A Book of Memories (57 page)

Only after these preliminaries could the real work begin: the close examination of notes, letters, receipts, papers, and documents; we never sat down but stood next to each other, in the shared sphere of each other's heat and excitement; we read the stuff together and in unison, devouring with greedy curiosity what were for the most part routine and boring, or fragmentary and therefore largely incoherent, pieces of information, and only when it was clear that the other didn't understand or might misunderstand something and therefore draw the wrong conclusion did we break the silence with a few whispered words of explanation.

We were not aware of what we were doing to each other and to ourselves; in the interest of our stated goal we didn't want to acknowledge that as a result of our activity a feeling was forming, like some tough stain or film, a deposit on the lining of our hearts, stomachs, and intestines; we did not want to acknowledge the feeling of repulsion.

Because it wasn't just official and work-related documents that we came across but all sorts of other material that we did not mean to find, like our parents' extensive personal romantic correspondence; here, the material discovered in my father's drawers was unfortunately more serious, but once we put our hands on it and went over it thoroughly, painstakingly, with the disinterested sternness of professionals, it seemed that by ferreting out sin in the name of ideal purity, invading the most forbidden territory of the deepest and darkest passions, penetrating the most secret regions, we, too, turned into sinners, for sin is indivisible: when tracking a murderer one must become a murderer to experience most profoundly the circumstances and motives of the murder; and so we were right there with our fathers, where not only should we not have set foot but, according to the testimony of the letters, they themselves moved about stealthily, like unrepentant sinners.

There is profound wisdom in the Old Testament's prohibition against casting eyes on the uncovered loins of one's father.

Maybe if we had uncovered this forbidden knowledge separately, each of us alone, we might have been able to conceal it from ourselves
—forgetting can sometimes act like a good comrade; but our situation was exacerbated by our attachment, this passionate and passionately suspicious relationship which went far beyond friendship but had not reached love; we got to know these secrets together and, let's not forget! while still sexually unsatisfied: the very object of these secrets was passion and its mutual gratification, and as we know, a secret shared by two people is no longer a secret; with her full knowledge and approval I read through letters written by a woman named Olga and also by her mother, both women writing from the height of emotional and physical rapture, cursing, berating, extolling, admonishing, fawning, and above all imploring her father not to abandon them, and, in keeping with the conventions of such love letters, decorating their words with encircled teardrops, locks of hair, pressed flowers, and little hearts drawn in red pencil; though old enough to sense the raw power of passion, in our aesthetic squeamishness we found all this very repugnant; with my approval and eager assistance, Maja had a chance to acquaint herself with the stylistically more restrained letters that János Hamar wrote to my mother and the ones my father wrote to Maria Stein, but my father and mother also wrote letters to each other in which they discussed their feelings about being caught up in this inextricably complicated foursome; and since all this was revealed to both of us, we should have made some judgment, or at least have appraised and characterized the information, put it in its proper place; needless to say, this went way beyond our moral strength—which otherwise we thought quite formidable.

How could we have known then that our relationship reenacted, repeated, and copied, in a playfully exaggerated form
—today I know it followed a diabolical pattern—our parents' ideals and also their ruthless practices, and to some extent the publicly proclaimed ideals and ruthless practices of that historical period as well? playing at being investigators was nothing but a crude, childishly distorted, cheap imitation; we could call it aping, but we could also call it an immersion in something real, for Maja's father was chief of military counter-intelligence and my father was a state prosecutor, and therefore by picking up on hints and remarks they dropped, we were both initiated, almost by accident and definitely against their will, into the professional pursuit of criminal investigation; more precisely, for us it was turning their activities into a game that enabled us to experience their present life and work—which we thought was wonderful, dangerous, important, and, what's more, respectable—and also to bring their past closer, which, judging by the contents of those drawers, was filled with adventure, real-life dangers, narrow escapes, false papers, and double identities—we could see their youth; and if I were to go a little further—and why shouldn't I?—I'd have to say that they were the ones who blessed the knife with which we sought their lives; in this sense, we not only suffered for playing our games but also took great delight in them; we loved being serious, we basked in the glory of our assumed political role, not only filled with terror and remorse but bestowing on us a grand sense of power, a feeling that we had power even over them, over these enormously powerful men, and all in the name of an ethical precept that, again in their own views, was considered sacred, nothing less than the ideal, self-abnegating, perfect, immaculate Communist purity of their way of life; and what a cruel quirk of fate it was that through it all they were totally unsuspecting, and how could they have guessed that, while in their puritanical and also very practical zeal they were killing scores of real and imagined enemies, they were nurturing vipers in their bosom? for after all, who disgraced their ideals more outrageously than we? who put their ideals more thoroughly to the test than we, in our innocence? and since we also harbored the same witch-hunter's suspicion toward them and toward each other, which they had planted in us and bred in themselves, with whom could we have shared the dreadful knowledge of our transgressions, whom? I couldn't talk about things like this with Krisztián or Kálmán, nor could Maja discuss them with Hédi or Livia, for how could they have understood? even though we lived in the same world, ruled by the same
Zeitgeist,
this would have been too alien for them, too bizarre, too repulsive.

Our secrets carried us into the world of the powerful, initiated us into adulthood by making us prematurely mature and sensible, and of course set us apart from the world of ordinary people, where everything worked more simply and predictably.

These love letters referred openly and unequivocally to the hours in which, by some peculiar mistake, we had been conceived
—by mistake, because they didn't want us, they wanted only their love.

For example, in one of her letters to my father, Mária Stein described in great detail what it was like to be embraced by János Hamar and then by Father. In her letter, and I distinctly remember this, it was the stylistic value of the word that troubled me most; I would have loved to understand "embrace" as a hug, a kind of friendly hug and squeeze, but of course there was no doubt that the word alluded to something else, which for a child was a little like watching an animal in heat that suddenly starts speaking
—interesting but incomprehensible; the letters Mother got from János Hamar before I was born were no less ardent; this was the same János Hamar who then disappeared from our lives as mysteriously and unexpectedly as Maria Stein did; neither of them came around anymore, and I was supposed to forget them, because my parents wanted it that way; Maja, on the other hand, was visibly pained by the fact that her father was still seeing this Olga woman, even though as far as her mother knew, the affair had ended long ago; Maja was forced to become her father's silent accomplice, though she loved her mother more.

I imagine the archangels covered God's eyes while we pored over these letters.

We made things somewhat easier on ourselves by quickly dismissing the letters as unimportant and silly
—how could respectable, middle-aged people scribble such smutty things to each other?—thus extinguishing the flames of our interest, which had been fanned by our own nature, we went about even more desperately looking for crimes that did not exist, at least not in the form we imagined.

Except I couldn't take it anymore: there was nothing premeditated about my decision; it was a sudden and complete indifference toward the whole business, a feeling, that these drawers with all the papers in them no longer interested me; they had before but now for some reason didn't, and I must leave.

While the setting sun still shone outside, a soft dimness was already spreading within; it was nice, and somehow made the large desk loom even larger and more gloomily, and in the fine layer of dust covering its smooth dark surface, I could see Maja's telltale fingerprints.

And there was something else: a strange, unfamiliar, and infinitely light sensation that I in fact existed, not irresponsibly but in full awareness of my responsibilities, and that I should stop doing what I was doing, and it would be not cowardly to stop but, on the contrary, an act of courage; I was still bothered by how tensely and crookedly she drew up her shoulders, that movement bothered me, and so did the traces our search had left behind; it may have been the feeling of being conscious of my body, that earlier erection provoked by her nearness, which now removed me from the childish games that we had transformed into a seemingly serious activity; I don't quite know what it was, except I felt that I must break out of this, and now! it seemed that all I wanted was that these lovely, slender, restive shoulders of hers
—I did love it that she looked so impossibly thin in her mother's dress, I liked them more than Hédi's fuller, broader shoulders, which would have no trouble filling out such a dress— yes, I wanted these shoulders to relax, to be like, like .. . but just what they should be like my wish failed to spell out; and if I had said anything then, if I had said that I didn't want to go on, her probable reaction would have been quite different from what I wanted.

And I also knew I would lose her, something would come to an end, but this knowledge caused me neither pain nor fear; the feeling was as if, within me, what would occur between us only in the next moment had already come to pass; some things had to come to an end, and one need not regret them.

But I did not want to be rude to her; this had gone too far, but still, I mustn't end it rudely.

Somebody's coming, I said quietly.

The hand with which she had just pulled out the bottom drawer stopped for a moment; she listened, then quickly pushed the drawer home, but since there was not the slightest noise to be heard, it was the sound of my voice rather than the situation that made her wonder; she couldn't understand why I was lying so obviously as to give myself away; it wasn't a decent thing to do.

And as if she'd just been slapped in the face
—which she wouldn't have minded as much—she looked up, her hand still on the drawer.

It's nothing, I thought somebody was coming, I said a little louder; to make it more believable, I should have shrugged my shoulders, but I indicated I was still lying, and deliberately, by leaving my shoulders motionless; in the meantime, my eyes followed the subtle change taking place in her as the result of an emerging but still unfocused emotion; she blushed as if embarrassed, and at the same time the very thing I hoped for actually occurred: her whole body was relaxing, and as she crouched there in front of the drawer her shoulders relaxed.

She didn't understand me, but she didn't seem offended.

I have to go home, I said, sounding pretty dry.

Had I gone crazy? she asked.

I nodded, and sensed the feeling of lightness growing stronger, because I felt no need to explain anything and there was no point in spoiling this feeling.

Because it was so fragile, I was afraid it might vanish altogether and then everything would be as difficult as it had been before; this feeling had to be treated with care, and this game of maintaining my inner balance had to do with the fact that I couldn't just suddenly turn around or back out of the room, I had to do it so that she would wish it, too, or at least so it wouldn't happen without her, even though she'd stay
—at least that's how I felt.

Come with me, I said, because suddenly I wanted to be magnanimous.

She stood up very slowly, her face lingering near mine; she looked serious; in her surprise she opened her mouth just a little, wrinkled her nose and forehead, as she did when she was reading and wanted to understand from a distance what was there in front of her eyes.

But I immediately felt it was impossible; she had to stay, and that was a pity.

You chickenshit, she said, as if she had opened her mouth only to close it again so I wouldn't see that she understood everything.

She understood all my hidden motives; the smile she saw playing on my lips
—I didn't want to smile but felt it anyway—filled her with such hatred that she turned red again, because seeing my treachery made her feel ashamed for me.

What the hell was I waiting for, then, she said, I should go, get the fuck out of there, miserable coward that I was, what was I standing there for like a prick?

My head began to move toward the mouth spewing the invectives, I wanted to bite into it, and as my mouth, my teeth, reached the light playing on the dark skin of her spitting mouth, before making contact, she quickly closed her eyes, but I didn't close mine, because I was involved not with her but with my own feelings; I saw that as her lips stirred under my teeth, her eyelids were trembling.

I wanted to stop her mouth with my teeth, but those warm, soft lips, parting curiously, seemed to be longing for my mouth, and we drew back, simultaneously, because her mouth sensed the sharpness of my teeth.

And when I stepped out the garden gate and began walking up the hill, I would have liked Kálmán to be there waiting for her again; I imagined motioning to him casually: Go on in, she's all yours; this could happen only in my imagination, because in reality they were far from each other, everyone was far away, and at last I was alone with my own feelings.