A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, Péter Nádas. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, a superb collection of short stories, essays, and literary criticism, we discover other aspects of Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, and as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of brilliantly original, touching, witty, and thought-provoking works by one of our greatest living writers.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, Péter Nádas. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, a superb collection of short stories, essays, and literary criticism, we discover other aspects of Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, and as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of brilliantly original, touching, witty, and thought-provoking works by one of our greatest living writers.
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Overview
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, Péter Nádas. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, a superb collection of short stories, essays, and literary criticism, we discover other aspects of Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, and as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of brilliantly original, touching, witty, and thought-provoking works by one of our greatest living writers.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312427511 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Publication date: | 07/22/2008 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Péter Nádas is the author of the novels A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Story, and Love. He lives in Gombosszeg, in western Hungary.
Read an Excerpt
Fire and Knowledge
By Peter Nadas
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
Copyright © 2007 Peter NadasAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-29964-4
Chapter One
The rust-eaten roses with their loosened roots, the hanging plants, and the fancy acanthus leaves rattled long and noisily whenever the huge iron gate, so hard to move in either direction, was opened or closed. The jumbled sounds of unoiled metal forced their way through the quiet garden and then reverberated wearily from the stuccoed wall of the single-story villa.The villa, proud of its ostentatious dimensions, spread out in a leisurely way above the garden, but its builders had exercised enough moderation not to show its haughtiness to the street. They masterfully hid the facade among tall pine trees, ornamental shrubbery, and rock gardens.
The jutting terrace and the winter garden, however, behind intricate bars, had an open view of the city's hazy outlines.
The six rooms, clearly designed for a lifestyle alien to us, seemed shabby when compared with our apartment in the city, and we were amazed at the marble-covered foyer and the enormous blue-tiled bathroom. Our furniture appeared lost in the six gigantic high-ceilinged rooms that could not be heated, and so the wonder and amazement gradually turned into a headache.
The garden was large.
All day long I roamed in it purposelessly. I would smoke stealthily or drag the deck chair out and read.
I was bored, looking for things to do, but I did put some order in my days. After coming home from school, I'd eat lunch, then walk in the garden, slapping my legs with a stick, strut among and glance over the flower beds, with the short-haired fox terrier stepping smartly behind me.
Having made several rounds of the entire garden, I'd change, put on an old sweatsuit, and run back out again. Meta would be waiting by the door, sitting on his haunches and happily wagging his tail. What usually followed was the "bullfight."
I'd brandish a red rag and start running. Meta would jump after me, catch and pull the rag, let it go; I'd spin it over his head, and he would follow it with his whole body in a frenzied spin. He would yelp, whimper, growl, and catch the rag again. I'd shake it, and then he'd keep yanking it with his teeth. I wouldn't give in, would tear it out of his mouth and run away, the dog after me; he'd knock me down, we'd roll around in the grass, he'd catch my wrist, jump on top of me, and then gallop away with the rag ... and that's how it went day after day. We'd keep on doing it until the running and laughing made my sides ache.
Meta sometimes forgot the rules and took our struggle seriously; he'd bare his teeth, growl, keep snapping, and with his frightening pink gums and spotted palate snarl at me threateningly.
But fear also made me bristle, and even more than he. I wouldn't play the game, wouldn't relent. It was on such an occasion that he attacked me.
The fabric got stuck in his teeth; I held on to it and lifted him up into the air. He howled with pain, tensed his body, and tore himself free. A piece of the red cloth was dangling from his mouth.
He snapped at my foot. I felt all but unconscious for several seconds-from fear, because I felt no pain; the only trace left afterward was a scratch. There was a hoe lying nearby on the grass. I reached for it slowly, with a clear mind. Meta, with whimpering eyes, was cowering, flattening himself against the ground. I began to hit him. Blood was flowing from his body. During the first blows he'd still howl; then his eyes closed, and he quietly suffered his skin and flesh to be ripped up by the sharp hoe.
Nausea made me stop. If not for that sickening feeling, I don't know what I would have done, driven by my strength and my revenge. I left him where he lay.
We didn't find him for days. Father stumbled on him Saturday afternoon at the bottom of the haystack. He pulled him out and took him into the foyer.
The dog's eyes were shiny with fear, his body was burning with fever, hay was stuck in his wounds, and clotted blood was drying on his fur. It was hard for him to breathe, his tongue was hanging out, and he kept licking his chops.
My mother washed him, bandaged him, gave him water, and then my parents tried to figure out who could have done the brutal beating ... maybe it was Meta's fault, if he stole a chicken ... I said nothing.
The next morning, on the way to the bathroom, I tripped on Meta's nearly stiff body. He must have dragged himself toward the door, maybe wanting to die outdoors ... With a tragic expression on my face, I walked into my parents' bedroom. They were still in bed. It was Sunday morning.
"He's dead," I said, and burst into tears. I slipped in next to my mother, but I yanked my head away from her caressing hand. I did not feel the need for any consolation.
2
For days I couldn't find a place for myself. I climbed up to the attic and found new treasures-trunks full of old letters, photographs, and newspapers-the only legacy of the former owner of the house, who had been a big landowner. I rifled through the dusty documents and enjoyed reading the ponderous, long-winded letters written in a scratchy hand. For hours I'd sit on a dusty beam, reading about soirees, servants, love affairs, fashion, gallants, and seashores.
I looked at photographs of smartly dressed gentlemen and ladies on the decks of grand ships, on the backs of camels by the Egyptian pyramids, under arcades in Rome, and in Venetian gondolas.
From the narrow attic windows came a steady stream of golden dust. Only rarely would a noise from the netherworld reach me-a shoutlike voice or the city's constant, monotone buzz, which anyway I couldn't hear because I was so used to it.
Some of the letters made me daydream. My imagination would put me too on horseback, not as an adult but as I was, a child, seated smartly with a riding crop in my hand. Or I would find myself in a huge marble hall, by the piano, like little Mozart; huge double doors were festooned with red velvet draperies, and from time to time letters of congratulations would be delivered on a silver tray by the maid dressed in black and white.
Sitting idly like that, in undisturbed indolence, I propped my head against a beam. Suddenly a female voice crashed into the golden haze. It came from the end of the garden, from the tennis court.
"Évaaaa! Come out of the waaater ...!"
I climbed up to the window, but because of the thick foliage, I could not see into the neighboring garden, and Éva must have come out of the pool because it was quiet again.
Her name made me excited.
Quickly I threw my treasures back into the trunks and ran downstairs.
In the early-afternoon hours silence reigned everywhere. My grandparents were resting in the farthest room of the house.
They had the daily newspaper, Népszava, delivered; my grandfather had been subscribing to the same paper since his days as an apprentice. His profession had ruined his eyes, and by now he could not make out even the largest letters. For ten years, every day, my grandmother had been reading the paper for him. She'd sit by the window, push her wire-rimmed glasses high on her nose, and the words would pour quickly, flatly, from her mouth. Grandfather needed either infinite patience or infinite resignation to listen to Grandmother's prayer-like recitation. And while he always managed to distill the essence from this fog of words, as thick as sour cream, Grandmother could never remember anything except the weather forecast, and that only because she claimed her waist and legs could signal any change in the weather better than the Institute of Meteorology.
During these afternoons everything was mine. Time and space. I was free to poke around in drawers and read forbidden books.
When I ran down from the attic, prompted by Éva's name, I headed straight for Father's closet and pulled out a few of his neckties. I could not conceive of meeting the girl without wearing a necktie.
I started running toward the tennis court. The closer I got, the slower I ran. I was trying to imagine Éva: strolling around the pool, wearing a pink tulle dress and carrying a white parasol, holding her head high under a straw hat, just as I must have seen it in an illustrated novel for young girls. And the anticipation sent my heart into my throat.
I approached the fence cautiously and looked through the parted lilacs, but I saw no one. In the middle of the lawn, in an elevated rock garden and fully exposed to the sun, stood a greenhouse made of glass. The swimming pool, built from natural stones, was lower down, and next to it a smaller pool full of water lilies.
I sat in the shrubs for a long time. Nothing stirred. And this fascinated me even more. I imagined that Éva was sitting in a shuttered room, playing the piano. But there was no sound of a piano. This of course did not change the images in my mind. I had been sitting quite a while when a girl's powerful voice broke the silence.
"Goosy, goosy, goosy," I heard, and the girl appeared, carrying a handful of corn, followed by hungry waddling geese.
She kept coming closer to the fence. She was teasing the birds, throwing a few grains here and there; the geese swooped down on them, then resumed their waddle.
The girl-it didn't occur to me that she could be Éva-was wearing a skirt she must have outgrown for it barely covered her skinny legs, and she was barefoot. Finally, not far from my hiding place, she emptied her hand, and all the corn was on the ground. By then I had lost all fear and yelled to her. "Hey!"
She turned around, and I thought she'd be a little surprised, but her thin face was rather hostile. "What d'you want?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"Then what are you looking at?"
"Why? I'm not allowed to look?"
"Idiot," she said, and turned back to the geese. I was taken aback, but I didn't move. She pretended to be looking at the geese, but from the corner of her eye, she kept glancing in my direction, and then she burst out, "Are you still here?"
"Yes, I am," I answered timidly, because she started back toward the house, and she merely said over her shoulder, "Then I'm leaving!"
Involuntarily I shouted my words: "Don't go yet!"
She stopped, turned around. "All right," she said.
I plucked up my courage. "Come over here, closer."
"What for?"
"Let's talk."
She didn't reply but came a little closer. I was still squatting by the fence.
"Sit down."
She sat down. She held her skirt down with her feet and looked at me. That look confused me again. My glances kept jumping between her eyes and her knees pressed together. She had dark brown, calm eyes.
"Let's be friends," I moaned.
"Idiot," she answered again. "I'm a girl, I can't be your friend."
I was staggered by this response. I couldn't say anything. I thought she was right because I felt the urge to argue, but she kept looking at me. We were silent. Then she got up, dusted off her skirt, and in her deep, intimate voice said, "See ya."
I would have liked to ask her to stay, but she strode away with such confident steps that I didn't have the courage.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fire and Knowledge by Peter Nadas Copyright © 2007 by Peter Nadas. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
The Great Christmas Killing 3
Liar, Cheater [A Story] 9
The Bible [A Story] 13
Homecoming 65
Little Alex [A Story] 83
On Thomas Mann's Diaries 93
The Lamb [A Story] 107
Hamlet Is Free 149
Lady Klara's House [A Story] 166
Melancholy 238
Vivisection [A Story] 262
A Tale of Fire and Knowledge 268
Family Picture in Purple Dusk [A Story] 276
Our Poor, Poor Sascha Anderson 286
Work Song 312
Minotaur [A Story] 319
Fate and Technique 336
Meeting God 346
Parasitic Systems 350
At the Muddy Source of Appearances 361
The Citizen of the World and the He-Goat 368
Clogged Pain 383
Way [A Story] 392