Read Online Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy - Free Book Online Page B

talk about Janka.”
    â€œYou can have her,” she said, still smiling.
    â€œHave her?”
    â€œI can’t take care of her,” she said. “I don’t take care of her, Mother does, but she’s so old. Janka would be better off without me.”
    â€œWhere you live, it’s no place to raise a child. It . . .”
    â€œYour place would be so much better. Filled to the roof with money.”
    â€œLook, if it’s a question of money . . .”
    â€œAlways.” She laughed. “It’s always a question of money.”
    â€œYou’re her mother,” I said.
    She put down the bottle, and came over and looked me in the face, and opened her lips in a way that brought out her teeth. But then something slackened in her, and she grew soft, and patted the place where she’d grabbed my shirt. “Yes,” she said, “I’m her mother,” and then she put the cap back on the bottle and sat on the bed and hugged her knees to her chest.
    â€œYou could come out, too . . .” I was safe in saying that. I knew it.
    She shook her head. “And do what?” She laughed. “It’s the same out there for me as it is here.” She opened the bottle again. “There was one sailor who made it, only to find that the place he’d arrived was the place from which he’d departed.”
    â€œCould you stop it with the sailor thing? This is important. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make.”
    â€œDon’t you want to know what happened to him?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “No, I don’t.”
    She shrugged, tracing the sailor’s route with a finger along her bare thigh. “It’s why you invited me back to your place, wasn’t it?” I said. “For Janka? It’s why . . .” I looked around the decaying apartment, the missing parquets from the floor, the balloons of yellow water stains on the ceiling. “It’s why we’re always here. Why I read to her.” I shook my head. “You didn’t expect me to believe it was for me, you bringing me here?You could do much better than me. And I’m sure you do.” I knew it was all true, what I was saying, but I still expected her to contradict me.
    â€œYes,” she said. “Yes, I could do better than you.” She laughed. “I could do it easily.”
    â€œWhy then?”
    She waited. “Your wife,” she said. “The way you described her that night on the bridge. She sounds . . .” Judit smiled her widest smile. “She sounds like the one.”
    Â 
    There was a sailor who built a sea of paper. That’s how I think of Judit now, and how she was in those weeks when we were dealing with consulates, agencies, doctors, even civic politicians, all of them scratching their heads, reaching for paperwork, telling us we were going too fast, that we couldn’t get it done, that it would take up to a year, even longer, for the adoption process—that we’d need more money, there were fees and medical tests and records to be ordered and processed, even a number of “gifts and donations” to be made. And when we weren’t doing that, trying to batter a hole through that bureaucracy, then I was in some park, mainly the Városliget, playing with Janka, trying to get the girl used to me, though I think now it was just the attention she loved, attention from anybody, her mother’s blessing floating along with us wherever we went—the circus, the Vidám Park, the Szécsényi Fürd ő , the Gerbeaud—almost like a kind of anticipation, a perfume, some hint of a perfect future. Janka would slip her hand into mine, and smile, and ask question after question about Canada, about lakes, about rivers, about birds, aboutthe Arctic, that would echo in me a long time afterwards. “Yes, your mother will come visit.”
    â€œWhat if you were to just take her?”