When she comes down the stairs with a large bag of garbage in one hand and dishes in the other, her father has woken up. He sits up and gratefully looks at Mia. Mia rinses out the glass and the dish. She wants to place them somewhere at the very back of the shelf. But, after thinking for a while, she goes out on the doorstep and smashes first the glass against the clay step, then the dish. Her father looks on in relief as she sweeps up the shards and discards them in the garbage. Then Mia very carefully ties up the black bag and heaves it on her back. As if it were a bagful of just recently mowed grass.

On her second visit to her mother Mia was surprised at the gate by the unusual absence of patients in the hospital garden.

An older female orderly, who explained to her that the free regime had been terminated for a while, opened the ward door for her with a removable door handle.

“Give them a taste of freedom, and they immediately run to Saint Peter,” she mumbled. “They think they’ll find something better there.”

Mia found her mother in a highly agitated and worried state. One of her legs was shaking and, when she spoke, her language was often jumbled. As she walked along the corridor to the common kitchen, she held onto Mia’s hand. In compliance with her mother’s wishes, they sat down in the far corner behind an artificial plant. Leaning her elbows on the greenish oilcloth, mother bent close to Mia and in a half-whisper said:

“The baroness jumped into the pool. And drowned herself. For real.”

Even though this bit of news was sad, seeing her mother’s grimaces, it again made Mia laugh. When children tire of playing, they call an end to it and try to invent something to do “for real.”

“Dread-dread-dreadful,” her mother continued in the same half whisper. “It’s not deep there but she shoved her face into that bilge and just gulped it down, just gulped it down. So that noone would take it away from her. Dread-dread-dreadful … And then one of the orderlies pulled her out and turned her upside down, for the water to flow out. And then he turned her right side up, and glug glug! The water came out. Her mouth open, and you could only see the white of her eyes. Finished. Dreadful …”

The words slid by Mia’s ears. For the first time she saw fear in her mother’s face. Buried underground water in Mia rose upward. The ground water of fear, which had collected from her first conscious memory – her mother was dying. Death was right here. As a child she had not known that you could play with death. But then, her mother had accustomed her to it, although the fear rose up with each new instance as if it were the first time. Take a hold of yourself. Clench your hands, to stop shaking. Open the door to the upstairs room. See the slanting beam. And that bright orange nylon housecoat belt with the small, totally foolish tied little noose at the end swaying lightly in the attic breeze. And her mother sitting under it on a wooden bench calmly smoking …