A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  "But you did read it, didn't you?"

  "Please look at it."

  As it to emphasize her words, she placed her hand on my arm, a little above the wrist, so gently but at the same time so peremptorily that it seemed to mean that she would not only take back the envelope but also eliminate the tiny distance still remaining between us and in some way— the way itself being of no consequence in that millisecond—to possess me; she touched me, and I did not have the strength to resist, in fact was struggling with a little guilt of my own, knowing that the stray glance at her breast and the thought of possibly kissing her could not have left her unaffected, for there is no thought, however furtive, that in highly charged situations is not detected by the other person, and for a split second, therefore, it seemed entirely possible that our heated exchange might take an unexpected and dangerous turn, all the more so because not only could I not move or, by turning my head away, escape the gentle thrusts of her breath and her fixed stare, but also, against my will, I was becoming aware of the telltale signs of sexual excitement—so pleasurable but in the circumstances somewhat humiliating: mild tingling of the skin, dwindling lucidity of the mind, pressure in the groin, and faltering breath, all of which could have been the direct consequence of that one touch, occurring almost independently of me but in a very edifying way proving that seduction can completely bypass the conscious mind and need not even be physical or flattering, for most often physical desire is not the cause but the consequence of a relationship—just as ugliness from a certain distance may be seen as beauty—when tension has increased to a point where only sexual release can offer hope, and at such moments a single touch is enough to defuse the almost unbearable psychological tension or release it into sheer sensual pleasure.

  ''No, I won't look at it!"

  Perhaps she did not exclude the possibility that I might strike her, because, hearing my somewhat delayed and rather hysterically shouted retort, she quickly withdrew her hand, as it was clear to her that my outburst, which must have seemed quite unusual, had less to do with the mysterious business of the telegram than with our immediate physical proximity, and not satisfied with removing her hand, she also stepped back a little, at the same time pushing her glasses up on her nose, and regarded me with a sudden look of blunt sobriety, as if nothing at all had happened between us.

  "I see. There's no need to shout."

  "Tomorrow I'll be going away for a few days."

  "Where to, may I ask?"

  "It would be helpful if I didn't have to take all my things with me. By next week I'll be gone for good."

  "But where will you go?"

  "Home."

  "You'll be missed."

  I started toward my room.

  "You go ahead, I'll be here, waiting by your door; I can't sleep anyway, not if you won't tell me."

  I closed my door behind me: raindrops were pattering on the windowsill, it was nice and warm in the room, and on the wall the feeble light from a streetlamp swayed in tune to the nodding, shiny branches of the maple trees, so I didn't turn on the light, I took off my coat and walked to the window, there to open the envelope: I could hear her, she was there all right, outside the door, waiting.

  But here below, though the wind was less, the surging sea would not be tamed, and up above the wind kept howling and whistling; now and then the sky seemed to brighten just a little, as if the wind had ripped and dispersed the clouds covering the moon, but I imagine this was as much a sensory illusion as was my hope that I would soon be past the dangerous part of the embankment; I literally could not see a thing, a condition my eyes perceived as a state of emergency and rebelled against, conjuring up nonexistent lights to lull their disbelief, and, as if claiming their own independence, resented having to look, and also resented my forcing them to look, even though there was nothing for them to perceive, and so they not only devised rings of light and sparkling dots and rays but several times illuminated the entire seascape before me: as if through a large, narrow slit, I could see clouds rushing above the foamy, tempestuous sea and myself walking on the wave-pounded embankment, but in a moment everything would go dark again, and I had to realize that this vivid image had been sheer hallucination, since no natural light source could possibly account for it—it couldn't have been the moon, whose light was not present in these images; yet these dazzling internal visions, sources of a peculiar internal pleasure, made me believe that somehow I could still feel out the path ahead of me, though in fact there was no longer any trail, my feet kept getting caught on stones, I was stumbling and slipping.

  I think by then I must have lost all sense of time and space, presumably because the capricious wind, the impenetrable darkness, and the rolling sea, lullingly rhythmical for all its stark grandeur, were like some narcotic numbing me. If I said I was all ears, I'd not be wholly wrong, since every other mode of sensory perception was now useless; like some odd nocturnal creature, I was dependent only on my hearing: I heard the rumble not of the waters or the earth but of the depths, and it was neither threatening nor impassive, and though it may sound much too romantic, I'd venture to claim it was the monotone murmur of infinity I heard issuing from the depths, a sound like no other, evoking nothing but the idea of the depths: where the depths lay, or the depths of what, was impossible to determine, since the sound was everywhere—on the surface of the water and in the air as much as at the bottom of the sea, seeming to fill out and dominate everything, so that everything became part of the deep until the sound itself became visible: a slowly rising boom, like the mighty effort of a vile mass rising up into motion somewhere at a great distance, ready to break free, to rebel against the fateful calm of this seemingly infinite rumbling, kept drawing closer and closer at a measured but forceful pace until suddenly it reached its own peak, sounding in a triumphantly thunderous blast that no longer allowed the depths to be heard; it rose above the depths, content, its goal achieved: it had defeated, for a brief moment obliterated, the depths; but in the very next moment all that apparent force, mass, surge, and victory crumbled away and with an unpleasant crackle disintegrated among the rocks on the beach, and the rumble of the deep could be heard once more as if nothing had ever challenged its rule; and the wind was there again, capricious and sinister, whispering, whistling, screeching; it would be hard for me to say when and how that subtle change came about; I perceived it not only inasmuch as the embankment was becoming narrower and the waves could therefore sweep right over it, but mostly in that I could acknowledge those rather striking environmental changes only long after they had occurred, and even then somewhat thoughtlessly, as if they had nothing to do with me, as if I were hardly concerned that my shoes and pants were sopping wet and my coat was less and less water-resistant; I yielded so readily to the sounds of darkness that even the fantasizing and recollecting, with which I had kept myself amused at the beginning of my walk, were now gradually dissolving into these sounds; what we might call self-preservation was thus functioning only in a limited capacity, as when someone waking from a nightmare keeps kicking and screaming and flailing his arms, instead of reminding himself of the moment just before he fell asleep and of the fact that what he is being forced to experience so painfully is real only in a dream, and he cannot remind himself, precisely because he is dreaming; similarly, I was trying to protect myself, but the means were dictated by the given situation: what was the use of hiding among the rocks, groping helplessly, stumbling and sliding, the water found me there too, and it never occurred to me that what had started out as a pleasant evening stroll had ceased to be that quite some time ago.

  Then something touched my face.

  It was just as dark as before and the silence came to an end, something I could not really account for came to an end, and when that something touched my face again, I realized it was water, cold but not unpleasant, and I knew this should remind me of something, but I couldn't, simply couldn't remember what it was, even though I heard, once again I was beginning to hear its sounds, so so
me time must have elapsed since I had last heard it, but despite this it was still dark, nighttime, and everything was wet; and indeed, it was dark.

  And at last I understood that I was lying among the rocks.

  Sitting in God's Hand

  But then Helene's appearance solved everything, or at least for a few wonderful moments our future, thought to be so ominous, seemed to turn captivatingly bright again.

  The next morning I was standing in front of my desk, unwashed, unshaven, undressed, lost in thought, absently scratching my stubbly chin, unable to begin what in the end would turn out to be a fateful day; also, I was filled with tension, because the night before, after the exhausting round of farewell visits, I had fallen into a deep, dull, dreamless sleep and slept so late one might have thought that all was well, but this coma-like sleep had been the direct consequence of my latest lies, my constrained acquiescence in the intractability of my life, and after awaking, my conscience, slightly more relaxed, rested, and tentative, was returning ever more forcefully and disquietingly to its familiar haunts, and by then I was also in the grip of wanderlust, of a thrilling anticipation that makes you believe that by merely changing locale you can put behind you all that is tiresome, unpleasant, depressing, or insoluble; my luggage had already been put out in the entrance hall, waiting to be picked up by a porter; all I had left to do was to gather the notes and books I'd need for my work and slip them into the black patent-leather case that lay open in the middle of the room, on the carpet, but since my train wasn't leaving until late that afternoon, I had plenty of time for this critical last-minute chore, which, for various reasons, caused me no little anxiety; and to avoid accumulating more unpleasant feelings, I tried not to concentrate on the task at hand and let my thoughts wander aimlessly; while waiting and dawdling, I heard the distinctive knock of my landlady, good old Frau Hühner, whose habit it was not to wait for permission to enter but to barge right in; I could consider it a great feat of education that she no longer burst in without knocking when she had something urgent to tell me, for I had been unable simply to make her understand that, even if she was my landlady, it was customary not only to knock but also to wait for a reply before entering. "But what could the gentleman be doing when I know for sure that you are alone?" she had said, rolling her eyes in exasperation and smoothing the apron on her distended belly, the first time I put this request to her, in my politest manner too; but she proved to be otherwise such a helpful and kind person that, though utterly incapable of learning something even this trifling, she amused rather than annoyed me with her habit, but now the noise she made could in no way be called knocking, for she was pounding with her fists, and the door was torn open as if by a blast of wind: "A young lady is here, wearing a veil, and she is asking for you, the young lady is," she whispered breathlessly, and spacious as the outside hallway may have been, the visitor must also have heard her, because needless to say Frau Hübner failed to close the door behind her; "A young lady is here, and I think she is the gentleman's fiancée."

  "Please show her in, Frau Hübner," I said stiffly, a bit louder than necessary, trying to make amends for her rudeness and hoping that the guest waiting in the hallway would hear these more polite words, although my appearance and dress at the moment made me totally unfit to receive a guest, least of all a lady; I couldn't imagine who this inappropriately early visitor might be, but soon thought of several disturbing possibilities: for a moment it even occurred to me (maybe that is why I didn't rush out to see for myself) that it was an emissary of my dearest friend turned deadliest enemy, here to carry out the promise to annihilate me, hiding a pistol in her fine fur muff—"Even fashion is on our side," my friend had said to me laughingly when women began wearing muffs, which did indeed increase opportunities for criminal activity, and I knew for a fact he was surrounded by so many loose women that it could have been easy enough to find one who'd do anything for him; maybe my visitor wasn't even a woman but one of his assistants dressed as a woman—and none of these assumptions could be so fanciful as to be untrue, because, knowing as I did all the means at his disposal, I couldn't help taking seriously my friend Claus Diestenweg's carefully considered promise, couldn't simply shrug it off, if only because from his standpoint I was in possession of discomfiting, incriminating evidence and thus a potential traitor to his cause: "You must die. We'll bide our time and come for you when the moment is ripe," he wrote in a letter not penned by his own hand, but what should have surprised me more was why he hadn't yet acted on his threat, why he'd decided to do it now, though it did occur to me that this uncertain reprieve might have been part of the punishment, which he meant to impose only after he had first allayed my fears and suspicions and made me believe he had finally let me go; I was like a hunted animal, hoping to escape by darting from the open field into the forest, not noticing the gun barrels concealed in the foliage; no wonder, then, that the beast too is perplexed, why is this happening now, on this peaceful autumn morning; the lack of suspicion is what makes this death terrible, for in different circumstances the end may have been accepted with equanimity; for several months I had also felt shielded by foliage, no longer so defenseless, and by changing addresses several times I hoped that finally I was beyond his dreaded reach and that in due course he would forget about me; indeed, after a time, the messages and letters stopped coming, and getting engaged not only had afforded me emotional relief but also enabled me to return to that sensible and civilized way of life I had broken away from for a few years, mainly because of my passionate attachment to Diestenweg; at the moment I had to grasp the back of my armchair to support myself against the impact of a single, unexpected, and dizzying thought: words said out loud can never be taken back—but then, I had no real desire to take anything back, because I didn't feel like pretending my past didn't belong to me; if I must die, I must, so be it, let it come, but let it come now, quickly, I'm ready; but nothing happened, and Frau Hübner didn't make a move either, as if she'd not only sensed but was actually experiencing the fear that had suddenly seized me; she stood petrified under the gently curving arch separating my room from the always dim hallway.

  "My dear Frau Hübner, let's not keep the lady waiting, please, do show her in"—I repeated my request, more softly but more emphatically, evincing a presence of mind that came as a surprise even to me, and in spite of that fleeting terror, I managed to remain cool and objective, my voice keeping the required dignity; I felt what I was going through was nobody's business: but I could see it was hopeless, and for some incomprehensible reason, the unusual situation so paralyzed Frau Hübner that, though she had had ample opportunity to learn it from me, she couldn't perform the simple ceremony of showing the guest in and behaved as if the gun was really pointed at her; quickly pulling my robe together and, like one resolved to face whatever awaited him, I turned without delay to welcome my guest, whoever she might be.

  In spite of this resolve, stepping from the sunlit room into the hallway's pleasant dimness, whence I could see the entrance hall through the open door, I had to stop and cry out, "Is it really you, Helene?" for seeing her in this drab, almost wretched, though for me more or less natural setting, suddenly made my poor landlady's stupefaction not only understandable but almost palpable, as if I'd gone through the same experiences as this hapless widow, who had not had many opportunities to behold such visions—for that's how Helene appeared, standing in the hall, like a vision, and in these dreary surroundings it seemed that even I couldn't have had much to do with such an affluent, angelically pure, exquisite yet fallible human being; she was wearing a silver-gray dress trimmed with lace which I hadn't seen before and which, according to the fashion of the day, most artfully concealed and at the same time cunningly emphasized her body's slim and shapely features, carefully not highlighting one to the detriment of another, which would have made her indecently conspicuous—the effect was created by the totality, whose excessive artificiality was offset by the naturalness of the underplayed details. She was standing
with her head slightly bowed, a posture that immediately brought to mind those afternoons when she'd sat at the piano or leaned over the embroidery hoop, and her neck, emerging in startling nakedness from the high, closed collar of her dress, was made to appear acceptably chaste and covered simply by stray curly ringlets escaping from a carefully combed bun of hair gathered up at the back; yet she appeared more exciting now, and not only because the deep crimson ringlets accentuated the bareness of her neck—what fires our imagination is never mere nakedness, which only evokes a feeling of vulnerability, painful defenselessness, but everything that is almost covered or barely concealed, urging us, by its very suggestiveness, to lay it bare, implying always that we and only we are entitled to view and touch such a vulnerable body, that only to us does it surrender its nakedness, for only a mutual thrill of discovery and possession makes it possible to tolerate, indeed enjoy, whatever is coarsely natural; although I could not see her face—the huge rim of her hat cast a shadow over it and she hadn't lifted her veil—I could sense her embarrassment, and I was thoroughly embarrassed myself, partly because the surprise was simply too great, and partly because I was overwhelmed by the unexpected joy that rapidly replaced my initial fright; I knew I should speak first, sparing her the further embarrassment of having to talk in front of strangers, for in the meantime two uncombed, pale-faced young girls, Frau Hübner's granddaughter and a friend, had stuck their heads through the slightly open kitchen door and with utter amazement were gaping at the tableau presented by Helene, a tableau in which they, too, were now involuntary participants, yet I could not bring myself to speak, for whatever I might have said would have been too obviously intimate and emotional for utterance in public, so I could only extend my arm toward her, whereupon she grasped her long-handled, pointed umbrella with one gloved hand, lifted her train with the other, and, gliding almost silently, began to move toward me; "What's come over you, my dear?" I said—it may have sounded like a stifled cry—after I finally managed to dislodge Frau Hübner from her spot, and having closed the door, we were left to ourselves under the arch between my room and the dim hallway, "or is there something wrong? What happened? Speak to me, Helene, I'm most anxious to hear!"