At Grandmother’s it was sometimes wrong to ask for paper and pencil. It was a day on which it was forbidden to draw and she saw in her grandmother’s face that she had done something terribly wrong in asking, even if she couldn’t understand what it was.
Sabbath wasn’t like Sunday. You woke up and it was Sunday. But you had to wait all Friday for the Sabbath; nobody was sure when it began. Uncle Benji was showing her how to draw a horse. Omama said it was time to put the drawing away because of Sabbath. “Look how dark it is.” It wasn’t Sabbath yet, Uncle Benji said. It was a cloudy day. He looked at his watch—it’s only four-thirty. “Look in the newspaper,” she said.
“We still have over an hour,” he said. Just a little over an hour! It was late. The table had to be set. They put away the paper and pencils hurriedly.
“Is it now?” she asked Uncle Benji. No, it was not. It was coming.
At Grandmother’s house dark, glossy furniture filled the room. From morning till late afternoon there were visitors coming and going: bearded men in black with pale shiny faces, wide-rimmed hats and thick lips, their voices high-pitched and full of sudden shrieks and gurgles, to whom she served red wine and offered sweets which they always declined. They spoke excitedly in a foreign language as if they had just arrived from another country with bad news or a secret message.
She didn’t like to sleep over at her grandmother’s because the Sabbath was in her house. It wasn’t anywhere else. She looked out the window from the dark room and saw the street lights and stores lit, cars moving, people moving about. At Grandmother’s she felt like she was outside the city.
She was drawing a battle scene: a whole row of men blown into a black cloud, the last one, running, a huge bloodflower in place of his head.
It’s not nice that picture, Grandmother said. Papi asked her questions and then explained the drawing to her. He spoke a foreign language, pointing to parts of his body that other people thought shameful. But she liked the story he told about Matushka the peasant boy who blew up trains with dynamite in the time of Franz Josef. She drew him very handsome with black hair to his shoulders and a red vest. What did dynamite look like, she asked Uncle Benji; he was her father’s youngest brother and more like a cousin. He drew a giant candle, then a pack of candles. She copied, drawing the wicks carefully. Why was Matushka holding sticks of dynamite in a picture showing a train already blown up? Papi asked in a voice that was sure her answer would prove his point. “For the next train,” she said. “He has lots,” she said angrily.
She lived in a red stucco house with a garden. Her father worked all week. Sundays they spent together, going on long walks, or to the zoo, or the children’s theater. Afterward, they visited at Grandmother’s. Her father and she were close; they looked alike, that’s what everybody said who met them on the street. She looked like him and was smart like him. Sometimes they asked about her mother. Was Kamilla still in Italy? Was she back from Austria?
Sophie was surprised if she found her mother sitting in the dining room when she entered. She was used to finding the dining room empty in the afternoons so that she could steal cookies locked in the buffet that she took with her to the meadow. Her mother wore a knitted dress and she was writing in a book, her hands seemed carved out of ivory, very beautiful, not like other people’s hands. She hovered around her mother. She bounced on the upholstered chair, circled around the table, banged against her mother’s chair, but didn’t have the courage to push her mother’s elbow; nothing made Sophie so angry as when someone pushed her arm and it ruined the page. She resolved to be so obnoxious that her mother would take her notebook into another room. She jumped from the window sill so that the chandeliers trembled.
“Can’t you see how bad I am!” she cried out finally, and left the room.
The house was empty; it was all hers. Her mother was away. Sometimes she gave bridge parties in the house. That always upset Sophie, to see the quiet room filled with smoke and shrieking people; bridge tables set up and chairs from other parts of the house brought in. She came in; painted women cackled over her. Servants hurried, passing around things on trays too high for her to reach. She ran out again. While she was at kindergarten or out playing the house was transformed.
She peeked into the room on the other side of the bathroom when she woke up. Sometimes the shades were drawn, instead of the great big room there was a smaller dark bedroom. Her mother lay in a big bed. She saw her blond curls, a stocking over her eye; heard her snore and closed the door. But other mornings the sun was pouring into the room. She ran to the window overlooking the garden; she felt the soft blue velvet of the divan. She touched a gilded leaf on the mirror frame. She went to the
