Free The Door by Magda Szabó Page B

couldn't receive him here on her own doorstep did little to deepen the mystery in which she wrapped herself like a shawl. I shrugged my shoulders. Yes, this person could come. I only hoped I wouldn't have to hang around waiting — she'd already asked me to be at home so she wouldn't be alone with the visitor.
    Walking home, I asked myself how I was going to get my husband to agree to it. He loathed anything that was not straightforward, especially situations that were open-ended, uncertain, ill-defined. But instead of raising objections, or putting his foot down, he laughed. He found something bizarre in the idea. It stirred his writer's imagination. Emerence and the visitor she wanted to entertain here! Perhaps she was looking for a husband. Maybe the visitor was replying to a lonely hearts ad, and Emerence, who never opened the door to her own home, was bringing him here to look him over? Let him come! He was almost sorry he wouldn't be there himself. He wasn't worried about leaving us in the apartment with a perfect stranger. Viola would tear anyone who attacked us limb from limb. Hearing his name, the dog gave my husband's hand an enthusiastic lick and rolled over for us to rub his belly. It was difficult to get used to the fact that he understood everything.
    On the appointed day, Emerence was like a madwoman restraining herself with an iron will. Viola, who picked up everyone else's mood, was also far from normal. The old woman brought plates and bowls of every sort, all on covered trays. This infuriated me and I asked her why she was parading her things down the street if the banquet required such secrecy? She wasn't a leper, and clearly neither was her guest, so why couldn't they use our plates and forks? There was the sideboard — she could take whatever she wanted. She could lay the table with my mother's best crockery and silver. Did she think I'd mind?
    She didn't thank me, but she took note. She never forgot a gesture, friendly or otherwise. She replied that she wasn't trying to hide anything, she just didn't want the person to see that she lived alone, without any family around her; and she didn't wish to explain why she never opened her door, or why she lived the way she did.
    As she was laying the table in my mother's room, I suddenly decided to say something that I had been meaning to for ages. She was setting out the cold meat and salad — she could bring a touch of magic even to the laying out of food — and I asked her if she had ever considered the idea of speaking to a medical expert about her symptoms: shutting the world out of her home couldn't be called rational behaviour. Doctors would have a name for this compulsion, or whatever it was; it was obviously curable. "A doctor," she said, fixing her eyes on me as she polished the long-stemmed champagne glasses she kept for special occasions. "I'm not ill, and the way I live doesn't hurt anyone. Anyway, you know I can't stand doctors. Let me be. I don't like it when you lecture me. If I ask for something and you give it, do it without preaching a sermon, otherwise there's no point."
    I left her, went into the bedroom and put on a record so as not to hear what I couldn't see. By then I had had quite enough of this arrangement. One day, I thought, Emerence would get us into real trouble. She was clearly off her head. Who was she bringing here? If I hadn't known the dog was there I would have been really worried. And why on earth did she need champagne glasses for this clandestine meeting? I didn't like my own secrets. I liked other people's even less.
    The music that flooded out from the record screened everything. Two rooms stood between mine and my mother's, where she had laid out her feast. I'd read, or rather leafed through, about fifty pages when I began to be suspicious. Emerence had indicated that she wanted me to meet the stranger, but where was this guest? And what was going on all this time, in total silence? Even Viola was quiet. Had the