A Book of Memories (104 page)

Theoretically, society should hold as ideal the person who feels the urge to do only what is not forbidden. And as most dangerous the one who feels the urge to do only what is not permitted. But this seemingly logical principle, like that referring to the asymmetry of beauty and ugliness, does not really follow the laws of logic. There is no person in the world in whose action there would be no tension between urges and inhibitions, just as there is no one who wants to do only what is forbidden. The ideals of social harmony and a well-adjusted life are predicated on the masses of people who manage to keep this tension in themselves to a minimum, yet it wouldn't occur to anyone to call them wise, good, or perfect. They are not the monks, nuns, revolutionaries, inventors among us, and not the madmen, prophets, or criminals either. At best, they are useful in maintaining social tranquillity. But the greatest usefulness can measure itself only in an environment of the greatest uselessness.

If before, in thinking about beauty and ugliness, I contended that when made to choose between two near-perfect forms we invariably pick the near-perfectly-proportionate form over the near-perfectly-disproportionate one, then now, reflecting on good and evil, I must conclude that in setting the moral standards for our actions, we never choose what is necessarily good or beneficial, never the boringly average, but the disturbing, provocative exceptions, life's necessary evils. Which also implies that for our senses the highest degree of perfection is the standard, while for our consciousness the standard is always the highest degree of imperfection.

On one page of his manuscript my dead friend claims that I sometimes asked Prém to take off his clothes. I remember no such thing. But I don't wish to cast doubt on his claim. Perhaps I did ask Prém to do that. But if I did, I must have done it for reasons other than those my friend had assumed.

There's no doubt that boys are greatly interested in the size of their own and others' sexual organs. One of our favorite games was to compare them in either words or deeds. Most men don't get over the effects of such games even in adulthood. Their unalterable physical endowments forever remind them of psychic injuries sustained in childhood. Depending on whether their organs are small or large in these games of comparison, the injury may take two different forms. If it's large, they must feel privileged, even though this privileged status later provides no advantage in their love life. And if it is small, then they must suffer the psychic consequences of feeling inferior, even if in their sexual life no disadvantage results from it. In this matter, everyday experience and scientific evidence are at odds with cultural tradition. I don't know how other cultures deal with the disparities between emotional and mental experiences, but our own barbaric civilization, in awe of the act of creation, does not respect creation at all. I'm sure of this. A childhood hurt does not develop into an emotional scar because of physiological factors but because of the contradiction between individual and cultural perception: an individual, geared to procreation, perceives his endowments as natural and unique, but his culture, disrespectful of creation, uses a different set of criteria
—disregarding the limits given and defined by nature—to evaluate individual endowments. And so the individual wants to squeeze more out of what is already a lot, or suffers because what he has, which is not little, cannot be more.

It is clear to everyone that the quality of one's sex life depends on happiness, however fragile that happiness may be. Although it's true that sexual happiness cannot be separated from the sex organs, it would be foolish to relate it to the size of these organs, if only because the vagina by its very nature is capable of expanding to the size required by the penis. Its expansion is governed exclusively by emotion, as is the erection of the penis. But the cultural tradition of an achievement-oriented consumer society obsessed with the accumulation, use, and distribution of wealth cares not one whit about this mundane, albeit scientifically verifiable sense experience. It suggests to both men and women that something is good only if it's bigger and there's more of it. If you have less than the next person, something's wrong with you. And something is also wrong if you can't squeeze more pleasure out of what you have plenty of. And if there's something really wrong with you, you can either accept it or try to change your whole life. You sow envy and reap pity. That is how a culture bent on self-definition and self-propagation is forced to acknowledge the limits set by creation. All clever revolutionaries eager to change the existing conditions of life are as foolish in practice as the dull conformist is wise in accepting life as it is. When dealing with this delicate question, which touches on all aspects of our lives, we act exactly like those primitive tribes who make no connection between conception and the function of their organs causing sexual pleasure. Our own supposedly highly developed civilization posits a direct relationship between sexual organs and sexual contentment that nature cannot confirm. A precondition of procreation is the regular functioning of the sexual organs, which may result in conception, but sexual happiness is merely a potential gift of nature. Hence the fragility of this happiness.

After expounding on these ideas, it would be risky for me to claim that I'm neither scarred nor warped in this respect. From my earliest childhood, circumstances have forced me to satisfy not my cultural longings but my natural inclinations. And for this reason I can honestly say that I find the culturally inspired masochism of resignation and the sadism of forced change equally abhorrent. Unlike my poor friend, who ventured into the realm of human desires and turned his body into the object of his emotional experiments, I turned my body into an instrument, a means to an end, and thus my desires have become only the stern supervisors of my natural inclinations. Because my origins were so problematic, I viewed with great hostility anyone who tried to convince me there was something wrong with me, or anyone who considered me exceptional because of my physical attributes. I couldn't accept these judgments. Life for me was not something to accept as inevitable or something that had to be changed; what I wanted was to find, in the only life that was mine, the possibilities congenial to my character. And in pursuing these possibilities I have been, if not passionate, definitely obsessive.

I have been coaxing out of myself during these lonely nocturnal hours, though I am temperamentally ill suited for it, reflections and confessions. Having desires does point to some sort of suitability, however, and this compels me to become active in an area where I should prove to be inept. But two complementary principles necessarily put into motion a third one.

Not being filled with longing, I am moved to reflect and to remember. What I want from myself is to eliminate everything that might embarrass me or make me biased. It is true, of course, that bias affected the way my memory obliterated my own image as recorded by my friend. But I've no reason to complain, because my memory neatly preserved another image.

A seemingly innocuous one. I don't know how often I may have recalled it over the years. Once in a great while, I suppose. It's like a pinprick. The sun is blinding. The grass is green. Prém is squatting in this raging light. From between his closed thighs his prick is dangling. And in thicker, longer, and harder sausages, shit is coming out of his ass. I have more of such images but none of them quite so distinct.

In the middle of our reconnaissance operation we'd suddenly feel the urge to relieve ourselves. We were not embarrassed in front of each other. Either I would have to go, or he, and sometimes both of us at the same time. And in the most impossible situations, too. We didn't have time to clean up, either, for whether we had reason to be afraid of getting caught or not, we always had a deeper shame to flee from. I believe that this more serious injury protected us from the other, much milder one.

Our compulsive shamelessness created a peculiar order of importance. What to others was a titillating sight, reaching into their sensuality and satisfying their curiosity, for us was only a trivial circumstance, though it still reminded us of our shamelessly affected shame. So if I indeed asked Prém to take off his clothes and show his nakedness, I did it not because I was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable desire to see his emblematically significant organ but, on the contrary, because I knew that in the other boys there still lived that inescapable attraction which our shame had already killed in me. This was the feeling I wanted to free myself from, or recapture the feeling of community with the others. That I could never succeed in this is a different matter. Perhaps this is the reason I don't easily tolerate being kissed.

I was toilet-trained by means of the most frightful prohibitions. I learned that I must perform one of my most basic life functions, relieving myself, in complete secrecy, alone, never in the company of others. The taboo was so strong I knew it could never be violated with impunity. Rules of sexual conduct seemed far more lenient in comparison. How profound and unavoidable the urge must have been for me to violate that prohibition. For I did violate it, we both did. For others there had to be a war, a state of emergency to do the same. Yet our conscience didn't trouble us, because it was not the cultural norms concerning toilet-training that we wanted to breach, just as nations don't go to war to squander the treasures of their moral sanctuaries. We lived in days of illusory peace, and we simply wanted to prepare ourselves for the day when we'd have enough experience and resolve to carry out the greatest reconnaissance mission. The ultimate proof of our preparedness would be the execution of an actual plan. If, for instance, we could penetrate the area near our house guarded by killer dogs, barriers, barbed-wire fences, and heavily armed men. If we could do it unnoticed, effortlessly, without getting hurt, like master spies. Unlike my friend and Maja Prihoda, we weren't trying to expose spies, we wanted to become spies ourselves. To spy out that quintessential enemy territory whose very existence and unfathomable character brought into question the validity of our own existence. But for this cold-war operation we didn't, couldn't possibly, have the necessary courage
—just as my friend and Maja ultimately shrank from denouncing their own parents. For that we would have had to break the seven seals of the darkest secret and do something that the country itself, sunk in a stupor of peace, could not do. And this was the greatest shame we all shared.

But I couldn't give up the idea of doing something like that.

It was autumn when I wrote this last sentence. There are sentences I have to put down so I can cross them out later. The truth is, I'm not happy with that sentence. Still, I can't cross it out, strike it from my heart. It's spring now. Months go by. I do very little else. I've been trying to figure out why I couldn't give it up. If I knew, I wouldn't have to write it down, or I could just cross it out. What I've been really thinking about is why I still can't give it up. Why I'm ready for the most humiliating compromises just so I won't have to give it up. Wouldn't it be more dignified to bow to irrevocable facts than to wallow disgracefully in the filth of obstinacy? Why am I so afraid of my own filth when I know that it's not just mine, and at the same time why do I shudder to look into a mirror that reflects only my own image, after all?

If memory serves, we broke into ten or twelve apartments. That's quite a lot. And we had to take a crap on eight or ten occasions
—enough to fix the experience indelibly in my mind. But what was the point of devising the most impossible tasks for ourselves, and piling one senseless crime on top of another, when we both knew very well that we were after something else? And we didn't need to talk about it either. Helpless and dejected, we hung around the fence of the restricted area. Trying to make friends with the guards. Did small favors for them, which they repaid with spent cartridges. We kept wondering how we might render the watchdogs harmless. We even asked the guards. There's no way, they said. But no amount of clever maneuvering could make us equal to the task, because what we were demanding of ourselves, in fact, was that our courage, strength, resourcefulness, and determination match the brute force that this untouched and untouchable restricted area had come to symbolize.

I remember well our last clandestine operation. I was trying to climb out through a small pantry window when a shelf laden with preserve jars gave way. It happened on Diana Road, in a villa surrounded by a high brick wall. Luckily, I was able to avoid falling on the bottles, which rained down with a terrific racket. I held on to the windowsill and took a look under me. The indescribable sight still haunts me. Green pickles plopping on and mixing with sticky jam, marinated yellow peppers sliding and rolling all over the tile floor. And more jars and bottles falling onto this soft, squishy mess, shattering one after the other.

My life does not abound in memorable turning points. Still, this moment of long ago I ought to consider as one. I felt I had to seek other, different means of action, and without ever again derailing any of my desires.

I was always an excellent student. Moreover, I was blessed with the diligence and perseverance of a teacher's pet. But my adaptability and pleasing appearance kept me from becoming thoroughly dislikable. I am one of those few who actually mastered Russian in school. My mother and I had visited all my father's fellow officers and soldiers who were returning from Russian POW camps. It was while listening to their stories that I decided to make a serious effort to learn Russian. In this I took after my mother, emulating her grim, obsessive ways. If she could learn the true story of my father's disappearance and death, she would get him back. This is what she must have felt, and this feeling took root in me. And since I was preparing to become a soldier, I hoped I'd be able to investigate the circumstances of his death exactly where it had happened. German I had to learn twice. The first time, it was acquiring a language nobody spoke anymore. Among the books we inherited from my grandfather was a two-volume leather-bound set with a mysteriously simple gold-embossed title on its spine:
On War.
The margins were filled with my grandfather's notes, in Hungarian, written in his tiny, crabbed, but quite legible hand; the book itself was printed in Gothic letters. I had to acquaint myself with this book, because I thought that from it I could also learn everything there was to know about war.