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By Root 1049 0

as I'd learned to do from Sherlock Holmes and from films. The air was not very cold and my mother did not run, she walked briskly, as though afraid she'd be late. At the end of Zephaniah Street she turned right and stepped out jauntily in her white shoes until she reached the bottom of Malachi Street. There she stopped beside the mailbox and hesitated. The young detective who was trailing her came to the conclusion that she went out to mail letters secretly, and I was bristling with curiosity and vague apprehension. But my mother did not mail any letter. She stood for a moment beside the mailbox, lost in thought, and then she suddenly put a hand to her forehead and turned to go home. (Years later that red mailbox still stood there, set into a concrete wall, and inscribed with the letters GR, for King George V.) So I cut through a yard that led me to a shortcut through a second yard, and I got home a minute or two before she arrived, a little out of breath, her cheeks colored as though she'd been in snow, with a mischievous, affectionate sparkle in her piercing brown eyes. At that moment my mother looked very much like her father, Grandpa-Papa. She took my head and pressed it lightly to her tummy and said something like this to me:

"Of all my children, you're the one I love best. Can you tell me once and for all what it is about you that makes me love you the most?"

And also:

"It's especially your innocence. I've never encountered innocence like yours in all my life. Even when you've lived for many long years and had all sorts of experiences, your innocence will never leave you. Ever. You'll always stay innocent."

And also:

"There are some women who just devour the innocent, and there are others, and I'm one of them, who love innocent men and feel an inner urge to spread a protective wing over them."

And also:

"I think you will grow up to be a sort of prattling puppydog like your father, and you'll also be a man who is quiet and full and closed like a well in a village that has been abandoned by all its inhabitants. Like me. You can be both, yes. I do believe you can. Would you like us to play at making up a story now? We'll take it in turns to make up a chapter. Shall I start? Once upon a time there was a village that had been abandoned by all its inhabitants. Even the cats and dogs. Even the birds had abandoned it. So the village stood silent and abandoned for years upon years. The thatched roofs were lashed by the rain and the wind, the walls of the cottages were cracked by hail and snow, the vegetable gardens were overgrown, and only the trees and bushes went on growing, and with no one to prune them, they grew thicker and thicker. One evening, in the autumn, a traveler who had lost his way arrived in the abandoned village. Hesitantly he knocked at the door of the first cottage, and ... would you like to carry on?"

Around that time, in the winter between 1949 and 1950, two years before her death, she began to have frequent headaches. She often had the flu and sore throats, and even when she recovered, the migraines did not go away. She put her chair near the window and sat for hours in a blue flannel dressing gown staring at the rain, with her book open upside-down on her lap, but instead of reading she drummed on its cover with her fingers. She sat stiffly staring at the rain or at some sodden bird for an hour or two hours and never stopped drumming on the book with all ten fingers. As though she were repeating the same piece over and over again on the piano.

Gradually she had to cut down on the housework. She still managed to put away the dishes, tidy up, and throw out every scrap of paper and crumb. She still swept the apartment every day and washed the floor once every two or three days. But she did not cook complicated meals anymore. She made do with simple food: boiled potatoes, fried eggs, raw vegetables. Occasionally bits of chicken floating in chicken soup. Or boiled rice with canned tuna. She hardly ever complained about her piercing headaches, which sometimes continued for days. It was my father