Andrea turned towards the bed, her arm oiled to her elbow, endowed with the strength of gods, yet she felt feeble. She wanted just to grab her daughter and run away, but then she realized that the farmers couldn’t run from their traditions, their responsibilities, their job. They had come there with Hugó to get a taste of the country life; well, this was it.

‘It’ll be quick, my love,’ she said to her daughter, but Emese didn’t answer, she just squeezed her mouth tightly shut. There was something in her eyes that Andrea interpreted as hate. Not a child’s hate, but a woman’s.

‘Open up, please,’ Erzsébet said pleadingly, but Emese just squeezed tighter in defiance. This couldn’t be happening, she wouldn’t submit her mouth, her throat, not any part of herself to these people. Not even to her mother, who had now become a stranger.

‘Goddamn these city people,’ Mama hissed, and Andrea felt ashamed because she and her daughter were city people, worthless, and she had no idea what to do. Mama did; she covered Emese’s nose with her wrinkled hand.

Emese would have put up a fight to brush the old fingers off her nose, but the handcuffs kept her down, and Erzsébet sat on her legs so she wouldn’t kick. Soon she needed air. She hated herself. She opened her mouth.

‘Now, for god’s sake!’ Mama shouted, and Andrea pushed her oily hand into Emese’s mouth. She closed her eyes at the last moment as Erzsébet had instructed her, since the sight of it only confuses the heart.

Emese screamed, but her voice was instantly muffled by her mother’s hand, her fingers creeping towards Emese’s throat. Emese felt as if burning spiders were running around in her mouth and her throat, then she couldn’t scream anymore.

Andrea’s blouse was soaked with sweat. She knew she mustn’t stop, not now, but it was so hard. She tried to take no notice of the body, her own daughter’s body, which kept writhing beneath her, struggling with every ounce of its strength. But what right did that body have to fight her? Hadn’t it been torn out of Andrea, the screaming infant pulled by expert hands from her own flesh, just like the larvae were pulled from the ground by farmers? Didn’t that make Andrea the owner of Emese’s body; doesn’t a mother own her daughter’s flesh, and with that, her spirit? At that thought, something clicked in her mind.

Now she could feel that her hand had slipped beyond Emese’s flesh, beyond her throat, beyond her body. The snail oil had opened the gate separating matter from the essence of life.

‘That’s it,’ she heard Mama’s voice from a distance. ‘Now search for it.’