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Mariana’s?”
    “My impression is that she is a good woman.”
    “I hope you’re not wrong.”
    “Mama also told me that she was a good woman.”
    “Be careful, in any event.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of those women,” she says, and disappears.

7
    A moment before awakening, Hugo manages to see Anna shrink down to the dimensions familiar to him. He is so glad that she hasn’t changed, that in his excitement he claps his hand and shouts, “Bravo.”
    Without meaning to, he surveys the closet. A broad-brimmed, colorful hat, hanging on a nail, catches his eye. It looks like a magician’s hat. Mariana is a magician, the thought flashes through his mind. At night she entertains the audience at the circus, and in the daytime she sleeps. The circus suits her. He immediately imagines her uttering bird calls, throwing balls up very high, and, with marvelous balance, carrying three brightly colored bottles on her head.
    The door opens, and once again Mariana stands in the doorway. Now she is wearing a pretty floral-print dress, her hair is up, and she holds a bowl of soup in her hand. “Straight from our kitchen,” she announces. Hugo takes the bowl, sits down, and says, “Thank you.”
    “What’s my sweetie been doing?” she asks in a slightly artificial tone.
    Hugo immediately notices the new tone and says, “I was asleep.”
    “It’s good to sleep. I also like to sleep. What did you dream about?”
    “I don’t remember,” he says, not revealing any secrets.
    “I dream, and, to my regret, I remember,” she says, and laughs with her mouth open.
    At home, neither his father nor his mother had called him “honey,” “sweetie,” or other common words of endearment. His parents were repelled by those verbal caresses.
    Hugo is hungry and eats the soup eagerly.
    “In a moment I’ll bring you the second course. Did you manage to play chess?”
    “I fell asleep. I didn’t even open the knapsack.”
    “After the meal you can play in my room.”
    “Thank you,” he says, and he is glad he is following his mother’s instructions diligently.
    Only a day has passed since Hugo parted from his mother, and the new place is no longer strange to him. Mariana’s arrivals and disappearances seem to him, perhaps because of their regularity, like his mother’s appearances in the cellar. A few hours ago, he felt as if his mother was about to enter the closet. Now he sees her moving farther into the distance, gliding on waves of darkness.
    Meanwhile, Mariana comes back and brings him a meatball and some potatoes, saying, “I have a greeting from your mother. She reached the village, and she’ll stay there.”
    “When will she come and visit me?”
    “The roads are dangerous, you know.”
    “Maybe I can go to her?”
    “For boys the road is even more dangerous.”
    Now his day is a stretch of naps, sometimes soaring high and sometimes on a gloomy cruise. The sudden separationfrom his parents and friends has left him feeling cut off on this strange floor covered with long carpets embroidered with giant cats that look out at him.
    It’s strange—he doesn’t receive the news that his mother has reached the village safely as a good omen. In his eyes, his mother always belonged to him. She sometimes disappeared but always returned on time. Now, too, he takes the news that she exists as self-evident. He does not yet know that every movement outside that ends well is a miracle.
    Hugo takes the chess set out of his knapsack, arranges the pieces on the board, and immediately starts to play. Reading books and having long conversations until late at night—that was an area that belonged to his mother. Chess and walks in the city and outside it—that was his father’s realm. His father did not talk a lot. He listened and responded with a word or two. His parents were pharmacists, but each was a world unto himself. Chess is a game of great strategy, and Hugo’s father was excellent at it. Hugo knows the rules of the game, but