The Door

by Magda Szabó

“So, are you surprised that my mother threw herself down the well? It was all she needed, a sight like this, and my hysterical screaming. I was screaming so loud that when the storm stopped I could be heard as far away as the main road, and of course the house. Mother ran out, barefoot and still in her nightgown. She hurled herself at me, and beat me. She had no idea I’d been running away from her tears and bad temper, her endless worrying and complaining. She didn’t know what she was doing. In her despair, she wanted to hit out and destroy, to strike the nearest living thing as a way of striking at life itself. Then she saw the twins and realised why I had called her. For a second her face blazed, then she flashed past me and sped away in the rain, her wild hair trailing along the ground behind her, screeching like a bird. “I saw what she was going to do, but I couldn’t move. I stood there, next to the tree and the corpses. The thunder and lightning had stopped. If I’d run for help at that moment they might have saved her. Our house was right by the main road — the threshing yard was just beyond the garden — but I stood there as if bewitched, my mind blank. My brow was dripping wet, but my brain had gone numb. No-one could love the way I loved those two little ones. I stared at the stumps. I still couldn’t make myself believe I had anything to do with them. I didn’t cry for help. I stood there gaping, and then began to wonder vaguely what my mother was doing all that time...