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because she wasn’t too keen on watching shovels at work and by the time the gravediggers covered the pit she was sitting in the much-tried leather armchair in Comrade Fenyő’s office, asking whether the Party was pleased with her; after all, though her correspondence had been unsuccessful, she did draw the right conclusion from it, namely, her daughter was not simply a stray sheep, but a downright traitor to her country who in the interest of her career was unscrupulously ready to betray not only her own mother but also the entire working class. A miserable nobody, a worthless little strumpet. And as Comrade Fenyő probably knows already, my mother said, she had not just broken off contact with her, but for her, as of that moment, her daughter was dead. Therefore, both as a mother and as an actress, she once again complied with socialist morality. For a while the party secretary thought my mother was pulling his leg, making a mockery of everything he stood for, and was reassuring the comrade actress that the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party would not put up with such an attitude, but within seconds, he realized that my mother’s remarks were not cynical in the least, that she most seriously meant every word she had said. And then he spat in my mother’s face.
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    She dropped her work permit into the sewer just outside the backstage door as if it were only a candy wrapper emptied of its sweet stuffing, but when she got home she hardly had the strength to close the shutters. Shemanaged to kick off her sandals, undo the buttons of her silk suit before she plopped down on the bed.
    I’ve got a migraine, bring me a wet cloth, she said.
    I’m moving out, Mother, I said.
    I see, she said, and while she stumbled out to the bathroom for a wet towel, I threw some clean laundry into my bag.
    From the door I looked back at her, lying in the darkened room among the bits of scenery she had falsely called the Weér inheritance. The silk jacket has slid off her belly, in place of her face only a wet rag. Her nakedness was like that of the dead, in whom only the corpse washer and God take any delight. I wouldn’t have cared if instead of tears, Comrade Fenyő’s saliva had spilled from my eyes, if only I could feel something. But I only felt I was suffocating. If I don’t get out of here now, I never will. At least I should hate her, I thought. The way Judit did, I thought. Or as did the wives, full of sedatives, who, through the small window of the crematorium would love to watch her and her silk suit becoming charred while they press the faces of their husbands to the fireproof glass and say, take a good look at her, you can still climb in and fuck her.
    I’m leaving now, Mother, I repeated, not really addressing her but the wet rag stuck to her face.
    I’ll lock the door, I said and locked the door, and then walked to József Boulevard though I had no idea where I should go. Then I remembered that not long ago the Krémers had offered me the use of their peasant house – anytime I wanted.
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    That was the period when peasant houses, with their adobe walls, fresh air, and farm wagons decorated with flowers in the courtyards, were becoming fashionable. The peasants were amazed at how eagerly these Budapestintellectuals were traipsing around in the mud, how expertly they repaired collapsed earthenware ovens, painted brown old hay carts and adorned them with geraniums, ingeniously transformed stinking sauerkraut kegs into tables, milking pails into chairs, and made reading lamps out of broken pottery. How enthusiastically the little ones splashed about in the kneading troughs while their fathers sharpened the scythe with an iron rasp and their mothers smeared the baker’s peels with boat varnish. The peasants were agape when the female presenter on TV was simultaneously reading the latest news in the studio and planting