A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  The tent collapsed the very instant the boys reached it, and the sight clearly stunned them; they may have had some idea about what they were going to do, but now they just stood there, panting, helpless.

  In the still booming wind I could hear the crunch and then the falling of pebbles dislodged by Kálmán's feet as he scrambled his way up toward me.

  Their defeat was so spectacular, so final, their losses so considerable, they simply couldn't move, couldn't yell or curse, couldn't chase us; a single look couldn't possibly take in the extent of the destruction, and any move or word would have been an admission of this total defeat; they simply couldn't find an appropriate response, which gave us further satisfaction; in spite of our retreat, we were in a position of perfect advantage: we were above, looking down at them from a well-hidden, protected observation post, and they were below, in a fully exposed open space; as soon as he was next to me, Kálmán threw himself flat on his stomach to avoid being a target, and we lay there quite still, waiting; victory was ours, but its possible consequences were unpredictable, and for this reason I can't say we savored it for long; it was as if we ourselves were reappraising the dimensions of our deed; I was now shocked both by the sight of it and by my own presentiment that we had crossed a barrier into the forbidden, not with the treachery of our attack or the unexpected termination of a friendship—we could always find a nominal justification for that— but with the real destruction of real objects; we shouldn't have done that, we couldn't just simply return from that and resume our customary games; so now something even more dreadful, something fateful was yet to happen, it was no longer a game; by smashing those objects, we had exposed the boys to unpredictable parental intervention; however justified our retaliation may have been according to the rules of the game, by doing it the way we did, we had in effect turned the boys in; our victory, therefore, was an act of treason, and it put us outside our own law, too, for not only had we administered justice but we had exposed them to the reprisal of the common enemy; we knew only too well, for instance, that Prém was beaten nightly by his father, and it was no ordinary beating: his father set upon him with a stick, a leather strap, and if Prém fell down, his father would go ahead and kick him, too; the hurricane lamp and the alarm clock belonged to his father, Prém had taken them without permission, I knew that, and I also thought about it the very moment when I'd heard them break to pieces; still, it was our victory, and we were not to be deprived of its momentary advantages by petty ethical considerations or the shock induced by the extent and possible consequences of the destruction, if only because our victory had given them a moral superiority we couldn't possibly endure.

  They didn't look at each other, just stood there motionless above their collapsed tent; Krisztián was still holding his stick in one hand and his knife in the other, which in light of their stinging defeat looked ridiculous rather than ominous; their faces were also completely motionless, and it didn't look as though they were exchanging secret signals to ready themselves for a counterattack but that they realized it was all over; their necks were stiff, Prém was closing his fist as if still holding the stone he'd hurled at us moments before; but if it was all over, what then? I didn't know what Kálmán was thinking, I myself was weighing the possibility of an immediate, unconditional, and silent withdrawal; we had to extricate ourselves somehow from this impossible situation, back off, slink away, quit the battlefield in a most cowardly fashion, if necessary, forget about our victory, and the sooner the better; but Kálmán quickly got up on his knees and, realizing what a wonderful arsenal he had been lying on, scooped up a fistful of pebbles and stones, leaned out of the bush, and without even aiming began throwing them.

  With his very first stone he hit Krisztián in the shoulder; the others missed.

  And then, as if pulled by the same string but in opposite directions, the two boys ducked and took off, one to the right, toward the woods, the other to the left; they disappeared among the trees at the edge of the clearing.

  By doing this, not only did they blunt the attack and confuse us, the attackers, but they also dispelled the illusion that in their defeat they didn't know what to do.

  It may not have been written on their faces, but they had some kind of plan; this running off was a planned move, not a flight, which they must have prepared right before our eyes, only we couldn't comprehend their secret signals; and this meant, of course, that there was a special bond between them, after all, something that could never be broken.

  What an animal, what a prick, I muttered angrily, what did he have to throw those rocks for? using a word that ordinarily I'd never have used, but now it felt good, because it was part of my sweet revenge for everything.

  Kálmán stayed as he was, on his knees, still holding the stones in his hand; he shrugged his shoulders lightly, which meant there was no reason to get excited; the curious pale splotches vanished from his face and he wasn't trembling anymore; he was content, calm, and gave me a friendly look filled with a kind of witless superiority born of hard-won victory; his mouth relaxed, the savage glint left his eyes, though in this newfound amiability there was a certain amount of contempt for me; with a wave of his hand he indicated that those two were probably trying to surround us, and it would be highly advisable to stop grumbling and turn around, because we had to secure our rear, too.

  But I was so angry at him, hated him so much, that I wanted to fall on him, or at least knock those lousy rocks out of his hand; it was on account of his precious glazed jug, I realized, that he'd turned Krisztián into my enemy for good; I got to my knees and began cursing him; and just then two black butterflies floated by between us, their fluttering wings almost touching his chest, then they flew upward, around each other, and passed by my face; I didn't tell him what I really wanted to, that he was an ignorant hick, instead I grabbed his hand, but it turned out differently than I intended; I don't know what happened, I found myself begging him, Let's get the hell out of here, even called him Kálmánka, which only his mother did, and that made me feel more disgusted; I told him the whole thing was so stupid, and who the hell cared, anyway, and what more did he want, and if he didn't come I'd go by myself; but he just shrugged his shoulders again and coldly withdrew his hand from mine, which meant I could go whenever I wanted to, he didn't care the least bit.

  Fuck you, I said to him—and it was for Krisztián's sake that I said that.

  Actually, I'd have loved to tell him we shouldn't have done this, except I couldn't forget so fast that it was originally my idea, and a disgraceful act cannot be put right by another act of dishonesty; he was also important to me, but not like that, surely not like that! and besides, the moment of victory was not a good time to remind him of the horrid way he'd got back at me; I preferred my own quiet disgust.

  But not leaving made me feel even more disgusted with myself; inert, I turned over to lie on my stomach and kept my eyes on the forest to see if they were coming.

  In a way I was grateful to Kálmán; by staying with him I managed to salvage some of my honor, and my cowardice would be put in the right perspective, at least between the two of us; I was even more grateful that he didn't take advantage of this, said not a word, even though he understood, perhaps accepted for the first time, how important Krisztián was to me and that he, Kálmán, was of no account—I saw his acknowledgment in the form of a jeering glint, hardly more than the flash of a sideways glance.

  The sun beat down on us mercilessly, not even the wind could relieve the heat, the rock was hot, and nothing was happening save for the flies swarming; we should have accepted the fact that they weren't coming, though they might charge out of the woods any second, because I was sure they wouldn't leave matters unavenged. I could have yelled, They're coming! it even occurred to me not to warn him, let them come, let them do with us what they would! with the trees groaning and creaking in the wind, cracking and snapping with each gust, branches bending and foliage sweeping forward then springing back, gaps opening and closing be
tween the bushes, light flashing irregularly as it tried to elude the pursuing shadows, it wasn't hard to expect the sound of running feet, to see spying faces among the leaves, bodies advancing from or retreating behind tree trunks; but nothing happened, no matter how much I hoped to win back Krisztián by betraying Kálmán; they weren't coming. And I had to stay on the overheated rock, on the lookout, alert, all according to some unwritten code of honor; stay with him, though he didn't mean anything to me, I didn't care about him. To take my mind off things, I began to collect stones and lay them out in a neat row in front of me, as if to prove to myself that I was ready for combat—should the need arise, the ammunition was to hand—but I tired of this, too, and there was nothing else to do; whenever Kálmán stirred and my foot accidentally touched his shoulder, I pulled away; I didn't enjoy the warmth of a strange body.

  Of course we also had to figure on their returning with possible reinforcements; one of them might still be nearby, keeping an eye on us, while the other ran off to get help; yet all I could think of was Krisztián's knife, that he might surprise me from the back, and this made me feel even more strongly the scorching sun on my back and the futile cooling efforts of the wind.

  It was around noontime, though the midday bell that would reverberate through the woods hadn't yet been rung; the sun was directly overhead, its blaze felt as if it were right on top of us; if it were not for the wind blowing so strongly, it would have been impossible to endure that hour of idle waiting; all that time I spoke to him only twice, to ask if he saw anything, because I didn't; but he didn't answer, and from his stubborn silence I could surmise that our bodies lying next to each other on that hot rock were gripped by the same desperate, pent-up fury; anxiety held our fury at bay and vice versa, the sharp point of hatred was blunted by fear, though this restrained yet somehow still freewheeling emotion was no longer aimed at the other boys but at ourselves; it was no ordinary fear, not a fear of being beaten, surrounded, overwhelmed, defeated, because by now it was clear we didn't have a chance, and having no chance reduces one's fears; the problem was that during the time passed in uncertainty we ourselves, or rather the peculiar feeling lingering between us, destroyed our advantage; this is the fate of victors who finish the job left undone by the enemy; our bodies, our skin, our very silence carried on a withering conversation during that anxious, uncertain hour, and it became clear to us that our victory was not only morally dubious but also unacceptable for simpler, more pragmatic reasons; we couldn't agree even on the significance of the victory, since it meant something different to each of us, and little by little we began to sense the limits of our friendship, to understand that without the other two boys our momentary alliance simply didn't exist; we could rebel against them, and during a brief period of plotting and acting against them might have felt our relationship to be as strong as theirs, but it could not cope with our victory or sustain it; there was a secret lack here, we could not measure up, Kálmán and I could only be accomplices at best, for we lacked the very harmony—of being complementary and suited to each other—for which we had attacked them, which I envied and found so irritating, which proved as impregnable as a rockbound fortress; and it was with the magic radiance of this harmony—yes, magic radiance, I'm not afraid of the phrase—that they drew us into their friendship and ruled over us, and we appreciated the good that came from this arrangement; and now we had squandered this good, exhausted and shattered it; it wasn't them that we had destroyed but our relationship! Kálmán's rightful place was with them; his easy calm complemented their nimbleness, his lumbering wisdom was a proper match for their resourcefulness, his benevolence a mate to their cruel humor; I was on the outside and could get close to them only through my friendship with Kálmán, like a cool observer of a triumvirate who, by standing on the sidelines, reinforces their cohesiveness as well as their hierarchy—Krisztián was at the top, of course, by virtue of his irresistible charm and intelligence, which had to be accepted, no rebellion should or could topple it; he lived in us, being with him was our life, and perhaps I even had a need to suffer because of him, for something good did come of it, something real and whole and workable; what I understood right away—that we were fatally defeated in the very moment of our victory and that along with my pains I'd lose everything that was any good in my life—took Kálmán longer to comprehend, though now I sensed a message sent out by his body that it was no use lying here, no use waiting, that we were defending our honor for nothing, since even if we managed to defeat them, which was just about impossible, the broken order of the world could never be restored; there'd be no new order, only chaos.

  Look, he said suddenly, quietly, choking with surprise, and though I'd been waiting for just such a sound or signal, it came too suddenly—in the desert of endless waiting the slightest stirring of even a single grain of sand seems sudden and unexpected—and I perked up, but this wasn't the same voice, not his pugnacious voice but his old one, a joyful voice expressing fond surprise at seeing what he'd anticipated all along, as when during our rovings he'd spot a fledgling bird fallen from its nest or a hairy caterpillar or a tiny porcupine among the dry leaves: I had to sit up to see what he was referring to.

  There it was: down where the winding trail, rising sharply from the street and hidden by two big elder bushes, ran into the clearing, there among the windblown leaves was a flash of white, then something red, a bare arm, a blaze of blond hair, bobbing, moving closer, then popping out from behind the bushes: the three girls.

  They were moving steadily up the trail, sticking close together, slightly blocking one another; they must have come in single file on the trail and now, having reached the open field, were jostling one another a little, full of small movements, leaning to the side, throwing out their arms, chatting and giggling; Hédi, the one in the white dress, was holding flowers—she loved picking them—and, leaning back, kept brandishing them in front of Livia, behind her, even stroking her face with them, gently, teasingly; then she leaned over to Maja and whispered something in her ear, though it seemed she meant Livia to hear it, too; Livia, whose skirt was the red spot we'd seen before, leaped in front of the other two, laughing, and as if wanting to carry them along with her momentum seized Maja's hand; but Hédi grabbed Livia's hand and waved her flowers in Maja's face this time; and then they stayed this way, hand in hand, their bodies almost pressing together, advancing slowly, taking very small steps, first Hédi, Livia in the middle, then Maja, completely absorbed in one another, and at the same time exchanging words, moving in an unknown formation, hovering along on the rhythm of their continually crisscrossing conversations, their faces and necks leaning close to and away from one another, their progress in the windswept, wildly undulating grass at once swift and majestically measured.

  The sight itself wasn't so unusual, since they often walked this way, hand in hand, clinging to one another, and it also wasn't unusual that Hédi should be wearing Maja's white dress and Maja Hédi's navy-blue silk one, though because of the differences in their build the dresses didn't quite fit them; Hédi was taller, rounder, "stronger in the bust," they'd say among themselves, the mildly judgmental words referring only to how the dress made her look; I always paid close attention to such remarks, eager to learn whether they had a rivalry similar to the one found among us boys, but they weren't concerned so much with the difference in breast size as with the right place for the bust seam, which they debated with great seriousness and adjusted with little pulls and tucks, even unstitching and basting it anew; and although this managed to lay my suspicion about rivalry to rest, I still felt it wasn't quite unfounded; anyway, Maja's dresses "unflatteringly" flattened Hédi's breasts, but it seemed that the not-quite-perfect fits, the continually mentioned differences in build, was what made swapping dresses so attractive for them; however, they never swapped clothes with Livia and were very sensitive to the pride she took in her clothes, so while they tried on her dresses, they never insisted on wearing them; her wardrobe was rather shabby and limi
ted in any case, though they always found her things "adorable" and eagerly outdid each other in lending her scarves and bracelets, pins, belts, ribbons and necklaces, things that would "show Livia off," as they put it, and that she accepted with engaging bashfulness; even now she was wearing a coral necklace Maja filched from her mother whenever she wanted to wear that white dress; the two girls did not seem to mind that these uneven exchanges tended to favor Maja, because most of Hédi's casually loose-fitting dresses looked quite good on her; at least in our eyes she seemed more grown-up in them, like a woman, her gangly awkwardness vanishing in their ample material; in fact, it seemed that our overlooking the unevenness of these exchanges eliminated the actual, hurtful differences which caused so much jealous rivalry between them and from which Maja suffered so much, Hédi being the pretty one, the prettier of the two, or, more precisely, the one considered pretty by everybody, the one everybody fell in love with; whenever the three of them were out together she was the one everybody looked at, behind whose back grown men whispered lewd comments, who was felt up and pinched in dark movie theaters or on crowded streetcars, even when Krisztián was with her; she cried, felt ashamed, tried to hunch her back so that her arms would cover and protect her breasts, but all in vain; and women were crazy about her, too, praising her hair especially, touching it like a rare jewel or digging into it with their fingers; with her soft blond hair falling in great shiny waves over her shoulders, her smooth, high forehead, her full cheeks and huge, somewhat protruding blue eyes, she was the "prettiest of them all," which hurt Maja so deeply that she always brought it up, kept dwelling on it, extolling Hédi's beauty more loudly than anyone, as if proud of this gesture, hoping that people would correct her exaggerations; what made Hédi's eyes especially interesting and dazzling were her long jet-black eyelashes and equally dark eyebrows, the precise curve and density of which she controlled and maintained with the help of a tweezer, plucking out hairs she considered superfluous—a very delicate operation which I saw her do once: with two fingers she stretched the skin above the eye; while working with the tweezers, snipping and plucking the stray hairs, she kept glancing at me from the mirror, explaining that although thin eyebrows were the current fashion and some women plucked them out altogether and drew new ones in with a pencil, "like that cook in school, that monster," a truly fashionable woman wasn't supposed to conform blindly to everything new but had to find the proper balance between her own assets and the prevailing trends; now Maja, for instance, often made the mistake of wearing something that, though very much in fashion, didn't look at all good on her, and if she said something about it to her, Maja would be gravely offended, which was childish; as a matter of fact, her eyebrows could use some plucking but she said it hurt, well, it didn't hurt that much, and anyway, if one had brows as thick and ugly as Maja's, one should use hair remover, which didn't hurt at all, and she should use it on her legs, too, which were terribly hairy; and the reason she didn't want to make her own eyebrows too thin was because that would make her nose look even bigger, and it was big enough as it was, so in the end she'd lose more than she would gain; her nose, skinny and slightly hooked, might indeed have been a bit large, she had her father's nose, she once told me, the most Jewish feature of her face, otherwise she could pass for a German, even, she added with a laugh; she'd never known her father, was too young to have remembered him—just as Krisztián had no memories of his father—he was "deported"; the word made as profound an impression on me as that other phrase about Krisztián's father, who "fell in battle"; and I liked running my fingers over her nose, because then I felt I was touching something Jewish; in any case, the color of her skin made up for this tiny flaw, if one can call flaw the irregular which is so organic a part of beauty; her complexion complemented her beauty, made it whole, though not fair, as one might expect in a person with blond hair and blue eyes but with the hue of a crisp, well-baked roll, and it was this color, full of tenderness, that created the harmony of perfection out of her sharply contrasting features; and I haven't even mentioned her round shoulders, her strong, slender legs that touched the ground so softly, her narrow waist and mature, womanly hips, on account of which she was once sent home with a note from her teacher for supposedly wiggling them too much; Mrs. Hűvös came flying into school and was heard screaming in the teachers' room that they'd do better to curb their own filthy imaginations than scribbling such revolting notes, and teachers like that ought to be "banned from the classroom"; Hédi's exquisite perfection did not just make her special among us but made her a distinctive and provocative beauty, a true beauty; with the help of these swaps, sometimes she sought relief from this image of perfect beauty, the swaps being all the more attractive, since Maja's dresses were nicer and more interesting.