• • •
The morning of departure you feel nothing. This is how it should be, must be: the curious absence of feeling on the morning for which there had been so much preparation; drinking your hot chocolate, only half aware of the voices and faces of aunts and cousins you are leaving behind. Should a spoon feel different in one’s hand this morning? Everything is unnatural. Immune to the excitement that possesses relatives accompanying you to the station. It’s their day. You are departing and invulnerable. Unresponsive to their asking eyes. Cousins’ babble, aunts’ sentimentalities and repeated commentary that today was the day, crying out, “You are leaving us!” Voices repeating the old instructions and what to tell her father in Paris and what things to remember—none of this annoyed. It was the same pleasant numbness like before you were operated on. This is how it must happen, at such moments you should be absent. It’s like when your tonsils are taken out.
On the train platform just before mounting the wagon, the numbness was shattered by the hissing steam and sudden excitement, the real hands, bodies of the last embraces clutching, admonishing, till once again safe inside the train compartment. These last awful moments that had to be endured, standing still like a statute before the window, family cluster on the platform waving hankies, making faces, mouths shaping words. The thought occurs that the train will not move, this moment will be prolonged into eternity, of the family cluster waving handkerchiefs and Sophie standing expressionless by the window like a statue forever. Slowly the train begins to move, a jolt and a few chugs; you stand solemnly for a long time, as the train picks up speed, wheels sing, buildings fly past, now her journey was beginning.
• • •
It was a strange venture for Sophie Blind to write about what it was like to be a child in Budapest. The person who would be writing it wasn’t there, not as she was now. She was writing in English in a New York City apartment. The child was in another country, in another language. She who was writing had not been there, couldn’t be there, then. But she could go back. Sophie Blind now in New York could go back. The child cannot, never having left. There is always that part which remains, continues, captive in its moment, and another that escapes. Someone else has somehow entered into the coming moment, a shadowy figure hurrying along a train platform with a suitcase, clutching her handbag and coach tickets. A woman in a traveling cape or a child holding on to her, they blur in the steam rising from the wheels, hastening along the train platform to their coach, one among the crowd of figures, passing, unregistered, as a gentleman sitting by the window of one of the first-class coaches looks up from the page of a book to rest his eyes for a blank instant and returns to his reading.
FOUR
A BRIGHT flurry in the hall. —Mummy, look! Presents! They can’t wait, running from their suitcases, unwrap the packages themselves. Toby, all legs, laughter and flying hair, waving a woven mat before my face; Jonathan, like an apple-cheeked, curly cherub out of a painting, brings a bowl.
—I made it myself, do you like it Mummy?
—Lovely...I’m astonished at their splendid, solid limbs.
—Did you weave that, Toby?
—Sure, we have a loom, it’s easy. —Look Mom! Joshua spreading a pile of large glossy prints on the living room floor, beautiful faun-faced dancer. And the way his eyes light up suddenly, the bold ironic look like Ezra’s old magic in the room.
—Joshua, is that you?
—And here I play a drunken peasant. I helped direct it too. Can we mount them and hang them up?
—Mummy where are you going to put my bowl?
—Oh Mummy you must buy me some yarn...
—Children, take off your coats, you’ve just arrived...
—I’m going to see my room.
—Me too.
—And then let’s talk...
—Did you know Cherie had a colt and we named it “Especially-me”?...and did I write you about the bears? Yes! They really come right up to the fence.
—Say, the apartment looks nice!
—So let’s talk, Mom. Any good movies in town?
My ears hum. Enlarged to a mere outline, I’m barely in the room reading Jonathan his father’s postcard.
Here for a visit from their Adirondacks country childhood; they’ve found the TV and their doodads, discovered the goodies in the fridge and poke around my desk. The word “home” still rings strange. They unpack their toilet kits and I give them each a towel...
Cornflakes under the sofa, footprints on the wall, the doorknobs sticky with jam...Why is Jonathan’s shoe on my desk? Toby rushes down the corridor to look at herself in the hall mirror, got up in my fur hat and textured tights.
—Gross! she shrieks. Oh gross!
—On you it looks good. Now will you please sweep up—
—I will. I will, she sings, rushing off. —Anyway it wasn’t me.
—Jonathan, put away...He can’t; Joshua tied him up in his sleeping bag, he is happy regressing. —Oh Joshua, you beast! Joshua come here! Doesn’t hear; glued to the idiot tube in his room, shades drawn, crouches hypnotized at the foot of the unmade bed surrounded by comics, candy wrappers, half-eaten cupcakes and empty Coke bottles. Looks up absently.
—So what are the plans? Can we go to Palisades Park?
—Children I want you to settle down.
—But Mummy, we’re on vacation!
A small delegation from another
