A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  A hitherto unfamiliar excitement made Mother's voice dry and choked, though I could sense she was trying to control herself; still, her voice sounded unnatural, as if she felt she had to play the role of mother, addressing herself to me, her son, as if controlling not so much her emotions, the joy at seeing the unexpected guest, but rather some powerful inner trembling, and the cause of this inner fear and trembling was unfamiliar to me; her eyes remained dry, tearless, and her face changed, which surprised me much more than their intimacy had, or the fact that I didn't recognize the man; a strikingly beautiful, red-haired woman was sitting in that bed, her cheeks flushed, her slightly trembling, nervous fingers playing with the strings of her bedjacket—she seemed to be choking herself with them—a woman who had been intent on keeping a secret from me but whose lovely green eyes, narrowing and fluttering, had just betrayed that she was completely defenseless in this painful and embarrassing situation; I had caught her in the act, found her out.

  "It's been five years, after all," the stranger said with a gentle laugh; his voice was pleasant, as was his way of laughing, as if he had a penchant for laughing at himself, for playing freely with his own feelings; he began walking toward me, and indeed became familiar; I recognized his easy, confident stride, his laugh, the candor of his blue eyes, and, most of all perhaps, the reassuring feeling of trust I could not help having in him.

  "Five years, that's a long time," he said, and hugged me; he was still laughing, but the laugh was not meant for me.

  "Maybe you remember that we told you he was abroad? Well, do you?"

  My face touched his chest; his body was hard, bony, thin, and because I automatically closed my eyes I could feel a great deal of this body; still, I did not yield completely to his embrace, partly because some of Mother's nervousness rubbed off on me and partly because the trust evoked by his walk, his ease, and his body seemed to be too familiar and too powerful; the potential exposure of feelings made me more reserved.

  "Why go on lying? I've been in jail."

  "I told you that story only because we couldn't really explain."

  "That's right, in jail."

  "Don't worry, he didn't steal or rob or anything like that."

  "I'll explain it all to you. Why can't I tell him about it?"

  "If you feel you must."

  He let this last remark pass unanswered and, as if slowly breaking away from Mother, and focusing entirely on me, he firmly grasped my shoulders, pushed me away a little, took a good look at me, fairly devouring me with his eyes; what he saw, the sight I must have presented to him, not only made his eyes brighter but turned his smile into a laugh, and this laugh was meant entirely for me, meant that he was pleased with me; he even shook me a little, slapped me on the back, planted loud, smacking kisses on both my cheeks, almost biting me; and then, as if he couldn't get enough of my sight and my touch, he kissed me once again, and this time I succumbed to this emotional outburst—I knew by now who he was, I knew it well, because his aggressive closeness pried open heavy locks within me, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I remembered everything, and of course he himself was right there, kissing me, holding me in a tight embrace; I'd never known that the locks were within me; after all, he had disappeared and we had stopped talking about him, he had ceased to exist, and I even forgot about that dark little corner of my memory that had been keeping alive the feeling of his closeness, his looks, his gait, the rhythms of his voice and touch; and now he was here, at once a memory and reality itself; so after that third kiss, with a clumsiness induced by my emotions, I also touched his face with my mouth, but he again pulled me over, almost roughly, once again pressed me against his body and held me there.

  "Please turn around, I'm getting up."

  Losing Consciousness and Regaining It

  When I finally came to on the rocky embankment of Heiligendamm, I may have known where I was and in what condition, yet I'd have to say that this was nothing more than sensing existence in pure, disembodied form, because my consciousness was lacking all those inner flashes of instinct and habit that, relying on experience and desires, evoke images and sounds, ensure the unbroken flow of imagination and memory that renders our existence sensible and to an extent even purposeful, enables us to define our position in the world and establish contact with our surroundings, or to relinquish this connection, which in itself is a form of contact; during the first and probably very brief phase of my returning to consciousness I felt no lack of any kind, if only because experiencing that senseless and purposeless state filled the very void I should have perceived as a lack; the sharp, slippery rocks did make me sense my body, water on my face did make my skin tingle, therefore I had to be aware of rocks and water and body and skin, yet these points of awareness, so keen in and of themselves, did not relate to the real situation which, in my normal state, I would have considered very unpleasant, dangerous, even intolerable; precisely because these sensations were so acute, so intense, and because I now felt what a moment ago I couldn't yet have experienced, which meant that consciousness was returning to its customary track of remembering and comparing, I could not expect to absorb everything my consciousness had to offer, but on the contrary, what little I did perceive of water, stones, my skin and body, wrenched as it was from a context or relationship, alluded rather to that intangible whole, that deeper, primeval completeness for which we all keep yearning, awake or in our dreams but mostly in vain; in this sense, then, what had passed, the total insensibility of unconsciousness, proved to be a far stronger sensual pleasure than the sensation of real things, so if I had any purposeful desire at that point, it was not to recover but to relapse, not to regain consciousness but to faint again; this may have been the first so-called thought formed by a mind becoming once again partially conscious, comparing my state of "some things I can already feel" not with my state prior to losing consciousness but with unconsciousness itself, the longing for which was so profound that my returning memory wanted to sink back into oblivion, to recall what could no longer be recalled, to remember the void, the state in which pure sensation produces nothing tangible and the mind is in limbo with nothing to cling to; it seemed that by coming back to consciousness, by being able to think and to remember, I had to lose paradise, the state of bliss whose fragmentary effects might still be felt here and there but as a complete whole had gone into hiding, leaving behind only shreds of its receding self, its memory, and the thought that I had never been, and would never again be, as happy as I had been then and there.

  I also knew that awareness of water, skin, body, and stones was not the first sign of this familiarly tangible world; a sound was.

  That peculiar sound.

  But as I lay among the rocks, once again blessed with the unpleasant ability to think and remember, I wasn't thinking at all about changing my dangerous situation or weighing my chances of escaping it, though that would have been the sensible and timely thing to do, since I could clearly feel waves washing over me, keeping me under icy water for long seconds; the possibility of drowning didn't even occur to me; what I wanted was to have that peculiar, strong, yet distant sound again within my reach, to luxuriate in the dim weightlessness of pure sensation where, banging, crashing, like some peremptory signal, that sound had first informed me I was still alive.

  To this day I cannot decide how it all happened; later, it was quite a surprise to see my bruised and bloody face in the hotel-room mirror; I also have no idea how long I must have lain there, on the embankment, for hard as I tried, I couldn't recall the last moment before fainting, and the fact that I got back to the hotel at two-thirty in the morning meant hardly anything except that it was very late; the night porter, barely awake, opened the large glass door and didn't even notice my condition; there was only one small light in the lobby, I could see the clock on the wall: half past two, no doubt about it, but I had no way of relating the hour to anything that might have happened. I can't be sure, but in all probability a massive, very high wave picked me up—it's so pleasu
rable to imagine being carried along by it; maybe I lost consciousness in that very first moment—and it must have slammed me down on the rocks like some useless object, but by then, gone were the early afternoon and my arrival in the hotel, the last references that, in spite of temporal confusion and dislocation, I could still locate in time with some certainty.

  But the sound I never found again.

  Of getting back to the hotel I can give only as poor an account as I have of how I wound up on the rocks; both had occurred independent of my will, though I was undoubtedly the sole participant and victim of each: while in the first I had been entrusted to the water, to an entire chain of lucky accidents and, thanks to it got away with only a few bruises, scratches, and black-and-blue marks, not cracking my skull or breaking my arms and legs, in the second instance the force which we like to call the survival instinct must have been operating in me, its determination as raw and violent as the elements; if we were to take what we proudly call self-awareness or ego and, applying a little mathematics, examine what remains of it when it is caught between the forces of nature and those of our inner nature, both of them so immense and independent, the result would be pitiful if not ridiculous, I'm afraid. We would discover how arbitrary it is to separate things: the fact that in an unconscious state we are one with trees and rocks: a leaf stirs only when, and in the direction, the wind blows on it—we may be unique but not superior!—when my hands and feet (not me, mind you, but my hands and feet) were searching for something solid to hold on to among those loose, slippery rocks and my brain, a soulless automaton, was calculating precisely the intervals between the breaking waves, when my body, adjusting each move for a possible escape, knew by itself that for safety it must first slide farther down the embankment and only then straighten up, when all this was taking place, what was left of the haughty, inflated pride with which I had set out for a walk in the afternoon? in those critical moments what was left of the pain and joy the ego can provide, the ego that's busy chasing its memories and toying with its imagination?

  Nothing at all, I might say, all the more so because when I had set out on my walk, I believed my life was so miserably hopeless, so over, so terminated and therefore certainly terminable, that the best I could hope for was a pleasant last walk before taking a bunch of sleeping pills; the reason the story I invented along the way turned out so neatly was also that I felt I'd reached the end of something in my life, but my hands and feet and brain, my whole body, came to the rescue: they did their job smartly, decisively, maturely, perhaps even rather too eagerly, and in the meantime the so-called ego could do little more than scream like a little child: "I want to go home! I want to go home!" somebody did seem to be screaming within me, a somebody known as myself, and for all I know I may have been screaming and crying; at any rate, that was the real me; and my desperate, cowardly terror was humiliating, stayed with me, suppressed every other memory; the ludicrous way the storm put me in my place—a storm that I'd tended to consider as a well-painted backdrop, an effective musical accompaniment to my emotions—was matched by the equally ludicrous way my own nature deprived me of my supposed autonomy: the fact of the matter is, nothing happened; I got a little wet— all right, sopping wet, which meant that at worst I might catch cold; the skin on my forehead was lacerated, maybe the flesh, too, just a little, but it would surely heal; my nose began to bleed but then stopped; I lost consciousness for a time but then came to; yet my body, trying to escape, forcefully mobilized all its necessary animal instincts, as if it were in mortal danger rather than merely exposed to mild insults, like a lizard seeing the inevitable end in every stirring shadow; but more important, the body acted as if the ego, fed by its intense emotions, had not wished for death at all; and the knowledge of nothingness not only showed me that all these past experiences I had imagined as so grandly excessive were in fact ridiculously trivial but also intimated that whatever was yet to come would be no more significant; I was exposed, I was but a receptacle of trivialities, and for all my awareness of what was happening to me, or what might still happen, consciousness was completely useless.

  Dawn was slowly approaching; outside, the wind raged on.

  My clothes were drying on the radiator and I was standing naked examining myself in the mirror of my hotel room, when there was a knock on the door.

  I knew it was the police, and I shuddered, not because I was afraid but because I was naked, yet I didn't care that much, I was totally absorbed in the sight of my naked body, and my shudder wasn't so much a response to the knock, a habitual reaction dictated by decency, as an outward manifestation of total inner exposure which at that moment held my attention more than any anticipated event possibly could.

  Why did this particular wish surface—the wish to go home—if not completely unexpectedly, then surprisingly and with such far-reaching implications? why did the body, seeking its own safety, choose to save and have my consciousness articulate this word "home" and why did it both seem so inane and yet also carry a most profound meaning, even if I was at a loss to say what?

  Before the knocking, I had to touch the bruise on my forehead to feel what I was seeing in the mirror, to feel the mild pain this superficial cut caused, to perceive the sight and its physical sensation simultaneously; then I passed my finger down the bridge of my nose, my lips, my chin, not ever forgetting that the full-length mirror screwed to the closet door reflected the whole body, just as the story of a single touch always has the whole body for both its hero and its setting; though I tried to guide my finger at an even pace, it seemed to linger on my lips, or maybe the effect of the touch went deeper; then I reached my neck; a small lamp with a waxed-paper shade stood on the night table behind me, and in its faint yellow light the mirror showed the contours of my body more than its detailed, full image: proceeding along the arched rim of the collarbone from the shoulder, I descended into the soft hollow formed by the neck muscles where the bones meet, whence my finger would have moved rapidly across the chest hair toward the dip of the navel, and along the abdomen's gentle bulge to reach and firmly grasp the genitals, the most satisfying spot of physical self-awareness; but my body started, acknowledging the knock on the door.

  In truth, I hadn't the slightest desire to go home, none whatsoever; in this regard, my behavior on the previous night had been very telling: in the almost totally dark entranceway Frau Kühnert, blanking out the attractive nakedness of her face, pushed her glasses back on her nose, and the faint light from the paper-capped wall fixture behind her, as if reflected in her glasses from the inside, made her eyes disappear; I could barely see her face, but I sensed her unexpected retreat, maybe from a conspicuous shift in her posture; my rebuff, ostensibly a response to her lengthy plea and explanation, alluded to our possible lust for each other and she wasn't going to endure so gross a humiliation, for all her inclination to servility; her neck stiffened, straightened, and now, looking down at me, she seemed to be retreating to the safer and more conventional forms of social intercourse appropriate for the relationship between an attentive landlady and an ever amiable, pleasant lodger; she straightened her back, too, eliminating the slightly stooped posture meant to protect her breasts—she was finding her way back to that tactful formality which had characterized our former contacts; but the moment I felt this about to happen, happening, already having happened, I felt like someone who has suddenly lost control of himself, who realizes that with sheer will he has destroyed something far more important than his will: I'd finally managed to sever the imperious, coarsely sensual bond between us that might have led to hate or to love; a moment ago, with some recklessness either one would have been possible, it was only a matter of decision; but this, this switch to unpleasantly cool formality, was totally unexpected; against my better judgment, I would have liked quickly to return to the dangerous but potentially more valuable form of behavior which Frau Kühnert was ready to abandon, but which became markedly important, given the tension and pressure it produced in my groin, and this importa
nce was being plainly communicated to me—not to the point of a full erection, but more in the form of a threat with a hint of possible extortion; when I told her I was going to disappear for good, I was actually alluding to the possibility of suicide, not to going home; and I wasn't disappointed, for this unclearly phrased, ambiguous statement had exactly the effect on her I intended: she was surprised, though I don't suppose she understood what I really had in mind; the secret intention I had been nursing for months, which had matured into a decision, must have deepened my voice so that I could imply the necessary sincerity and seriousness to draw her back into the magnetic field she had been trying to escape; what I was hoping to accomplish, aside from gratifying my ego, I cannot say—perhaps, in light of my imminent death, I wanted to be pitied, or perhaps it would have been too unpleasant to be left alone with the telegram, though I knew that whatever it said, it could not change my mind; in answering her questions, eager and weighing every possible danger I might be facing, I did not say what I really wanted; I didn't tell her, for example, to leave me alone, that nothing mattered anymore, that she was too late anyway, but if she wanted she could take off her pullover and let me close my eyes at last, I didn't want to see anything, I didn't want to know or hear anything anymore, so let's try to work on a single moment, and why not this one, we should be able to manage that much—but instead of saying that, I reminded myself of a previously attempted solution and I described my intended return home as a reassuring form of disappearance; of course, this was only another way of avoiding her, and myself, because at that moment the word "home" meant nothing more than a distant hope of no real significance; I used it then as a tactful lie: and here in the mirror of the hotel room was this body now, and though neither its sight nor its palpable feel could convince me of the importance or necessity of its continued existence, yet I could not have named anything to prove my unavoidable presence more than this image in the mirror.