Divorcing

small gasps and groans, as she stood frozen, her head bent, her back stiffened, as if anticipating a blow. She stood at once frozen and torn between fear and desire to be struck by this woman who dared not strike her only because of her father who was too good. She was at once troubled, and relieved that no injury was done to her flesh. But as the danger diminished, more troubled than relieved, because she couldn’t grasp what really held her mother back. Was it really her father, preoccupied with a patient in a room in another part of the house? She wanted to picture it as something solid. The invisible wall between herself and this woman, protecting her; the invisible leash holding Mother back, allowing her to claw and spring only so far and no further, troubled Sophie, forming pictures in her mind which didn’t apply.

Her mother stood by the dresser dabbing her eyes, still crying. Sophie waited till her sobs were subdued. It was hard for her not to feel sad for her mother. For now she was a very pitiful woman, crying, lost to her sadness, totally alone, oblivious of Sophie, her rage at Sophie quite forgotten. Her forlornness had both beauty and ugliness. Sophie couldn’t tell whether she was more beautiful or ugly, only that she was pitiful...Sometimes while she stood thus, waiting for her mother to collect herself, afraid simply to leave the room, she had time to ask herself a host of questions she couldn’t answer. Shouldn’t she comfort her mother? Why couldn’t she? How would she go about it if she could? But she didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. She didn’t comfort her mother. Whatever held her back said in her mustn’t when she felt very sorry; or said won’t or can’t when her mother’s head turned slightly and their eyes crossed; Sophie could not grasp it. It was what her mother had said of her, which was so terrifying her mother didn’t have a word for it. Heartless, inhuman, unnatural—these were the words grasped merely to express her incomprehension before what she saw in her child, whose reality only she, Sophie, could grasp and feel because she embodied the unspeakable, incomprehensible evil. It didn’t feel like anything. It was the feeling of her body as a lot of bones, tubes, stomach, lungs, heart, intestines all packed together.

Her mother was seated before her dresser; she pulled out all the drawers searching for something with quick nervous movements, her look preoccupied. She didn’t find what she was looking for. She flung a scarf angrily on the floor.

“I am going out in the garden,” Sophie said, turning to go.

Her mother looked up, holding a bunch of tangled silk hose she had just lifted from the drawer, frozen midair.

“Didn’t you come to me because you wanted something—” Her voice was weighted with fatigue, indifference, only the suggestion of a taunt came through the rough edge of leftover rage.

She said the title of the book and went out.

SCHOOL gives childhood an unanticipated sanction and dignity. You enter a new existence—formal, public, regulated; here you will spend the next twelve years of your life, progressing from grade to grade. Here you wear a uniform, a sailor blouse over a pleated skirt, dark blue like all the girls of your class.

It’s a magical and exalted world. The days become different under the tutelage of those big round clocks; the bells, the hours, every segment has its characteristic activity: color, bodily sensations, excitement and boredom. It’s like the seasons only cut up smaller, the same sense of return, knowing that you will come back to Monday afternoon reading class next week.

Sitting in class was like being on a trolley whose route you knew, anticipating the familiar stations; a certain turn particularly thrilling, dull stretches when you can daydream. School was like that. There was the pleasure of being told what to do and then of doing it with only now and then an instant of fright which always had to do with the hand of the clock and with time moving while she stopped to think about what color to draw the roof, and the sudden realization that time moved while she stopped was like falling off a moving thing.

Silent reading always produced an acute distress. The clock ticking in a silent room, one felt the earth hurtling through space, the Chinese standing on the other side hanging upside down, one heard the blood pounding in one’s ear and at different points of the body a voice that said: “Time is passing time is passing time is passing.” Against such discomforts there are remedies like drawing secretly under the desk or turning pages when teacher isn’t looking, or methodically studying the children’s legs crossed, uncrossed, socks, shoes.

Every morning before class they stood very straight and solemn beside their desks singing the national anthem:

I believe in one God.

I believe in one country.

I believe in a divine, eternal justice.

I believe in the resurrection of Hungary.

The big flag standing in the corner was unrolled while they sang, one student kept the pole upright and another held the cloth straight. There was a gold crown embroidered on the white ground in heavy gilt thread. It roused mysterious, joyous feelings, uniting pleasures of winter and summer: snow, chocolate Santa Claus wrapped in gold paper and the fireworks on St. Stephen’s Day. The map on the wall showed the greater, or resurrected Hungary, a thin black line indicating the present boundaries established after the First World War.

It was exciting drilling for air attacks, trying on gas masks. Her father said it was nonsense, propaganda. Lies. War was ugly. He had lived through a war, fighting on the side of the Dynasty. He saw the revolution and counterrevolution. It was a lot of nonsense. Stalin was important.

Everyone was sure there would be a gas war. Which country was preparing the attack wasn’t clear. One of Hungary’s neighbors, maybe, or was Hungary preparing a war? On the way