Parallel Stories: A Novel (48 page)

Gyöngyvér still would not speak. She heard herself whimpering or, more precisely, along with her whimpering returned the quondam crying and, with the crying, the courtyard, its dazzling light, the glimmering gray shades of the acacias reaching to infinity, the unquenchable thirst, the taste of the soft soap, and the choking. From this she understood that the moment had come. When she would finally take her revenge.

All she had to do now, to keep the man from making even the slightest move inside her, was to raise one hip. She fastened herself to the root of his cock. Me, me. Don’t. And no longer heard her own hateful whimpering. At last. She’d have to choke, after all.

But at least not for lack of air, but because of the water, that would do it, she’d choke on the water; she’d been thirsty for so long.

In the water I’ll get lost, finally. And when she thought about this and really wished it, she saw how sane and cold the outside world was.

The familiar ceiling of her room.

They were scratching and stroking the pig, kept slapping and patting the horse’s neck, she really remembered this. The young bride pressed the goose under her enormous thighs and hacked away at the bird’s windpipe, everything crunching under the knife, and then tore, ripped, and scraped at the gristle. She closed her eyes while the blood poured into the bowl and the bird was kicking and convulsing under her with its slippery large white feathers. And then she pushed it off the stool. Spoke to it gently, calm down now, stop kicking your mistress so much, cooed to it more emphatically, it’ll be all right, little goosey, you’ll see, you’ll be all right, while the headless bird thrashed about until it bled to death.

The young woman was silent for a good long while. Feathers were flying.

In the meantime it probably turned evening.

And this is not something she imagines but is a memory she doesn’t really remember. How interesting. The hog they killed at dawn, the small livestock at sundown. She didn’t know when it might have been morning, if now it was evening. Until she grew up, she would have preferred to be an animal like a hog or any other beast.

Not this kind.

The children must have already been sent indoors, for they were no longer making noise in the courtyard. From somewhere a radio could be heard, and the sound of someone tenderizing meat or of some other muffled pounding.

Luckily, she wasn’t the one being beaten. Smack, thundered the raw meat.

That is how loud the pounding of her heart seemed to her, and on the ceiling she saw the mute, reflected lights of the warm summer evening. But in that instant it also became clear that somebody else was in the room. A sudden current of air and a strange smell could be felt.

A slight clink on the window. Her heart skipped a beat. Quickly she raised her head—oh my god—to look out over the man’s tensed-up shoulder.

The maid’s room was barely longer than the bed. Only now did she come to her senses enough to see where she was. This was not a trick played on her senses.

Mrs. Szemz
ő
, Dr. Irma Arnót, had indeed opened the door on them. Her white lace glove glowed on the doorknob; her white face hovered in the shadow of her hat and at the same time seemed to be nodding approvingly with each of her words. This means something entirely different. Indeed, this must mean something very different. Yes, that’s how it is. I’ve opened the door and now I am here.

Gyöngyvér made desperate belated moves. She would have wanted to pull the cover over them but it had slipped off some time ago. She found a corner, but the cover was stuck in or on something, and she had to yank and tug before it freed up enough to cover only partially the bottom of the man kneeling over her. There was not enough to hide his broad, sopping back, flashing in the light now entering the room, or the shoulders, the tousled hair and dark head.

She could not make him disappear.

My dear Gyöngyvér, my sweet, said Mrs. Szemz
ő
from the doorway, her voice at once grating and sugary, I just dropped in to tell you I’m leaving now.

She spoke in such a natural conversational tone, perhaps a bit higher than necessary because of the darkness, as if she hadn’t seen anything or didn’t want to acknowledge what she was seeing or perhaps did not believe her eyes.

I definitely won’t be back before two, she added more softly.

But with these words she destroyed the confidence with which she had entered the room, and it was as if, after all, she should acknowledge something of the sight and the vaporous smells that assailed her. Genuine alarm stole into her voice.

If I’d thought you were asleep I wouldn’t have come in. To tell you the truth, oh god, I thought you were listening to the radio.

She regretted this foolishness the moment she uttered it. As one exposing herself. After all, I did see it was dark in here.

Yes, I could have sworn you were listening to the radio, she added quickly. Please forgive me.

Oh, please, no need to worry, go ahead and leave if you have to, Gyöngyvér replied, her voice barely audible, as if still hoping that this was nothing but a hallucination or dream, and that if she behaved properly and produced appropriate sounds to indicate that nothing was going on everything would turn out well.

The old lady would evaporate, vanish. And she would unexpectedly wake up and forget the whole thing. But how could she produce acceptable sounds. The man was stiffened into himself, as if he had turned into a piece of furniture. Because of his incredible weight and mass, she could neither budge nor breathe properly, could not speak as if he were not inside her.

At the same time, there was a touch of indecent flirtation and derisiveness in his immobility. And why not, seeing that his face was concealed. However alarmed he may have been, he was enjoying the embarrassing situation.

Obeying some incomprehensible command, he had to behave like a bug; he became motionless, stiff, as though he understood the limitations of anthropoidal behavior. Yet he did not mind that his naked body was revealed to someone he’d never seen before and, to his great good fortune, was not seeing now.

In fact he was sorry Gyöngyvér had so quickly and adroitly covered at least his ass.

In his rectum, in his swollen testicles, drawn up high in excitement, there slumbered the wish and the pleasure of exhibitionism, as well as its recurring concomitant shame.

In truth he didn’t know why he did what he did and why he desired his own shame. In the boarding-school shower room it had reached his consciousness, what was expected of him and what commercial value a shameless exhibition had, and, realizing how high a price the sight of his body was quoted at on the secret stock exchange of his inmates, he accepted their undisguised glances; he ceased to have serious doubts about his naked body’s effect on others. His self-confidence was reinforced by the interest not of women but of men. However, liberating and slightly hasty waves of lovemaking had barely flooded his body when, at the threshold of his youth, he was surprised by a depressing fantasy that refused to leave him and accompanied him into manhood. The harder he objected to it, the deeper the fantasy cut into him. And it came with a powerful sensation; the larger his doubts as to whether all this fucking was worth anything, the stronger the pleasure became, or at least the painful imagination of great pleasure. Which made him sink even deeper into depression.

Even in the most conventional position, he always worked rhythmically, almost inattentively, at least pretending to be aloof, or, conversely, he’d put everything into it, get on his knees to hold the woman’s vagina captive, yet leave enough freedom to slide smoothly between clitoris and the orifice of the uterus, keeping his movements strong and finely detailed so the woman would reach her first major climax as soon as possible and not be demanding, surrendering herself to a continuous gratification; and in this labor, his ass would inevitably spread, open wide, and he would be surprised by a good friend.

All he needed for this was to feel the coolness of the room in the crack of his buttocks, to have a current of air stroke his cleft. A close friend. Though he had no such close friend and normally would not even want one.

This fantasy spoke more of his naïve inexperience than anything else.

The friend had no face.

He put up with him though he abhorred him, did not see what was happening yet had to endure the violence.

So much for friendship.

Although he could easily sublimate this ungratified desire and secret dread of his excited anus, he tamed it. When with his mouth and tongue bathed in prodigal amounts of saliva, he slid from women’s vaginas to their tight assholes and they cried out in surprise. It was as if he were calming his own anus, as if he were searching for his own.

He didn’t think much of friendships.

He had no idea that feeling ashamed about this was unnecessary; after all, the tight bundled muscle curling back on itself, the
musculus levator ani
, closely binds genitals and anus together in everyone.

You probably have to get up early, said Mrs. Szemz
ő
apprehensively in the dark, as if she had not seen that someone was lying on top of Gyöngyvér.

Yes, unfortunately, I do, very early, replied Gyöngyvér, and despite all her efforts, her words sounded like gasps.

And here I am, so heartless, waking you up. Don’t worry, when I come back I’ll try harder not to wake you again. And now I really won’t bother you anymore.

Filling up someone must feel very different from being filled up by someone, these feelings are not interchangeable; yet, halfway between the anus and the genitals, at the point where the powerful dual self-enclosed muscles meet and cross in a figure eight, the image men and women have of themselves do not differ.

Go on, and have a good time.

I just wanted to tell you that I left the light on in the hallway on purpose.

I know, dear Irmuska, answered Gyöngyvér emphatically, as if she were talking to a slow-witted child. She’s still not leaving. And she felt like screaming. Get this old hag out of here. What’s she doing spying on me. She had no strength to scream, because insidious little vibrations and tremors were pouring into her from the man, and she shuddered with helpless fury. With the effort not to feel them.

They should not spread to her vaginal muscles, should not even come close.

With which she inadvertently took on Ágost’s preventive attitude.

Though she would have found it very amusing, a worthy revenge, to reach her orgasms mutely, right in front of the old hag.

Actually, wasn’t she basically trying to conform to the situation and satisfy everyone as best she could. The effort she was making to have it not be like that now only filled her pelvis the more powerfully with painful pleasure. She tightened up, she couldn’t do otherwise, she tightened her anus and the tightening immediately returned to the oval muscles of her vagina and spread in all directions.

This is how she returned it, amplified by her own strength, to the man; thus, the spreading not only didn’t stop at but brimmed over the sandy shores in ever greater volume.

She saw before her those not-too-distant shores.

Don’t turn it off.

Oh, no, I won’t turn it off.

It was as if her pleasure would make her give birth; her pelvis widened, ready to burst. She herself was the bed of the mighty river, which the water filled with its surging mass.

But yesterday you did turn it off.

By mistake, Irmuska, I promise I won’t this time.

For a moment Mrs. Szemz
ő
stared at her quietly. It’s one thing to have something in mind, to think about something, and it’s a whole other thing to see it right in front of us.

Over the man’s shoulder, virtually steaming with heat, she stared back at Mrs. Szemz
ő
, as if pleading with her.

But she did not budge.

There was no longer enough light in the small room for them to see each other, yet their looks were as if glued together. As though one of them used this look, wrested from the darkness, to spirit away what the other did not want to show; oddly, this impossibility became their compromise.

Well then, go back to sleep, said Mrs. Szemz
ő
. And thank you, it’s very kind of you, she added fleetingly. Pleasant dreams.

Yes, I thank you, Irmuska, came the hesitant answer from the darkness. Good night, she said loudly.

The door of the maid’s room closed, the draft it created made the window above them clink, but they could not move, because Mrs. Szemz
ő
still wasn’t leaving, was still rummaging in the hallway.

They didn’t dare open their mouths.

As if the wall between the maid’s room and the hallway had been broken through and they could feel on their skin the little noises of her rummaging. They didn’t dare laugh or express alarm or displeasure. And wild joy burst out. But they had to stifle it. They grabbed, held on to each other on the narrow bed with the bad springs. But this solved nothing. Because in the woman’s pelvis the trembling kept on radiating, with intermittent silent vibrations slashing through; it had no rhythm, she returned what she received, or she gave it and received it back and then, as if pushed along, it coursed through her spine and thighs; it would unexpectedly make her knees jerk, her brain jouncing painfully with every jerk. Which made her unable to speak. Oh.

So good. More, it hurts, oh, but it’s good. How it hurts. She knew nothing else, wanted nothing else; more, it hurts, oh, that was all she wanted. Though she had pangs of conscience; why did she have to bring here a man who weighed a ton.

And that is why she wanted to stop, slow down, absorb the jerking with her muscles. She might have been ashamed of the sounds she made, of her own stupidity, of her pain, of being busy with her own gratification even in such an impossible situation. She could not stop the jerks, not the trembling, nothing. They kept coming. They hurt. She wanted them. Her orgasms came. She could not reject any of this, her brain was rattling.