“You look like an angel,
Sleeping it off at a station,
Were you only passing through?”
Kate Bush, ‘L’Amour Looks Something Like You’

[To Gy, August 1997]

Today’s lecture was about Nádas, more specifically ‘Emlékíratok könyve’. According to the teacher, one of the main themes in Nádas is that the world has fallen apart (szétesett) and this is reflected in the plight of the individual. We are constantly expected to play a bewildering number of roles, donning a series of masks depending on the situation we happen to find ourselves in, but masks are objects: strip the individual of the masks and there is nothing left underneath. We have all lost our centre, or, perhaps more properly, certainty. Directionless, searching for meaning. The eternal role-playing represents a substitute for a non-existent reality, a distraction from the internal vacuum. Reality is assumed to lurk beneath the surface, which provides a transcendental solution to the problem. The roles played by the individual do not constitute an identity, he claimed. I disagree. The roles DO constitute an identity, a social identity, with the self as the focal point for the processing of experience. Order, in the teacher’s interpretation of Nádas, can be found in beauty alone, in physical beauty because beauty is harmony. I also reject this argument. What matters in my opinion is moral beauty, the purity of emotions and the consistency that arises from following your convictions. Though I do not condone evil (you will retort, how can I define evil without a notion of morality?), conventional morality counts for very little. It is the product of social consensus and varies through time. It is relative, in other words. Physical beauty does not go beyond the surface and is transitory in a way that moral beauty is not. If you take physical beauty as the foundation of your image of yourself, as the prime motivator of your actions, you will devour yourself because it will fade with age (although I admit this is again the product of social attribution). I know how flimsy a consolation physical beauty is through experience: I possessed it once and lost it through becoming fat and invisible. As a result, I had to find an alternative, but even when I was beautiful it was never my primary concern. Purity of intent took precedence over all else. Which brings us back to my favourite topic of conversation at the moment: Neal. We have become increasingly obsessed with authenticity as a substitute for the lost centre/certainty. The irony with Neal is that, to attain the authenticity that will liberate him, to free himself of the hypocrisy which his birth has imposed upon him he has to undergo a transformation, a metamorphosis from falsehood to truth, a rebirth allowing him to live at last.

Another theme from Nádas is that of violence. As he makes explicit in one of his short stories (‘A bárány’), even the act of redemption involves violence, through sacrifice and bloodshed. In ‘Egy családregény vége’ one of the main characters, the Jewish grandfather, states that the only route to happiness (itself the sole worthwhile aim of human existence) is to be completely passive. I would counter that passivity leads to frustration and destruction (the female plight). Most religions echo the grandfather’s views by exhorting the adherents to abandon desires, to renounce the self, as the self’s ceaseless promptings of desire blight our existence, or, to quote Schopenhauer: “Alles Wollen springt aus Bedürfnis, also aus Mangel, also aus Leiden. Diesem macht die Erfüllung ein Ende; jedoch gegen einen Wunsch, der erfüllt wird, bleiben wenigstens zehn versagt: ferner, das Begehren dauert lange, die Forderungen gehn ins Unendliche; die Erfüllung ist kurz und kärglich gemessen. Sogar aber ist die endliche Befriedigung selbst nur scheinbar: der erfüllte Wunsch macht gleich einem neuen Platz: jener ist ein erkannter, dieser ein noch unerkannter Irrtum. […] Darum nun, solange unser Bewußtsein von unserem Willen erfüllt ist, solange wir dem Drange der Wünsche, mit seinem steten Hoffen und Fürchten, hingegeben sind, wird uns nimmermehr dauerndes Glück noch Ruhe”. However, the self is all that exists, therefore to renounce it is to condemn the individual to extinction and obscurity before the inevitable snuffing out which is physical death. Why yearn for it in advance? I am active. To an extent, we create our own happiness – to the extent, that is, that we do not depend on others for our happiness. The problem is, as the teacher pointed out, that if you chase happiness, it usually eludes you. Happiness is an athlete with incredible stamina. No matter how stubborn the pursuit, no matter how much of an adrenalin rush spurs you on, happiness remains just out of reach. I push harder and harder, raising the stakes until collapse is imminent. Brinksmanship. Then, in sheer exhaustion, I crumple, slump and weep, lamenting my lost life, bitter that, in spite of my best efforts, my honesty, my sincerity, my generosity, still I am abandoned. There is, however, no alternative. Standstill is not possible, only retrogression, stagnation, decay.

[To Gy, 29th July 1997]

When we were on the bus one of the things that distressed Neal was that he had to lie about his name, at least, it was a lie until he uttered it and from that moment on it became the truth because he was reborn “officially” as a man. He detests lying and to him, I suspect, his entire existence up to now (he would refuse to call it a life) has been one of massive falsehood because he was born into the wrong body, a vicious twist of fate that has condemned him to wretchedness until now. His choice challenges all our accepted (socially transmitted) ideas of what makes up reality and authenticity. To the outside world/society, the reality was that he was a woman and the physical reality could not be denied. Internally, though, the outlook was entirely different. He could not accept the tormenting, mocking gulf between the appearance and the reality. To him, the only way that he could truly be himself was to make the physical and the psychological/emotional match. I admire him because he seeks authenticity, taking the need for consistency to its logical conclusion. I empathise with this drive because one of the qualities I prize most in others, even more than simple honesty, is authenticity. Others might find his persona deeply disturbing. I do not, I want to possess it. He proves that our identities and categories for recognising others (and subsequently categorising them with the implicit value judgements the exercise entails) are not nearly as stable, solid or unambiguous as we would like to think.

[2004]

In the middle of the night Lydia called from Jakarta, near hysterical because of the severe turbulence she had experienced during the flight. He did his utmost to calm her, voice soft and melodic in his native tongue. Neal coveted a beard more than anything else. Every morning he would inspect his chin for stubble, rubbing his slender fingers over his cheeks. The testosterone injections left him drained and irritable. As he lay spread over the mattress in his striped pyjamas, arms flung wide I soothed him with fictions based on characters we had met. When she returned from her business trip, I was finally introduced to Lydia. Her tactic to disarm me was spontaneous generosity, presenting me with an opal on a leather thong, which she placed round my neck at the café. I could not warm to her in her artificial splendour: wig, false nails, eye shadow and foundation, cherry red lipstick, heels, short skirt, in short the primped ultra-femininity I have always eschewed. The heat and the wine, his brown locks and plump lips, my brow uncaressed, my womb burning.