A Book of Memories (8 page)

"I'm not asking for myself!" he said even more sharply, and his hand, from which I'd just withdrawn my arm, was still in the air, hesitating; he had long fingers, a slender wrist, but I didn't let him finish, didn't want to, because I didn't want to see him like this, and I cut in: "First of all, it would be nice if you could tell the difference between denouncing and reporting."

But pretending not to have heard me, he continued the interrupted sentence: "I'd just like to spare my mother this latest unpleasantness."

We kept interrupting each other.

"If you think I'm a squealer, we've nothing further to discuss."

"I saw you go into the teachers' room after class, I did!"

"What makes you think I'm always busy with your affairs, especially yours?"

"You know my mother has a heart condition."

I burst out laughing. And there was strength in this laugh. "When you have to face the consequences of your words, then she has a heart condition."

His eyes regained their sparkle, they seemed to be illuminated from within by a cold flash of light, he was screaming, and the garlic-smelling thrusts of his words hit me in the face: "What d'you want, then? What? I'll kiss your ass, if that's what you want!"

Something stirred nearby and almost automatically we both turned our heads: a rabbit darted across the snowy clearing.

I wasn't looking at the rabbit, which having reached the edge of the clearing must have vanished in the thicket; I was watching him; in our anger, we unwittingly ended up so close to each other that if he'd paid attention he could have felt my breath, which I failed to control, pounding on his neck; the casually tied knot of his striped scarf was coming loose, the top button of his shirt was undone, and its collar must have slipped under his sweater, because his long neck appeared before me like a strange naked landscape: a vein embedded in tightening muscles and showing faintly through the smooth skin seemed to be pulsing evenly, and at slightly irregular intervals the tip of his gently protruding Adam's apple bobbed up and down; the blood that had rushed to his face while he was shouting was slowly subsiding; I could watch as his normal coloring gradually returned and his fleshy lips again parted slightly, the pale yellow light of the sun, sinking behind the woods, glimmered through the green of his eyes, his gaze following the rabbit's path, and when his eyes came to rest at a certain point, I knew the rabbit had disappeared; the persistent chatter of the magpies, the incessant cawing of crows, the smell of the air, even the tiny rustling noises of the woods seemed to have the same tangible certainty as his face, which was sharp, hard, mobile even in its immobility, with no emotions reflected in it, it simply existed, giving itself over easily and gracefully to whatever unfolded before it; for me, at this moment, it may have been not so much his loveliness, the harmony of his enviable, captivating features and coloring, though ostensibly that was what I longed for, but his inner ability to give himself over to the moment, totally, unreservedly; whenever I looked into the mirror and compared myself to him, I had to conclude that though I wasn't ugly, I really wanted to look like him, to be exactly like him; my eyes were blue, clear, and transparent, my blond hair fell on my forehead in soft waves, but I felt my sensitive, vulnerable, and fragile features were deceptively false because, though others found my face positively charming and liked to touch it, to caress it, I knew myself to be coarse, common, sinister, insidious; there was nothing nice about me, I could not love myself, I shielded my real self with a mask, and so as not to disappoint people too much, I made myself play roles that fit my outer appearance more than my inner self, trying to be pleasant, attentive, and understanding, lighthearted, cheerful, and ingratiatingly serene, though in reality I was sullen, irritable, all my senses hankered for raw pleasure, I was irascible, hateful, I would have preferred to keep my head bowed all the time, not to see or be seen by anyone, and I looked right into people's eyes only to check the effectiveness of my performance; I managed to deceive just about everyone, and yet felt comfortable only when I was alone, because the people I could easily fool I had to despise for their stupidity and blindness, while those who became suspicious, were not so gullible, or simply could not give themselves to anyone, I would cloy with such excessive attentiveness and solicitude
—the effort taking up all my strength and energy—as to make myself absurdly, deliciously nauseated, and for this very reason I sensed most keenly my slyness, slipperiness, and urge to dominate when I succeeded in winning over people who were otherwise alien, even hateful or indifferent to me; I wanted everyone to love me and I couldn't love anyone; I felt beauty's seductive deception, knowing that anyone with such a fanatic craving for beauty, paying attention only to beauty, was incapable of loving and could not be loved; yet I couldn't give up this obsession, for I felt as if my allegedly handsome face were not mine, though it was useful in deceiving people; the deception was mine and gave me power; I steered clear of people who were crippled or ugly, and this was all too understandable, for even though they kept telling me I was good-looking, which I could see whenever I looked in the mirror, I still felt ugly and repulsive; I could not deceive myself, for my innermost feelings, more than the power lent me by my good looks, told me precisely what I was really like; therefore, I longed for the kind of beauty in which external and internal traits meshed, in which a harmonious exterior shielded strength and goodness, not the disarray of a twisted soul—in other words, I longed for perfection, or at least for a total identification with my true self, for the freedom to be imperfect, to be infinitely mean and wicked— but that far he would not let me go.

"I had no intention of denouncing you," I told him quietly, but he wouldn't even move his head, "and even if I wanted to, you could always deny it and say you were thinking of your dog; it would take some explaining, but you could have been thinking of your dog."

My whispered words were no heavier than the cloud of mist forming around my mouth in the cold light, and each one of them reached and touched his motionless face; I couldn't have been more cunning than this
—holding out the possibility of doing something I had no intention of doing and, to counteract this mild threat, immediately offering a handy explanation with which to slip out of the net I might cast over him—but by doing this, I also betrayed my own supposed conviction: because I should have denounced him, yes, then and only then would I be strong and tough, and I just might, I just might—I couldn't possibly sink lower than this; by then I had lost all feeling of my body, I was hovering somewhere above myself yet way too low.

Words were of no consequence; nothing was more important than this mist, my exhaled breath touching his skin, but it seemed that even that wasn't enough, because his gaze became suspended; he must not have understood what I was getting at.

"It never occurred to me to do it, believe me!"

He finally turned his head to me and I could see in his eyes that his suspicions were gone.

"No?" he asked, also in a whisper, and his eyes again became open and penetrable, the way I liked. "No, it didn't," I whispered decisively, although I no longer knew what this denial was referring to; because I could finally penetrate that glance and no longer had to playact and, even more important, felt my own eyes opening up. "No?" he asked again, suspicious no longer but like one who wants to be sure of his own love, and the puff of mist accompanying the word touched my lips. "No, not at all," I whispered, and then suddenly there was silence between us, we were looking at each other, and we were close, so close that I hardly needed to move my head forward, with my mouth I touched his lips.

My mother, who had been brought home from the hospital three days earlier, was still bedridden, and when I was left alone after Krisztián disappeared behind the bushes, this was the first thing that came to my mind: Mother lying in her big bed and reaching out to me with her long, naked arm.

I could still feel his lips on my mouth, the chafing of that unknown skin, the softness and scent of the fleshy lips that stayed with me, on my mouth; I still felt the slight quiver of the two lips, their slow parting under my closed mouth, and then the slowly exhaled air that became mine, and the air he inhaled that was taken from me, and though I may seem to be contradicting myself, I don't think this could be called a kiss, not only because our lips had barely touched or because this touch was for both of us highly instinctive, and its purposeful, I might say erotic, application neither of us could have fully understood, but most of all because at that moment my mouth was but the ultimate means of persuasion, the final, wordless argument; with his last exhalation he breathed his fear on me, and when he inhaled, he drew in his newfound trust from me.

I don't even know how we finally separated, for there must have been an infinitesimal fraction of that moment in which I totally gave myself over to feeling his lips, sensing at the same time that with his breath he was also giving himself over to me. Being aware of this, I'm not about to claim (it would be ridiculous to do so) that our contact, our unique form of reasoning, lacked sensuality; no, it was very sensual but free
—and this must be emphasized, it was purely free—of any ulterior motives with which adult love, in its own natural way, complements a kiss; our mouths, in the purest of possible ways, and regardless of what had gone before or what would follow, restricted themselves to what two mouths in the fraction of a second could give each other: fulfillment, comfort, and release; and that's when I must have closed my eyes, in that instant when no sight or circumstance could possibly have mattered anymore; when I think about that moment now, I still must ask myself whether a kiss can be anything else or anything more than that?

When I opened my eyes he was already talking.

"Do you know where rabbits stay in winter?"

And though his voice sounded deeper and perhaps even raspier than usual, there was no urgency in the question, asked with such self-evident ease, as if the rabbit had run across the field just then and not several minutes earlier, as if nothing had happened between those two points in time; as I watched his face, his eyes, his neck, the way he stood against a shimmering, opaline background laced with branches and treetops, as I took in this sight which seemed so very distant to me, I must have experienced momentarily the dread of a fatal, irreparable mistake: his question didn't mean that in his quite natural, almost obligatory embarrassment, he wanted to hide behind a neutral topic, for neither in his eyes nor in other features of his face nor in his posture could I discover the slightest trace of embarrassment, and he remained as poised, confident, cool as he had been on other occasions
—or perhaps it would be more correct to say that after having been relieved of his fears by the kiss, he became his unreachable former self, which certainly did not mean he was unconcerned about or indifferent to what was happening to him; on the contrary, he was so open to each and every moment of his existence, always the very moment he was compelled to live in, that all past and possible future moments were forced out of him, so that he seemed to stand outside his own physical being, as if he were never really where one assumed him to be; but I forever remained a prisoner of what had already passed, and a single emphatic moment could arouse so much pain and passion in me that I had no time left in my being with which to create the next moment, and thus I, like him though in a different way, also remained somewhere outside; I could never keep up with him.

"I've no idea where," I mumbled listlessly, as if I'd just been awakened.

"Maybe they stay in the ground."

"In the ground?"

"I'd bet with some clever trap we could catch a whole brood."

Later, I must have opened the door calmly, without rushing, and most likely did not let my schoolbag drop as usual, hitting the floor with a thud, and the door didn't bang shut behind me, so people in the house had no way of knowing I was home; I didn't run up the polished oak stairs leading to the foyer, though I was not conscious of this alteration, of the skipped routine, and had absolutely no inkling that from now on I'd move about more quietly and cautiously, would slow down and become even more introspective, but of course that could not keep me from noticing everything going on around me, indeed from seeing everything even more keenly, only from the perspective of indifference; the dining room's glass double door was wide open, and from the faint clinking of dishes I could tell I was late, lunch was nearly over, though this didn't bother me at all, because it was nice and dark in the foyer, pleasantly warm, only a little afternoon light seeping through the opalescent panels of the front door, now and then the radiator giving out a scraping, bubbling sound, followed always by an echoing, metallic clang of the pipes; I must have stood there a long time, in the heavy smell of freshly fried beef patties, and could even see myself in the old full-length mirror, though at the moment the purple reflection of the rug was more important to me than that of my face or body, the black outlines of which faded gently into the mirror's silvery gleam.

I understood well
—why wouldn't I—that by mentioning the trapping of rabbits he was raising the possibility of some joint undertaking, and I also sensed that, if he was expecting an answer, he was waiting for me to pull myself together, to revert to the customary norms of our relationship, to come up with a workable idea about what to do together—it could be anything at all, no need to insist on those stupid rabbits, any joint venture requiring strength and skill and therefore manly; but I found this possibility, offered to me with patient chivalry, much too simplistic and somewhat ludicrous, in view of what had just happened between us, not only because it no longer suited our age but also because its very childishness betrayed an idea born of defensive haste, aimed at ignoring what had just transpired; in short, it was a cover-up, an evasion, a diverting of emotions, though still a more sensible solution than anything I could have come up with in the circumstances; but at that moment, in that situation, the last thing I wanted was to be sensible; the joy of having been released, unbound, was pouring out of me like a stream of some tangible substance, something emanating from my body, rippling forward, seeking him out, and I had no other wish in the world than to remain in this state, the body yielding fully to everything that was instinctive, sensual, and emotional in it, losing as much of its weight and mass as was displaced by the liberated energies, indeed ceasing to be the body which we feel as a burden; I wanted to preserve this state and extend it to all my future moments; I wanted to break down all the barriers, the forces of habit, education, decorum, everything that robbed us of ordinary moments by preventing us from communicating the most profound truths of our being to others, until it is no longer we who existed in time but time that existed in our stead, vacuous, efficient; trying mulishly to preserve myself for this moment, unable to address him in anything resembling a normal, everyday voice, I had to feel that nothing I was going through could possibly reach him, though he had to marshal every bit of his apparently quite humane psychological skills to remain so calm and patient at the sight of such unbridled longing; he appeared to be a smooth, blank wall impassively deflecting and hurling back everything emanating from me in his direction, with the result that it was I, not he, who was surrounded by this emanation; I was encased in a shell, and I also felt that this shell and I were one; though I might quite pleasantly float around in it, I knew that one careless move and it would disintegrate, one emphatic word and everything that had erupted from the body would dissolve into thin air, as our breaths did; he was looking at me, straight into my eyes, and indeed we saw nothing but each other's eyes, yet he was becoming more and more distant, while I stayed where I was, because I wanted to stay where I was, and as I was, since only in this insanely defenseless state could I perceive my true self; I might say that there, and in this way, I felt for the first time the grandeur, beauty, and peril of the senses raging within me; this was the real me, not the uncertain outline the mirror may have shown as my face or body, but this; I could not help noticing his growing remoteness—first, the fleeting shock which, despite his good intentions and self-discipline, made its mark on his face, and then the tiny, childishly conceited smile with which, having overcome the gentle shock, he managed to move so far away that he could even afford to glance back at me curiously, and do it with a measure of compassion; but I said nothing, I made no move; for me, existence reached its perfect fulfillment in this wordless state, and I was so important to myself that nothing seemed to bother me, not even the disappearance of the last trace of smile, when silence once again became acutely perceptible and we could hear the woods, magpies, a creaking branch in the distance, a stream rushing over sharp stones, our own breathing.