Parallel Stories: A Novel (111 page)

Threats, implorations, or explanations notwithstanding, no and no.

Until given away in marriage she would not sacrifice her beautiful hair.

She was even prepared to play the madwoman.

Her daughter tried once, but the moment she cut a large tuft the mother grabbed the scissors from her. They tussled vigorously for a while, until it became clear it was more than playacting; she first stabbed her own breast and then, with shouts of murderess, murderess, I’ve been murdered, she was ready to throw herself at her daughter, Marika.

She suffered a kerchief on her head only when she went out on the street.

The street was perhaps the only worldly authority before which she was willing to bow, or before which at least she forced her madness into different forms. On the street she played the kind of role that others could accept but that also suited her own adolescent daydreams. She transformed herself into a lady who, with exaggerated gestures, indicated how disgusted she was by the vulgarity of the world but who also knew at any given moment what this world owed her.

At home she wore no shoes, not even slippers. If in the winter she spent time in one place or just stood on the kitchen’s freezing floor, she’d keep shifting from one foot to the other and under the long nightshirt rub her cold soles on her calves.

She suffered from the cold.

Although she wore thick underpants, she struggled constantly with inflammation of the bladder and chills. Before going anywhere, she’d spend a long time picking her shoes and bags. Sometimes the careful preparations took days or even weeks. Because of her fine skin, her legs were sensitive, she explained to everybody, and with her fingers she’d point to and gently touch the fine skin on her cheeks and forehead, everything chafes and irritates it. If she went only so far as the marketplace, that would be the end of it, her feet turned into one big sore, sometimes her shoes filled with blood, and every shoe hurt, cut into her flesh, she has nothing to wear anymore because of your disgusting stinginess. I will not shove my feet into bloody shoes, yet she has to because this helpless man, whom even his children have left because of his terrible miserliness, they hate him, won’t talk to him, have nothing but contempt for him because he is mean, mean, and everybody always cheats him at the market too, sells him rotten fruit, he gets all the bruised ones and the ones full of worms, and no matter whether he looks at them or not, if the merchandise is cheap he doesn’t notice.

The meat already has a smell. Still, he buys it.

Shoemakers can’t help her anymore either. Once she had a decent cobbler, but who knows where he is now.

May his memory be blessed.

These cobblers can’t or don’t want to widen her shoes properly, if only they widened one pair, the one made of fine calfskin that’s flexible enough, because all her shoes are custom-made so they won’t chafe her instep or heels. She swears on the memory of her beloved father that she never suffered any pain comparable to this, and every week, when she goes to the market, that is her burden, that is what she has to endure. And not only is the cobbler wicked, treacherous, mean, and I don’t even know his name, but he’s worse than the goy cobblers, only the butcher is worse than this cobbler. The butcher is so mean, he’s a common criminal.

Mean.

Listen to me, man, that’s how I call him, who can remember the names of these cobblers, I’ll give you any money for a pair of proper shoes. God is my witness, when I try them on they fit, see how nicely you could fix them, you see, but by the time I get home, my feet are nothing but blisters.

And already yesterday I told you, she says now, that you’d have liver today.

But of course you forget everything. To you I’m air. I already told you yesterday what nice liver I bought for you, you wretch, was I talking to the air. I don’t eat any of it, not a bite, but once again I swore, I swore on everything dear to me that I’ll never go to that
shoyhet
again. I don’t care what you say, he is not a human being. Mean. You protect him only because you want me to go to him for your liver, but his stinking mouth is always dripping with
hazeer
,
*
she said all this in a uniformly high, almost bored falsetto, and then, as if obeying her body’s unknown passion, and with the passion of her sense of justice, she unexpectedly began to shout.

Can’t you see, she shouted, yanking the elastic dough out of the bowl with the wooden spoon, you don’t even have an eye for wickedness. Mean. You’re no less mean than all the rest of them. All right then, I’ll fry this liver for you, she added tenderly, stupid that I am, I always let you have your way, and the unexpected emotional turn was addressed not to her husband, this miserable man, but to the liver, because she liked to fry it and she liked to pronounce the word
fry
as many times as possible and always with the same gusto.

And to make her lips pronounce the word
liver
, while she envisioned the liver bursting with blood under the bluish-purple membrane, even though she would never have put it in her mouth.

I hope you’re happy to have liver for lunch.

Now I’ll fry it well again. And don’t worry about blood, not a drop will stay in it, don’t you worry.

All this time Gottlieb did not look up from his prayer book, not out of meanness but out of considered goodwill and self-defense. Ever since the woman’s condition had taken a turn for the worse, he let her have her way, he had to endure almost everything, while with carefully doled out indifference he protected himself, spared himself from emotional involvement to the extent that allowed him to remain by her side.

He did not love her, not even in their earlier lives, and the woman had not loved him, never; he had failed to love this woman for even a moment, and therefore it was incredibly hard for him to remain permanently indifferent to her. To find a solution for this problem throughout an entire, unpredictable lifetime, even though the solution consisted of unbearably long moments.

In the early years of their marriage, they had tried to accept each other’s bodily proximity, but they failed.

At most, he was fond of remembering her beauty. Of saying to himself, after each moment gained, see, you managed to bear it, and instead of rebelling, you steadfastly praised the Father of Mercy for all your tribulations; yet he knew that his perseverance had only its own value and no reward, and never would have, neither in this nor in the promised other world. To this day, it filled him with satisfaction that he had been granted a beautiful wife, though he had never succeeded in opening up this beauty, and had never been able to think about what might have happened between them in the sight of the Lord. He feared that if instead of praying as he should, he’d think long and hard about how unbearable it was to endure her indifference; then madness would seize him and hurl him into the depths. Once, during a prayer, he shuddered when he realized he should stay away from depths, should strive for heights, because this hapless woman had no one but him. Since then, consciously and guided by the greatest compassion, he forced himself to think only about shallow things. Thank God she had two healthy children, knock on wood; may the memory of our poor little dead one be blessed. But these children, her own blood, are not only indifferent about their mother but stranger than she is, because they take after her completely. He could see that they wanted to be free of their mother; they would unhesitatingly put her in the nursing home in Bonyhád, which the Transdanubian religious communities maintained for mentally deranged Jews.

What else can we possibly do with our mother, they would say.

He must not die while the woman lives.

He, the stranger, must take care of this strange woman.

He did not understand Creation, why it assigned strangers to live together.

But how could he comprehend His powers. And he no longer wanted to.

In the midst of his prayer he really had to laugh out loud at the Lord Almighty for his wild thoughts, and that made him shudder. Into the minds of people given to alienation, the Lord put thoughts of estrangement. He enjoyed immensely the sly tricks of the Lord, how He managed to reach into his thoughts.

He says, think of shallow things, and the shallowness turns out to be deep enough to be painful.

You’ve got me again, my Lord, I thank you, Thy will be done, as Thou had willed it once, now, and forever.

He understood how the Lord’s mercilessness could possibly remedy his joyless life.

Don’t reply, don’t even look up, whispered the sober thought, but with the prayer drive out the sparks and restless incitements of reason.

Actually, he could endure everything except for one thing.

When Margit screamed, can’t you see that I’ve raised three beautiful children for you.

Not that, not that third one.

Our third child, Margit, deformed and crippled, you can call it what you want, but not beautiful.

Hold your mouth. Give no cause for quarreling.

If they started to quarrel, because Gottlieb did not respond or because he did but could not reasonably control himself, which made their quarrel deteriorate, because he said out loud that they had buried their third child, we buried him, Margit, make a note of that finally, even then there was no room for reflection. Except that on those occasions it was not his goodness but his wickedness he had to relish to the last drop, and with it he had to part with his reason—no small physical and mental ordeal. His wife would repeatedly shout the name of the dead child, exactly as she had done when she was first told; she kept calling him to come home, where was he, just a minute ago he was still out on the street playing with the other children.

He was not, how could he be, we sent him away to the Strickers, Margit, for the whole summer, to the island.

I don’t send my child to anyone, to no kind of island. You gave him away. You did it. You. To the goyim. Only you.

She collapsed, writhing on the ground as if in her pain she would have to give birth again.

But Gottlieb’s silence might provoke her; at times, whether he behaved well or inadvertently did something incautious, it was impossible to keep on an even keel or escape without fits and outbursts; his wife’s monologues accompanied him in his waking hours and even in his restless sleep, sometimes inexplicably.

If she yelled out into the great big world, Józsika, Józsika, the whole neighborhood came running to the house and the doctor had to be called so that with the help of injections and tranquilizers she would calm down.

I’m glad, Margit, he said now, in the voice of a man who has tired of even the semblance of indifference and, in addition to his physical reality, is searching for emotional reserves with which to mold something into something else.

You know how glad I am about the liver.

This did not sound very convincing.

Why wouldn’t you be glad, you wretch, it was fresh when they brought it, I was standing by the counter for a whole day so it would be fresh for you, and on top of that I’ll fry it again for you. I can spend more time at the stove standing on my bad legs.

She did not always fry it a second time; this was unpredictable too—just as he didn’t know whether she’d address him in formal or familiar terms—and that made Gottlieb dread the possibility of blood spurting under the knife onto his plate; he always tried to hide it under the rice or potatoes. At least he should not see the abomination when, to ensure the mental calm of his wife, he silently ate the blood.

Because of his insane wife, once a week he eats raw blood.

Just fry the liver again the way you usually do.

For a change, today I’m making nice white rice to go with it, because I could eat a few grains too, the wife said pensively. For two days now I haven’t had more than a few morsels. With my stomach, I can’t cope with liver anymore, no matter how much I like it and would like to eat some. But I’ll peck at a few grains of rice with you.

I don’t like watching you eat the liver all by yourself all the time.

Only no blood should be left in it, Margit. You know that’s the most important thing.

He did not look up from his prayer book, signaling obsessively that he was calling out from his book between two sanctified thoughts and had neither time nor energy to waste on this liver story even if he was frightened of blood.

You know, Margit, how much I love to have the fried liver well done, you know very well.

And it doesn’t matter if it burns a little and becomes a bit crunchy.

Deathly silence followed; perhaps this was already too much, too many instructions and explanations for the woman.

For her, his words could mean that according to her husband she burned the liver and ruined his food. She paid no attention to anything; she could not be expected to fry liver properly, and, according to these facts, Gottlieb married a woman from Munkács who spoils the creations of the Creator.

Now something was again about to happen between them. Should she tolerate such nasty slander from this wretch from Mohács.

In the tense emotion-filled space, Gottlieb completely forgot he had come home because of his missing hat, and that Madzar must be waiting in vain for the three sleepers to be sent to his home.

He had developed a special ability in himself.

Within a split second, he was able to withdraw attention from his wife. Accompanied by the singsong high falsetto, he fell back into the sought-after text. In the prayer books, he liked checking those prayer fragments that involuntarily cropped up in his mind during the day, while waves of the senseless singsong words broke pleasantly above his head.

Even after several decades, he still did not think he knew the prayers by heart. How could he, when throughout his entire bitter childhood he had been beaten so much. His father of blessed memory beat him, his teacher lifted him out of his seat by his side locks, and her gentle mother shrieked as she pummeled him, because the raw matter in his brain instinctively protested against receiving verses whose sense, despite all his well-intentioned efforts, remained vague and elusive.