Parallel Stories: A Novel (11 page)

He reached the third floor when the telephone stopped ringing.

Since the very first time he set foot in this building, the only change to this door had occurred when another nameplate was added to the original one. One said
DEMÉN
, in large roman letters. The other said
DR. LIPPAY LEHR.
He eavesdropped for a little while. Not out of curiosity; rather, it was the sweet instinct of natural laziness at work. If he had gotten here when the phone stopped ringing, why not stay a while, find out who called, from where, and who picked up the phone. He had a hiding place in his kitchen from which he saw everything while remaining unseen; he knew everything about everybody. He always knew who was at home, who had gone out, and he could guess who would be coming back when. For weeks, he hasn’t seen Professor Lippay, who is being treated at Kútvölgyi Hospital; from there they’ll take him to the cemetery, that’s all. And the younger Lippay simply dashed out of the house pretty early in the morning. He did not remember anything like this ever happening before. He knew that in the morning all the connecting doors of all the rooms were wide open; still, no sound reached him on the landing. A pox on it.

He decided it was because of the wind.

The professor’s spouse, whom for some mysterious reason everybody called Nínó or Aunt Nínó, which Balter could never understand, was just stepping out of the bathtub. Her bearing has not changed over the passing decades; her waist is almost as shapely as in her youth, but her hips, thighs, buttocks, and breasts, much admired by many, have immeasurably filled out. She has grown heavy; under her skin the fat is becoming granulose; this is the hard reality.

Whenever I look at myself, I feel like puking, she kept telling her female confidants, who idolized her for her bluntness. With which, of course, she expressed only a small part of reality.

She spent more and more time in silent, thoroughgoing personal hygiene. For she was becoming more and more aware of various intrusive, completely strange odors emanating from her body and permeating the air around her, and she felt helpless against them. But she never mentioned this to anyone. Had a stranger of refined taste caught a glance of her now, standing in front of her bathtub, he would have thought that, overall, this was still a very imposing body. The problem lay not in the disintegration of its shapes but with its irrepressible odors.

What has happened to me.

There was such a question in the world, though it sounded more like a statement. She had no idea where the scent of decay was emanating from, from her mouth, her loins, or her every pore. This decay had become her idée fixe. When getting out of the tub and, driven by the pleasure of painful self-torture, she could not avoid looking at herself in the hazed-over mirror on the opposite wall, neither statement nor question helped. As if she were asking, who have I become, while the answer was ready and waiting: this is not me, I don’t know this body. She quickly averted her face. So she would not have to carry in her limbs all day what she had just seen.

What she did take along was the changed, unknown odor concealed under her perfume. If she happened to forget it, however, or if she managed to ignore her reflection, and she tended to do the latter, then she exuded a determined, positively cheerful self-confidence, just as she used to when she was a girl.

The Italianate sound of her nickname originated with her little boy, Ágost, who for a very long time could say nothing else. He tried but could not. This was his one and only word, which meant both eating and mother. When his mother pronounced each syllable very slowly, puckering her lips to match the sounds, she practically chewed the words for him, as it were, listen, Ágó, listen, my darling, ma-ma, little Ágost stubbornly and with sly pleasure responded with a triumphant nínó. This became not only a nickname but also the unit of measurement of the young couple’s pleasures.

How many nínoes did you have, asked the young wife, stretching sleepily among the wrinkled bedding.

One hundred and one, answered the young husband bashfully.

Funny, I’ve had at least a thousand, replied the young wife, and maybe she wasn’t even exaggerating, though one tends to do that if only in the hope of a better future.

They would think nothing of taking their child into bed with them and doing various exercises for half an hour, because it made them laugh, their sides nearly splitting, writhing with pleasure, which of course the child also enjoyed. For them, however, this roughhousing was a preamble to submerging themselves in each other again. He said it instead of mama, he said it instead of papa, instead of kaka, peepee, baby, daddy, instead of everything. Listen, Ágó, my sweet, say mama, say it nicely, say daddy. The child really listened, but mainly to guess whether his parents would be laughing again. And as a result, he always gave the same answer.

Nínó.

Even without knowing anything of these matters, as indeed the case had to be with most people, no one could say the nickname was not apt. Lady Erna was considered a weighty personality among her friends and in her family, a person who had to be respected and who was not easy to evade. She had characteristics, though, that could not be taken too seriously. At this moment, for example, she has just overcome one of her angina attacks, which never fail to put her out of sorts physically. Now, she might also be upset about the telephone. She rarely allowed this to show, though she grumbled or fumed to herself. She has to be careful not to lose her temper, which could bring on another attack. Her little fits could not be anticipated or prevented because they never fully exploded. While she dried herself fretfully, and absentmindedly let her eyes stray several times to her reflection in the mirror, she felt that this was the last drop in her glass. Her own rashness.

Why am I gaping at myself.

What she could least abide was her dark and mighty nipples, forever facing downward, and who knows since when. One irritation increased the next, and she became furious about being furious. Good Lord, how utterly witless I can be. I’m a silly goose, she said to herself half aloud, hoping to calm her agitation.

A common goose, that’s what I am.

Agitated or not, the attacks came and went; depending on which branch of the coronary artery they occurred in, their symptoms varied. Now she felt their painful pressure in her chest, now the fingers of her left hand went numb. Sometimes the pressure was great yet an attack did not develop, at other times she barely felt anything yet the attack laid her low. Occasionally she had so much pain in her shoulders she felt as if her accelerated pulse were beating through the marrow of her bones, but occasionally the pain was very much like what she experienced after an eating binge when she indiscriminately stuffed herself. Even her back suffered sometimes, as if it were about to give way, or her shoulder. Nothing, a mere swelling. If in small doses she passed some of the gas in her intestines, she’d feel better immediately. Because the inner pressure felt like pain to her.

However she disciplined herself, the pain was unbearable; or rather, she endured it but wished to be free of it. But there was no wind in her bowels, there was nothing to release, only this slowly rising, pressing ache, the unmistakable sign of an attack. And then she felt the pressure would burst her sternum asunder from the inside. And breathlessness at the same time. How she longed to breathe, but there was not enough air. Maybe somewhere else, but not here. Above her lips and on her forehead cold sweat broke out in every pore; a clammy film covered her face as if she were wearing an icy mask. Still, she could not cool off. Maybe she should open the window.

There is no air in the room; there is no air; there is no air in the air.

Oh, her bones won’t bear this, she’ll simply explode. She can see the air of others; they have what she does not.

Oh God, how happy they are. They walk on the street and don’t even notice they have air.

Oh, this is absurd. There is no way to get air from the air. Or maybe there is no oxygen in it.

She knows, she sees that others have air, only she has none, they’ve taken it away, there wasn’t enough to go around.

If she is not alert to what’s coming, it might be too late.

But the idea of lateness always gave her a bit of an extension, which she used to struggle against the panic of being late, so that it should not overwhelm her, because then the too-late might come true.

But her feet are not carrying her body fast enough, she is too heavy, everything has slowed down, and she cannot tell whether she will reach her goal before total darkness. What eternities pass while one foot manages to catch up with the other. Yet she feels her body to be lighter now, her steps barely touching the ground. And there is a stranger here too, whose breath whistles more loudly in her ear.

Cannot tell how long she might continue to feel it, hear it, even though she hates it.

When this happens, she moves blindly, with numb fingers she rifles in bags, drawers, jewelry boxes, phials, so at least at the very last moment, with the very edge of her nails, she can grasp her medicine. Sometimes she succeeds in getting at the lifesaving medicine with her long manicured bright red nails; her fingers do not have the confidence to extract a single pill from the many, but a pill can stick to the underside of a nail; that’s how she brings it to her mouth, tucks it under her tongue, where it has to dissolve. A vessel called the
vena lingualis
runs across the base of the tongue, and nitroglycerin, the agent that widens blood vessels, is easily dissolved in this intimate location and then seeps through the wall of the vein. After a few long, impatiently awaited seconds, it reaches the heart; in the coronary artery, it widens the passage narrowed by sclerosis and fatty deposits.

And then the blood begins to circulate. Blood pressure drops, the pulse slows, oxygen reaches the heart’s muscles; the body, tensed with anxiety, relaxes.

There were times when the medicine took effect immediately. At other times it had no effect at all.

Sometimes it had a little, or she deceived herself that it did—yes, I’m feeling better—even though she felt worse. Or the medicine began to work but only a few minutes later, when the stranger had stopped panting disgustingly into her ear and the icy mask on her face began to melt, and suddenly she felt the next and stronger attack approaching. And if this were not enough, the medicine caused a collateral hyperemia in the abdominal cavity, loosened the abdominal wall and the sphincter muscles, resulting in an attack of diarrhea; gasping for air, entrusting the weight of her body to empty walls and sliding furniture, invoking God, she fought her way across the entire apartment.

If in such a state someone tried to help her she would silently refuse to accept it.

Until now, she always made it to the toilet, if only just in time. Where the shit literally burst out of her rectum. While, of course, the pain, pressure, and tightness below the sternum did not let up. While her mind was racing, writhing with humiliation. While the rotten medicine was back in the room or she couldn’t find it in her dressing-gown pocket. She kept repeating to herself a single sentence, but of course, I’ll keel over right here, I’ll drop dead like this, and her hand was groping after the toilet chain on the wall.

If she could at least reach the chain, she wouldn’t have to die in this awful stink.

And a wicked little girl was sitting inside her who has been giggling at everything. Maybe this was her soul, something that people call the very depth of the soul.

And that reminded her of her little dead daughter.

This wicked little girl could not be frightened; she feared nothing; she kept laughing at Lady Erna’s little vanities. Of course, you’ll drop dead like this, craven, the way you have lived. Good Lord, how much crap you still have in your guts. How did you think they would find your body; you think people would be interested in your shit then. But don’t worry, you’re not going yet. And if you stay, you’ll swear you’ll lose at least ten kilos. You wouldn’t have to shit so much if you didn’t gorge yourself all the time, that’s right. The urge to stuff yourself is still stronger than you are, no matter how much you protest. That is how the little girl talked to her and she, of course, swore, I swear, I swear I won’t do it again, knowing her words were worthless.

Her false swearing sounded like the sniggering of the wicked little girl, and she imagined that if she didn’t make it this time, they would find her in this awful stink.

That is what she had to go through that morning. And she thought she heard the telephone ring again, for the fourth time.

No, this cannot be.

The towel stopped in her hands, she listened, thinking that her anger and her ears were deceiving her.

And just then, simultaneously, all three of them started for the telephone. One woman jumped up from the tile stove, taking with her the poker with which she had just slammed shut the stove door; the other woman jumped nimbly out of bed and, because her searching foot could not locate either of her slippers and her dressing gown lay too far away on the back of a stuffed chair, went off as she was, barefoot, wearing only a short silk nightie, a so-called baby doll, that clung to her body and left her thighs bare all the way up to the top.

The young man tore himself away from the windowsill, though only a moment earlier he had noticed a police assault car stopping in front of Café Abbázia. With great alacrity, policemen were jumping out of both sides of the vehicle, which could have deflected his attention from the woman he had been observing for months, whom he kept following secretly, and whom he wanted to see this morning though he knew that from this vantage point he could not.

The wind howled while the telephone rang.

Lady Erna lost her patience completely; slamming her towel on the laundry hamper, she slipped, still wet, into her pink bathrobe which, despite its garishness, became her. Her movements were nervous, uncoordinated and hasty; her fury egged her on and at the same time hindered her. What a bunch, she mumbled to herself, what a rotten, inconsiderate bunch. Her reproach was directed not only at the three people in the apartment but, mainly, at her son, who at the moment was not at home.