Parallel Stories: A Novel (202 page)

That is how a moment in which many other things might have been decided came to an end.

Later Dávid did not dare move, even though there was nothing frightening about the stranger. He saw him as both gentle and wild.

Yet he felt as if he had been caught doing something wrong. As if people were saying, well, well, you’re up to something terribly bad and are rotten to the core. It was as if he discovered in the fugitive’s face the pitiful guilelessness of his own life thus far.

That is when, at Vác, the pastor stepped onto the ferry ready to depart.

And Dávid was frightened not so much by the possibility that the stranger might have observed him but by his being the one doing the watching and observing of an unsuspecting stranger. He wanted to shout something, a friendly greeting. As is usual in such cases, no sound issued from his throat.

And that reminded him of his negligence, the bell-ringing.

Thanks to his objectivity, by the way, he was the only one not taken in by the fugitive’s appearance. Twenty-five years old, he later told the police without thinking, and he was off by only a few months.

He jumped up to run away; perhaps the stranger wouldn’t notice him doing that. The food stopped moving in his mouth and, as if he had come upon tastier loot, he stepped with his booted feet on Dávid’s clothes. In the bubble in which the good ruled exclusively, something happened that the adolescent boy, upset by his own negligence, could not comprehend. The fugitive put the loaf with its chewed-off end on the ground, plopped down next to it, tugging and yanking at his ankle boots until he’d pulled them off his feet, and then threw both of them into the water. What Dávid understood from the nature of these movements was that the fugitive was struggling not with his boots but with the devil and wanted to be free of it, and he tried to explain this to the police officers. The first boot had barely filled with water when the second one followed, and they both sank at about the same time.

According to the records the young man was a patient incapable of controlling or taking care of himself. If, using drugs, they tried to make him see reason, he became aware only of the bad. This was not his first escape. When he was taken back to the institution, things would still be bad but no one would have trouble with him for a long time, and thus he managed each time to allay suspicion. He hardly ever talked or made a sound, and he did not hear many sounds either; he either sat or lay on his bed. If they did not tie him down, he might spend an entire day getting dressed and undressed. Whenever he could, he stole other people’s clothes to put on instead of his own. And to keep other inmates from beating him up for his thievery, the attendants preferred to tie him up. When unable to get dressed and undressed, he felt as if he were crouching at the bottom of a deep pit. The pit was narrow; he could not stretch out his arms in it. Up above the sun did not shine, the wind did not blow, no snow fell, and there was no rain in the world, but it was somewhat lighter than down here at the bottom of the pit.

Water dripped from the thick clay walls. Frogs, worms, and all sorts of reptiles lived with him at the wet bottom of the pit. An impassive observer might claim that he was wearing his institutional pajamas, but he had to protect his skin from the slippery creatures; his skin hurt, it hurt everywhere, and he also had to be sure that none of these creatures managed to nestle in some part of his body. He made movements as if only the instinct of self-defense had left any memories in his mind. Still, sometimes snakes, spiders, or lizards crawled into his ears or through his nostrils into his brain. They penetrated his mouth and his rectum, and then, he felt, they multiplied. The attendants did not help; he asked them in vain, pleading with them quietly. If very rarely he managed to cough up, vomit, blow out, or evacuate the evil vermin, right away they crawled back in somewhere else.

And when the situation became untenable, when so much bad could not exist without a tiny bit of good, then the desire to be naked, so necessary for his body’s defense, endowed his limbs with a power whose strength was at least as terrible as the pain of his defenseless nakedness had been.

At such times either they trapped him and pumped him with a bigger dose of sedative than usual, or he managed to climb out of the slippery pit unnoticed and leave unnoticed.

If someone had observed Dávid repeatedly circling the pond, keeping to his ever-deepening and quickly fading footprints, in the end raising squelching clumps of clay with his feet to the point of exhaustion, that person could not have said to what temptation the boy was surrendering himself. We can know so little about one another. And Dávid could not have said why the stranger had thrown his boots into the water, why, jumping up from his sitting position, he seemed to be compelled to shed his skin, why he tore off his blue worker’s shirt, why he shoved his pants down to his ankles, why he hopped around, stumbling like that, why he stepped out of them, and then why, once he was naked, the vehement resistance in him subsided.

Underneath the blindingly pale skin, his bare frame showed clearly, pivoting on its joints.

The sight made Dávid forget his negligence; his fear, his aggressive mood, his self-accusation and anger all got stuck in his throat like a piece of bread gone the wrong way. The stranger crouched, keeping his knees together, and, wobbling as he sought his balance, first pulled to himself his worker’s shirt and then his pants. He did this with movements as engrossingly slow and thoughtful as those of a person intent on smoothing out his clothes and laying them on the back of a chair before going to bed. First he fixed the pants. Laying them out before him, he pulled out and straightened the legs. Then he laid the shirt on top of the pants and patted it, and then, not moving from his place, he reached back behind him with one thin arm, scooped up the bread, and rolled it into the clothes. With the bundle in his hand, he stood up.

He could not have been blind, and if he wasn’t he surely saw Dávid on the far shore of the water.

He heaved the bundle over his head, the way we get ready to heave a heavy stone. At the end of a second preparatory swing, he hurled it with all the might of his tense body.

A big dull splash followed, and Dávid involuntarily cried out.

They were about twenty-five meters from each other. At Dávid’s shout, which might even have preceded the splash, their eyes met for the first time. Like two heavy oil stains seeking each other, neither surprise nor excitement disturbed the way their glances blended. The bundle popped to the surface, and while in each other’s attentive eyes they were paying attention to the attentiveness, the shirt and pants floated apart, scattering quickly bursting bubbles around them.

Shirt and pants peeled off each other and lazily, with slow-moving tentacles, sank again.

The bread stayed on the surface for a time.

Even later Dávid could not describe to his grandfather every detail of this strange series of events. With his words, he rearranged the story’s chronology to create the impression that he had neglected ringing the church bell because of a heated battle for the pants and shirt, and therefore that slapping his face had been unfair. With this bold lie he was protecting his secret, which he could not reveal because he had no words with which to share it. And while he hurried behind his agitated grandfather on the shady brick pavement that encircled the house, his grandfather’s blind anger filled him with new and ominous feelings. About the old man being after some sort of bloody revenge, when it was Dávid’s lies that had befogged his judgment.

They both longed for a scapegoat and each of them found one.

He knew exactly what his grandfather wanted to do: to get on his bicycle and, disregarding the spasms of his kidney trouble, ride out to the fields.

There to catch that lunatic by the ear and, if necessary, with a single blow to render him harmless, or to turn him over to the police and take back the pants.

He would never again dare return to that place, which, judging by what had been done to him, was obviously cursed.

But he figured incorrectly, because the pastor was thinking not about the tramp, of whose existence he could not know, but about the retired prison guard who, according to the villagers, spent his days walking around naked on his land.

As it turned out, he did not believe them.

Grandpapa, he whimpered in his agony, in a whiny child’s voice he hadn’t used in years, it’s just a lunatic, he whined as they hurried along the sidewalk.

He wanted to arrest the flow of events—though he also longed for revenge—so that he wouldn’t have to divulge his pagan secrets or admit to lies.

He threw in his own boots and his clothes too, believe me, and probably that’s why he needed my pants. With words like this he tried to get out of his story. He is a madman, believe me, Grandpa, he even threw his bread in the water, he escaped from somewhere.

Mention of the bread caught his grandfather’s attention.

One must be truly a madman or criminal to throw away bread, he thought, but his thick, muscular back did not respond even when he crossed the high threshold of the shed door; reason could not assuage his agitation so quickly. Grabbing the bicycle by its handlebars and seat, with a single motion he lifted it out of the clutter of tools and turned around with it; spades and hoes, shovels and pickaxes thudded and knocked together in the wake of his violent movement.

Dávid stood in the bright opening of the door; the pastor’s wire-rimmed glasses flashed at him sternly from the dimness inside.

Where are your shoes, he asked the boy because he needed time to divert himself from his original goal.

Dávid looked down at his bare feet as if only now discovering the missing sandals; with this, he too meant to gain time, to thwart his grandfather’s revenge.

He didn’t take them. They’re still there.

Which shoes did you have on, the pastor asked sternly.

I wore my sandals today, the boy hastened with the answer.

The pastor rebuked himself unsparingly. Which increased his agitation instead of lessening it. Anyone who at the sight or sound of the slightest trouble lets his mind jump to the most extreme conclusion must face his own criminal character. Nature had endowed the pastor with enormous physical strength, which forced him to be careful with his temper, not to lose it, to nip it in the bud. This habit was not, in the end, alien to his gentle disposition, but it filled him with complacency, and thus did his moral precaution lead him toward the greatest danger lying in wait for him: arrogance. When he yielded to the temptation of complacency, as he frequently did, he committed the mortal sin of arrogance.

He seemed more like a shy man than a stupid one.

With the benefit of his long spiritual experience, he reproached himself most severely; he prayed fervently. But a single remark offending decency, or cursing or swearing or an obscene gesture, sufficed to upset the fastidiously guarded equilibrium of his conscience.

And everyone sensed that something was not right with his conscience; the village too made him feel it. They openly laughed at him when he stood before them, red in the face, having a temper tantrum, driven to the edge of his self-control.

He readily used his physical strength to help people; he rushed to their aid with self-sacrificing zeal, as if to alleviate his shame by doing something, as if to conceal some physical flaw. It was not that these people along the Danube were unfamiliar with the concept of self-sacrifice, but rather that they saw through the trick; the pastor wanted to redeem mercy with
caritas
. Behind his back they told one another that he behaved like a Catholic. The transgressions of his youth seemed to be presiding over his present efforts. He still desired the woman in Vészt
ő
, whose temptation, so long ago, in his days as an assistant minister, he had been unable to resist. He carried luggage, heavy sacks of anything, he uprooted stubborn stumps with a pickaxe, he moved the bulkiest beams; the peasants took advantage of his gentle humility, at times abused him. And because of his willingness to serve them they did not like him.

One prefers to disdain a person one abuses. They watched him, observed him, spied on him, hoping to figure out what the pastor wanted to achieve with his behavior.

The Christians who live in these parts have never even heard of monastic humility.

Ever since his wife died, and that was more than four years ago, no day passed without his being tortured by the old feeling about that woman from Vészt
ő
. He could not be rid of the scent of that woman’s strong body. He felt as if he were losing the meaning of his life’s entire work, even though he had been truly self-restrained since his wife’s death; he had exiled all selfishness and considered his life as a service to others. No agitation and no hope could shift the heavy apathy that settled oppressively on his heart at times like this and remained there for hours, sometimes days or weeks. What could he do, what could he give, what could he offer as sacrifice, if with the labor of his entire life he had not overcome his most sinful desires. He did not argue with the Lord. One receives God’s mercy or forgiveness not as a reward for one’s deeds. His doubts about Calvinist doctrines of faith and predestination were not based on theological considerations. Rather, he had practical problems with his own life: how to lead others to the point where at least they would not stand in the way of mercy with their evil deeds; how to lead young souls to the command of love when his own body searched for nothing but the physical desires of others.

All right, he has been restraining his body’s desires since then, if one can put it that way.

However, a young soul recognizes no obligations regarding others except those that please that young person’s body.

But doesn’t a young soul follow the divine plan when it satisfies its urges.

He became aware of his naïveté after his wife’s death, when he was past his fiftieth year. Her death took away the faith that had served him steadfastly for decades. He willingly reconciled himself to this, yet he still faced the question, from where would he draw the strength necessary for his calling if not from his faith. He was on his own with his physical urges and no person to attach them to. The practical mind has no general ideas for a man past fifty, so he could serve only himself, whom else, with his remnants of the procreative instinct—and it wasn’t even the instinct of procreation; and he in the name of the Lord Jesus should have been serving the Almighty. His service was, at best, empty fervor turned into self-interest, which stupid people liked to see and which they counted on so as to get something for nothing again. Because of his good deeds people around him became like wild beasts on the lookout for prey. Nothing interested them except their profit; go on, call the pastor, he’ll take care of it. He’ll pull it out, cut it down, uproot it. That pastor is strong as an animal; all you have to do is tell him. The possibility of even the smallest profit made them feverish; what else could be torn or ripped from what. They rolled their eyes frenetically in their eternal, insatiable pleasure. And these characteristics of his, which he recognized in other people, reminded him again of that insane woman of Vészt
ő
with whom, as a young man engaged to be married, he had cheated on his bride.