The Parallel Tale

— J. Chr. de Vries

I

At the beginning of the afternoon on a warm late summer day, I encountered George Bruijsols on the terrace of L’Auberge la Source du Périgord, a simple hotel-restaurant just outside Le Coux. The restaurant offered a choice of two menus, simple yet very tasty. And rightfully so, as they had been serving the same menus for decades without changing a single dish.



It reminded me of a similar appointment I had in the same restaurant a few weeks before with George Bruijsols, a partially blind retired librarian, and especially his remarkable house called Chez Hilbert. With George, I discussed the topic of ‘infinity’, and with Marco, the conversation turned to a similar subject: ‘parallel lines’ [‘evenwijdige lijnen’], in which infinity also plays an important role.

^*)

^*) See: ‘The Mirror of Atropos‘.

I don’t remember how we got onto this topic, probably through a linguistic issue. Our primary topic was ‘Romanticism’, that was at least the reason for our appointment. Marco was a historian specialized in this subject. He believed, following Safranski, that Romanticism was ‘Eine deutsche Affäre’ [A German affair]. We started talking about those typical German concepts like ‘Sehnsucht’ and ‘Heimat’, and their untranslatability. Be that as it may, at some point, we began discussing the concept of ‘evenwijdig’, which is expressed as a variant of the term ‘parallel’ in all the languages around us — parallel in German and English, parallèle in French, parallelo in Italian, and paralelo in Spanish. So, Dutch has two terms for it. “Well,” said Marco, “in the sense that you can speak of two parallel concepts, but not two evenwijdige.” [The term is a compilation of ‘even’ (just as) and ‘wijd’ (wide).]


We quickly agreed that the Dutch term ‘evenwijdig’ [just as wide] was a purely geometric term, and that the other used Dutch word ‘parallel’ could also have a figurative meaning. However, we couldn’t agree on the definition of two parallel lines: do they never touch one another or do they intersect at infinity? Whether it was the amount of alcohol consumed, the heat, or both, is difficult for me to ascertain, but our discussion about the concept of ‘parallel’ led to a rather embarrassing confession from Marco. Suddenly, he told me a story from his student days where he had fallen madly in love with a fellow student but couldn’t muster the courage to tell her. They spent a lot of time together, sought each other out, whether it was to study together or go to the pub, but they never became truly intimate, not even a fleeting kiss. It took him over a year to gather the courage, during which he slept poorly and lost his appetite. And it was the girl who eventually pushed him to take the plunge, even though he wished he had plunged himself in the sea to drown himself. The girl asked if something was wrong, he looked terrible, was he sick? Oh yes, sick he was, he thought, sick with misery. And suddenly, he blurted out that he was in love with her, ashamed that he hadn’t confessed it earlier, because he was way too uncertain, well, he babbled a complete nonsense novel and abruptly ended it as abruptly as he had started. Her response was so painful that he never forgave himself for his confession.



She said that she really liked him, truly liked him a lot, but that she wasn’t attracted to men at all, and that was probably the reason why they got along so well, because there was no erotic tension between them. ‘Not for her, no,’ Marco snapped, ‘but definitely for me! I was deeply ashamed, especially because I had completely failed to sense her sexual preference. What did that make me? A completely clueless idiot!’ I tried to calm him down, saying that it was all very understandable. We were young, inexperienced, and these kind of misunderstandings are part of life. What did we know?


After sitting in silence for a while, gazing ahead, and after the waiter came by asking if he could serve the next course, he looked up again. ‘Two parallel lives,’ he said, ‘that will never intersect.’ I tried to gauge if it was appropriate to laugh at that, but he started laughing himself. ‘I’m glad you can laugh about it now,’ I said.


While we were enjoying the main course, I asked him if his dramatic love story was a typical romantic issue. In a similar way as Tristan & Isolde, who couldn’t touch each other either, except ultimately, in the ‘Liebestod’. But Marco strongly disagreed.


“That concept of Liebestod comes from Liszt, not Wagner. Wagner writes Verklärung in the score, which means transfiguration. But more importantly, the original version of Tristan & Isolde predates Wagner by far. It’s a medieval courtly legend, recorded by Gottfried von Straßburg somewhere between 1210 and 1240, although his version is incomplete. Other writers also worked on it. The story is not ‘typically romantic’.”

“But Wagner’s version most certainly is!” I countered. “The longing, the knightly oath, that ‘transfiguration’, those are all typically romantic themes.”

“All of that has absolute nothing to do with my failed love affair, if it resembles anything, it’s more like another courtly theme such as La Douce Dame sans Merci, the unattainable woman. Tristan and Isolde at least got each other, albeit with some trouble and a misunderstanding, thanks to the accidentally administered love potion. In the medieval version, the two lovers have, unlike in Wagner’s opera, the time of their lives on that ship and they are deeply disappointed when land is within sight. Tristan doesn’t die in a knightly duel, and in Gottfried’s version, King Marke loses his wife to Gandin in exchange for his magnificent harp playing. Isolde was merely an object to the king; love had nothing to do with this all.”

“Yet, you were deeply in love with that girl, without realizing it was utterly hopeless. Perhaps love, in the end, is always a projection and has nothing to do with objective reality? I read in a text by an American psychiatrist a long time ago that it’s about ‘recognizing the divine in the other person’. I found it to be a beautiful metaphor.”
 “In my case, it was definitely a projection. It was an impossible and hopeless attempt to connect two completely incompatible worlds.”

“Did you continue to meet her afterwards?”

“No, I wasn’t able to put myself through that, I really was completely devastated.” 

“I understand that very well. Did you ever meet her again later on? Weren’t you curious about how she was doing?” 

“No, the first few years I repressed it. When I could bear to think about her again, she seemed to have disappeared from Earth. I never saw or spoke to her again. I have no idea where she might be. Two parallel railway tracks, me rushing in one direction, and she heading in the opposite direction. We vanished from each other’s sight forever.”

“Well, ultimately, what does it all matter? You fell in love with someone who didn’t have the same feelings for you. Unrequited infatuation is much more common than a mutual one. I speak from experience in this matter. Her sexual preference is of no significance, or that you didn’t realize it. It’s about the feeling of rejection, that’s the essence, in my opinion.” 

“It was a double shame. If I had paid more attention, truly seen her, not just as a sexual object, then I wouldn’t have even reached that point of rejection, I wouldn’t have fallen in love.” Marco stared at his empty plate. 

“From what you told me about her, I understand that she was much more than just an object. You had fun together, discussed important matters, helped each other with your studies… You’re making it too big, and you are bringing yourself down.”


Marco shrugged, in a way that he reminded me of a small, sulky child who didn’t get his way. We had our dessert and had another espresso, and then finally went to a small beach at the river side. I enjoyed a good cigar, and Marco was skipping flat stones across the water, trying to make them bounce as many times as possible.


II

After dropping Marco off at his hotel, I reflected on this peculiar conversation while sitting in my garden. I thought about my own foolish infatuations, like the American girl I met in a youth hostel in London when I was seventeen. She was traveling with her sister doing Europe On 5 dollars A Day. Her older sister did the talking, but it was the quiet girl who caught my attention. I had fallen head over heels for her. They were supposed to visit me back home. For weeks, I stood by the window, staring, hoping to catch a glimpse of them arriving. Of course, I never saw them again. Infatuation is in the heart of the beholder, right? After a few similar infatuations, I made the decision never to fall in love again. What good did it do? I managed to hold onto that decision for some years, but you can’t fight nature. Yet, I had come up with a clever solution, I just called it something else.

The issue of recognizing someone’s sexual preference was another matter, and difficult for me to grasp. I had to admit that I didn’t always understand it, not with girls nor with boys. Was that a bad trait? Or was it actually a good thing? Because apparently, there was something else at play in those interactions, something more noble — at least, that’s what I convinced myself of. Marco was someone who couldn’t accept defeat. I thought that was a bad quality. In a game, of course, it’s much different. I can’t handle losing, but that’s just a ‘winner’s mentality’, and that for me is perfectly okay.

You can also consider infatuation as a game. But it becomes a difficult exercise because then, with whom are you playing? With yourself, that’s the only honest answer. In that case, not being able to lose gracefully remains a harmful, barren trait.


As I pondered, the story of Dieuwe Dingks came to mind — a matter I must have repressed for a long time because it took great effort to remember when I last thought of him. He’s no longer alive, which undoubtedly plays a role, and it was over half a century ago: Paris, May 1968, to be precise. Dieuwe and I studied at the same university, he mathematics and I musicology. We were young, not yet twenty, and the world was on fire. The war in Vietnam, student uprisings at the Sorbonne, the Provos. We decided to go to the heart of it all, to speak with anarchist leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who had expressed strong criticism of the French Minister of Education for ignoring issues surrounding student sexuality. Especially Dieuwe saw this as a fundamental matter, and I only understood why later on. With just backpacks, we left by train for Paris, booked a bed in a youth hostel, and took to the streets. Soon, it became clear that we were not seasoned activists, and after a few blows from a police baton, we called it quits. Naturally, we never got to speak with Cohn-Bendit. We stayed a few more days, keeping a safe distance from the ‘front’, and then our money ran out too. We slinked away to Gare du Nord and caught the first train back to Amsterdam.


At some point, during our journey back in the train, the conversation turned to the definition of two parallel lines. I’m not sure how we exactly got onto this topic, but the fact that it came to my mind at this very moment, has undoubtedly to do with the conversation I earlier had with Marco. The definition of two parallel lines — in a flat plane, as it must be noted! — which I had learned in school, was that these lines intersect at infinity. Dieuwe completely disagreed with this. ‘That’s an outdated definition,’ he claimed, ‘because if they intersect at infinity, then they never intersect. That is simpler. Science benefits from simplicity. The Razor of Occam!’ He was the mathematician, so I took his word for it.


“But maybe my definition is more interesting,” I suggested, “you can consider two lovers as parallel ‘lines’ or ‘worlds’ — they meet each other in the infinite, like Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Daphnis and Chloe, Eros and Psyche, Pyramus and Thisbe…”


I remember very well that after my proposal, he started to look quite uneasy, he became nervous and started to stare out the window for a while. When I asked him if something was wrong, he began to stutter and stumble. At first, he struggled to produce a coherent sentence, but when he saw my concern, the words finally came out. He was in love. His face displayed a deep red blush of embarrassment, and he had developed blotches on his neck. ‘But that’s great!’ I exclaimed, ‘How wonderful for you!’ Yet there was no sign at all to suggest that he agreed with me.

Dieuwe was Flemish, originating from Antwerp. His parents moved to Brussels, and he came to study in Amsterdam. He was a somewhat pale young man, with the typical appearance of a ‘nerd’: high forehead, thin flaxen hair, budding beard on his small chin, sunken cheeks, clever eyes without any hint of irony, and a high-pitched voice. But he didn’t have protruding ears.
 By the way, the ‘word that came out’ turned out not to be the announcement that he was in love, but rather whom he had fallen in love with: another boy named Fedde Leige, whom he had met in Brussels. His parents knew nothing about it, nor did Fedde’s parents. Love between people of the same sex was still a major taboo in those days. Both boys found it difficult enough to confide in each other, and even in themselves. Nevertheless, they bravely chose each other. This meant secret rendezvous, preferably somewhere in a park or forest, because even cafes didn’t feel like safe territory.


Het ‘hoge woord’ bleek overigens niet de mededeling te zijn dat hij verliefd was, maar op wie: een andere jongen, die luisterde naar de naam Fedde Leige, een jongen die hij in Brussel had leren kennen. Zijn ouders wisten van niets, de ouders van Fedde ook niet, de liefde tussen personen van dezelfde sekse was in die dagen nog een groot taboe. Beide jongens vonden het al lastig genoeg het aan elkaar, en eigenlijk ook zichzelf, toe te vertrouwen. Maar ze hadden desondanks moedig voor elkaar gekozen. Dit betekende heimelijke afspraakjes, het liefst ergens buiten in de natuur, want ook cafeetjes voelden geen veilig terrein.


The decision continue his study in Amsterdam was certainly influenced by his sexual orientation. Fedde also planned to join Dieuwe there, for completing his study in mathematics. Homosexuality was much more accepted in Amsterdam at that time than in any other city.


I took his hand and said, ‘I hope you both grow old together in love.’ In response, he spoke about his grandmother, how after her husband’s death, she had placed his wedding ring next to hers on her finger. ‘Two parallel lines that never intersect!’ He looked at me with an uncertain but heartfelt smile and continued, ‘Your know-it-all mathematician friend.’


Two days later, early in the morning, he stormed into my room unexpectedly. ‘I had such an intense and insane dream last night!’ His incoherent account is difficult to summarize, but from what I gathered, it began with his grandmother’s wedding ring transforming into a gigantic railway line around the equator. Initially, it belonged to Earth, but eventually it turned out to be an unknown planet somewhere on the edge of the cosmos. The planet started to grow, and the train thundering along the tracks now consisted of two monorail trains, operated by Sintra and Lotides — names he had no idea where they came from. At the end the planet grew to such an extent that its diameter became infinitely large, causing its surface to be a flat plane. That was when the planet and the two monorails disappeared into a black hole, and Dieuwe woke up.


“You were right with your definition on parallel lines,” Dieuwe said, “yours is not only much more enjoyable but also truer from the perspective of love.” Without further comment or waiting for my response, he rushed out of my room and vanished.


I never saw or spoke to him again after that. I heard from friends that he had returned to Brussels. Two years later, a fellow student gave me an article from a Walloon newspaper about the consequences of a tragic train accident near La Louvière. On March 25, 1969, two trains collided head-on as a result of disregarding a red signal. Around fifteen people were killed. Dieuwe was on the train from Brussels, and his beloved Fedde was on the one from Bergen.

— Bonnemort, Februari 23, 2023