It was troubling to see her mother so changed, so much softer, more remote and really beautiful because there was that other mother she knew in the villa with her bad daughter; her husband who treated her as a joke or a case. There were other faces and voices and a different smile in other rooms. At home she watched her mother wash. She stood in silk panties, bent over the sink, splashing water on her arms, face and breasts. She recalled her father saying it was a pleasure to look at her, she had a fine torso, and her breasts were perfect hemispheres. Then her father came in, between patients. His voice shocked Sophie; it was so raspy, unmusical; it was a jesting, mock-affectionate tone with a bit of imitation peasant, the tone he used with the dog. He said the same silly jingle he said to the dog, full of nonsense words. “On what does Pajtas fatten?” He named various foods. It ended: “Fattens most on his master’s love.” The dog loved it, he lay on his back, his paws in the air, drooling while Papi patted his white belly rhythmically. He did it to Sophie too, she never liked it and now he was patting her mother’s buttocks like the dog’s belly. She played along, then laughed at him for being such a bore. There was something very different in the ski lodge with her mother and her lover, Zoltan Vithezy; she wasn’t sure what it was because it couldn’t be hers, except she felt robbed of whatever it was. Her father couldn’t know because he didn’t have it. And her mother, who had it, always told her that her father was the sweetest and kindest man on earth. He was the person she loved most in this whole world. Whatever love Sophie had she owed to him, not to her, her mother said with so much feeling and tears in her eyes Sophie had to believe her. It was another tone she used with her father, simpering, affected, lapsing into baby talk—a tone her father detested. Her father disapproved of her mother, and Sophie was made to be her father’s ally. She was glad her mother had admirers and a nice friend like Zoltan. No matter what her mother said, and no matter what people were saying against her mother—that she was a bad wife and mother—Sophie felt her mother was a woman wronged, robbed of her child. She was relieved her mother had a lover. To think of her alone, banished from the house, was intolerable.
Zoltan Vithezy wanted to marry her mother. He was different from mother’s other boyfriends because he wasn’t so pronouncedly athletic, and handsome, and always tanned. He was tall, fair and kind; not dashing or mannered in the expected way. His smile was always surprising. Maybe he wasn’t really handsome. What struck Sophie most was that he was big. People said her father was tall but Vithezy stood at such a height that to enter through a normal doorway he had to draw in his head like a turtle for which reason he was nicknamed Teenie. Otherwise, he had no distinguishing features, unless his baldness which, however, due to his extraordinary height, went unnoticed. Sophie, who rode piggy-back on him, was in a position to note both his bald pate and the long blond hairs which still adorned it. Papi treated Zoltan in a friendly but somewhat patronizing way and he didn’t make fun of him. They had long discussions and seemed to respect each other.
Zoltan behaved toward Sophie differently from the others. Even if her mother was divinely oblivious to Sophie, sometimes Zoltan liked to pretend that they were a family. He went about it in a funny way, perhaps because Sophie was a funny little girl or because he was so tall and in a funny position. Also he was a quiet, thoughtful man, brooding, not talkative. It was her mother who would start him, joking about his being taciturn. But even though he was preoccupied with himself and then with her mother, suddenly he would want them to be three people and he went about it in a big way, lifting Sophie up and dancing—holding her by the waist while her feet dangled in the air, he waltzed or put her on his back, riding piggy-back, even when she was too big for that. They were putting on a show for her mother. Or he put on a show with her mother for Sophie. Sophie and her mother didn’t have to put on a show for him, that would have been impossible. Ordinarily, she would have been embarrassed especially to watch him putting on a show with her mother, but she was too impressed by his strength and suddenness. He lifted her mother like a feather. “Shall I throw her out the window?” he asked. She saw even her mother was stunned and confused, protesting, giggling hysterically.
She knew that she mustn’t like her mother’s lover too much even if she wasn’t clear about why. Even with Zoltan who was like a second daddy it was safer to be on joking and playing terms. Long before the divorce, her mother asked her how she’d like him for a daddy. While she was ready to oppose, displease, deny her father for a cause, she couldn’t hurt him. And to prefer another man to your father was a hurt. No one asked Sophie if she preferred Zoltan Vithezy to her father, but even to ask her if she liked him was like asking her how she felt about something she was not ready to feel, like asking you do you like oysters—someone who hasn’t tasted oysters and isn’t ready to.
THE DAY everything changed it seemed like it happened to someone else, another child, an undefined stranger, was trying to grasp the deception, the endless loss; the loss of both the world and the person to whom it naturally belonged who was
