pressing forward on the embankment before I realized that something had changed ominously.
The wind wasn't blowing straight at me but at a slant off the sea, which I countered by moving sideways, head and shoulders thrust into the wind, at the same time using my upturned coat collar to shield as much of my face as I could from the spray sent up by waves crashing on the rocks, though I still had to keep wiping my forehead, where the spray collected into drops and the drops, heavy with salt, formed into rivulets that gushed into my eyes and down my nose into my mouth; I might as well have closed my eyes, for I couldn't see anything, yet I did want to see the dark, as if seeing this particular darkness gave some sense to the otherwise senseless act of keeping them open; at first, only translucent gray splotches and thin strips of wispy clouds rushed past the moon, coming offshore and racing over the open waters on their way to a destination hidden in infinity, their haste, for all the graceful grandeur of their movement, made positively laughable by the impassive calm of the moon; when more massive clouds appeared, denser and thicker but no less agile, it was as if a single projector on a giant stage had been blocked by scenery, and it grew dark, completely dark, the waters had nothing to reflect, and there were no more white streaks drawn in the distance by white foamy crests; but then, just as quickly, it all turned light again, and then dark again, dark and light, always unexpectedly and unaccountably, dark and light and then darkening again; it's no accident that I've mentioned the stage— there was something theatrical, indeed dramatic, in the peculiar phenomenon of the wind above driving the clouds in exactly the opposite direction it was compelled to be blowing down here, a tension between the desires of heaven and earth—but the tension lasted only until some decisive turn occurred in the seemingly unalterable course of events on high—who knows what it was? perhaps the wind changing direction somewhere or, above the waters, getting entangled in the piled-up clouds, turning them into rain and dashing them into the ocean—and then the spells of light grew shorter, those of darkness grew longer, until, abandoning earth and water to their own darkness, the moon vanished altogether.
I could no longer see where I was going.
This way the game seemed even more exciting, for in the meantime, forgetting my fears, I had taken what is usually called the raging of the elements to be a game that embodied or substituted for the opposing forces struggling inside me, and with my own feelings thus projected into a living metaphor, I could pretend to feel secure, as if everything I witnessed were but a delightful spectacle of illusions put on solely for my amusement.
I admit, it was a pretty piece of self-deception on my part, but why shouldn't I have imagined myself to have the major role in this majestically grandiose hurricane when, in fact, for weeks I had been able to think of nothing but that I must put a violent end to my life; what could have been more reassuring now than to see this raging world locked into its own darkness, for all its destructive energies unable not only to extinguish itself but even to harm itself, with no real power over itself, just as I had none over my own self.
Recollecting the previous night, the night before my departure, the night of that certain yesterday—I hasten to emphasize this, because my encounter with the sea shifted the temporal dimension of all my previous experiences into such a soothing perspective that I would not have been at all surprised if someone had told me, "Oh no, you're quite wrong, you arrived not this afternoon but two weeks, nay, two years ago"—I must reassure myself that very little time had elapsed between my departure from Berlin and that stroll on the beach, and though this does not mean that the pleasant confusion about time could untangle my snarled emotions, the sight of the stormy sea in the night did provide a haven in which I could reflect on what had happened; so I thought of that previous night, now fading into a gentle distance, of arriving home at not too late an hour and in the dark stairway—they still hadn't repaired the lights— fumbling so long with my keys that of course Frau Kühnert, always in the kitchen at that hour, fixing her husband's sandwich for the next day, pricked up her ears; alarmed at hearing her hurrying down the long hallway, I still could not fit the key into the lock, and she stopped for a second, but then, beating me to it, threw the door wide-open and, holding a green envelope in her hand, smiled at me as if she had been long preparing to welcome me, as if she'd been waiting for this very moment, and before I had a chance to step inside, say good evening, and thank her for her trouble, she handed me the envelope, blushing as she did so; and at that instant, thanks to the ludicrous protection which the proximity of the sea raging in that starless night may have given me, I ceased to fe
el the faintness, bordering on loss of consciousness, which had gripped me while I was standing in the doorway and which had not left me until now; I was even amused, because the scene of my taking the envelope from a shouting Frau Kühnert registered as an overly sharp, totally unfamiliar picture.
"Telegram, my friend, you've got a telegram, a telegram!"
If at that moment I had not glanced at her rather than at the telegram—one automatically glances at anything thrust into one's hand—I might have failed to notice how strange and unusual her smile was, not that she hadn't smiled on other occasions, but with this smile she was trying to conceal her eagerness, an insatiable curiosity which despite all her theatrical experience she could not conceal; the moment the telegram reached my hand—suppressing my emotions I barely glanced at the name and address—I looked at her again, but the smile had vanished: from behind her thin, gold-rimmed glasses, her huge eyes, bulging morbidly from their sockets, seemed to be fixed on one point, my mouth, which she stared at intently and sternly, as if expecting to hear a long-delayed, thorough confession; an expression, maybe not of raw hatred, but of compassionless scrutiny, spread over her face; she wanted to see how I would react to what had to be shocking, though to her incomprehensible, news, and I had the feeling that she had already read the telegram, and felt myself growing pale, at that moment overcome by terrible faintness, though the very thought of giving myself away made me go on controlling myself, because I knew that whatever the telegram said, wherever it came from, this woman already knew or meant to find out too much about me for me to stay here; there was nothing I would more strenuously guard against than someone trying to pry into my life, so in other words, not only was I facing some sort of blow, which I had to endure with dignity, but I also had to find a new place to live.
