The Door

by Magda Szabó

This book is written not for God, who knows the secrets of my heart, nor for the shades of the all-seeing dead who witness both my waking life and my dreams. I write for other people. Thus far I have lived my life with courage, and I hope to die that way, bravely and without lies. But for that to be, I must speak out. I killed Emerence. The fact that I was trying to save her rather than destroy her changes nothing.

“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 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?”

She was like someone standing in strong sunlight on a mountain top, looking back down the valley from which she had emerged and trembling with the memory still in her bones of the length and nature of the road she had travelled, the glaciers and forded rivers, the weariness and danger, and conscious of how far she still had to go. There was also compassion in that face, a feeling of pity for all the poor people below, who knew only that the peaks were rosy in the twilight, but not the real meaning of the road itself.

Once, as a child, I watched a butterfly circling round and felt the same desire to influence it, desperately willing it to land. I didn’t want to catch it, just to see it close up.

You were taught how to do a thousand things, but not to be aware of what really matters. Can’t you see that there’s no point in trying to dazzle me? I don’t want anyone unless they are completely mine.

She also demanded of me that, in my art, it should be real passion and not machinery that moved the branches. That was a major gift, the greatest of her bequests.

What did puzzle him was why the thought of breaking down the door upset me so much, when it could be fixed back on again.