A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  They were coming from Maja's house and were on their way to Livia's or Hédi's, and chose this route as a shortcut, or to give Hédi a chance to pick flowers; she was assertive and narcissistic enough to advertise that she looked good picking flowers, just as she looked good playing the cello or having refined, pretty things around her; her room was full of little mugs and glasses and tiny vases; she picked fresh flowers every day and kept the withered little bunches for a long time; she was forever chomping on some plant or other, a blade of grass, a leaf, a flower; she never folded back the edge of a book page or used a bookmark, but placed a flower or, in the autumn, a colorful leaf between the pages; if you borrowed a book from her and weren't careful, a whole dried-up arboretum was likely to fall from its pages; she also took cello lessons and played her large instrument quite skillfully.

  She played her cello at school functions, and once asked me to go with her into the city, where she was supposed to perform at some Jewish social event and didn't want to travel alone, especially since she'd be coming back late at night; she was also worried about her expensive instrument, not to mention all those insolent men; actually, Hédi lived in the city, in Dob Street, not far from the Orthodox synagogue, in a gloomy old apartment house on whose ground floor was a hostel for workers, who washed themselves in the courtyard in huge wash buckets; Hédi's mother, whom I hadn't yet met, had sent Hédi to live with Mrs. Hűvös over in Buda, partly because of the fresh air—Hédi supposedly had weak lungs—and partly because Mrs. Hűvös had a big vegetable garden, kept animals, and her food would be richer; but Hédi told me this was just an excuse and the real reason she became a "foster child" was that her mother had a lover, a certain Rezsö Novák Storcz, whom Hédi "couldn't stand, with his smarmy manners"; her mother wasn't home but left a note tacked to the door telling Hédi that they'd be waiting for her at the party, and also what dress she should wear; I probably remembered all this because Hédi wore the same dark navy-blue silk dress that afternoon which Maja had on now, in the woods, and Hédi's mother had some reason to object to it then: we were standing outside their door on the depressing gallery, the inner balcony running along the apartments, and it suddenly occurred to me that her father must have been deported from this very spot, an appalling nightmarish scene it must have been, thickset characters hauling off a live human being as if he were a piece of furniture, a couch or a cabinet; now all I could see were gleaming brass door handles, the pretty, old-fashioned brass buttons on bells and nameplates, the walls showing traces of bullets, alterations, badly done repair jobs, smaller holes close together in the soot-blackened plaster, left there by bursts of machine-gun fire; it was autumn and still warm, rays of the sun were sliding languidly down the slanted roofs, and down below, workmen stripped to the waist were washing up, splashing each other playfully, the whole courtyard, decorated with oleanders, resounding with their cries; in a kitchen somebody was beating eggs, through an open window we could hear choral singing coming from a radio; pressing the huge black cello case between her knees, Hédi read her mother's note as if it contained some dreadful news, read it several times, turned pale, seemed incredulous; I asked her what it said, even tried to peek, but she pulled it away, and then, sighing deeply, reached down to get the key from under the doormat.

  In the spacious apartment, dark and cool, the doors were tall and white and they were all wide-open. Hédi ran straight to pee; deathly silence; the windows facing the street were shut, fringed wine-red velvet drapes hung over the heavy lace curtains fully drawn; everything in the apartment seemed layered, piled up, and invitingly soft: dark-toned hangings on the silver-patterned wall, on which were hung gilt-framed landscapes, a still life, and a painting of a nude woman illuminated by the scarlet glow of a fire in the background; striped red runners were spread over the carpets, and the flowery slipcovers of the deep armchairs and the straight-back chairs all had lace antimacassars; from the ceiling of the central room, where I stood waiting for her, hung a chandelier, wrapped like the mummy of a frightful bloated monster in a white protective cover twisted in a knot at the bottom; everything was spotless, unpleasantly, too neatly, permanently arranged—glass, brass, silver, china, mirrors, everything polished to perfection and, at least in the dim light, mercilessly free of dust.

  It took a long time for Hédi to return; I had missed the sound of her trickle but heard the flush; when she came out I could tell she hadn't gone to pee but to have a little cry; she had the look of someone who has just put an end to something that was terribly important but was now over and done with; "This is the sitting room," she said, wiping her eyes again, for the last time, though there were no tears, only redness from rubbing, "and that's my room over there," she said; her pain must have been the kind she wanted to get over quickly, yet as much as she tried to smile at me, I felt she didn't want me to see her struggle, would have preferred me not to be there.

  She seemed to turn very quiet in that apartment, indeed said nothing after that, but opened the big black cello case, took out the instrument, and sat down with it by the window; she tightened the bow, tested it, applied resin, took a long time tuning, while I had a chance to walk around the apartment: each room opened into another, and it was easy to imagine someone being hauled out of here, but what could not be imagined was that every night, in the completely darkened bedroom that gave onto the courtyard, this Rezsö Novák Storcz was doing something to her mother that Hédi had said always "got on her nerves."

  I got back to the sitting room just as she started playing; the piece began with soft, long, deep strokes of the bow; I loved to watch her tense, absorbed face, her fingers feeling the long neck of the instrument as she quickly attacked a chord, held down the strings, her fingers quivering; then, in reply, came rapid, plaintive sounds dying quickly, higher and higher notes, reaching a level from which, with unexpected shifts and the blending of two positions—highs and lows, long and short notes played simultaneously—the melody should have emerged, leading to a clear statement of the theme, but she missed some notes and after several tries, she stopped playing, obviously annoyed.

  The annoyance was for my benefit, though she pretended I wasn't in the room.

  Leaning the cello against the chair, she stood up and started for her room, but changed her mind, came back, effortlessly picked up the instrument by its neck, and carefully placed it in its case, put bow and resin into their compartments, closed the case, and stood silently in the middle of the room.

  For some reason I didn't say anything either, just kept watching her.

  She would flop today, she said; no wonder she couldn't concentrate, she said; it was bad enough that her mother dragged along that idiot of a disgusting beast everywhere she went, she said softly, with such hatred that her body trembled, even though her mother knew, knew damn well, that just seeing him drove her to distraction; at least she should have the decency not to bring him to her performances, because that really made her unbearably nervous; all of which seemed very strange to me, since I'd never heard anyone speak with such open hostility about their own mother, and it embarrassed and shamed me; I would have liked to protest, ask her to stop, I felt I was being dragged into something I wanted no part of; she couldn't stand it anymore, she went on, she couldn't stand this man sitting there, staring at her! and as though that weren't bad enough, she said with a bitter laugh, he always has to butt in about what she should wear—Yes, yes, your little white blouse, Hédi dear, and that pretty navy-blue pleated skirt—so she'd look ridiculous and ugly! she hadn't worn those things for two years at least, because she'd outgrown them, but she pretended not to notice, hoping that slimy animal wouldn't be staring at her.

  Furious, she loosened her belt and began unbuttoning the little red buttons on her blue dress—the belt was red, too—and when she reached her waist and under her hand I could see bare skin, I thought of turning away, because she didn't seem to be taking off her clothes for me, she was simply undressing, but then, with a single move, she slipped out of h
er dress and stood before me in the dim light, wearing only her panties and white sandals, holding her dress turned inside out, her hair slightly tousled.

  And she said quietly not to be scared, she'd already shown them to Krisztián; and then we fell silent again, just standing there, and I don't know when the distance between us slipped away, all I wanted to do was touch her; she didn't look so beautiful with just her sandals on, looked rather awkward with her dress hanging from her hand, but her breasts, her breasts were calm, the two nipples looking at me; what I do remember after that—without recalling whether she started in my direction or I in hers, or maybe we both took a few steps—is the deliberate way she let her dress drop to the floor, as if she had sensed her own little-girlish, almost laughable awkwardness, and, to appear more daring and shameless, put her arms around my neck, but in a way that kept me from seeing what she had offered up to me; I was overwhelmed by her skin, by the breezy smell of her perspiration, and with an unconscious move I hugged her, even though I would have preferred to touch her breasts; the situation could have been ludicrous, since she was at least a head taller than I, but I wasn't thinking about that then—it was painful not to have my fingers touch what my mind so badly desired.

  Not from the touch of her arms or skin but from the movement of her breasts did I feel that she quickly and softly kissed my ear; then she laughed and said that if she couldn't have Krisztián, she'd steal me from Livia; but I wasn't interested, because all I wanted was her breasts, the flesh, I don't quite know what, the way they were touching me, their softness or their firmness, but she was careful not to press too hard against me, wanting the tender flesh to remain between us, keep us apart; and with that laugh she let go of me and, leaving her dress on the floor, walked into another room, taking her breasts with her; I heard her open a closet door, and it was as if all this had never happened.

  And when Maja had whispered in my ear earlier that she knew all along that I loved only Hédi, the reason I hadn't protested—or insisted I loved only her, Maja, or told her I loved neither her nor Hédi but Livia— was that I would have liked Maja to steal me from the other two.

  They got as far as the middle of the clearing when all three of them stopped at once, looking around somewhat foolishly, realizing at last that something odd and unusual had happened or was happening here, something dangerous they suddenly didn't know how to cope with; when I'd first sat up and noticed them, it even occurred to me that Krisztián might have sent them, this could be a trap, the trick we'd anticipated, but their genuine bewilderment made it clear that their showing up here was purely coincidental, and as astonishing as that seemed, I felt it was beautiful, simply beautiful; it was fascinating to see the three girls frozen in their tracks and listening, each in her own way, each in a different direction, their high spirits ebbing away as they grasped one another's hands even more tightly.

  Their physical intimacy had always intrigued me, the mutually tender ways they touched, held hands, chased about, in constant bodily contact, put their arms around and danced with each other, and kissed so freely; the way they exchanged clothes, as if giving themselves to each other or lending some very precious part of themselves; the way they combed out, curled, and set each other's hair, polished each other's nails, put their head on the other's shoulder, lap, or chest, and cried unabashedly when they were sad, shared their happiness, locking themselves in a clinging embrace with every part of their bodies participating—all this evoked in me a desire beyond envy or jealousy which I could hide but, shameful as it was, could not suppress or restrain; and I tried, hard, for I knew that Father was forever on the lookout, noticing and censuring every so-called girlish gesture of mine, perhaps he, too, had something to fear, I don't know; at any rate, I saw, I had to see, that a perfectly innocuous gesture was enough to fill me to the brim with this desire, which may explain why I wanted to be a girl, and indeed often imagined being one, to have some unequivocal legal grounds for these unpunished contacts, even though I sensed far more impulse, fear, constraint, habit, and routine in the apparent freedom of the girls than I could admit; and whenever my longing for uninhibited constant bodily contact did not completely cloud my mind, I realized, of course, that this contact was but a parallel version of the same passionate rivalry that existed among us boys, even if we weren't permitted to touch one another physically or had to find complicated, tiresome, and often humiliating pretexts to do so, resort to trickery, outsmart one another just to share among us our most elementary emotions; I couldn't ignore, and in fact bitterly envied the profound attraction that made Krisztián want to fight with Kálmán all the time, choosing the uniquely boyish form of fighting, which girls never used; girls entered into physical fights only when in dead earnest, and then they would scream, tear, scratch, and bite one another; between us boys the game of fighting, unimaginable among girls, always erupted for no apparent reason, simply because we wanted to touch, hold one another, feel and possess the other's coveted body, and only this kind of playful fight could legitimate our desires; had we expressed them as openly as girls did, embraced and kissed as they did, had we not camouflaged the true intentions of these physical rivalries, the others would have called us fags, because clearly I was not the only one watching his step, the others were also very careful not to cross certain boundaries, although you could never be entirely sure what the word itself meant, it had a mythic character, like almost all our curse words and imprecations, implying a desire for something forbidden; for example, we say "eat my dick," because it's forbidden, or we say "motherfucker," alluding to another taboo; to me the word meant a prohibition against an entirely natural impulse, the meaning of which was only vaguely illuminated by a remark Prém dropped once, which he'd heard from his brother, who, being six years older, was considered an authority, according to whom "if you let a guy suck your cock, you'll never be able to screw a woman," a statement that needed neither comment nor explanation; it made it quite clear that everything faggy or having to do with faggots or faggotry endangered masculinity, the very thing we were striving for; in another sense, the whole notion was beyond the grasp of a child's mind; for me it meant one more of those disgusting, mean things adults did which one was never keen on following, but the word failed to stamp out the impulse, the lively desire, camouflaged though it was by the innocence of our playful fights, it merely held in check the desire that among boys constantly seeks expression; as I've said before, I wasn't alone in this; for instance, Krisztián would creep up behind Kálmán, throw his arms around him, and wrestle him to the ground, or—and this was one of their favorites—they'd grab each other's hand and keep pressing, squeezing, and bending it, the rule of the game being that no hand must be seen above the desk, and you weren't allowed to rest your elbow on your thigh—in other words, one arm had to wrestle down the other in the air; they'd turn red, grin, and, straining for support, would hold their bodies stiff by pressing their locked knees together; the object here was not to beat the opponent, as in a serious fight, but to get a lover's taste of his strength, agility, and resilience, to enjoy the preeminence of sexual sameness, and fulfillment meant the tender meeting of two like strengths; in the same way, with the tender intimacy of the girls, one could feel a certain amount of unpleasant, irksome falsity, although not so clearly or emphatically as with us, but when they were walking about hand in hand, giggling, whispering, gossiping, or dressing, consoling, teasing, or caressing one another, I couldn't help feeling that this degree of direct bodily contact was permissible only because it was merely the outermost layer of their bond, friendship, and alliance, a kind of necessary guise, like our playful fights, contact that seemed not to express real feelings but rather to demonstrate a secret conspiracy or even conceal a deadly hostility; this became especially obvious to me after the incident in the gym when Hédi accidentally discovered that Livia and I had been staring at each other, and of course she made sure word got out: that Livia and I were in love, for by doing this, she not only exposed Livia to common
talk but delivered her up to me, and further, by spreading the rumor that Livia had fainted in the gym out of love for me, she saw to it that this act of deliverance became public knowledge; interestingly enough, Hédi's machinations did not make Maja jealous; on the contrary, she showed great enthusiasm, forever trying to arrange for Livia and me to be alone; yet it was clear that with their acts of kindness and maternal solicitude, Hédi and Maja would not let go of Livia; their kindness was a trap, their solicitude a noose, and what's more, buried in their approbation were underhanded concessions with which to get into a more confidential relationship with me, as if they knew that ultimately this would only confuse me, as if this had been their express goal from the start; they got me Livia, but on no account was I to be able to choose among the three of them: Livia could be mine, but only in the way and to the extent they allowed, and Livia had no objections to the arrangement, because the alliance the three of them had forged, for and against me, the conspiracy itself and their bond, was far more important to her than I was, or, more precisely, she knew it was in her own best interest not to let this secret alliance unleash their own fierce rivalry, not to let open hostilities between them make me take sides, and everything should stay as it had been: undecided, ambiguous.