by Peter Nadas
"One day you'll realize you've been tormenting me for no good reason," she whispered later, her trembling lips almost touching my ear, "because you never believe me, but there's nobody I love as much as I love you, nobody."
She sounded like that other voice, out of that long-ago afternoon, straight out of the body of my little sister, a shrill but lilting voice, tickling my ears; it felt as though I was hugging my little sister's formless body, knowing it was slender Maja I was holding.
In the meantime, she kept buzzing and bubbling in my ear, gratefully, softly, unstoppably.
"Like yesterday, I told him he could bully all he wanted, you were my number-one love and not him, I told him straight out; I told him you were good and kind, and not mean like them, and I know he's doing it with me just so he could tell Krisztián about it, I told him he's definitely number two."
She stopped for a moment, as if she didn't dare come out with it, but then, like a whiff of hot air, assailed my ear: "But you are my baby, and I love to play with you so much! and you mustn't be mad when I pretend to be in love with him. He interests me in some ways, yes, but it's all a game, I'm only using him to tease you, but there's nobody, nobody I love as much as you, believe me, certainly not him, because he's a brute beast and not nice to me at all. Sometimes we could make believe you're my son. I often thought I'd like to have a little boy just like you; I can't imagine him any other way but as a sweet, kind, innocent, blond-haired little boy."
She fell silent again, her gushing coming up against real emotions.
"But you can be a bastard, too, you know, and that's why I cry all the time, because you want to know everything and won't let me have my own little secrets, even though you and I have the greatest, the biggest secret of all, and you can't possibly think I'd ever betray you, because that secret is more important to me than anything else, and will be forever. But you keep secrets from me, too; don't you think I know that it's not Livia you're after but Hédi, and that you don't give a shit about me?"
Nothing changed, we kept rocking and swaying, but something urged me to let myself be seduced completely by this voice; it seemed that I was no longer rocking her, but that she was rocking me with her voice, lulling me, and I had to keep us on the threshold of sleep.
"Now you can tell me about it," I said in a loud voice, trying to rouse myself from the pleasant torpor.
"What?" she asked just as loud.
"What you two did yesterday evening."
"You mean night."
"Night?"
"Yes, night."
"Are you going to lie to me again?"
"Well, almost night, late in the evening, very late."
It sounded like the beginning of another digression, which interested me as much as the story itself, but she didn't continue, and I stopped rocking her.
"Tell me."
But she didn't reply, and somehow even her body fell silent in my arms.
Melchior s Room under the Eaves
With soft lively steps he moved about the large room like someone going through very familiar motions, each step he took making the all-white, ostentatiously white, floorboards creak slightly, his pointed black shoes looking especially worn and battered on this startlingly white floor and on the thick, deep-red rug; he seemed to be preparing an unfamiliar secret ritual or initiation ceremony; rattling a box of matches, he began to light candles and with a politeness bordering on stiff formality offered me a comfortable-looking armchair—would I care to sit?—there was a hint of intrusiveness in these unnecessarily elaborate preparations, his scrupulous politeness notwithstanding, as though he were making it all too clear that he wanted the time we were about to spend together to be exceptionally pleasant and comfortable and with his movements was making me a virtual part of his little plan, as he threw off his jacket, loosened his tie, undid the top buttons of his shirt, and, looking thoughtfully around the room to see what else needed to be done, unself-consciously scratched his chest hair, enjoying himself as though I weren't even there; then he walked through the pretty arched doorway into the entrance hall and fiddled with something there, which mystified me even further, after which soft sounds of classical music swam into the room from concealed speakers, but I didn't want to yield to this fastidiously yet crudely staged atmosphere and chose to remain standing.
He came back to turn off the overhead light, and that surprised me—in fact, to be honest, since I took it as too hasty an allusion to something we were still anxious to hide, even from ourselves—frightened me, though by then candles were burning in sconces and candlesticks and we weren't in sudden darkness, at least thirty tall tapers making the room both churchlike and reminiscent of wartime blackouts, and he drew together the heavy red brocade curtain, its fleur-de-lis pattern glimmering gold in the candlelight, the rich ruffled fabric covering the entire height of the wall from floor to ceiling.
He enjoyed his movements, and because his limbs were long and slim— long arms, long fingers, long thighs in rather tight slacks—his movements were not ungainly; he touched objects with a sensual, even voluptuous pleasure, as if in coming into contact with them even these routine gestures caused him a kind of elemental joy, yet in making this subtle, over-subtle play for objects, suggesting cozy intimacy, he seemed to have me in mind as well, as if he had to prove something not only to himself but to me, trying to demonstrate—surely the game was not without purpose— how one could and should live pleasurably in this place, what rhythms were required by these surroundings, to show me in minute detail that this rhythm was as much his own as were the objects themselves; but for all the openness and genuine amiability his moves implied, I sensed a certain tense anxiety, and not only because the less-than-perfect ease of this shameless exhibitionism had a hint of obtrusive familiarity in it, but also because behind the exhibitionist's easy self-assurance, superior air, and secret delight, I couldn't help noticing a certain touchy tentativeness, as if he were watching me from the protected forward position of his superiority, trying to see whether I was really interested in the intimate tokens of trust he was offering me, whether he mightn't have made a mistake.
And because I felt this avid, persistent, selfish curiosity in every move he made, however harmonious and confident, however much offered as a revealing confession, his unspoken question was not unjustified, because I did act like someone who couldn't care less about his elaborate show, who'd rather remain within the reliable boundaries of conventional etiquette and did not even note the secret meaning of his gestures; I was so uninterested in him that I would have liked just to close my eyes so as not to see him open up like this and lay himself bare in hopes of a like response, but he, accurately gauging the nature and extent of my fears, was willing to neutralize the signals with other gestures—in short, was ready to retreat.
But by then we were too far gone, to say nothing of what had led up to this meeting, and an actual retreat was clearly out of the question, for my original mistake was to come up here in the first place and let him stand before me and smile his infinitely trustworthy smile, steady and untroubled, not begging for but offering trust and confidence, its fluttery surface made more sensitively responsive by hidden tentativeness, an all-pervasive smile; it was there in the vertical creases of his lips, in his eyes, but truly inside them somehow, on his smooth forehead, as a shadow in the corner of his mouth, and of course in the ingratiating dimples of his cheeks; so I could not close my eyes, if only because I felt acutely that if I were to do so, or even allow my lashes to droop the least little bit, I'd betray the feeling I'd harbored almost from the very first moment we met, and that would certainly contradict the stiffish posture, a result of my feigned indifference, with which I tried to hide, neutralize, force into the accepted moral order my unequivocal and rapturous attraction to his mouth, his eyes, his smile, the soft depth of his voice, his playfully buoyant walk—he walked as though he were flaunting it: Look, this is how I walk! he seemed to be saying—how was I to curb and discipline my senses, and th
ereby keep his movements, too, within bounds? no doubt it was foolish, absurd, to hope that in this situation, in this repellently rather than attractively interesting room, the coy game between sense and sensuality might be checked by some inner discipline; I tried desperately to steer my attention out of the trap of his smile to other things, to focus on the room, hoped to divert my attention by looking for other reference points and, by understanding the connection between them, perhaps I could rescue my mind, now very much at the mercy of my body; but meanwhile, I made the unpleasant discovery that my mouth and eyes had involuntarily borrowed his smile; I was smiling back at him with his own smile, his own eyes; I hadn't closed my eyes, yet I became one with him; minutes went by like this, and no matter what I did or tried to do, I was being carried in the direction he chose to steer us; and I knew that if I allowed this to continue and let his smile freeze on my lips, if I couldn't get it unstuck somehow, I'd soon lose what we call the right to self-determination—if only his all-too-knowing, accommodating, yet indecently high-handed determination hadn't bothered me so much!—my only means of escape would have been to find a clever excuse, say goodbye and get out of there, just leave, but then why was I so willing to come up in the first place? or maybe I should just walk out the door without saying a word? but there was no clever excuse for parting, simply couldn't have been, since we both took care to keep the smooth veneer of conventional social intercourse in this perfectly ordinary situation: two young men facing each other, after one of them had invited the other up for a drink; who could find anything objectionable in that? their mutual attraction, stronger than their bashfulness, was slightly embarrassing, but during the course of a serious conversation, when they'd let the power of their instincts manifest itself as abstract thought, the embarrassment would surely disappear, if only this smooth veneer weren't so transparent! as it was, attempts at distraction only enhanced the sense of intimacy, which I both welcomed and tried to avoid and which our mutual tactfulness—I wouldn't offend him and he wouldn't go too far—also strengthened, everything did, and in the end, however ill at ease I may have felt, all my eager concessions and self-deceptions, my glossing over things, my embarrassment, conspicuous stiffness, and forbearance simply boomeranged.
And on top of it all, he kept on talking, rapidly and more loudly than necessary, always following my eyes with his words; to the exclusion of all other possible topics, he held forth on whatever he thought my eyes were curious about; we might say more cynically that he was running off at the mouth, trying to relieve my embarrassment and at the same time keep my forced, trembling smile—his smile on my lips—from somehow reinfecting him; he went on jabbering, buzzing and flirting in a way that made his high-handed, obnoxious complacency unbearable and unacceptable precisely because it was so very masculine, or at least what's usually considered masculine: a mildly aggressive, enticing, instinctively obtrusive, ingratiating, audacious mirror image—what a caricature mirror image!— of the sort of behavior I had never had a chance to observe from the outside, for without giving it a thought, I had indulged in it myself; a disagreeable pose is what it was, a pose one masters sometime in adolescence, considering it very manly; the trick is to talk, talk a blue streak, without saying anything, so that only the form itself, the style, the razzle-dazzle of words can clue one in on the speaker's secret designs: I was surprised, wasn't I, he asked, that he'd painted the floor all white—but he wanted no reply, only to catch my eyes again with his and not let go— he knew, of course, that this sort of thing was usually not done, he said, but that had never stopped him before, and didn't I find it attractive, though? he did, when he'd finished painting it, and was pleased that he wouldn't have to scrub it anymore; the place used to look like a dump, a pigsty really, some old geezer had lived here before—he often tried to picture his old age and feared it, actually, considering that given his aberrant inclinations it would surely be the most critical period of his life, a horrid wreck of a body with still youthful urges lusting after young bodies—anyway, the neighbors told him the old man had died on a urine-soaked mattress in that little room where the sofa was now standing; he hoped fate wouldn't deal him such an old age; in fact, he didn't want any kind of old age; and I couldn't imagine the dreadful state of the apartment when he moved in, filthy beyond belief and so foul-smelling he had to keep the windows open even in winter, and it was still in the air, sometimes he could smell it even now, four years later; anyway, why shouldn't a floor be all white, who said it must always be brown or an ugly yellow? wasn't it a great idea to spread the color of pristine purity over all that smut? and wasn't this, after all, perfectly in tune with the taste of our upright Germans, and he was, if not fully, at least half German.
Only half? I asked, surprised.
That's a long and quite amusing story, he said with a laugh and, as if sweeping an unexpected obstacle easily aside, went right on, with the same fervor, asking me if I had had the chance to make these or similar kinds of observations, because if I hadn't yet, I would surely discover in the future that white could be the appropriate symbol for the defeated German people's national character.
I said it was mostly gray I'd been noticing, and because I felt I should somehow be embarrassed for him, for his flippant tone, my gaze drifted away.
But he followed my eyes: ah, the desk, a nice piece, wasn't it? and the armchairs, candelabra, and rugs, too, all brought over from his mother's, just about everything was from there, a kind of family inheritance, all of it, he looted his mother's place, but she didn't mind, mothers never do, and all this was recent; at first he wanted the place to be white and bare, just a bed covered with a white sheet, nothing else ... he was blathering away, giving me all this nonsense because he was glad I was there but afraid to say so; shouldn't we rather drink something, he happened to have a bottle of French champagne, chilled, saving it for some special occasion, one never knew when such an occasion might arise, right? how about making our meeting a special occasion and uncorking the bottle?
Taking my bemused silence for acquiescence, he left to get the champagne; the antique clock on the wall struck twelve, I counted the strokes, mechanically, helplessly; So 'tis midnight, I thought, which wasn't too bright but characteristic of my state, for by then my thinking had simply shut down so that pure sensory perception could take control, making me appear as another object in the room without my knowing how it got there, a not unfamiliar sensation, yet never before had I sensed so vividly and thoroughly that the place I was in was as unique as the hour marked by the countable strokes of the clock, because something had to happen here, something that went against all my wishes and that would change the course of my life, and whatever it might turn out to be, I knew I had to yield to it: midnight, the witching hour, never more propitious, I had to laugh at myself, as though I'd never let myself go before, a slight exaggeration, surely, as if I were a young girl debating whether to lose or keep her virginity, as if this room were the last station on a long deferment whose nature and content had been unfamiliar until now; I was fooling myself, still pretending—what pleasure to pretend to ourselves!—that I really had no idea what extraordinary thing might happen or perhaps already had happened here tonight, but what was it?
The candles flickered and crackled, soothingly, beautifully; outside it was pouring, and after the clock struck twelve all one could hear was the even, bubbling rhythm of baroque music and the pelting, pattering sound of the rain, as if somebody had overdirected this scene to be so obviously, so ludicrously beautiful.
Because somebody did stage it, I was sure, not he or I but somebody, or at least it got staged beforehand, as all accidental encounters are; no one plans them or counts on them, and only later, in retrospect, do we realize they were pivotal, fateful; at first it all seems banal, incidental, incoherent, random fragments and flashes to which we needn't attach much significance, and as a rule we don't, for what may be accidentally visible to us from a tangled heap of occurrences, what may hang out and appear as a sign,
a warning, is nothing more than some detail belonging to another cluster of happenings we have nothing to do with; a prop in Thea's slightly laughable romantic agony, that's what I thought of him then, because he was the one she spoke to Frau Kühnert about on that dark autumn afternoon in the uncomfortable silence of the rehearsal hall, calling him "the boy," an odd and deliberately derisive appellation, enough to arouse my curiosity; but then it had been more intriguing to try to follow the inner process, the various degrees of transition, that Thea had to follow so that finally she could focus the intense emotions of her just completed scene on some external object, which she ended up calling the boy; as I have already pointed out, Thea, like all great actors, had the special ability to make her inner processes, mixed in with her private life, continually visible and spectacular and, precisely because emotions displayed on the stage are nourished by the actor's so-called private life, one could never be sure when she was in earnest and when she was only playing with something that might mean a great deal to her; in other words, unlike normal mortals, she would toy with deadly serious things and take seriously what was only make-believe, and this interested me more than the seemingly irrelevant question of who the elusive person was whom she labeled "the boy," the person she disdained, hated even, so much so that she wouldn't utter his name, the person she nevertheless didn't dare telephone because for reasons unknown to me, he had asked her never to call him again, for whose closeness, then, right after the erotic desire expressed onstage had become impersonal and objectless, she still yearned so much that she was willing to risk humiliation, and in whose room I would be standing later that same evening—in a sense as her replacement.
In spite of my apprehensions, and they were numerous enough, I had given in to her pleading and nagging and agreed to spend the evening with them: "Come on, don't be such a meanie! why can't you come with us, why play hard to get when I so very much want you to come? oh, you boys drive me mad! you'll get to meet him, at least, he's a remarkable character, and you don't even have to be jealous of him, he's not quite as remarkable as you are, Sieglinde, do me a favor, you ask, too! my asking isn't enough? it's me, me who is asking you, isn't that enough?" she was purring, whispering, playing the girlishly awkward seductress, leaning her light, fragile body against mine and taking hold of my arm; it would have been pretty hard to resist such a playful display of affection, yet what compelled me to go was not curiosity, let alone jealousy—the prospect of observing the two of them in a probably perverse relationship didn't intrigue me either—but because from the moment Thea had managed to avert her lustful and horror-filled gaze from Hübchen's half-naked body and, turning toward us, caught my stare, the almost voyeuristic stare of an overstimulated spectator, I too had been deeply, personally touched by her emotional upheaval, playing itself out in the very sensitive border region of her professional and personal candor: it was impossible to decide whether the scene, interrupted by inveterate directorial rudeness just as it was reaching its climax, might not perhaps continue between the two of us, because to bring it to a halt was impossible, about that there could be no doubt.
