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to determine their true color.
I wish the photograph showed my uncle s hands. He could talk to my
mother, she claims, almost as clearly as she to me, even though brother and
sister had to invent their own code, which she no longer remembers. He was
urbane and cultured, she says, well educated before they left Budapest
he had been planning to enter a school of law had traveled throughout
Europe. Did he visit Paris, meet his uncle Ferenc, pick up a little French Sign
Language to take home to his sister? He spoke French, German, and English
as well as Hungarian how my mother knows this I don t understand. He
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loved his little sister.
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Her other relic is a tiny bisque porcelain hand, broken at the wrist, the
mute, stiff hand of the doll she brought with her from Budapest to the new
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world.
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She would lose patience with this mosaic of
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moments and fragments my mother believes in narrative. The last time I
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visited my parents, not long ago, I asked her to tell me a story. Here we are,
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the three of us, my mother, my father, and their grown son, sitting in straight
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kitchen chairs on the front porch. The floorboards, slightly warped, have
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recently been painted, as have the balusters and railings, the frames of
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the screens. The screens are heavy with the mass of sweet peas clinging to
them, climbing to a height that would be above my head if I were to stand
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beside them on the strip of lawn below the porch. My mother claims their
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fragrance isn t as sweet, as penetrating, as years ago; she would trade the
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new brighter colors for stronger scent. My father rises to go in and fetch me
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another cup of herb tea, to freshen his and my mother s drinks. The floor-
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boards creak beneath his feet. I ask my mother for a cigarette, as I do once
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or twice a year. She shakes her head first, then leans forward to offer the
pack, and lights my cigarette with a wooden kitchen match.
Here she is, my mother, a slender woman approaching sixty, her hair,
largely grey, clasped loosely at the neck and her lips, thin now, still brilliant
with lipstick although she no longer paints her eyelids, rouges her cheeks,
or powders her nose. The small garnet earrings I sent her for Christmas last
year flash as she turns her head, the chain and locket glitter on the breast of
the severe, high-necked cotton dress she made herself. She sits erect, silent,
smoking, breathing through parted lips with a slight rasp, until my father
returns, sits beside her. Then her hands, still long and slender, the nails per-
fectly shaped and lacquered, begin to speak.
They were sitting in the headmaster s reception room, my grandparents
the count and countess, he stoic, for naturally he is impoverished now and
in the new world his title means nothing, she tragic, ravaged, beautiful; their
handsome son Lajos perfectly turned out but tense, nervous; their lovely
little daughter Marit in a chair too large, poking at a scrap of embroidery. On
the floor beside her, an old-fashioned doll with porcelain head and hands.
Lajos the interpreter slipped from a formal, Frenchified English to French
to Magyar, depending whether he spoke to headmaster, mother, or father.
With his little sister he was brusque yet tender, he understood her best,
watching her pantomimes closely and miming back with a natural flair that
scandalized the headmaster.
Marit would learn to lipread, the headmaster claimed, huffing behind
his huge desk, English of course here the countess sighed. Students of the
Pennsylvania School for the Deaf were encouraged to view their handicap
as an opportunity, to hone their natural powers of observation, that per-
ceptiveness which deaf children possessed to such degree. Why, it did one s
heart good to see a class of children, stone deaf since birth, concentrating on
their instructor s lecture with a quiet intentness one would never observe in
normal boys and girls, to see them comprehend the teacher s most subtle
points with ease. With dedication and sincere application, he continued,
she would learn to speak. He could not promise miracles, they understood,
his face reddening slightly as Lajos stared at him; her speech was unlikely
to be as lovely as she, and it would be difficult for those not close to her to
understand, yet it would suffice, would give her access to real language
rather than the primitive gestures the child must now employ. Such a pity
she wasn t younger here he was stern, disapproving a very young child
learns more easily; it could be a lifelong project, they must understand, he
couldn t promise miracles, but they had come to the right place. Only the
most advanced techniques were employed at this school, not like those in
Europe where, he believed, pupils were actually encouraged to use their
hands as if that didn t cut them off further from the world. As if a simple
code of gestures such as savages from different tribes use for barter and
trade and that a code the deprived children themselves invented could
serve the necessary purposes of language. How, after all, could little chil-
dren who knew nothing but the concrete and the visible comprehend such
SAFE AS HOUSES
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concepts as the Soul, Responsibility, or Democracy without the resources
of language.
He had become carried away. He was eyeing the countess s diamonds,
her furs, the pearl stickpin in the count s cravat, Lajos s beautifully tailored
suit, and the ruffles of fine lace spilling out below the hem of Marit s skirt.
They would like to see the facilities, of course, meet the instructors and the
dormitory matrons.
No, the countess couldn t bear it, it was too tragic that they must aban-
don their darling.
The count, restrained, shrugged. It must be understood that they were
strangers here, hardly more than guests of this great country, and it was dif-
ficult to know what to do. They only wanted what was best for their daugh-
ter.
Agitated, the countess had drifted to a window. Holding her furs tight at
the throat with one hand, she pushed aside the curtain with the other and
stared out on the play yard below. A number of boys dressed in drab blue
serge kicked a ball back and forth, played with yo-yos or jacks. The count-
ess s gasp was like a pistol shot.  That boy! she cried, indicating a black-
haired child, short, slim, pale  my dear brother looked just like that as a
child, he is Hungarian, he must be.
Lajos rushed to her side, called the headmaster over:  Who is that boy?
He was my father, of course (my mother pats his hands absently), for this
is a bedtime story, my mother s favorite, which she never tired of telling nor
her children of watching.
III: The Princes in the Tower
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My father taught me to read before I went to
school. Understand the difficulty of this project. Remember first that the
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written alphabet is a congeries of arbitrary signs that purport to represent
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sequences of spoken sound, equally arbitrary, and recall that my father
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cannot hear. Remember that these signs are arranged in particular ways
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