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so unlike actual children I couldn't cry or mourn for them. It was all too much. I could no longer take anything in.
    "Do you know what I am saving up for? For a crypt. It'll be as big as the whole world, and there won't be another as beautiful anywhere. Every window will have different-coloured glass, and there'll be shelves in it, and a coffin on every shelf — my father, my mother, the twins, me, and, if Józsi's boy stays true to me, the other two places could be his. I started saving up for it even before the war, but then I needed the money for something else. They asked for it, for a good cause, so I gave it, it didn't matter. I saved up again. It was stolen, but I started again. I've always got money coming in. A certain person sends it to me from abroad. And then I've never in all my life been a day without work. There's enough now for the crypt. Every time I go to a funeral I look to see if there's a building like the one I'm planning; but there never is. Mine will be different from all the rest. You'll see, when the sun rises and sets, what wonderful bands of light it will throw through the coloured windows on to the coffins. My heirs will be able to build a crypt that everyone will stop and stand before. Do you believe me?"
VIOLA
    It has always been important to me to lead a full emotional life: to have those who are closely connected to me show pleasure when we meet. Emerence's perfect indifference the next morning didn't exactly wound my pride, but was a disappointment after that surreal night, when she had stayed by my side and revealed her childhood self to me. I had slept free from care and anxiety, and by dawn I felt the world was a sane place after all. Not for a minute did I doubt that the operation would be a success, so completely had her words dissolved my fear. Before that night, her headscarf had concealed every important detail of her life; now she had become the central figure in a wild rural landscape, with the blazing sky behind her, charred corpses before her, and sheet lightning over the sweep of the farmyard well. I truly believed that at last something had been resolved between us, that Emerence would no longer be a stranger but a friend: my friend.
    She was nowhere to be seen, either in the apartment when I awoke, or in the street when I set off for the hospital; but there was evidence of her handiwork in the section of pavement outside the front door swept clean of snow. Obviously, I told myself in the car, she was making her rounds of the other houses. I wasn't distressed, or heartbroken. I felt that only good news awaited me at the hospital, as indeed it did. I was out until lunchtime. Arriving home, rather hungry, I was sure she'd be sitting there in the apartment, awaiting my return. I was wrong. I was faced with the disconcerting experience of walking into my own home, bearing news of life and death, and no-one to share it with. Our Neanderthal ancestor learned to weep the first time he stood in triumph over the bison he had dragged in and found no-one to tell of his adventures, or show his spoils to, or even his wounds. The apartment stood empty. I went into one room after another, looking for her, even calling out her name. I didn't want to believe that, on this of all days, when she didn't even know if my patient was alive or dead, she could be somewhere else. The snow had stopped falling. There could be nothing in the street requiring her attention. And yet she was nowhere to be found.
    I went into the kitchen, suddenly no longer hungry, and began to warm up my lunch. Logic told me that I had no right to what I expected from the old woman, but logic can't screen out everything, certainly not such unexpected feelings of loss and sheer disappointment. She didn't clean for us at all that day. I found the blanket lying rumpled on the sofa, just as it had been when I had crawled out from under it. I tidied up the apartment. I even washed the floor. Then I went off to the hospital again,