A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  And while he planted himself firmly on the soft sagging couch and, with his knees spread wide apart, leaned over me, I was assailed by the raw smell of his body: clothes hold in body scents and isolate them from the outside world, but when they are removed, the subdued exhalation of the body, like a swollen river from behind a dam, surges forward in wild and abundant streams.

  He pitched the shirt he'd just pulled off me somewhere, and then, with a sigh, sank down next to me; my arms were still raised over my head, my out-turned wrist was touching the wall, in this way giving him a little room on the pillow as well, and he pulled up the blanket caught between our legs and spread it neatly over my back, then tucked it behind his own; from the window left open in the living room we felt waves of a cool breeze, and emitting sounds of pleasure, he used the blanket to wrap us tight into the heat of our own bodies and then, slipping one arm under my neck again and hugging my back with the other, he lowered his head onto the pillow, next to my face.

  I didn't open my eyes; there was one more prolonged moment, full of expectations, before body would touch body; lying parallel and turned to one another, each waited for the other to give up his moral principles as they are expressed in decisions and intentions, because it wasn't my clothes he had peeled me out of but rather my hurtfulness, my pride, and my anger, my resolve that if I couldn't stay with him I'd want to be all by myself; and even though in this game of undressing it was my passivity that had enabled us to come together again, pretending that my limbs were lifeless betrayed a lack of conviction, a reluctance to give up my advantageous position or give in to his closeness, his smell, and his warmth; and of course all this harked back to our morning conversation, which had been cut short when we grinned at each other our most obnoxious grin.

  But his activities were no less ambiguous either, for the more determined and purposeful an activity, the more clearly it betrays its true intent: he was bowing to my will, not exactly apologizing but, swallowing his pride, trying to make amends, and for him, this act of getting intimate, this undressing ceremony, meant that his emotions, best conveyed to me through our bodies, made him perform the gestures of the most Christian humility, which was by no means an act of abasement, any more than the ritual of washing a person's feet is, and if after all I wasn't going to reciprocate the gentle aggressiveness of his humility, then he had no further move to offer, that was the limit beyond which there were only unyielding moral principles detached from the flesh.

  And then I did move my raised arms, slipping one under his neck and wrapping the other around his back; at the same time he pried open my knees with his, slipped his thighs between mine, his head was on my shoulder, his groin over mine, and thus our two bodies, turned completely toward each other, met along the full surface of their skins.

  And this meeting was so abundant in instincts, emotions, and intentions that the fractional moment in which skin touched skin, heat reached heat, and smell mingled with smell to make a closer fit physically impossible was like a deep, painful groan of happiness and good fortune, eliminating distance and division; that's how parallel lines must feel in infinity.

  The harmony of the two bodies expressed in this single touch, bridging their differences and bending their moral reserve, was as powerful and wild as physical fulfillment, yet there was nothing false in this harmony, no illusion created that just by touching, our bodies could express feelings that rationality prevented us from making permanent; I might even say that our bodies coolly preserved their good sense, scheming and keeping each other in check, as if to say, I'll yield unreservedly to the madness of the moment but only if and when you do the same; but this physical plea for passion and reason, spontaneity and calculation, closeness and distance, took our bodies past the point where, clinging to desire and striving for the moment of gratification, they would seek a new and more complete harmony.

  Our bodies' uncertainty became the only certainty, and that was good enough; desire-filled body watching the body's lack of desire; and the more satisfaction each body found in this watching, the more relaxed they both became, the more comfort they found in each other; I may have fallen asleep a few minutes after he did; just before falling off, I could hear the breeze ruffling the poplar's yellowing leaves, and his ever more regular, even breathing.

  We slept in each other's arms, with his chest on mine, thighs pressed together, his head on my shoulder, his hair in my mouth, our legs entwined under the blanket; we had to be this close not only because the couch was very narrow but also because the hard horsehair mattress slanted down on the side and we had to hold on to each other even in our sleep so as not to fall off.

  We were startled out of our sleep at the same time: like someone shrinking back just when he is about to sink into an even deeper sleep, his body shuddered along the length of mine, giving me a start, too; under the pressure of his head and shoulders, my own shoulder and arm had gone to sleep and were now aching; looking instinctively for a more comfortable position, which the body always does, I moved away from him.

  Our bodies parted, at the same time feeling the peaceful closeness and harmony in which they had rested until now; they didn't separate completely, just far enough so that a bit of cooler air, part of the outside world, could penetrate the space between us, making us more aware of our bodies' heat.

  I think we opened our eyes at exactly the same moment, and because his head slid off my arm and dropped to the pillow, we looked into each other's eyes from very close up.

  Since our every little move and sensation remained identical, they became our own because we saw them reflected in each other; I caught the same look in his eyes—I might call it a neutral look—with which I felt I was looking at him.

  We both had had an equally deep and short sleep, which blotted out time, so that our consciousness was somewhat puzzled as it was trying to return to where it had left off, the resulting look in the eyes being not necessarily a sign of muddleheadedness, in fact possibly of very sharp, keen awareness; I imagine this is the way babies look at the world.

  I could see in his eyes that this was just what he was seeing in mine; there was no trace of conscious thought for either of us, and the next moment we both broke into a smile, and this, too, was strikingly similar, one originating in the other; I smiled his smile and he mine, which in turn elicited a like response from both of us, turning bashfully away from this unexpected and unwilled intimacy, we bowed, more precisely, lowered our heads resting on the pillow, making forehead touch forehead.

  I didn't close my eyes and don't think he did either, or if he did, he probably opened them again soon after.

  The eyes, though retaining some of the neutrality of the first wakeful moment, became alert again, ready to return to former activities, and now shifted downward, into the darkness under the covers; the glance penetrated the feelings as it enjoyed the view of a wedge-shaped configuration, observing it from above.

  Our two divergent bodies formed the sides of this wedge: two chests, one of which, his, was hairier; two bellies, appearing a little sunken in this position, one of them taut and flat, the other just slightly bulging; and down below, in the narrower part of the wedge, the nestlike softness of the testicles filled out the angle formed by the entwined legs, and the genitals, one, his, larger and longer, and the other, mine, rather comically limp in its shrunken state, were lying on each other as peacefully as did our intertwined arms above.

  The geometric shape could not be perfect, though, if only because of our different builds, and I was also lying a little bit higher: our feelings, too, were similar rather than identical: he was more comfortable, I think, his lower body weighing hard on my thigh, and unless I wanted to paint too idyllic a picture—and why would I?—I'd have to confess that my thigh could hardly wait to be rid of the weight, but in spite of this minor discomfort, we lay there in almost perfectly identical positions; and as we did, aware of and watching this symmetry, the two genitals that had been resting on each other, as if coaxed by our eye
s and the geometrical arrangement of our bodies, began to rise, ever so gradually, smoothly; swelling, filling up, lengthening and thickening, their heads crossed, collided, mutually impeded, and then bumped past each other, gaining the feeling of mutual momentum needed for a solitary erection.

  The symmetry and simultaneity became clear, unequivocal, and at the same time comical, because what we saw was real, though it also allowed us a glimpse into the workings of our senses, into the almost impassive mechanism of our instincts: forehead bumped into forehead because we turned away so quickly and simultaneously, as if suddenly discovered or exposed by someone, and then we burst out laughing—again at the same time.

  Judging by the sound of it, it wasn't just a plain laugh but a guffaw.

  An eruption of joy and coarseness, a burst of joy over the coarseness that a stiff penis, by its very nature, provides in any and all situations, the joy of "See, I'm a man," the joy of a living organism expanding, the ancient joy of belonging to the community of males, the joy of life's continuity; and it was also laughing at the coarse mechanism of exposed archaic instincts, which is called culture and which leads to doubling the enjoyment of raw instincts, because I feel what I feel in spite of the fact that I know what I feel—and thus I feel more than what I can possibly know.

  With our guffaw we transformed into sounds the coarseness and violence inherent in joy, especially in shared joy, a form of communication which, transmuted by humor, promised a more powerful pleasure than the prospect of consummating the act—and one always grabs for the larger chunk of pleasure, or at least tries to, so I roughly pulled him to myself, and he just as roughly pushed me away; like two crazed animals, we began fighting on the couch.

  In reality there's no such thing as perfect symmetry or total sameness; a transitional balance between dissimilarities is the most we can hope for; although our scuffle wasn't at all serious, it did not turn into an embrace, for the same reason that he had pushed me away: up to that point, wishing to keep up the pretense of perfect symmetry, I had accepted the less comfortable position so he could rest comfortably in my arms, but that was like telling him he was the weaker one, which, in turn, was like telling him he wasn't as much of a man as he'd like me to believe, forgetting for the moment that letting him have the better position gave me much more pleasure; yet precisely because there is no perfect symmetry, only a striving for it, there can be no gesture without the need for another to complete it.

  The fight turned into a real one; though we both tried to keep it playful, it became increasingly rough, and it boiled down to a question of who could push, shove, squeeze, or throw the other off the couch, gaining a decisive and incontestable victory. The blanket got caught between us and then must have slipped off; naked and sweaty, we kept pummeling each other as much as the cramped space would allow; laughing when we started, we slowly turned silent, only now and then emitting what we imagined to be battle cries, trying to threaten each other with the sound of certain victory at any moment; we tumbled over each other, biting and scratching, thrusting our legs against the wall, straining against slippery skin, against shoving and twisting hands; the couch creaked, the springs moaned and groaned, and in all probability he was as happy as I to see that in this struggle for victory all the real pain we had caused and all the hostility we had felt toward each other rose to the surface out of some hitherto unseen netherworld.

  Our bodies, which only moments earlier had given such symmetrical and palpable proof of their desire for each other, now found—without our noticing the change or the moral dangers hidden in it—a different kind of occupation, just as elementary and passionate, and this change completely transformed our feelings, turned them inside out, I might say: my muscles and bones, without the tenderness of desire, were now communicating with his muscles and bones in the language of violent emotions.

  Until with a huge thud I wound up on the floor.

  I tried to pull him down with me, but he punched me in the face, and then, pushing against my face, worked himself back up on the couch.

  He was on his knees, grinning down at me; we were both panting, and then, since neither of us knew what to do with our respective victory or defeat, he suddenly flipped over and lay on his back, and I also lay on my back, on the soft carpet; in the sudden silence we kept breathing, waiting for the panting to subside.

  As I lay there with my arms spread wide, and he lay up there also breathing hard, with his arms spread wide, he let his hand hang down, maybe inviting me to touch it; I didn't, I let it hang right in my face, that's what made it nice, the lack of touch, this little gap that could be closed at any time; it seemed to me I had seen the ceiling before, the way the late-afternoon light, broken into three separate strips by the arched doorway, was chasing the shadows cast by the swaying branches outside; I had seen this dead hand before, twisted on its wrist; incredibly, everything happening now seemed to have already happened to me here once before.

  At the time I neither found nor looked for an explanation, though the image was not so far from my feelings that I couldn't have reached it, but sometimes the mind, keeper of all memories, does not provide the place of a stored item, only hints at it; for some reason the mind would not call the desired item by its name, and it's very considerate of the mind to be in no hurry to spoil an otherwise enjoyable situation by clearly identifying secret data relevant to it.

  Perhaps if I had reached out and held his hand.

  For twice in a row, as if compelled to free himself of some deathly anxiety, some choking, harrowing pain or insane joy, he let out a howl so powerful it made his whole body contract, as if all his strength were being forced into his chest and throat, he roared, he bellowed himself into the silence of the room, which hit me as unexpectedly as any blow or grace of fate would; long seconds must have passed while, unable to move or to help, I watched the agony of the large, prostrate male body: the truth is, I thought he was playing, still fooling around; his hand was still hanging down, his eyes were open, glazed over, staring into space, and his feet were flexed.

  Now he rose slightly; his chest, filled with air, heaved and quivered, the heaving and quivering coursing through his whole body and then rippling back; I saw he wanted to scream a third time, perhaps hoping to expel what he'd failed to eject twice before, because if he couldn't, his heart would break.

  Maybe the reason I couldn't move or help was that he looked beautiful.

  And not only was he unable to scream the trapped air out, but all the oxygen seemed to have been used up by his lungs, now swollen to bursting, and no fresh air could enter them; to keep from choking, his body tried to straighten out, jump up, run off, or maybe just sit up, but without enough oxygen it had no strength, only reflex motions seemed to be at work, struggling with themselves, until the straining muscles finally squeezed out a sound, high-pitched but clearly coming from a great depth, a whimper, a broken, breathless whimper that grew longer and stronger as he managed to take in more air.

  Shaking, looking ugly, racked by bursts of loud sobs, he wept in my arms.

  We do well to praise the wise inventiveness of our mother tongue when it speaks of pain as something ripping open; language knows everything about us; yes, we do make caustic remarks, our hair does stand on end, and the heart does break; in these set phrases language condenses thousands of years of human experience, knows for us what we don't know or don't want to acknowledge; with my fingers, with my palm on his back, I did feel that something inside, in the hollows of his body, really had ripped open, as if the membrane of a mucous organ had been slashed through.

  My fingers, my palm could see into the living darkness of his body.

  Something ripped open with each new burst of his sobbing, and still there was more to be ripped open.

  Years were ripping out from under the membrane of time.

  In a half-sitting position he leaned toward me as, perched on the edge of the couch, I clumsily pulled him to me, and with his forehead on my shoulder, the hot waves of hi
s sobs flowed down my chest, his nose was pressed to my collarbone, and his lips, wet with snot and saliva, were clinging to my skin, and of course I whispered all sorts of tender nonsense into his ear, trying to calm and console him, and then did just the opposite: sensing not only that my body could give no strength to his but that any show of so-called selfless love would only divert or stifle the pain that had to come out, I told him to cry, yes, he simply had to cry, and with my voice as well as with my enervated body I tried to help him cry.

  How ridiculous all our intellectual babble had been.

  For the first time I could feel what I already knew, that behind his cool sobriety he was clinging to me with all his might, in the brief pauses between sobs his lips were glued to my skin, his pain turning this contact into bites, though he meant them to be kisses, and for the first time I could feel that there was almost nothing I could give him; with this realization I was actually brushing his hands off me, which he felt was only natural but in turn made me want to try the impossible.

  By the time he'd calmed down a little and the pauses of his childish sniveling had grown longer between the fits of sobbing, an aging little boy's face was sitting atop his mature man's body.

  I laid him down, tucked him in, wiped off his smudged face, including the snot—this was a face of his I didn't want to see—sat at the edge of the couch, holding his hand, doing what the stronger one is supposed to do, and even enjoyed a little the illusion of being the stronger one, and when he calmed down completely, I picked our clothes off the floor and closed the window.

  Like a very sick child who feels the caring presence of his mother, he dozed off and then fell into a deep sleep.

  I sat in his chair, at his desk, where in the growing darkness my pen lay untouchable on top of my notes on a performance; I kept staring out the window; by the time he began to stir and opened his eyes, it was completely dark.