‘The essentials,’ she said, and she was right. ‘Whatever is sensible, smooth, straight, or flat.’

When he wasn’t disturbing her, she read. She was fond of verse that rhymed properly and of highly condensed, cramped text in small books, where the pages were utilized fully and economically by certain essayists, philosophers, and memoirists who understood the rare art of keeping to the point. She detested novels and short stories. They were a waste of time. They kept people from real life. They were meandering and uneven. Rubbish!

When she was reading, it was totally quiet in the house. Sometimes she appeared in the hall, and they emerged from the doorways of their rooms, breathless with listening and lurking.

‘Young people need to enjoy themselves,’ she said. ‘They have to get it over with before it’s too late.’

Then they got their shirts and handkerchiefs and went out to enjoy themselves, with their aging, dispirited faces. She never asked where they had been or when they got back. ‘Other mothers,’ she said. They guiltily swallowed the large pieces of meat, ashamed of their clean nails with their bright, white half-moons, embarrassed by their smooth-shaven chins.

She showed him the household budget. ‘The butcher, the baker, the grocer,’ she said, stabbing a broad, dry, squarish nail down on each soundless entry. ‘Okay,’ he said quickly, blushing. ‘It’s not really necessary –’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said with her smooth, flat abdomen at the same height as his nose. ‘It must be done. We have to get it over with.’

‘Mother,’ they said.

Then they fell silent again under her inquisitive look, because there was never anything essential they needed her for, no topic of a concrete nature which they could lay out quickly and precisely. Then they said, ‘Where are the shirts? Where are the handkerchiefs?’ Her response calmed them. For a moment it cleared the burden of guilt from their hearts, making it less difficult to breathe. And they stared at her constantly from their secret corners, from their storm-swept tower chambers, from the horrible crookedness of their souls, trapdoors, and unsmoothable wrinkles. ‘Rubbish!’ she said. ‘Trivialities! Get to the point!’

‘Grow up,’ she said.

And all their lives they stood listening, anxiety-ridden, not far from her, while in the evening she tore apart silk ribbons and letters. There was no end to it, and they never gave a thought to who emptied the waste basket and took out the garbage. It was completely inessential. Maybe it was their wives, maybe a housekeeper –

A Fine Business