Love     by Péter Nádas, Translated by Imre Goldstein Original title: Szerelem Original language: Hungarian Original year: 1979 Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Format: Hardcover, 133 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.62 x 8.57 x 5.72 ISBN: 0374192286 Edition: 1st Edition List Price: $20.00 Buy online from Amazon.com for $14.00

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It seems strange to think that this short novel of drug-taking should have been published in Hungary in 1979, under the puritanical Communist regime. That means that it appeared after The End of a Family Story and at about the time when Péter Nádas was starting to try to get his big novel A Book of Memories past the censors. It was not published in English until over twenty years later.

An unnamed man is in the seventh-floor flat of a flaxen-haired woman called Éva, lying on the bed and watching her meticulously roll a joint of marijuana. She is naked. He’d planned to tell her he wouldn’t be coming back, but finds he can’t say the words. They drink lemonade, chat briefly, start smoking. She gives him a sheet, then starts preparing a second joint. This time he inhales greedily, and before long is in a hallucinatory state that continues for most of the rest of the novel.

There is much repetition as he tries to focus on whether or not he has been into the bathroom to fetch a glass of water, listens to the church clock striking the hour, improbably sees folk motifs, thinks he may have gone mad, thinks he may be ill, imagines he’s jumped to his death from the balcony. The typography mirrors the disorientation we too are starting to feel, making ragged patterns on the page. He meditates at intervals on birth and death, on the notion of time, on the need to love. And eventually he (probably) leaves. It isn’t clear if he’ll be coming back.

That’s about all there is in the way of plot. But the repetition, the anxious seeking for identity, build up a hallucinatory rhythm that keeps you turning the pages.

The church bell strikes, resounding sharply

in my ear,

one strike,

pause,

and then the next strike.

it struck

twice. No more. The whole apparatus is creaking and groaning, I can hear it. And then there is silence. That means it’s the half hour. Half past something. Time doesn’t let me sleep. Was this meant to be a signal? For me! Signalling that I am not making any progress, not moving forward, I only imagine it. But why am I thinking about this when I wanted to go to sleep? No matter. I must be careful not to turn back from this reality, and there will be no problems at all. That church bell was a signal of time, so that I should not go to sleep. That I should be continually aware of what there is and what is happening around me; I can’t go to sleep; if I fell asleep I’d lose time. Here I lie, and because I continue to lie here, that means that time is passing. But how could I fully, consciously realise that? 101-2