“Of course I am but…”
Because it was easier, I talked about my father: what it was like to see him only every two weeks, how much he helped or didn’t help as I grew up, how I wasn’t sure I loved him at all. Iván listened devotedly like a child would, and at the end he generously said he understood. This annoyed me because I knew he knew nothing. I didn’t tell him what my father said about his future.
Unspoken words have weight. First you barely feel it, then, as they proliferate you realise you cannot carry them anymore. You either release them or keep them in, in which case they start to press and pinch your heart. You feel the grip even if you are happy. Especially then.
I didn’t tell Iván, partly because I wasn’t sure, partly because I didn’t want him to lose the light. He was happy. In a sense, so was I—but while I was laughing, caressing, loving, part of me peeled away from me and, watching us, said, “Not much longer.”
It drove me wild. If you close yourself off to the future, the present seems richer. I felt every moment was perfect because there would be no more like it.
It’s sweeter if you know it will end.
For two months we carried on like this, until we had only two weeks before the journey. It was the best two months of the five and also the worst. Then, one night as I was straddling Iván, looking down into his face, the knowledge became too heavy. He was calm and young after making love, and more beautiful than any other. He caressed my hip slowly and without thought.
I’d been saying goodbye for two months and knowing that I’d been doing it, and I had no desire for another ten months of leave-taking.
He watched me peacefully, vulnerable in front of the future. The dimness of the bedroom made it feel like a nest, but the words gathering inside me kept me from feeling comfortable.
“I won’t go with you to Delhi.”
His hand stopped on my hip.
“Why?”
I shook my head. I still didn’t want to tell him.
“I won’t go with you.”
“But…” His hand fell down as if broken. After a few long moments, he blinked. “Oh. And when I come back? We continue?”
I turned away, stared at his books on the shelves. The ones I had read and the ones I wanted to borrow. Maybe from the library.
“We won’t continue,” I whispered.
We held each other, me crying, Iván caressing my back. We made love again, madly, passionately, and at the end, I packed my things and left. Three times I turned back from the door to kiss him and every time it was harder to go. But I had to. I closed the downstairs door feeling ten years older. Nothing inside me, only the weight of emptiness.
The following week I locked myself in the toilet several times to cry. In the end, I took some leave because if I saw Iván every day, I would turn back, go with him to the little apartment with the naked light bulbs that we had seen on the Internet, and to hell with what will happen in ten months time. I sat in my flat and waited until it was too late to do the paperwork needed for the journey.
Of course he called. Many times. He was sweet, his voice calm, but I knew that this meant nothing. The phone calls were full of awkward silences when only two wounds were bleeding at the end of the line. I knew more about how he felt than I did about my own feelings.
He didn’t speak of his thoughts, but he spent long, strained minutes remembering our trip to the conference in Debrecen. What it felt like when I fell asleep on his shoulder while he was driving. I told him in turn about waking up when he touched my face—softer than anyone before had been. We recalled the morning stuck on that godforsaken train station because we got off a stop too early, how we sat on the grass-spotted concrete and watched the sun rise above the Hungarian Plain. It was then that we began spinning plans for the Indian trip, and the red light of the dawn had seemed to spill over tropical soil. On the phone, he asked about my mother’s varicose leg and I sent word to his sister that there was a sale on skirts in her favourite shop.
We made everyday chit-chat because it seemed absurd that we were no longer a couple and soon he would leave my life for good, for there is no leaving as definitive as death. We laughed into the phone and sometimes I felt he was sitting very close to me, whispering in my ear—still we didn’t meet. We didn’t say our relationship had ended because it was different from breaking up.
He left for India and I went back to work. After a few months, I had to admit that breaking up was meaningless. I was still thinking about him, counting the days, and I was just as scared. The fear wouldn’t lift until the year had passed, and maybe not even then. Sometimes you recognise things that are meant to be forever.
Then I saw my father on the tram.
I hadn’t talked to him since I’d been burdened with his prophecy. My first thought was to get off the tram before he noticed me; in the end I shoved my way to him through the crowd of passengers and, skipping the hello, I said:
“You shouldn’t have told me.”
He started. He hadn’t noticed me, and his face showed embarrassment—and maybe a little guilt.
“How can I keep it from happening?” I grabbed his arm.
“Put it off, you mean?”
“Don’t play with me. You know very well what I mean! Turn it back, pre-empt it… I know what will happen. I can slow it down, right?” The passengers froze. They turned away with so much care that their attention filled us with tension.
“You can’t slow it down; it is the future,” he said and nervously glanced around. “Listen, can we get off?”
I laughed even though I didn’t want to. The laughter choked me.
“You still want to control what and when you tell me?” I flicked my wrist. “Whatever. Let’s get off!”
The tension followed us to the tram stop. I didn’t wait for the people to leave the platform.
“I don’t believe it is futile,” I said. “Your prophecies…they cannot be gratuitous. They must be changeable!”
His eyes were tired.
“You want an answer from me? I only tell what I see. I don’t make up the future. I don’t control it.”
I pushed him hard, surprising myself as much as him.
“I don’t believe you haven’t ever tried!”
“I have,” he said bitterly. His eyes showed some passion at last. “I have tried but in vain! The only way is acceptance or you go mad. That is my advice to you, as well.”
I shook my head.
“I wish you hadn’t told me at all.”
“I’m sorry.” He extended his hand, perhaps to draw me close, but we never felt easy enough around each other for an embrace. I stepped away.
“Or you told me to make me try…” I looked up, realising this was it. This had to be the reason. “I have to try, maybe…”
“Don’t!”
“Then why?”
“Because I, too, can make mistakes!”
I shook my head.
“Then tell me what will happen to me! What will I do?”
A familiar face, yet confusing. Do I love him? Hate him? Despise him?
“It doesn’t work like that. I cannot control what I see and what I don’t. Don’t you think I would have done it? Judit, listen to me…” He reached for me and this time touched me before I could pull away.
“Then tell me something, anything that will happen to me before the year passes!”
The next tram arrived. People shoved past us as they rushed towards the crosswalk. I saw his gaze darken.
He rubbed his face.
“One of your patients will die within six months while you are on your shift. I don’t know exactly when. You won’t hear her calling.”
“Would I be able to save her?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor and I see only what I am allowed to see. Judit! There is no point.”