by Peter Nadas
So I just said that I'd be ashamed to say it out loud.
I held his face in my hands, and he held my face in his, the gestures were identical, yet our intentions seemed to be at odds; it's possible that I didn't even mention my shame, didn't say it out loud, afraid that if I went further and said the word, I would have to be truly ashamed, because he would respond the only way he knew, with cold reserve and suggestive irony, with his perennial, exasperatingly beautiful smile, and then my own embarrassment would spoil something that must not be spoiled at any cost, I would deprive my hand of the warmth of his face, of its smoothness, of the stubble's crackle under my fingers, which I especially liked, though on our first night it had still elicited resistance from me, caused by the dread of the familiarly unfamiliar, a resistance that was also an attraction enticing me to cross the border between smoothness and coarseness on the face of a man, with my mouth to touch another mouth that was also ringed with stubble, to feel the same kind of strength from it that I was imparting to it, as if receiving back not his strength but my own; "Why, it's my father's mouth!" someone shouted in my voice on our first night when he leaned over to kiss me on the lips, and I could hear the scraping and blending of whiskers on our chins, the stubble on our father's chins touching the smooth skin of our forgotten childhood selves! I sank pleasurably into the loathsomeness of self-love and self-hatred, yes, I can see clearly now that we had to stop talking, although we hardly noticed that this was no longer talking; I began to love the self-loathing I had left behind; what I loved about it was that it blotted out everything that would still make me fearful and anxious; with him, I literally stepped over my father's corpse, I could finally forgive him, and although I couldn't be entirely sure which of the two was my father, I was cleansed; they were together now, fused, and there was silence now, only our bodies were talking; a profusion of words was still droning in my ears, because it takes a while for the brain to process verbal stimuli and to store them in their proper compartments and receptacles, and even after the buzz of this sorting operation abated, there remained scraps and fragments that somehow didn't fit in the large storehouse of received information; oddly enough, these strays were unimportant details of some communication:
French death, for instance, was a phrase that meant absolutely nothing, and the gesture, the way I drew his face closer and held his chin in my hands, barely touching the skin of his face with my fingertips, was nothing more than an unconscious means to an unclear end; neither of us could go on talking anymore; earlier, while he was talking, although he held my gaze captive as if in my eyes he had found the only secure point to which he could anchor himself, it didn't seem that he was looking only at me, that I was the only subject of his scrutiny; gazing at me like this allowed him to retreat into himself, to regions where he would not venture alone; but now, his retreat enabled me to enter this otherwise forbidden territory, and the more his gaze became fixed in mine and I became a subject of his gaze, the farther he could push himself away from me—I had to be on the alert—and the farther I could retreat along with him; and because I was with him, he could handle his real subject with even cooler, more cerebral, and elegantly meandering sentences, adorned with an even softer smile; and his real subject was his thoughts, his memories; let's call it by its name: the solitude caused by the sheer existence of the body, the sensation of being alive in a space felt to be dead! and then this smiling coldness removed him so completely from the story of his body that he could see its little episodes almost with my eyes—hence his gratitude, perhaps, for being able to sense, if only in a flash, how dead space might perceive a living form, to sense that even I could become one with that alien outside world; hence the wetness in his eyes, a wetness that produced no tears to roll down his cheeks but only blurred his image of me and obscured that other, more distant sight he beheld; his embarrassment over this physical change pulled him back from that interior landscape; the thing he'd fixed his eyes on turned back into a person, me; to match the speed of his return, I had to back out of his eyes just as quickly, but scared of losing what I had gained, I pressed his knee between my knees and bent forward slightly to touch his face, while he, pressing my knee between his, also bent forward to touch my face.
To touch.
Just to touch, and to feel.
Sometimes we listened to music, or he would read something to me out loud, or I would recite Hungarian poetry to him; I wanted him to feel, to understand the poems, was eager to prove that there was such a language, a language in which I could also express myself reasonably well; he was amused, chuckling occasionally, even letting his mouth drop open like a child when shown a new toy; I was light and carefree; dressed or naked, we fell asleep in each other's arms on the divan in the dim hallway, while outside it darkened and was evening again, another winter evening; candles had to be lit, the curtain drawn, so we could sit there again, facing each other, well into the night, sometimes into early morning, when the room had cooled off; the clock on the wall ticked away peacefully, the candles smoked as they guttered, and we drank heavy Bulgarian red wine out of dainty crystal glasses; hours turned into days, days into weeks, carrying us almost imperceptibly from autumn into winter, when each morning our poplar tree, like its own laced skeleton, drifted into ever softer mists; I would find giving an account of this time as difficult as it would be to answer the question of what right I have to include his feelings in this recollection of a shared past, the feelings of a stranger; on what grounds can I claim that this or that happened to us, when I feel equipped to talk only about myself, to describe with reasonable accuracy only the things that happened to me? there's no answer to the question, or maybe the only answer is that one winter evening I realized just how much we loved each other, if love means the fervor and depth of mutual attachment; yes, that may be the answer, even if just a few weeks or at most a month later we noticed that something had ominously changed in us, in him as well as in me, and kept changing, ever more threateningly, until it reached a point where I had to close my eyes so as not to see him like this and hope that when I opened them again all the disconcerting hints would have vanished, and his face, and his hand in my hand, would be the same as before—at the moment I seemed to be clutching the stump of my own hand—and his smile would be the same, too, because nothing had changed, nothing could have changed; I don't remember exactly when, calendar time meant nothing to us then, but it must have been at the end of November or the beginning of December, my only point of reference is Thea's opening, for which Melchior joined me, though by then they were no longer on speaking terms, so in all probability it was shortly before then, at the height of her pre-opening-night frenzy and panic, that she came up there one evening, hoping to find Melchior alone—I remember supporting her in that hope—but she found only me, and that meeting also made things different, although on the surface nothing had changed; he and I went on sitting in our chairs, just as we had done before, the candles were burning the same way, and it was as quiet as before; the room hadn't changed, the phone didn't ring, neither did the doorbell, nobody wanted anything from us and we didn't want anything from anybody; it was almost like sitting in a gallery above the ruins of a deserted and depopulated European city, with not much hope of being liberated, and though there may have been others out there sitting in similar rooms, it was unlikely we would ever hook up with them; our solitary togetherness, made exciting earlier by our having to hide and pretend, turned unpleasant now, I don't know why; I realized, of course, that it was on my account that he had driven everyone away, locked us in, unplugged the telephone, and would not answer the doorbell, yet I couldn't help reproaching him for it, not openly of course, because everything he did he did for me; I tried to block out these thoughts by closing my eyes, but it didn't help; what disturbed me most was the thought that we'd grown so very close, I just had to back off, loosen the bond; it was as if I had just become aware of our closeness and suddenly found it revolting, unbearable; I had to find some unfamiliar ground, some
thing I could not have known before, and neither could he, something that could in no way be his, something unshared; and when I opened my eyes again his face struck me as being a little more distant and indifferent, a stranger's face, and the discovery was both pleasant and painful, because any strange face can raise in us the hope of recognition or the possibility of getting to know it better, but this face was vacant and boring, holding out no hope at all, I'd had my fill of it; I might have gotten to know it these past few weeks, but the knowledge was insignificant, like so much else I'd picked up, because it seemed that no amount of knowledge, not even dangerous knowledge, helped me to find a safe haven within myself, a foothold of devotion and permanence; so it was a mere adventure, then, an unprofitable one, for in the end he remained a stranger to me, as I remained a stranger to him, and I didn't understand how I could have thought him beautiful when he was ugly, no, not even ugly, only boring, a man, one I couldn't possibly have anything to do with—a man.
I hated myself, I found myself disgusting.
And he may have had similar thoughts, or sensed what I'd been thinking, because he withdrew his hand—at last I was free of that horrible stump—stood up, kicked the armchair aside, and turned on the TV.
This was so deliberately rude, I let it go, I didn't say a word.
Then I got up, too, kicked the chair out of the way, and walked into the hallway.
Almost at random I picked a book off the shelf and, making myself believe I was really interested in it, stretched out on the soft dark rug and began to read.
At first the patterns of the rug distracted me, and the archaic style of the book was no small obstacle either, but then I got into it, reading that the only true temple was the temple of the human body, that nothing was more sacred and sublime than the human form; it was nice to stumble on these words on that friendly, warm rug, to read that when we bow down to man, we pay tribute to revelation in flesh; to touch the human body is to touch heaven.
I tried to understand the concept, inappropriate though it seemed at this moment, and not pay attention to some woman climbing out a window, clutching at the creeping ivy, plaster falling, she screams and leaps; then it seemed that everything would blow over, only one thing bothered me still, that I'd given the armchair such an angry kick; ambulance screeching to a halt, the clattering of instruments, we're in an operating room; it seemed like such an unimportant thing, plain silly, yet I couldn't help feeling I'd been rude; I should have seen what I was doing, kicking the armchair like that, and it wasn't even my chair; sounds of funereal music, the woman must have died, she's probably being buried; I shouldn't have done it, I might have damaged the thing; one shouldn't kick someone else's chair, even if the human body is a sublime temple; he could kick the armchair because it's his; I shouldn't have, yet I did and felt good about it.
Later I asked him in a rather loud voice if I should leave.
Without turning his head, he said I should do as I saw fit.
I asked him if he held anything against me, because I wouldn't want that.
He could ask me the same thing.
I emphasized I held nothing against him.
He just wanted to watch this movie now.
This particular movie?
Yes.
Then he should go ahead and watch it.
That's exactly what he was doing.
The oddest part of all this was that we couldn't possibly have avoided the real issues more objectively; we were more explicitly truthful than if we had said what was on our minds; more precisely, our lies and subtle evasions defined the situation more honestly than emotions might have, for at the moment our emotions were too violent to be true.
I couldn't go away and he couldn't hold me back.
And this bare fact, emerging from the background of his words, proved to be a stronger bond than a pact sealed in blood.
But because of our lies, something, or the emanation of something, perhaps a compelling force that had been there before, moving between us with the naturalness of instincts, now seemed to have abated; it didn't disappear completely, only stopped; at any rate, something was no longer there; and in this absence I sensed what I had felt before.
And I knew that he sensed this, too.
There it was, still flickering like the bluish television screen, almost tangibly filling the space between the room and the hallway, maybe we could still reach it or stop it for good, but it was precisely its vibrating immobility, independent of us, that paralyzed us both, unable to make the slightest move, as if with cool reason it were suggesting that we had no other choice but to accept and endure this immobility, this was the only bond between us, and it was as strong as judgment itself; it was as if for the first time an outsider had shown us the true nature of our relationship—now, just as it was jolted in its course.
In situations like these, we automatically consider and rapidly weigh the most obvious and therefore simplest practical solution; but getting up, kicking his slippers off my feet, putting on my shoes and coat, and leaving seemed impossible, and absurd, for after all, what had happened here? nothing!—so to do all that would have been just too awkward and tedious, it would have taken too much effort and would have been unbearably dramatic. But it was just as impossible to maintain my relaxed pose on the rug, that would have offended my sense of propriety for another reason; after all, I was lying on his rug, and the question of ownership—let's not forget, it's a measure of being at another's mercy— can be more crucial than our emotions, even in the case of true love; I should go away, I should get up and leave, I kept repeating to myself, as if just saying it would make it happen, but I stayed and pretended to be reading, just as he pretended to be watching the screen.
Neither of us made a move.
He sat with his back to me, in the blue effulgence of the TV screen, and I was leaning over my book; though this may be a trifle, it bothered me more than anything else that I was holding myself stiff, because it gave me away; and although he couldn't see me, I knew that emotionally we were keeping track of each other's moves very precisely, so he was as aware of my feigned nonchalance as I was of his forced concentration on the screen; while pretending to be watching that stupid movie, he was actually watching me, and he knew that I knew; nevertheless, something compelled us to play this transparent little game, which was more offensive than any candid response would have been, yet also, despite its seriousness, quite funny, amusing in fact.
I was waiting, biding my time, and thought he would make use of this funny, amusing quality to find the last opening we could squeeze through and escape the trap of our own pompous gravity; to be more precise, I wasn't actually thinking all this but, rather, sensed that behind the tragic pose there lurked an urge to laugh.
Because this was a game, and now it was his move; a clumsy little game of feelings it was, a transparent, trivial game whose rules nevertheless forced us to observe the measures and proportions needed for human relationship; what makes us play this game is our taste for a fair fight and our eternal desire to get even; and precisely because this was a game in the purest sense of the word, I could no longer be indifferent to him or consider him a stranger; I was playing with him, wasn't I, we were playing together, the joint undertaking was bound to temper my hostility; still, I couldn't move, I couldn't say anything, I had to wait; I'd already had my chance and played my best card when I lied and said I didn't have anything against him; now, according to the rules, it was his turn.
The tense anticipation, a moment of truth hovering in the air, the invisible third person who had touched him and had touched me as well, that certain compelling force that was present but no longer functioning— and it was hard to say whether it was emanating from me toward him or the other way around, or was simply hanging in the air, making it so dense that it "could be cut with a knife," as people like to quip—it all reminded me of my first night there; we felt it then, too, when he went into the kitchen to get the champagne.
He had left the door op
en and I should have heard something, little noises, the refrigerator door opening, the muffled thud as he closed it, the clinking of glasses or his footsteps; but later, when we had drifted too far apart for things to make any sense and as a defense began to review our shared experiences and piece together the fragments, he told me that he had stopped by the kitchen window that evening, watching and listening to the rain, and without knowing why could not move away, as if he didn't want to go back to the room but wanted me to sense the dead silence of his helplessness; and I did, I sensed his expectation and indecision; he wanted me to be aware that the rain, the dark rooftops, the very moment itself were more important to him than I was, waiting for him in his room, though he had to admit that my waiting made him very happy; and it was this feeling, so rarely experienced, that he would have liked somehow to share with me.
He got up and, as if now, too, he was just going to the kitchen, started walking toward me.
Though we couldn't yet tell what we would decide to do, we both felt that the decision, whatever it might be, had already been made.
Then suddenly, as if he'd changed his mind and decided not to go to the kitchen, he lowered himself next to me on the rug, supporting himself on his elbows; he put his face comfortably into his hand, he was half lying, half sitting, and we looked into each other's eyes.
It was one of those rare moments when he wasn't smiling.
He looked at me as if from very far away, not really at me but at the phenomenon I had become for him at the moment, just as I was looking at him the way we look at an object whose beauty and worth cannot be denied, in spite of our resistance, but nevertheless which isn't identical with what we could love; the beauty we saw was not the one he loved, or the one I thought I'd loved.
And then he said quietly, This is what it's like.
And I asked him what he had in mind.
