Every morning she and her mother went shopping, each with a headscarf and a sturdy shopping bag. Her mother shopped for the best cuts of meat at the butcher: men who work hard need a solid meal, she explained. Helga served ‘a solid meal’ for her husband at precisely six o’clock every evening. But from the moment he left in the morning until that hour, she rarely thought of him. When the shopping and cleaning were done, she sat at the window with some darning that was meant to distract her from the fact that she was sitting there idly, while the people in the street all seemed to have so much to do. From her protected, hidden spot behind the curtain, she observed them with interest and seriousness, the way she had, before Egon, observed all men with brown eyes. She was filled with vague curiosity: Where were they going? Why were they so busy? Although she didn’t realize it, she was lonely. She often thought about her mother, because, in Helga’s eyes, she was a person, unlike everyone else, who never changed. It was a kind of respite for Helga to be with her mother. Mother and child. Comfort. She loved recalling her childhood. She liked hearing her mother talk about things that had happened. Her mother talked a lot. The sentences streamed from her, forming sturdy frames around distant, blurry landscapes. Often she said, ‘You are doing so well. You should appreciate it more, but you always have been ungrateful.’ ‘Ungrateful how?’ Helga asked. Then she always got the story about all the tears she had shed when she received gifts. ‘In the end, we were simply afraid to buy you anything,’ her mother said. And there in the twilight they sat, shaking their heads at the thought of this unappreciative child who had cried over gifts that would have delighted other children. They talked about this mystery in the same tone one might use to talk about getting over scarlet fever: Good heavens, you were so sick, we thought you might never get over it!

Most of all, Helga loved hearing about everything that was outside the parameters of her own memory: about the first words she’d spoken, when she’d been toilet-trained, and so on – things that did not differentiate her at all from any other child a mother might talk about. Her mother liked to end these stories by getting up and gathering her belongings as she remarked: Well, we won’t be seeing those times again, or some similar generalization spoken in a tone devoid of complaint, but that left a small rip in the veil that lay over Helga’s innermost being, like the membrane around an unborn child.