dare you hide it from me!?” He grinned with satisfaction. “Be glad that you got away with the little you have! I could have just taken it from you!” Esti nodded understandingly, and started slowly backing away because she feared her brother was about to hit her. “Anyway,” he added with a conspiratorial smile, “I’ve got some really cool wine here. Do you want a sip? I’ll let you have a bit. Do you want a drag of this? There.” And he extended the by-now dead cigarette towards her. Esti made a tentative effort to reach for it, but almost immediately snatched her hand back. “No? OK. Now listen, I’ll tell you something. You’ll never amount to anything. You were born a retard, and that’s what you’ll remain.” The little girl screwed up her courage. “So you. . knew?” “Knew what, bug? What the fuck did I know?” “You knew. . that. . that.. the money plant. . never. . never?. .” Sanyi lost his temper again. “What? Don’t try to put one over on me. You should have tumbled to that much earlier, you retard! You think I’m going to believe you never had a clue? You’re not that soft in the head. .” He took out a match and lit the cigarette, shielding it with his hand. “Brilliant! So you’re the one upset! Rather than being happy that I’m paying you some attention!” He blew out the smoke and blinked. “Right! Session over! I haven’t got the time to stand here debating with idiots. Scram, little baby. Scram!” and he prodded Esti with his forefinger, but the moment she set off at a run, her shouted after her. “Come back here! Closer! Closer, I said. Good. What’s that in your pocket?” He reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out the paper bag. “Fucking hell! What’s this?!” He raised the bag and examined the writing. “For fuck’s sake! This is rat poison! Where did you get this?!” Esti couldn’t get a word out. Sanyi bit his lip. “Fine. I know anyway. . It’s from the barn and you stole it! Right?” He pressed the bag. “So what did you want it for, my little retard? Be nice and tell big bro!” Esti didn’t move a muscle. “I see it now. A pile of dead bodies back home, right?” the boy continued, laughing. “And I’m next in line, eh? OK. Now let’s see if you have a spark of courage in you! There you are!” He pushed the bag back in the cardigan pocket. “But be careful. I’ve got my eyes on you!” Esti started running towards the bar, waddling a little, like a duck. “Easy now! Be careful!” Sanyi shouted after her: “Don’t use it all at once!” He stood for a while in the rain, his shoulders hunched, his head up, holding his breath, listening to the noises of the night, then fixed his eye on the distant window, squeezed a zit on his face, then he too started to run, turned off by the road mender’s house and vanished into the darkness. Esti, who kept looking back, saw him for a split second, his cigarette alight in his hand, like a comet fading, never to reappear, its trace remaining for a few minutes in the dark sky, its outlines growing blurred, eventually absorbed in the heavy night haze that snapped its jaw around her now, the road beneath her immediately snuffed out so she felt as though she were swimming through the dark without any support, weightless, quite isolated. She was running towards the flickering light of the bar window as if that could compensate for the lost glow of her brother” cigarette, and more than once she shuddered in the cold once she reached it and hung on to the bar’s projecting windowsill, because her clothes were completely soaked through and the lace curtain was clinging to her hot body, and it felt like ice. She stood on tiptoe but couldn’t quite reach the window so had to jump to look inside and because her breath misted the glass she was only able to hear a confused babble inside, the clinking of a glass, some more glass breaking, and snatches of laughter that quickly melted into the louder sound of human conversation. Her head was pounding: she felt a flock of invisible birds were screaming and circling her. She pulled back from the light of the window, leaned her back against the wall and dreamily stared at the ground with its patch of light from the window. That was why it was only at the last possible moment that she became aware of heavy steps and the sound of gasping as they emerged from the road and mounted the steps to the door. There was no time to escape now so she just stood by the wall, her feet rooted to the ground, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed. She only moved when she saw it was the doctor, and ran to him in a panic. She clutched at his soaked coat and would have most happily hidden herself inside it, the only reason she didn’t burst into tears was because the doctor did not embrace her and so she simply stood before him, her head hung low, her heart racing, the blood throbbing in her ears, and she didn’t really take in the fact that the doctor was saying something, she understood only that he was impatiently wanting to be rid of her and, not being able to make out the words, her original relief was quickly succeeded by an incomprehensible bitterness because rather than hugging her he was sending her away. She couldn’t understand what had happened to the doctor, to the one man who once “had spent the whole night at her bedside, wiping the perspiration from her brow,” why she had to wrestle with him to hold on to him and to prevent him from pushing her away but, in any case, she simply couldn’t let go of the edge of his coat and only gave up when she saw that everything around them — suddenly — was caving in and rising up, and it was hopeless trying to detain the doctor because, at last, it was all over, and she watched terrified as the earth opened under them and the doctor disappeared in the bottomless pit. She started to run, with a chorus of baying voices, like wild dogs, pursuing her and she felt it was the end, that she could do no more, that the howling voices were bound to seize her and grind her into the mud, when it suddenly fell silent, with only the humming of the wind and the soft explosions of a million tiny raindrops covering the ground around her. She only dared slow down a little when she reached the edge of the Hochmeiss estate but she couldn’t stop. The wind drove the rain into her face, the cardigan had come unbuttoned and she couldn’t stop coughing. Sanyi’s frightening words and the nasty incident with the doctor bore down on her with such force that she was incapable of thinking; it was little things that drew her attention: her bootlaces had come undone. . the cardigan was unbuttoned. . did she still have the paper bag?. . By the time she reached the canal and stopped at the hole in the ground a curious calm had settled on her. “Yes,” she thought. “Yes, the angels see this and understand it.” She looked at the disturbed earth around the hole, the water dripping from her brow into her eyes, and the ground before her started, ever so gently, to undulate. She tied up her laces, buttoned the cardigan and tried to fill the hole by pushing the earth with her foot. She stopped and left it. She turned to one side and saw Micur’s dead body extended on the ground. The cat’s fur had soaked up the water, her eyes were staring glassily into nothing, her stomach was strangely sagging. “You’re coming with me,” she said quietly to the corpse and lifted it out of the mud. She hugged it close, and thoughtfully, decisively, set off. She followed the course of the canal for a while then turned off before the Kerekes farm, reaching the long, winding path round the Pósteleki estate, which, having cut across the metalled road into town, leads straight past the ruins of Weinkheim Castle, towards the fogbound Pósteleki woods. She tried to walk so that her the lining of her boots rubbed less painfully against her heels because she knew she had a long way to go: she had to be at Weinkheim Manor by daybreak. She was glad she wasn’t alone and Micur was warming her stomach a little. “Yes,” she quietly repeated to herself, “the angels see this and understand it.” She felt a more naked kind of peace now: the trees, the road, the rain, even the night, all radiated calm. “Whatever happens is good,” she thought. Everything was simple at last, forever. She saw the rows of naked acacia on either side of the road, the landscape that vanished into the dark within a few yards of her, was aware of the rain and the stifling smell of mud, and knew for certain that what she was doing was absolutely right. She thought over the events of the day and smiled as she understood how they all connected up: she felt it was neither chance, nor accident, but an unutterably beautiful logic that was holding them together. She also knew she was not alone, since everything and everyone — her father up above, her mother, her siblings, the doctor, the cat, these acacias, this muddy track, this sky and the night below it, all depended on her, just as she depended on everything else. “What a great champion I might become! I just have to keep going.” She squeezed Micur still closer, looked up at the unchanging sky and quickly stopped. “I’ll make myself useful once I’m there.” The sky was slowly beginning to lighten in the east, and by the time the first beams of the sun touched the ruined walls of Weinkheim Castle and streamed through the gaps and the enormous window spaces into the burnt-out, overgrown rooms, Esti had made all the preparations. She laid Micur down on her right, and once she had divided the remaining contents, brotherly fashion, half and half, and had succeeded in swallowing her half with a little rainwater to wash it down, she placed the paper bag on her left side on a rotten board, because she wanted to be sure her brother wouldn’t miss it. She lay down in the middle, stretched out her legs and relaxed. She brushed the hair from her forehead, put her thumb in her mouth, and closed her eyes. No need to worry. She knew perfectly well her guardian angels were already on the way.