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    I returned with my confidence boosted, resolved that when I saw her again I would tell her nothing of what the doctors had said. I wasn't going to bore her with my private affairs. She obviously wasn't interested. And how could I even be sure she'd been telling the truth, on that evening of the mulled wine? I mean, the things she said were impossible, folk ballads in prose. Why on earth was I so obsessed with Emerence? Was I insane?
    She finally looked in late that evening, and announced that more snow was promised, so she might not have time to clean tomorrow either, but she'd make it up to us when she could. Oh, and the master was better now, wasn't he? I wasn't interested in either her announcement or her inquiry. I made a show of leafing casually through my book, and said that my husband was as well as could be expected and she should feel free to go. Whereupon she did, wishing me a good and restful night. She didn't so much as clear up the empty yoghurt container I had forgotten to put in the rubbish bin, though she must have seen it. She didn't even bother to make up the fire. And she didn't come back later that night. There was no mulled wine, no fairy tale. It was two days before she appeared again. She cleaned thoroughly, and showed no further interest in the master. Obviously she knew by instinct that his condition was improving. She certainly wasn't one for needless conversation.
    After this, she spent even less time at our place. Our lives were dictated by different things, mine by the hospital, hers by the snow. I had no visitors, and spent very little time in the apartment. Finally, towards Christmas, I brought my husband home. Emerence greeted him politely and wished him a full recovery. Such was her nature, we now qualified for the convalescent's free meal. I'd not been able to get my hands on the christening bowl when we met in the street: now was my chance to take a good look. Like the mulled wine goblet, it was a real work of art. Plumply-rounded, with two handles, it perched on its own little circular stand; the ceramic, lid carried a flamboyantly executed Hungarian flag inscribed with the name and portrait of the great Kossuth. She had brought us a glistening chicken soup. She'd noticed me admiring the bowl the first time I'd seen it, she said: it was a very handy thing to have. She had been given it by one of her employers, Mrs Grossman, when the Jewish laws were in force. It wasn't used for christenings then but for seeds, but it would be a shame to use it as a flowerpot. And she had masses of porcelain and glass. The piece she'd brought the mulled wine in was also a legacy from Mrs Grossman.
    A charming legacy too, I thought with disgust. I was already irritated by her return to her earlier, formal attitude, and the one thing I didn't need was the thought of her helping herself to the contents of someone's shattered and abandoned home. During those years leading up to the Second World War I had moved in privileged political circles, mixing with people who were substantially better informed than my Hungarian neighbours about what was going on around us. If I do finally write the history of that part of my life, my earliest years — the years people don't talk about very much — the subject will not be short of interest. I knew perfectly well what was inside those cattle trains, exactly who was being taken where and for what purpose. I would happily have returned the christening bowl, but couldn't have done so without stating my reasons, and I didn't want to upset my husband. At the time I was allowing him only carefully monitored doses of reality. The thought of being fed from some knick-knack that had belonged to a destitute stranger bound for the gas chamber would have made him leap out of bed, half-dead as he was. Emerence had obviously thought, like so many others at that time, if I don't take it, I'm giving it to someone else. So I allowed her to spoon the soup out, to the