Parallel Stories: A Novel (87 page)

And then something peculiar happened.

Nobody wanted to escape from the cellar. The beam of my flashlight was jumping, flying in all directions, but somehow I managed to retrieve it, and it did produce some visibility when I kept pumping it. And there wouldn’t have been anywhere to escape to. It was only a matter of time before the smoke would fill every passageway.

Everybody was holding out, yet everybody was running at the same time.

One can hold out only until the last breath and not beyond that, and the physiological needs are uniformly unavoidable for everyone. I was only retching, but several people were vomiting.

The tiny woman also vomited.

She tore the checkered shawl from her neck as if it were choking her. My light slipped off her too, even though I stopped near her in the hope that at least the light would help her. While the light was on her, she could see that she had vomit on her pants and combat boots. Either she had vomited on herself or someone else had. If I’d continued to watch for another second as she wiped off the vomit with her shawl while still retching with only saliva coming out, I’d have thrown up too. I was fleeing with my own retches, though I empathized with her, wasn’t at all repelled.

The building held on decently too, it did not collapse on us. Actually, the buildings on the other side of the boulevard, which were being fired on, were the unfortunate ones, which was our good luck. Ours had to withstand only blasts produced by explosions. None of the survivors speaks of this needlessly, because they all know that no matter what, nothing happens the way one imagined it would.

I’ve never even asked anyone in the neighborhood what happened that night to the people on the other side of the boulevard.

Survivors are busy with themselves and I wasn’t interested in the lives of others either.

In the early afternoon hours, the shop became very busy and I knew there wouldn’t be another opportune moment. This woman not only made the coffee but also did the dishes and waited on customers.

One week she worked in the morning, the next in the afternoon.

When the lawyer finally made himself scarce, I managed to spit out that I’d wait for her after she finished.

Not here, she replied softly and quickly, as if she had to defend herself fiercely against me.

Luckily, she didn’t say that I shouldn’t wait for her.

Continuously, without letup, relentlessly, I thought of only one thing, that I had never seen such beauty and never would again if I left her even for a moment. Her eyes, the color of her eyes or her glance, I don’t know what, but it paralyzed me. Her scent probably had a part in this but I could reach only the edge of it because she took it with her, though sometimes she left thick clouds of it behind. Here eyes were not blue but not green either. As if I were looking down into the depths of unfamiliar waters. I did not understand the angry darkness, but the color of the water was throwing sparks at me. No human can have eyes of this color. There is no water of this color, no material of any kind. I didn’t even have a chance to ask her where, if not here, because her partner was looking at us anxiously, an older bespectacled woman with whom she always worked as a team, as she measured out candy, then fudge, and finally handfuls of jelly beans to an insatiable child.

It was very difficult to hide our cautious glances from her.

She listened as one who needed to know what was happening around her and mainly what transpired between the two of us.

Her thick glasses made it hard to follow her eyes. I’d say to myself, right now she’s not looking, and then she would be. On other occasions too. I could never, ever pretend that she was not a constant eyewitness. She very quickly discovered why I frequented the shop and what it was I couldn’t tear myself away from. This in itself couldn’t have been so conspicuous, and others too came to the shop just to see this woman or her beauty. There were always two or three of them hanging around the coffee machine, chatting, laughing, and not only men but often women of her age too. The older woman watched and observed; she watched everyone. Sometimes I had the impression that she knew everything before I did. More precisely, that she knew better than I how serious this was, while I presumptuously kept on deluding myself that it was merely a little adventure.

Because I didn’t think I felt anything for her. Or I might have thought that that’s how others did it, just take the risk and do it. Begin by just looking, without feeling anything, cautiously look at her, that’s something nobody can forbid. But this woman with her thick glasses right away needed to know what would develop from my interest. Maybe it was more than mere curiosity on her part. She was keeping an eye out for what should be forbidden. She was the boss in the shop, but that couldn’t have meant much in this context. Maybe the difference in their ages was what counted, or the woman’s old age, or her ugliness.

Perhaps she wanted to protect the beautiful young woman from random crazy annoyances.

This seemed unlikely, however, given their cool relationship, more friendly than hostile yet dealing with each other as if they had to avoid tension.

This tension was in the air. Clarissa, my sweet, she’d say to the young woman, or she’d call her my little Klári. And the other would reply, Terike, darling.

Perhaps their tension was just as passionate as the secret attention the young woman and I had been paying to each other. The boss might have feared that the other woman would slip out of her hands, a fear indicating a kind of jealousy, after all. There was a chance that their tension might explode one day, in which case I thought I should keep away from them.

When I turned my back to the counter and looked at them in the mirror, I was acting out of instinct. I must not be the cause of an explosion. Of course, the mirror also revealed to the boss the directions of our glances, but it protected us. It protected me from my self-accusation of being too forward and from the shame of being so crazy about her. Naturally, this act of mine was more forward than if I had turned to her face-to-face, more insane.

While searching for her countenance in the mirror, I saw her back, her shoulders, her naked neck, her hair caught in a loose bun. This was more than I had wished for. Because in the reopened store mirrors covered every wall, which was considered very luxurious since one could see everything from both sides and, from certain angles, the same thing multiplied many times.

Our lives were barely moving on; therefore, those many mirrors confused others too.

You barely stepped into the place and you were already facing yourself among the sweet aromas. And if you wanted to turn away from yourself, you saw at the edge of another mirror how, on the polished surface and in multiple copies, you were turning away from yourself, or how the waitresses, also multiplied, were waiting for your order. Even the ceiling was framed with a mirrored strip.

Of course, some people took to the mirrors immediately and were delighted to keep looking at themselves, or to preen and pose, though doing it as if keeping it secret from themselves. The walls behind the narrow shelves packed with merchandise were also mirrored, and there was another mirror above the sink. This woman named Klára, whom sometimes the boss a little mockingly called Clarissa, always splashed water on this mirror above the sink and then carefully wiped it off. Maybe to see me better. Because sometimes she pretended she had to rinse out the glasses and would turn away from me; I would also turn around, but we could still look at each other—all we had to do was raise our heads a little.

The boss noticed every little irregularity.

She was always complaining about the draft. It may have been too hot in the store, but the new entrance door did let in streams of unwanted air.

She’d be shivering near the door, behind the cash register, with the tip of her pencil following the long column of numbers, and if she raised her eyes a little behind her glasses, she could see in the mirror opposite what the two of us were doing with our glances. One could be exposed in all those mirrors, yet one could also say that’s not me, it’s only some reflection. It’s not the same as looking directly into someone’s eyes. We had some respite from her only when her husband showed up or, around noon, their pathologically overnourished son, a pupil in the nearby music school who allegedly played the violin as wondrously as Jascha Heifetz.

Even in those moments I cautiously looked back at Clarissa in a mirror, and not only because it excited me to know whether we were indeed safe.

January went by, and then February, and still I knew nothing of this Clarissa. Nor did I believe that such a beautiful young woman could be interested in me. After all, she did nothing but look. But this was a big thing because I could not discover anything about myself that would justify her looking. And I had no idea what to do with her first name or nickname either; I did not want to imprint it on my consciousness. I was a little ashamed of this, but it’s how I protected myself. I didn’t want to think that maybe in the future, thanks to some fortunate circumstance, I might wind up so close to her that I could call her by her name or that I too might address her, pompously, as Clarissa. This was completely shameful idiocy, but I had to maintain my distance.

Let this remain a minor novel that no one has ever written and no one ever will write.

I had no idea what beauty was or what one should think about it.

The eyes see something, and when they cannot not see this something it cannot be addressed with a common first name. I must not be interested in anything that has to do with her ordinary life. I did not understand how such a beautiful woman had wound up here, though I couldn’t have said where she should be. The questions cropped up because I was interested in everything. Or, why was she behaving so commonly with everyone. Or, if she was behaving so commonly why didn’t I believe that she was indeed common.

When the boss’s husband was in the shop, I watched her because I had no explanation for the enmity between her and the boss; I wondered what it really referred to or stemmed from. Or why did this Clarissa smile so politely at everyone, and if she smiled so politely why didn’t she go ahead and sleep with everyone. I thought my cogitating was ridiculous, since I wanted nothing from her. I told myself almost each time I left the shop that, no, I will no longer put up with this humiliation; but nobody had humiliated me. I’m not coming back. I won’t come back even if she’s waiting for me, even if she’s really missed me. But no matter how I formulated these firm decisions for myself I could never keep to them, not to one of them, ever.

They made the weekdays horrible because nothing was happening, and Sundays became unbearable, interminable.

Still, Sundays were better than weekdays because I had no idea where she might be, I didn’t know where she lived, and the store was closed.

But from one of the living-room windows I watched the closed iron shutters.

In the evenings, from the same window, I usually followed the shop’s intricate closing ritual.

The lights in the windows went off first, followed shortly by those inside; they came out of the shop with their coats on, but momentarily left the door open.

One could hear the bell of the church in Terézváros; it was eight o’clock.

With a long rod ending in a hook she’d reach up, fit the hook into a ring soldered to the side of the shutter, which she often missed or did not find. I observed their ceremony from the height of the third floor, between us trembled the bare crowns of trees on Teréz Boulevard, and on the cables stretched over the roadway the dim light of streetlamps was swaying. I saw mainly their shadows between the branches. Laughter usually accompanied their actions. If a lit-up streetcar happened to pass, it drew its yellow light across them.

From their movements I could tell they were laughing.

Now one, now the other tried her luck with the rod. When they managed to pull the shutter halfway down, they threw the rod back into the store, locked the door, and, holding on to the shutter together, pressed it down with their combined weight. The last centimeters were the hardest. When the upper ring clicked into the one at the bottom, they slipped a padlock through and the boss took the key; they stood facing each other. Two strangers in an empty street in the evening who nevertheless had to spend every blessed day together. The key was put into a steel box that, after it was locked, had also to be sealed. They usually fussed with this for some time in the cold. Then they said their good-byes. The boss disappeared into the lobby of the adjacent building to drop off the box with the concierge; the young woman moved on.

That’s how the day ended.

I often wondered what would happen if I waited for her downstairs and followed her when she went off by herself. I didn’t think of talking to her; I’d only follow her from a distance and learn where she went every evening. But only on very exceptional occasions did I bring myself to do this, because, to tell the truth, it was better not to. To watch her as she passed by the boarded-up store windows, walking on the empty sidewalk, then turned into the almost completely dark Szófia Street, and then ceased to exist until the next day.

But there were weekdays when I couldn’t resist going downstairs two or even more times. It was an achievement if I went to the shop only once. I had no money, either, could barely buy a double espresso. At other times I’d gain two full consecutive weekdays not going downstairs at all and not even looking out the window; I wanted to feel how strong I was. Now it’s really over, I’d say to myself, she no longer interests me. But it was at just those times I felt most strongly my loss and my ridiculousness. In fact, all I’d done was waste two days, and it would be even more ridiculous to waste any more.

Because when I went back to the store, she rewarded me with a glowing countenance. As if asking me, why didn’t you come if you wanted to see me. As though asking me, why are you playing this game. And the entire agony would begin anew if her countenance was overcast. I could not be certain about anything: was she telling me or asking me these things, did she reserve her maddening reticence only for me. Her face lights up at the sight of everybody. But I could be certain that she was even more beautiful than I had envisioned her in those endless hours when I wanted to forget her beauty and therefore pretended I wasn’t thinking about her.