Parallel Stories: A Novel (75 page)

It turned out that nobody was coming down the promenade, neither human nor beast; my ears must have deceived me earlier.

I should have decided to leave as soon as possible and, because of Pisti, never come back again. I’d seen what he was up to; he was indeed at home here. I couldn’t get over this, because he was certainly the darling of girls and women if anyone was. And having seen him here, and not only that other boy, Königer, and I did see him with my own eyes, then I’d never understand anything about what was happening around me, and who knows whom I might meet here tomorrow.

Just about everybody is doing it.

I never imagined that in the nocturnal multitude I’d run into somebody I knew.

I couldn’t tell him that I had wound up here by chance and opened my fly by accident.

But the threatening image of this
never come back again
, which took hold immediately, was like a hardly feasible self-mutilation.

How can I restrain myself when I see that what I hardly dare dream about, others extravagantly indulge in every night.

Something had revealed itself: a realm of unfamiliar activities and secret compulsions that for the sake of rationality I should have locked up in the world of unfamiliarity forever. It’s over, that’s what I should have yelled. I shall ignore it. Since until now I had had no idea what men did under the cloak of night, I could easily forget it or pretend to know nothing of it.

Nobody’s presence should ever remind me of this again during the day. I’ll walk back to Pest not on the Margit but on the Árpád Bridge, and that way I might get away with it without being exposed.

Never again, never, I kept promising to myself. Maybe one last time I might still get away with it.

That would be the only reward for my self-punishment: that I’d get away with it. A reward one does not receive physically. If somehow one received it in one’s hands and carefully unwrapped the fine rustling paper, one would find something threatening and ominous, something one had managed to avoid or that had avoided one only by accident.

The worst did not happen.

And what sense would it make to wind up in an embarrassing situation because of such a loathsome adventure. Now I knew about Pisti, but maybe he didn’t yet know about me. I couldn’t risk more than that. And not only I but he couldn’t explain this away; nobody could. I went on lying in the cool darkness, full of warm currents. I closed my eyes to listen to the mysterious rustling of leaves and to recall something of the night’s emotion-filled occurrences, which I should have loathed. And to make my escape a certainty, in my imagination I made my crossing between the blackened facades of tenements on the poorly lit, deserted side streets of Pest. Nobody I knew should see me in such a state, especially not Pisti. I quickly planned my route and directions.

It was as if I were constantly crossing to another side of the street, even though the street had only two sides.

I was wading into the deserted jungle of the city, and there was no way back. Because I ardently wished that there would be no way back.

And I probably dozed off as the pain eased, because I awoke to the sound of its stinking panting and the distinct feeling of its presence next to me.

It is panting and puffing right into my face.

I see its black mug with its long, dangling, rhythmically slipping-and-sliding tongue as it stares at me. Its eyes were flashing as it stood above me, dark and colossal.

My first thought was that the black-haired giant had metamorphosed into a black dog, Satan’s dog, which would mean I had gone mad indeed.

Its polite and patient waiting showed that it presumed I’d wake up.

Not much time could have gone by, I told myself, alarmed. I felt I had to account for the wasted time, but at least I knew where I was, which made me crash back into my real life. The period of summer exams had begun, the first two exams toward my doctorate were behind me, and I did not think that, once awake, I owed an explanation to anyone about anything. But somebody inside me kept shouting that for days now I’d been doing nothing but useless things.

It was a smooth-haired stray dog.

Quickly it sniffed into my ear and my hair, all four feet stamping with excitement; then the panting suddenly stopped as it rushed to my feet, its short tail joyfully wagging very fast as if to say, at last I’ve found my master in the empty night, the one I’ve been looking for; it smelled my shoes for a long time, found them familiar, then licked my wound and, if I hadn’t yanked my leg away, it would have lapped up the blood; it sniffed all around my groin very thoroughly, then my hair; I let it, though its long, dangling ears and mustache tickled me. It would have sniffed my eyes too, and the prospect seemed to make it very happy. With a motion of my hand, I shoved it away. It wouldn’t back off, wanted to sniff my mouth, which made me laugh, and I shoved it again, harder than before.

The dog stank; it must have eaten human shit.

Ever since my childhood, the proximity of animals has always set my gums and palate on edge, so that for long minutes I couldn’t swallow properly.

The dog did not wait for the end of my shove; it jumped back instead, its body taut, ready to attack.

I jumped up too, but not because I was afraid of it. Perhaps I felt secure with animals precisely because I could never lower myself to their level.

It was a nice young male, a black, skinny but large-bodied vizsla, probably a crossbreed; under his filthy short hair, his skin was full of sores new and old. Though he bared his teeth, I told him it was all right and patted his hard head, which he let me do, though not the way a dog used to kindness would but resignedly, neutrally attentive. In the meantime I tested my injured leg to see if it would function; the dog put his forelegs on the ground, raised his butt playfully in the air, shook it, and this time showed me not only his full set of teeth, his two terrible fangs, but also his naked frightening gums. Emitting short, angry, and, I’d like to say, ironic grunts, he seemed eager to tell me something that I did not understand.

Truth to tell, I needed this dog more than he needed me, but I did not realize that then.

I set out with him toward the service entrance of the hotel, limping heavily, with the dog snapping at my ankles. Thus we crossed the enormous, dense, close-cropped lawn.

I started in that direction because I thought that with a bit of luck I could feed the starving dog.

And as if he knew what my plan was, he kept running ahead and coming back to me.

There was a big lump on his skull where he must once have been badly hit on the head. His snarling was his laughter; he demonstrated his great joy and trust in me by showing his fangs, though he mightn’t have minded taking a bite out of my ankle. Nevertheless, I couldn’t be sure of what I was doing, so I told him right away to be still, let’s see how things turn out, just come quietly with me but don’t count on anything.

I found the waste bins in exactly the same place they had been ten years earlier. The old system was still working.

The steps leading down to the service entrance were at the end of the left wing of the large building. Garbage collectors or delivery people had to get off the road and back down a fairly steep, ribbed platform all the way to the cellar level. This was the staff’s turf, where produce was carried in and bales and bundles were taken out through strictly separated openings, and where garbage was taken outside. Not only my shoes but also the dog’s feet and toenails made noises on the ramp, noises that echoed between the walls. Occasionally I stopped and the dog did too, raising his head; we both listened and watched, and he stayed at my side.

It became incredibly quiet in the night, all life and labor had fallen silent. In the cool breath of the river I could feel more strongly the sweet scent of the petunias and the smell of gasoline trapped between the walls by the entrance.

There was very little chance of someone noticing us or asking me what I was up to.

Although the lamp above the service entrance was lit, the glass-paned revolving door behind the iron grating had been secured in a safe, entrance-blocking position, and this entrance had no night porter.

It would be opened at exactly 5:30 in the morning for the scullery maids’ noisy arrival.

They’ll be coming from Dömös, Kisoroszi, and Tahitótfalu with the first produce-carrying steamer, getting off on the Buda shore under the Margit Bridge, bringing along all sorts of delicacies and sweet tidbits in small baskets, jars or kerchiefs tied smartly at the corners. They’ll bring sweet cream, strawberries, tarragon, raspberries in little baskets woven from dry corn husk, curd cheese, small bunches of thyme, mushrooms of the season, and everything else the forests and fields can provide, fragrant wild strawberries in enameled containers, quail eggs in crates lined with willow, blackberries, dogwood, rose-hip jam in glazed jars, elder blossoms and chamomile wrapped in kerchiefs. They will hand all this in at the storeroom, the directress will count or weigh each item, enter the data in the large ledger, so that each week, in addition to their salaries, the scullery maids will be paid for what they have brought.

It was they who lowered the heavy corrugated iron shutter over the storeroom entrance. They will raise it when the milk wagon arrives and the white bottles clinking in the iron crates are unloaded wordlessly. Even before this job is done, the bread man will make his delivery. The rear door of the wagon, cushioned on the inside, is opened and the warmly fragrant breads and bakery products are carried into the storeroom.

The workers whistled while they worked, so I assumed that early-dawn bread delivery must be a joyful thing.

I didn’t even have to remember the various tastes of fresh unpasteurized milk, of warm croissants or sweet brioches to distinguish between the hotel’s night and early-dawn activities or to know what sorts of things happened in the morning or in the afternoon. The scullery maids began every day with cleaning vegetables and disemboweling chickens. At 12:30 they turned their freshly whipped cream over to the pastry cooks, who could then complete their cakes and desserts; next they wrapped in blotting paper and then in kitchen towels the evenly sliced potatoes, later to be made into chips, and after that the girls were done. Their return boat would leave the Bem Square station at 1:30. It arrived in Tahi at 4:00, Kisoroszi at 4:40, and Dömös at 6:30, and every day of every year they made the same routine to-and-fro journey until the river became dangerously icy and boat traffic came to a halt.

That was when all the weddings took place in the villages and the young women no longer came to work in the hotel. Barely adolescent girls had to replace them.

Leaning on their baskets and against one another, they slept in the deafening dark bowels of the big paddle steamers.

The staff of the Grand Hotel had specific instructions on how to deal with the children of guests. Very decisively but always kindly and politely, no matter how difficult this might prove to be. Except for me, it was very rare for children to be in the hotel in the early autumn. I was well behaved, polite, and managed quite well in the red-walled living room, empty but for the record player and my picture books for company. I knew what was allowed and what was not; and that described my reputation. He is a nice quiet boy, the adults would say, able to keep himself busy. They had no idea how I abused their trust and confidence. They thought they didn’t have to worry that I might get into an accident or do mischief. The chambermaids, bellboys, and cleaning women competed for my favors; they liked to have me along or waiting for them while they did their chores.

Of my own secret mission, of course nobody knew anything.

I loved to follow the different hotel workers along the corridors on the soft, dark red carpets, which absorbed the sound of footsteps, go downstairs with them via the rear stairwell, then take the elevator, glittering with its cut-glass windows, all the way to the top floor, doing all this to discover the hotel’s secrets. I realized early on that one should not say no to anything. The more willing and polite I was and the more reliably I behaved, the more communicative people became; ultimately grown-ups are rather careless with their secrets.

It never occurred to anyone, for example, to lock the external door of the garbage bay from the inside.

Beggars also had their place and hour; nobody imagined that the beggars might assault the garbage bins. They were supposed to line up just before the kitchen closed. They came one by one out of the night with their worn bags and frayed satchels, waited before the basement window, bathing in the light that filtered through it, in the kitchen stench streaming outward at and in the weakening preclosing kitchen clatter.

If it rained, they stood under umbrellas.

At most they would make courteous little gestures, well understood by others in the line: but of course, go on, your grace; oh no, don’t even mention it. And the chambermaids never ceased boasting that here, fortunately, we hardly have any real beggars. The directress takes this very seriously; she can’t abide smelly or filthy persons and will not suffer Gypsies or drunken louts. As far as she’s concerned, that kind of person can just stand in the rain or snow; she won’t give them a morsel.

One wasn’t to speak of people in this line as beggars. The directress did not want to see a beggar who looked like one. She could not bear such human wrecks. Nobody could tell her that a person couldn’t wash in cold water.

Watch it, little girl, I hear
beggar
from you again and I’ll rap your mouth for you.

She’d do it too, there’s good reason to be afraid of that big ring of hers, because these people are decent ladies and gentlemen, and every person is entitled to respect. Poor war widows, disabled pensioners, victims of some family disaster. Some of them come for food to take to their gravely ill relatives. These people have been truly robbed of everything. God forbid someone should speak ill of these poor beings or humiliate them. If anybody, the communists should be ashamed of themselves.