I could not even choose between the sky and my mother’s face, and my eyes roamed heavily from one to the other. Her chant, toneless, and yet indescribably sweet, went on:

Till with age my hair starts graying,

Till my locks have ceased to curl,

Let me live in joy and gladness,

Let me love a pretty girl!

Let me live my life in joy and gladness,

Let me love a pretty girl!

I felt that I had all the time in the world. In various versions, I posed myself the question: Is she mad? Can she sing really as carelessly as this when her son is dying? Or is it that the song hides her feelings? Her needle’s movement followed the pattern of the rhythm of her voice; at the end of a line or at a rest, she would gracefully and deliberately draw out her green silk thread and let it hang in the air a moment like a sunbeam. I could not tell, afterwards, if it was one or several minutes before I realized that she was silent and had looked up from her fancy-work. She rose and crossed directly to the bedroom door. I followed her.

She went to the cot and said in a whisper, not to me nor to Mrs. Henderson but to herself, “I think he’s going to die.” She touched the little boy’s forehead lightly with her fingertips. A shudder coursed through Ivan’s thin body under the bedclothes, and my mother drew back in alarm. His stifled breathing seemed to stop and then began again, a rattling, wheezing inspiration. Forgetful of my duty towards him and even of my love, I could only look on him with horror, but I was impelled to his side where I knelt down, taking his tiny wrist between my fingers. The pulse raced under my untutored touch. His sharp little face was distorted and blue; the red lips hung and the cheeks drew in. I heard someone come to the door and, thinking it was the doctor, turned in relief, but it was only Sarah. “He advised another poultice and he’s coming in half an hour.”

“Oh, Lord!” cried her mother. “I don’t know what to do. His poor little chest is raw where they’ve been.” But, although she was certain that the doctor was wrong, she was obedient to his professional orders, and went to the stove to heat the mat. I followed and opened a new shaker of mustard. The sharp smell stung my nostrils; in this one whiff seemed to be embodied all the others that I had taken in in these four long days. I lunged heavily against the stove in my sudden fatigue and burned my wrist. Instinctively, I put the hurt place to my tongue and as I did so, my mother called from the bedroom, “Sonia! Hurry! I think he’s dead.”