Parallel Stories: A Novel (12 page)

He was shooting the breeze with his friends, two men of his age, in a heated glass-covered corridor at the Lukács Baths, but Lady Erna could not have known this.

At last, it was the maid who picked up the receiver; she’d barely said who she was when at the other end someone began to speak, very firmly and to the point.

It was like a report from the battlefield.

Which caused the maid’s jaw to drop and her features to freeze. With one hand she grasped the receiver tight, she had to listen carefully, understand every word, but concentration made her forget her other hand, from which the poker slipped free.

It hit the rug with a thud.

At the sight, the other two people stopped in their tracks; aghast, they remained motionless.

The person on the line spoke continuously and at an ample volume. Ilona Bondor would have been glad to stem the flow and hand the receiver to someone more authorized than herself, to a family member, to Kristóf, who understood the hesitant little movements of her hand and seemed ready to take over at any moment. But it was impossible to interrupt the seamless speech. Twice she responded helpfully by saying, yes, yes. After that, she could only utter yes, yes, thank you very much. Lady Erna also heard these last words and saw her employee’s telltale, in fact ridiculous, features.

But mainly she saw their motionlessness, their posture, the way all three of them leaned stiffly forward.

She stood in the doorway of the sitting room, a little wet, the fluffy pink terry-cloth bathrobe barely gathered around her ample body, in her high-heel slippers, her bleached, tousled hair still dripping.

Oddly, at such moments, everything else ceases to exist. Still, she cast half a glance at Gyöngyvér’s sinewy, slender brown body, which had always impressed her, as if she were hearing a sudden snap, a sound that for a thoughtless moment brought everything to a halt in her mind. It was rare that she saw her so scantily dressed. She had to take advantage of the opportunity.

She loathed this woman, did not believe anything she said, though she understood her own son: after all, the woman’s body had an effect on her too.

Ultimately, it was the sight of this body that restored her calm.

She stopped fuming.

As if she knew what had happened and as if she were reinforcing her realization with a clumsy nodding approval.

The maid replaced the receiver and remained where she stood, facing the wall. She had to turn away, not to see anyone, for at least a second. Not to let them see her face. Everything that had happened between her and the professor during the past year was way beyond anything that conventional human relationship recognizes or allows.

For a long time, this little transition into silence, this click of the receiver, lingered as the last noise in the room, or rather, they all felt that a very long time was going by. Outside, it was a moment when the sky became lighter, even though rain was whipping the two windows. All three of them were watching Ilona, watching her thin, unnaturally raised shoulders.

They waited for her to speak. And they wanted her to remain silent for a while longer. Gyöngyvér Mózes’s teeth knocked together several times but luckily no one heard that. She had no idea what she was doing, and her movements were uncontrolled; she pressed her thighs together, grasped her short nightie, kept tugging it as if afraid for her loins.

The rich darkness of her pubic hair glimmered through the light material.

Is he dead, Lady Erna asked cautiously after a time.

For hours after her attacks, her voice was usually colorless, and now she sounded hoarse from the first syllable. Of her listeners, only the young man discerned the sober calculation in her question. More precisely, the dread that her plans would crumble. He could see it on his aunt’s face, which without makeup always seemed offensively bare. Her boldness frightened him so much that he tore his gaze from her. In fact, this was his greatest concern: the boldness of human emotions. He did not want to hear Ilona’s response. And to see the effect of the response.

Not a word, nothing.

No, please don’t be afraid, cried the maid, choking and stammering. He recovered half an hour ago. The doctor told me to tell you they won’t be able to keep him conscious for long. He said he felt he had to say that unfortunately it won’t last long, he could not give any reason for hope. As far as it was humanly possible to make a prediction, they said. But he is exceptionally lucid now. He wishes to see Ágost, he wishes to see Nínó.

And please hurry.

But whom did you talk to, for God’s sake.

In response Ilona gave her shoulders a little shrug. She didn’t know, did not understand why suddenly this would be important or interesting. Actually, her next sentence would have been a request to accompany her mistress.

Some man, she answered, and her voice trembled with the effort, he said he was speaking for the head physician, because Lady Erna had discussed something with him that now would be absolutely necessary.

And with this she turned away, she could not continue, and because of the frustration at not having voiced her request—I’d like to say good-bye to him, and she was losing her courage to say it now, I’d like to see him once more—her shoulders trembled silently.

Even though she did not want to cry at all. What had she to do with all this. I don’t want to cry, she shouted within herself.

Where is Ágost?

I don’t know, I’m very sorry but I don’t know, Gyöngyvér replied too loudly to the threateningly quiet question. I can’t help it, she added as one caught and accused of gross negligence who must make excuses. He jumped out of bed at dawn, she muttered, got dressed without a word, wouldn’t tell me where he was going, and ran out.

You were probably fighting all night again.

We were. Unfortunately, that’s true.

Ilona, please bring me my dark gray suit. Kristóf, you’re coming with me. Somebody order a cab.

Her recent fury was replaced by this cool, patronizing voice used to giving orders, which the three people before her could not easily oppose.

It was difficult for her to master not her emotions but her lack of strength. She really had no time to lose, and she had an aversion to unpleasant scenes. Luckily no one noticed the corner of her mouth quivering, her knees shaking and her long fine fingers trembling. Not so much from her own shock, because for her this matter had long been considered closed, but from what she had not counted on: that now it would indeed come to pass, what until now seemed to be impossible to finish.

Her breath was accelerating; she had to slow it down.

Otherwise, everything had been properly prepared for the moment that now managed to surprise her after all. She only had to take out of her desk drawer the sales contract requiring the dying man’s signature. She knew where to find it. And luck would shine on her after all; her little good fairies would be with her. A heart attack must not interfere now. She turned to leave for her room.

And it was not the five words that Kristóf called after her that stopped her, but the shock and indignation that anyone here might have an objection or hold a different view about something.

I am not going anywhere.

What are you talking about.

I am telling you, I’m not going to escort you anywhere.

You’re out of your mind.

This was an attack she would never have thought possible.

She had no illusions about her own son. But this boy, in whom she daily saw her murdered younger brother, which she considered a precious gift of life, was the most gentle and attentive human being she had ever known. During the past six years, she had never for a moment regretted taking him into her house instead of putting him back into some filthy orphanage. Involuntarily, every person makes such selfish calculations. Whom can I trust when in trouble. What benefit will I have by doing this. Him I can truly trust. Neither her body nor her soul had any appropriate sense organs with which to comprehend what she was failing to comprehend with her mind.

She did not understand what was happening.

Not going anywhere, no, repeated the young man almost impassively, and softly rather than loudly.

But why not, for heaven’s sake, why are you telling me this, or what is this supposed to mean.

She could not conceive where this voice could be coming from. And then there was one long moment from which the two other people present were excluded. A peculiar situation. If objects had eyes, they’d be looking at one another as neutrally as Nínó and Kristóf were looking at each other now, and that made them similar, turned them into almost identical beings, or more precisely, brought into daylight their common familial features.

Their egomania grappled with their sense of justice, only to force both of them to retreat, defeated, into the protection of illusions.

Kristóf found no appropriate moment to explain. He didn’t even know what signals he should be sending to make others understand his intentions. It was not possible to understand; he himself did not understand it. When in January, in the business district near Café Abbázia a few old stores were reopened on the boulevard, there also appeared a saleswoman with whom he unaccountably and senselessly fell head over heels in love. So much so, that he never dared to speak to her. He wouldn’t have known what to say. Of course, things like this happen to young people almost on schedule; the adventures of their instincts, however, are not without dangers. Although no one noticed, and he did nothing to attract attention, for some months now he’d been teetering at the edge of the steep slope of clinical madness with his helpless and ever darkening passion. His aunt was close to the truth. What in January had promised to be nothing but a playful little adventure by now paralyzed him, and his conscience did not have a sober spot or a sane corner left.

What whimsy, what a weird idea, my dear, what a disgusting recklessness.

He could not move from his post.

That was his soul’s only command. Though he couldn’t have confessed even to himself what good it would do to stay put all day. No good at all. Something very important failed to reach his consciousness. He could not tell himself or say out loud I’m very sorry I cannot go with you to the deathbed of my uncle because I must stay here on account of a strange woman who actually I can’t see from here. If he said this, even if only to himself, he would make public the fact that his days had no meaning at all. His rationality had broken down, and that is why his aunt called him to account.

The only thing that stood between him and schizophrenia was that he had not uttered these sentences aloud, considered irrational by the world, though the inclination to do so was there.

He clung to an old, infantile feeling. As if the matter at hand had to do with things being unfriendly, and their indubitable reality offended his sense of justice. Or sense of morality. The two women could not have been aware of what his aunt had secretly prepared here. While your husband is dying, you are busy working on your son’s inheritance, but you want me to go along with you and you have the nerve to talk about disgusting recklessness. You can all go to hell, together with your inheritance. I’ve had enough of all of you, once and for all, I’m fed up with my family. This is what he would have liked to shout into his aunt’s wet face, but he couldn’t even do that. At that moment he thought it important—much more so than the justice of his childlike sentiments, that no matter what happened to anyone, he should not go anywhere from here. He could account for the reasoning of this desire not even to himself, but now it meant nothing less than the betrayal of his aunt and was therefore morally unacceptable. Following common sense, he should have been looking for some excuse for not going, some pretext or reason, however hollow, however baseless.

Yet he said something that frightened not only the others but mainly himself.

I’ve had enough of his death. Excuse me, Nínó, I beg your pardon. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want any more deaths.

But this is not about you now, Kristóf. I need you to come with me. So I won’t be alone in such a troubling hour, my boy.

In her confusion and agitation her mouth trembled uncontrollably, while Kristóf looked at her obtusely and apathetically, and obviously without having understood anything of her very real need.

His glance remained so innocent that Lady Erna thought with some justification that maybe it had been a slip of the tongue, that he would now change his mind, retract that insane earlier sentence of his, and everything would be back where it had been before. But Kristóf could no longer restrain himself; he simply turned his back to everybody and, as if nothing was more natural now, stared out the window again. But Lady Erna’s behavior was equally unpredictable. Her own weighty sense of justice had already taught her not to do anything that would needlessly further complicate an already difficult situation. Rising above senseless and confusing phenomena, she expediently cut to the chase and instantly ejected the confusion from her mind. As if saying that anything that might interfere with me simply never did and does not now exist.

Gyöngyvér, you are not working today.

That’s right, today I am not.

Then maybe you can come with me.

I was about to suggest it myself, Gyöngyvér replied, as someone gasping for air, though on her own she would never have dared to make such an offer. They had never gone together anywhere.

I’ll get dressed right away.

Ilona, please pull yourself together. It’s too early to start crying. Call a cab, I say, and get my gray suit. And put out my short Persian lamb coat too.

Outside, the wind and the rain subsided for a few seconds but everything grew dark as if it were dusk. In the meantime, the policemen disappeared; the empty assault car, as though on a leisurely patrol, slowly cruised around the large square, pulled into the Andrássy Road intersection, and stopped, exactly at the spot where in November 1956 the Russians had set up their cannons and blown away Café Abbázia. Since then the café had reopened. In the apartment a door slammed, maybe the bathroom door, closet doors creaked, the two women were running around excitedly.