Parallel Stories: A Novel (162 page)

She should stop thinking about these women. It was about time that this overpampered Geerte disappeared from her mind.

What a wonderful young man he has turned out to be. My husband is literally amazed by his mental abilities.

You’ll laugh, Bellardi answered and laughed himself, though there was not much joy in the laughter. They looked for him everywhere, at least in Transdanubia, they went to every remote orphanage and reformatory.

They figured it had to be a secret out-of-the-way place and, in the end, they found him in Buda, on Rózsadomb Street, only a few blocks from our apartment.

No, it can’t be, that’s unbelievable.

But it’s true.

You can’t be serious.

Why would I lie. If anything, I’ve been making myself ridiculous with my openness.

The reason I’m asking, man, is exactly because my mother also found my older brother’s son at Emmi Pikler’s place.
*

I think that was her name, yes, that was the famous woman’s name, Bellardi answered, contempt making him hesitate, though he was trying to remain cool and neutral when confronted with these bygone matters. Or maybe that was the name of her famous school, I don’t know, probably, but today it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

My mother had to dig our nephew out of the same place too. But Erna of course kept quiet about how they had left the boy’s mother alone in that struggle. Our little Kristóf also had a different name when our mother found him. But my older brother never turned up, we haven’t heard anything about him since.

And she didn’t want to mention who her older brother was, the famous communist who had given his inheritance from his grandfather to the Party. For a short time, he had been minister of reparations and construction and had so enthusiastically and cheerfully shipped every intact or movable machine and other equipment to the Russians, as stipulated in the cease-fire agreement, that even his own party couldn’t put up with it.

Perhaps because of these thoughts, it happened that for the last third of the trip to the hospital no words passed between driver and passengers.

They had to retreat into themselves.

Bellardi was used to being treated as a servant, with his language he seemed to invite this role, but that someone should call him man, as they do with a jobber or ditch digger, that was too much.

And Lady Erna could not mention her brother or what he had done because for long minutes she couldn’t even moan for the pain, which now intermingled with the pain over the loss of her daughter, the betrayal of Geerte, and the dread released by the thought of her husband’s dying.

István, my God, Geerte—as if in her thinning voice she were whimpering or praying silently.

She had to think about the little nitroglycerin tablets that had been gathered off the cab’s dirty floor only a short while earlier, and about her silver pillbox. The only thing she wanted to mention quickly to Bellardi was that they never succeeded in learning anything about her brother’s fate. She also found very little trace of her young daughter. Where they might have taken her or where her bones or ashes were. Might her brother have been in jail together with someone who might still be alive. If they hadn’t beaten him to death the day they arrested him at dawn.

If she let one more sound out of her body, if she squeezed out one more syllable, she was sure to break into a howling sob.

As it was, she only yelped into the noises of the cab’s jouncing on the cobblestones, into the squealing gusts of wind.

As Bellardi drove his cab to the hospital that Monday morning—and when he looked into the rearview mirror to speak or listen to this other person, this lecherous Jewess, and felt compassionate toward her—his memory preferred to take him back to that long-gone summer, recalling every little detail. To the endless clinic corridor where all the doors stood wide open and his steps made an infernal racket. To the brass handle on the door to the ward, which he had to press down; to his own shadow.

His shadow was going to meet Elisa’s shadow.

And then, in all its reality, there lay before him that morning what remained of Elisa.

Both he and Mária Szapáry found some gratification in the half hour or forty minutes they spent sitting together in the noisy corridor; being close in a time of trouble and in the most profound feeling of being in the same situation because they loved the same being. For without hesitation they would, for Elisa, have strangled or murdered with a pistol, hunting rifle, anything, a knife or their bare hands. And their peculiar solidarity was enriched by their being a man and a woman, proportionately entwined with Elisa’s life.

What other human joy could she possibly expect.

Later Bellardi’s father-in-law arrived, which is when Bellardi took his leave of both of them; he felt he had dutifully done all that was humanly possible to do. Szapáry accompanied him to the turn in the corridor, where Bellardi kissed the woman’s forehead and Szapáry kissed him lightly on the mouth.

Vainly, he thought that with a firm decision he could free himself of the pain.

But he took the pain with him and it hadn’t left him since. From the lobby of the clinic he called and gave instructions to his housekeeper and then, as if preparing for a carefree little summer trip, he absentmindedly put the top down, got into his open car, and drove to Mohács. What else could he do if he had already forgiven unhappy Mária Szapáry.

It was high time he transferred his aunt’s house, sold and almost completely emptied, to its new owner so he could collect the money for it.

The blazing summer and the breeze created by his uniform speed managed somewhat to cleanse him of his past. Perhaps only for a few hours, perhaps only for the brief duration of his arrival. Madzar was about to cross the stone-paved yard, was halfway between the veranda and the workshop, when Bellardi arrived late in the afternoon and suddenly, with lots of noise and a playful gait, walked in through the arched gate. Frozen in their interrupted movements, they stared at each other.

Bellardi did not step into the yard, had not even opened the gate completely.

His leather cap sat rakishly on the crown of his head, the wavy tufts of his chestnut hair falling loosely from it; the milk-white skin on his neck and on his face had burned red on the trip. Madzar blushed deeply with joy and dread.

And they did not greet each other.

Perhaps they did not consider formalities, or the lack of them, to be significant. Both felt the presence of the other as the greatest possible surprise. Perhaps there was no formula for a salutation in such an encounter. Madzar was still filled with noisy and blissful memories of the Szemz
ő
s’ visit, with the shouting of the little boys, the smell of the Danube, the taste of the woman’s lips, the sensation of her small breasts, and he could see Bellardi had come by neither boat nor train.

In the most significant moments of life, one’s mind is busy with completely inessential, insignificant things.

Bellardi’s brand-new leather cap caught his attention and the fact that Bellardi had come in his new car, which his father-in-law had given him along with the cap.

The Szemz
ő
s had left in the afternoon of the previous day, by train, and he had sat on the veranda until dawn, feeling empty and drinking insanely, drinking in the infernal barking of dogs, to forget her, just to forget. But he felt he couldn’t get drunk, not even a little. Just struggling with his mind, fuck, why couldn’t he just pass out. He wanted to wind up under the table. To crack open his torture with moans and whimpers and let all the pain flow out. He trampled one naked foot with the other, alternating them in short intervals, stared at his disgusting toes, writhing like maggots in battlefield corpses.

Unable to wring a single sound out of himself.

Still, what he felt was not pure pain because he had been made permanently happy by the knowledge that with the furniture he was making he could at last reveal his secret self to Mrs. Szemz
ő
.

Jealousy tortured him; a sense of deprivation hurt him greatly.

They stood side by side in the great silence and coolly spoke of styles.

He could not tell either of his selves, not the one holding forth on furniture styles or the other, sterner one, so far removed from cool discourse, that he did not like Mrs. Szemz
ő
or did not know what Mrs. Szemz
ő
liked in him, because he so unbearably wanted her body. Which, on the morning of the previous day, he had had a chance to see displayed in a bathing suit. And when in his workshop, in the steamy afternoon of the same day, in a stolen, not entirely safe moment and in dizzying confusion, they fell on each other, laid hands on, patted, bit, and grabbed each other, hugged and kissed, and with their kisses stamped each other with all the hunger, longing, and desire they had previously stifled and denied, he felt he was touching a taut bow; at the same time he felt on his chest her girlishly tender, trembling breasts.

When he had to get up to urinate, to piss on his mother’s roses, he felt he had managed to get drunk.

He could hardly stagger to the steps without some support.

One can’t urinate with an erect prick.

I’ll piss on it for her, anyway, since I’m already a Hungarian and love my country.

I don’t give a shit about my German mother’s fucking roses.

He could not get a proper hold on his penis because then the urine wouldn’t have started to flow, but he didn’t want to piss on his feet either. Holding it properly would have kept up the erection and blocked the urine. Because of Mrs. Szemz
ő
, he’d completely forgotten that for weeks he had been waiting thirstily for Bellardi more than for anybody else. And now he was here. Or perhaps he should fuck this little Izabella what’s-her-name instead of Mrs. Szemz
ő
; the one with her scar had been left here for him anyway, and he could tell by her smell that she had nobody. A lonely animal, like me.

Why do I always wind up with women whom others have discarded.

And now he could not remember why in hell he had been waiting for this Bellardi, what could he have wanted from him, from such a man; and because of the rotten women he also couldn’t remember the miserable sentence he had so carefully prepared to surprise Bellardi with, and himself too.

What could I have wanted to tell him, what could I have wanted from him, and about what.

Bellardi shook him on the shoulder, nodded to him that he should come, it was time for them to go, and narrowed the slits of his usually smiling eyes even more.

Madzar greatly missed Bellardi’s permanent smile and disdain for the world; their absence made Bellardi a stranger to him.

He saw that something irreparable had happened to him.

His wordless reply was clear; they should go to the Danube.

Where else.

While the sun is still up.

Then I’ll bring my bathing suit, said Madzar.

Leave it behind, said Bellardi, why make a fuss.

From which he knew where Bellardi wanted to go, the place where pants weren’t necessary, and if only for that reason he did not object.

I’ll tell my mother.

Go ahead, tell her, grumbled Bellardi. I’ll wait for you outside. Why don’t you fuss some more, my friend, go on, worry a little more.

But Madzar turned around from the veranda steps, where the previous night he had several times managed to piss all over his mother’s beloved roses. Within the pungent odor of his own, he unexpectedly began to smell the familiar odor of his father’s urine. Bellardi always and in everything had been more foresighted than he, and Madzar as a child had grown used to following him almost always, and in almost everything, despite the fact that he, Madzar, was the more thoughtful of the two. He usually followed Bellardi without due reflection. There was no need to tell his mother; after all, they were going only a stone’s throw away. If he told her, there’d be no end to the rejoicing, to the feeding, to offering more than necessary, to the familiar display of affected manners.

And meantime the sun would set.

When he and Bellardi decided to do something or took something into their heads, they usually forgot everything else. For which Madzar had suffered many serious slaps on his face. He never knew what would happen; with Bellardi things kept changing, growing, multiplying, losing their boundaries, becoming almost incomprehensible. He took his place next to him in the fancy car, unkempt, unwashed, with a two-day growth of beard, wearing the work clothes he had not changed since the day before, and even before he slammed the car door shut Bellardi stepped on the gas.

It was a Maybach Cabriolet with red-and-black leather seats, red gearbox, its dashboard also covered with the same red leather.

As if on purpose, Bellardi first made his perfect automobile cough and jolt, as if he couldn’t get it past its basic starting mode, but seconds later, smoothly and with great speed they flew along Duna Row, lined with round-crowned elm trees, which followed the course of the river on the reinforced-concrete embankment.

They could smell the water.

He slowed down near the church of the Roman Catholic Episcopacy, where a majestically swaying high-piled hay cart, drawn by oxen, approached. Farther away, nervously bleating goats were being herded along the road. Women on foot carried baskets on their backs, and from Fürd
ő
Street, boys and girls were rolling out on their bicycles, probably the local jeunesse dorée.

I realized I was wrong, Madzar said slowly, now remembering his cleverly prepared sentence. He wanted to be done with his deceitful confession, to avoid dealing with Bellardi’s foolish conspiracy and his whole secret life.

But he was not accustomed to insincerity and betrayal.

It’s a good thing you gave me time to think it over, he said, glancing cautiously at Bellardi.

What did you realize, what’s wrong, Bellardi asked, his tone hostile; he kept looking impassively at the increasing traffic before them. As if he had not felt the other man’s eyes on his face, or as if with his mind’s eye he were following a hovering figure whom only he could see.