Parallel Stories: A Novel (107 page)

As if waiting to see whether it was worth getting up from the desk at the visiting gentleman’s request.

Outside, birds were chirping, but the riverside swallows were not yet making their shrill sounds in flight, and suddenly Madzar missed them. They had not yet arrived from Africa. Gottlieb always had the boys put down the driftwood and stack it first and then paid them here, in the office.

If
he paid, and if he didn’t say, please, boys, come tomorrow for your pay.

And then they had to hang around for a long time, stand firm on their demands for pay. The shrieking of the swallows was part of the protracted wait.

I see, I see, he said now, after a long while, though frankly he only guessed what sort of wood the stranger had in mind. It should be hardwood, preferably from a demolition site, healthy but old, very old if possible.

A few years back, somebody here made a very interesting big catch, he said warily but still not getting up from his desk and not even putting his pen down.

If it isn’t driftwood, I’d appreciate your showing it to me.

How did you know I was thinking of driftwood, asked the merchant suspiciously.

Saturated Sleepers

I am somewhat familiar with local conditions, Madzar answered, sounding not too friendly, to signal that he didn’t want to get into details.

He had no wish to chat.

Outside, sparrows went on chirping in the sunshine. Nothing had changed during the elapsed years, for birds chirping in the sunshine were always sparrows.

They scrutinized each other somewhat suspiciously for a long time, and then it seemed that Gottlieb, searching Madzar’s features and despite his own reticence, recognized the long-lost boy.

He laughed, quietly accommodating Madzar’s taciturnity.

He showed his old deformed teeth, atrophied gums, and bits of breakfast leftovers stuck in the grooves of the worn tooth enamel.

Every morning he ate goose fat spread on a slice of brown bread piled high with rings of red onion, which he considered very healthy, and drank coffee with it, no milk.

With his every word he exuded the smell of stale onion.

He said that without knowing what the wood would be used for, he was very sorry but could not tell the gentleman whether he had any.

He still hadn’t put down his pen. He meant this in jest; it was nothing but the peculiar curiosity of country folk: first he had to know who this man was, what wind had blown him this way, and whether his intentions were good or evil.

With your permission, I’ll take a look, Madzar said in the tone of one used to giving orders, even though he was shaken to the core by his joy in seeing the old man again.

His back and thighs were covered with goose bumps.

Though I see, he added, that you don’t have much wood at all.

Ultimately, this was an encounter with lapsed time at whose depths lay the disgraced corpse of the little boy cast out of the water, which Madzar and Bellardi along with the other boys had to look at.

They could not refuse; they looked at it as the other boys did.

Gottlieb, hearing the gentlemanly tone, put down his pen carefully and to be on the safe side closed the top of the ink bottle.

He saw the stranger’s face turn red, and, as if protecting his property against an anger of unknown origin, he rose, pushed the chair out from under him, though not too fast, and stood up. He was a robust man, and advanced years had made his shoulders stoop, but only a little; in the pocket high on his long dark-blue apron, one could see the tips of a slide rule, carpenter’s pencil, and folding ruler; he wore brown corduroy pants and had black elbow protectors on the sleeves of his striped flannel shirt.

With his knotty palms, used to moving and loading things, he blindly and absentmindedly kept touching things on the desk.

True, I can’t offer you much right now, he said with a helpful, almost humble mercantile smile, and then, as he continued to search for something, alarm showing in his eyes, he forgot to complete the sentence he had started.

Perhaps he’d find it on the blackened wood floor, swept every morning with oily sawdust.

Or perhaps on top of one of the open filing cabinets packed with receipts and account books.

Where is my hat, he asked half-aloud, as if in passing.

But the origin of this wood I’m talking about, he said, returning to the interrupted sentence absentmindedly and going on in a lively tone, I can verify for you. It’s the kind of material that I’m sure would meet all the gentleman’s requirements. I have never paid so much for driftwood, I have a witness too, I’ll show you now what I mean if you’d be kind enough to follow me.

Could I go without a hat, he asked himself half-aloud.

But if the gentleman does not care to see it personally, I’ll show you samples of everything else that is still available.

It’s not much, true, not that much.

Madzar did not understand what the Jew was talking about.

And then Gottlieb, unable to overcome his curiosity, interrupted his convoluted explanation, almost shouting, no matter how hard I look at you, sir, in my view you are not from these parts.

Madzar did not respond, he did not wish to fall into a trap or get involved in a complicated conversation, so he kept silent until Gottlieb finally started out with him toward the door.

They could hear the monotonous clatter of fulling machines in the nearby leather factory and, from farther away, a uniform thumping in the silk factory, as well as the engine of a military assault boat puffing and coughing on its way upstream.

There were so many new things in this world; behind the tall brick wall enclosing the lumberyard on the west, one could follow the noise of a horse and cart as it turned slowly into Farkas Street, where its creaking wheels began to squeak among the one-story houses with their pointed facades. Madzar could have sworn it was the cart of the horse-dealing Gypsies and that a foal was trotting alongside the near horse.

Everything was as if he had already lived through it once.

And only when they left the office did he notice that the Jew was indeed not wearing a head covering.

A sharp little breeze caught his thin graying hair and showed sickly shining spots on his scalp as they were going down the steps. Madzar had never seen him bareheaded. Abroad, he had come in contact and worked with many different kinds of Jew and for quite some time paid close attention to them, as if urging himself to notice at last what he was supposed to notice. Yet it never occurred to him that they were supposed to wear hats. He was seized by a childlike muteness. The Jew had violated the rules. As if noticing for the first time in his life that he had been doing everything that ritual demanded. Having returned to a once-familiar world in which nothing had changed, his childhood self had no idea what to do with a Jew whose scalp rarely saw the light of day.

When put this way, however, the question made no sense; he almost laughed at it aloud.

The ominous absence of the hat cracked the old-time magic.

At the sight of the pale spots and the tufts of sticky, oily hair, he felt aversion and repugnance. Still, he was able to behave according to the codes of his upbringing.

Or perhaps Bellardi had managed to confuse him with his damned chatter.

What the gentleman sees in the yard, Gottlieb was explaining artlessly, will all be taken away tomorrow, end of the week at the latest, because I’m making the final accounts and on Monday I close the whole business for good. Roheim will take over whatever is left, if you know who I mean. The gentleman may not believe it, but the firm Gottlieb and Company was founded eighty years ago.

And Roheim, as everyone can see, and I don’t begrudge him his success, has managed to stay in business.

Eighty years, that’s right, that’s how long the firm has been in business.

Madzar frequently thought that although he knew about different materials, had unconventional ideas and a good sense of space, and possessed a not bad sense of proportion, yet compared with his successful professional colleagues he was hesitant and came to his ideas belatedly.

The big doghouses were empty, he was late again; on the ground, richly dotted with barely sprouting chamomile and chickweed, the chains hanging off the runway wires were lying abandoned, just as they had been unclasped from the dog collars. He paid no attention to the Jew’s heavy remarks, not really; he was thinking about the komondors and about himself, busy with his own desperation.

Which meant that he could interpret existing conditions even in a strange environment but could not use them to foresee anything.

His vision was weak.

Of course he did not mean to lie, it would take two more years to make it a round eighty, but just the same, he will close the business his grandfather had opened, may his memory be blessed, it’s three generations after all, the work of three generations.

In that case, Madzar replied, half-aloud, I got here just in time.

Gott behüte
, to say something like that or even to think it, the merchant responded with a scratchy little laugh and much waving of arms. Who knows when the last hour arrives, the gentleman can’t know either. Let’s not hasten it with anything we do.

At this point laughter helped him deflect the conversation. Out of caution, he did not tell the visitor that his son, with the same family name, was carrying on the firm’s work on Coney Island. He had two vehicles, two beautiful Fords, to deliver merchandise with.

After all, he doesn’t know who this stranger is, why would he tell him everything.

Madzar didn’t need much time to see he would find nothing useful here.

Under the rain roofs he saw mainly abandoned pallets and broken support beams, a bit farther away under the open sky a small pile of firewood or rough softwood timber. But one couldn’t stop the Jew; he was going on, hurrying, taking with him the aroma of the morning’s onion, limping a little, his weight shifting more to one leg than the other. Madzar felt like going instead to the Serb merchant who always had a rich assortment of material taken from demolished buildings.

At the railroad, they stack a hundred sleepers to a pile.

He paid no attention to what the Jew was saying.

As the gentleman can see from here, only two are missing to make it a full pile, Gottlieb said, and he smiled at him as if to say, I don’t care to go too far in our conversation, but let’s go as far as the pile.

I must keep the gentleman busy with my chatter until we get there.

But Madzar would have preferred to know what the Jew had done with the komondors, and immediately consoled himself that these could not be the same komondors. He did not want to ask, for that would reveal his identity and then it would be impossible to avoid a conversation burdened with their memories. He shuddered at the thought that he might wind up in intimate proximity to a Jew who didn’t brush his teeth in the morning.

Bellardi, with his theories, had surely made him sick to his stomach.

It even occurred to him that what he was doing now also justified Bellardi. Wherever he looks, he cannot free himself of Bellardi.

Perhaps the reason he had gone so far away was to be free of him. What’s the point of pushing back the Jewish element if the German one will push into its place. If a Gottlieb throws in the towel, there is always a Roheim to take over his business. It’s impossible to shake off the foreign element.

His men were very lucky, the merchant went on enthusiastically, they managed to fish out all but two of them, and sleepers of this quality the gentleman will never find anywhere.

He didn’t know whom he found more repugnant, Gottlieb or Bellardi—everybody, which could mean himself.

He might have killed his own dogs, he thought angrily, giving himself the impression that the Jew was repugnant and that thinking so proved his loyalty to Bellardi.

They’re from Stipiczka’s plant in Semmering, the merchant explained, hesitating slightly at the sight of the gentleman’s expression.

If that name means anything to the gentleman.

It does, of course it does.

But entrusted to this smooth-mannered Jew he felt his situation as even more lamentable in this damned provincial district where he saw the justification of thoughts he vehemently opposed. Away with all this. What was the point of hoping. Why had he come here anyway. He couldn’t go to Roheim because Roheim didn’t deal in this sort of material. How could this Jew be familiar with Stipiczka’s plant in Semmering. He couldn’t get free of—and in his thoughts he almost said of this louse. And the old man could have at least remembered him.

He tried to interject that he did not object to looking at Stipiczka’s sleepers but frankly did not need ninety-eight of them, in fact didn’t need a single one.

The Jew pretended not to hear this; he kept talking just to work his jaws.

Even though Madzar emphasized that he was not interested in waterlogged wood, which he could not use in his work.

Gottlieb did not give in; he enjoyed his own artful jabbering. He understands, of course he does; with a raised voice, he spoke a word to every one of Madzar’s, clear as day, unless he had misunderstood the gentleman. Because if we figure three hundred river kilometers, and we can’t figure less, then this wood had to have been sent downriver from Ver
ő
ce, which took at least a week.

Well, now, how can you say such a thing, Madzar interjected angrily, as if he were in the mood to argue about this with a Jew. He did not understand why the Jew was exaggerating so shamelessly when the exaggeration was against his business interest. Even from Gy
ő
r it’s not three hundred, how could it be more than two hundred from Ver
ő
ce.

I wouldn’t want to argue with the gentleman, I’d probably wind up at the short end of the stick, but please take a good look, he said, and with his finger he pointed at the place they were approaching. Whether it’s two hundred or five hundred, on that wood the gentleman will see no trace of any damage or any alteration. Right next to the red stamp of the railway, the gentleman can see Stipiczka’s burn marks. He, Gottlieb, has a good man with the railroad who follows up and takes care of everything for him. In the end they agreed, he doesn’t mind telling the gentleman, that he’d pay the railroad a symbolic sum, they set it at ten pengös, which he paid properly, because according to railroad regulations the wood had been exposed to a natural disaster, and they’d have to chalk it up as a loss anyway.