A Book of Memories (29 page)

And if what she said didn't leave me cold, it wasn't because it was important for me to know which of the two men was my father, a question that was exciting, to be sure, teasing, titillating in its immodesty, above all, a delicious secret, like the picture I kept in mind of the man I knew to be my father with that other woman in the maid's room, but still, I'd say the question itself was not of primary importance, it could be dismissed, forgotten, relegated to the background, like the broad sweep of the horizon in a painting of a quiet, misty meadow at dusk, in other words, a mere frame that fades away, undeniably part of the picture, but the picture itself, our picture, begins and ends where we are, where we assume our position in it: our view of existence can have only one center, and that is our body, the pure form of being that makes this view possible and provides strength, authority, and security, so that ultimately
—I emphasize, ultimately—nothing else should interest us but our body in all its possible aspects and manifestations; Mother's last sentence silenced me and ruled out further questions, mainly because it was like a not quite inadvertent allusion to everything that had been preoccupying me; I couldn't make decisions, yet felt compelled to decide, just as she did— only from her sentence it was already a guilty conscience staring back at me, stemming from an inability to decide, which, I knew, would last a lifetime: I was facing my own future filled with threatening chaos and confusion, though viewing it with the serenity of one who already knew he couldn't hope to decide what is undecidable, in which regard her confession was quite liberating, as if she had sensed that she was going to die soon and, as her last will, meant to warn me not to experiment with making decisions when no solutions were possible and to allow uncontrollable events to be my only joy, as if real freedom consisted of nothing but letting ourselves be affected, without protest, by occurrences that choose to manifest themselves in us; consequently, for me, then, she wasn't like a mother, whom we expect to shield us with the warmth of her body from the rigors of the real world, but like an experienced person who has returned to herself after many adventures and indulgences and is therefore necessarily cruel and cold, a person with whom I had very little to do because common ties are defined by warmth, yet with whom I was in every way identical because, regardless of differences in age and sex, the occurrences within us were identical.

It was as though she was talking about something she could not have known anything about.

Our silence spoke of this, too.

And then I did manage to tell her something about which I had never spoken to her before.

It wasn't real speaking, of course, not a single word being formed or articulated in the deep silence, and lasted only as long as it took my mouth, breathing tiny kisses, to inch its way from the soft curve of her arm up to her shoulder, but "Girls like me very much," I would have whispered in the choked voice of a lover's confession meant just for her, "they like me more than any of the other boys," I would have whispered, as if to prove something, and also a bit ashamed of this surprising, inappropriate, ever boastful declaration, because everything we say out loud about ourselves, even if only to ourselves, needs immediate, disappointingly ambiguous amplification, so I would have said this, because they didn't like me that way
—"I know, and I'm ashamed that they like me not the way girls like boys but as if I were a girl, too, which I'm not, of course, I'm a boy, but this difference, this thing that separates me from other boys, I can't help being proud of," and I would have asked her to help me, because I was saying it all wrong and desperately wanted to say it right, and the plural didn't mean girls in general—there is no such thing anyway—but the three of them, Hédi, Maja, and Livia, they were the girls, and in the same way, when I thought about boys I saw Prém, Kálmán, and Krisztián as belonging together; if I had to decide which sex I was more attracted to, buffeted between these two dependent yet separate trinities of the sexes and trying to find my place, I'd have to have said that women and girls were dearer to me though men and boys attracted me more.

I'd have said all this, if it had been possible to talk openly of such matters.

But leaning on Mother's shoulder I remembered what it was like to come from the garden and silently step into the Prihodas' spacious dining room, where their maid, Szidónia, was clearing the table, and to watch for a while, without a sound, as she got down on her knees, her buttocks thrust toward me, to pick bread crumbs off the floor.

Perhaps it was the heavy fragrance of Mother's skin that made me reveal all my secrets to her, things I experienced independently but which still had to do with her, somehow.

And when the maid finally noticed me I put my finger to my lips, warning her to be quiet, say nothing, nobody should know I was here, not yet, I wanted to be able to surprise Maja, and she stayed as she was, motionless, fortunately unaware of the deeper meaning of my precaution, thinking it was a prank, some innocent prank, after all I was such an amusing fellow, wasn't I? and my smile, my playful plea, made her my accomplice; very carefully then, not to make the floor creak, I started walking toward her
—Here comes that rascal again, her beaming eyes seemed to say—and, watching me approach, she burst out laughing.

I always had to think of something new; old tricks were good for starters, but I had to devise something extraordinary to heighten the effect, which was not so hard as it first seemed; I had to remain refined in my little acts of rudeness, gauge precisely the opportunities afforded by the given moment.

And in this silence I went as far as not saying hello to her, knew that only the most extreme gestures were effective, sometimes would only nod, but another time would suddenly grab her hand and kiss it, she'd slap me lightly on the back of my head: that is how our contacts remained silent, even when free of playful smacks and cuffs, still more expressive than words could have made them: we were giving, exchanging signals, a form of communication that suited us perfectly, why spoil it with mere words?

No need to concentrate on anything else: I had only to look at the yellow flecks in her gray cat's eyes
—I knew that every premeditated and self-conscious move was too artful, therefore patently false—to establish contact between those flecks and my instinctive gestures in order to learn whether I was on the right track or not; now, for example, her loud laughter was a kind of revenge for my imposing silence on her, but she laughed out loud, and that called for reprisal; our furtive pleasures demanded these little reprisals, which gave us a chance silently to kick, bite, scratch, and furiously pummel each other, and then, very slowly, I too went down on my knees—no need to mimic her openly, she got the message!—simply replicating, mirroring, the funny, somewhat humiliating position her body had assumed; I knelt next to her, among the legs of a couple of chairs, as if to say, You are like a dog here, yes, that's what you are, a dog.

Szidónia was a fat girl, her thick brown hair pinned up in a braid, her oily skin glistened, her eyes were bright, and every move she made was disarmingly, awkwardly childlike; there were dark stains of perspiration on her white blouse under her arms; I knew I had to do something with this penetrating, enduring odor: but I am your dog, I intimated, and, sniffing noisily, stuck my nose into her armpit.

Her body dissolved in silent pleasure, she rolled under the table, and I followed the moist, wet smell until she bit into my neck, hard; it hurt.

Now this way, now that, whichever way we played these little games, they were only the antechamber of pleasure.

Because in the inner sanctum, deep inside her room, poring over her books and notes and resting her head on her hand and chewing on the end of her pencil, sat Maja, her bare legs crossed under the table, and she kept swinging them, shuffling them in an irritatingly unpredictable, nervous rhythm.

Thick shrubs grew tall outside her window, old trees lowered their branches like a curtain, the air in her room was always filled with green stirrings, green flickers on the wall, as the leaves outside floated and fluttered.

"Livi isn't here yet?" I asked quietly, making sure I opened with a crucial question, a confession really, letting her know right away that she wasn't that important to me: she may have been waiting for me, and now pretending not to be, but I hadn't come because of her.

She didn't look at me; she always made as though she didn't catch my words the first time, always sat in some contorted position, and not so much read her book as scrutinized the pages from afar, with a certain revulsion and wariness, keeping them as far away as she could, as another person might look at a painting, taking in both the details and the composition as a whole, furrows of concentration creasing her brow, her dark brown eyes round with a constant, level astonishment, all the while chewing and twisting her pencil with her beautiful white teeth, chewing and twisting it again; and if my presence registered in her consciousness this was indicated only by a slowing in the shuffle of her feet under the chair, a less active nibbling on her pencil, but needless to say, these were signs not of inattention but of the most concentrated attention
—these monotonous, mechanical motions enabled her to absorb knowledge far removed from her physical being—and if she finally managed to tear herself away from what she'd been so intent upon, she looked at me with the same deep, astonished interest; I must have seemed like another object to her, every object being remarkable in its own way, as slowly, very slowly, she lifted her head, the furrows of her brow disappeared, she had to pull the pencil from between her teeth, her mouth stayed open, and her eager, attentive look did not change.

"You can see for yourself," she said casually, but she didn't fool me, I knew she enjoyed reporting painful news.

"She's not coming today?" I asked, needlessly, only to emphasize that I hadn't come to see her, let there be no misunderstanding about that.

"I'm getting a little tired of Livi, maybe she won't show up today, but Kálmán said we'd see her anyway, because Krisztián is doing some kind of theater."

She might as well have stuck a thorn in me; of course nobody had told me about this, and she knew they meant to leave me out of it.

"We'll see them, then?"

"I guess so," she said innocently, as though the plural included me as well, and for a moment I almost believed it.

"Did she say that I should go? That you should invite me?"

"Why, didn't she tell you?" With just a touch of mock indulgence, she savored my embarrassed silence.

"She did mention something," I said, knowing well she could see through my lie; she seemed to feel a little sorry for me.

"Why shouldn't you come if you feel like it?"

But I wanted no part of her pity. "Then our whole day is shot again," I said angrily, inadvertently betraying myself, which of course pleased her no end.

"Mother is out."

"And Szidónia?"

She shrugged, which she did with inimitable charm, raising a shoulder just a little, but somehow this made her whole body sag, reaching the limits of its inertia, and after an indefinable moment of transition she relaxed again, flung her pencil on the desk, and stood up.

"Come on, let's not waste any more time."

She acted as if she really wasn't interested in anything else, but I couldn't shake my anger so easily, and besides, I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at, since all I knew was that once again something had happened behind my back which I had to scream out of my system.

"Just tell me this one thing, will you: when did you talk to Kálmán?"

"I didn't," she said with a gleam in her eye, almost singing the words.

"You couldn't have, because he walked home with me."

"You see
—so why don't you just leave it at that?" she said, grinning pertly, eager to let me know she was enjoying my annoyance.

"But may I ask how you found out about their plans, then?"

"That's my business, don't you think?"

"So that means you have your own little plans, right?"

"Right."

"And of course that's where you want to go."

"Why not? I haven't decided yet."

"Because you don't want to miss out on anything, right?"

"I'm not going to tell you, so don't get your hopes up."

"I'm not interested."

"So much the better."

"I'm an idiot for coming here."

There was a moment's silence, then very quietly and hesitantly she said, "Want me to tell you?"

"I couldn't care less. Keep it to yourself."

She stepped closer to me, very close, but the look in her eyes faltered, turned opaque, as though she'd been deeply touched by something, and that fleeting uncertainty made it clear that she didn't see what she was looking at, didn't see me, didn't see my neck, although she seemed to be looking at it, at the bite mark, but that's not what she saw; in her thoughts she was roaming that secret region which she wanted to hide from me and which I was so curious to see, to know, and above all, I wanted to feel Kálmán in her, feel her every move, hear the words she had whispered in his ear; then, hesitantly, as if trying to convince herself I was really there yet not fully realizing what she was doing, she pinched together the collar of my shirt, tugging at it absentmindedly, and lowering her voice to an ingratiating breathlike whisper, she drew me even closer.

"The only reason I am going to tell you is that we promised we wouldn't keep any secrets from each other."

And like someone who has managed to hurdle the first and most serious obstacle posed by her own sense of shame, she sighed, even smiled a little, using this smile to find her way back to my face and, looking straight into my eyes, continue what she had started: "He wrote to me, sent me a letter, Livia brought it over last night, that I should come, too, on account of the costumes, you see, and that we'd meet in the woods this afternoon."