His skin smelled funny in the water. He smelled different wet than dry, that’s what always struck her first when Papi appeared in the bath; she found him or he found her, they were always losing each other. Most of the time she was alone. But sometimes he suddenly surprised her in the water; or she found him sitting somewhere smoking a cigaret and reading the newspaper. He had a special waterproof case for money, matches, cigarets.
He talked a lot about what a great athlete he used to be, how he practiced diving when he was a young man. She wanted to see him do it. Muscles and good looks, that was all nonsense, he said, what you had in your head was the important thing.
But to please her, he would show her what he could do. She could be proud of her father. See what a father she had. Play-acting with mock seriousness, maybe imitating himself as a young man to whom a flawless dive was important, imitating himself and other people, he took up various positions on the diving board—the matinee idol, the fat middle-aged Jew deciding in turn for and against attempting the dive; he made Sophie laugh. He had a real actor’s sense, her father. He could get her to laugh so hard his actual diving lost importance and when she didn’t care any more whether he dived or not, then he dived very competently and did a crawl across the pool and back. He came up the ladder dripping. Sophie wanted to see him do it again. No, it was enough, he said wiping himself, careful not to get water on the newspaper and cigarets. It was enough. Ah there was a time...Then sat smoking, once more the scientist, explaining to Sophie why she enjoyed seeing him dive.
Fat women sat or squatted in the water, engaged in lively conversation, sometimes they dipped under or splashed themselves; when they stood up in their funny bathing suits that looked like underwear they were so amazingly hideous she couldn’t help gaping at them. It was to hide their ugliness they stayed submerged, she thought. They looked at her so sternly when she gaped that Sophie learned to look from the side of her eye. She could look at people carefully while flopping her head as she frolicked in the water.
Her mother always stayed in the part with grass near the restaurant when she was at the baths. Most of the time she lay oiled on a beach chair with separate part for the feet that always collapsed when Sophie tried to sit on it. Her mother swam with great care for style and always asked her boyfriend afterward whether she was doing it well. She had different boyfriends. They all were very tanned and reminded her of Papi’s imitations of matinee idols.
She was playing in the water most all of the time; they had to drag her out of the water when they wanted to go home. Look, everyone is going, look they’re closing the pool. See the guard over there, Papi would say. She got mad when people lied to her. She didn’t want to go home. Then she was very ashamed: people were staring at her because she was screaming. When she screamed she forgot that there were people around her, she wasn’t screaming at her mother or Papi, people stopped existing and she was screaming all alone in the world, then suddenly she saw them and their looks, or just remembered the shocked and disapproving faces because she was running ahead to the trolley stop; she didn’t want anyone to see her face. When she was running very fast it was like being partly out of the world and outside herself. Sometimes it was possible to change yourself just by pressing your cheek against the window of the trolley.
*
She would be kidnapped by gypsies or simply wake up in another house with other parents who were her real parents and forget what had been just a dream. She thought this always when she was riding on the trolley. A dirty old man got on the trolley. He had trouble picking out the fare from his torn pockets. He looked bad-smelling and his eyes rolled. Please don’t let him sit down beside me, she prayed. I’ll say the national anthem ten times, dear God, if you grant me this wish. The dirty old man lurched on down the aisle and slumped in a seat in the back of the trolley. Suddenly Sophie felt very bad for that poor dirty old man who was her father in another life. She regretted her wish but she kept her end of the bargain. Then while she was murmuring, “I believe in one God, I believe in one Country, I believe in one Eternal Justice, I believe in the Resurrection of Hungary,” it struck her that one day she will forget Papi; she will be living another life and he will be a poor old nasty-smelling man she won’t recognize and won’t want to sit next to her. It made her feel very sad. She would try to be extra nice to Papi.
All the years in Budapest she thought about waking up and forgetting. It was a strange, powerful, frightening thought. However, she reflected, it was frightening only now. Once she woke up in another life she wouldn’t be afraid because she wouldn’t remember having been someone else before.
• • •
It was all very strange and difficult and wonderful to begin and have her own room in a nice villa with colored pencils and lots of paper. If only she could make up her mind about being in so many worlds. But she was of many minds. One mind said: I like to stay where I am. Where I am is the right place. Another mind liked to travel. It loved to be surprised; to lie down in one bed and
