The Angel Makers Read Online Free PDF Page B

go, this one has been far from an unqualified success.
    ‘Yes,’ he says, unmoving. She gets up instead, and moves towards the door, opening it for him.
    ‘Goodbye, Ferenc,’ she says quietly. ‘Come and see me when you’re feeling better.’
    He leaves.

CHAPTER THREE

    The summer gives no sign of ending, until one day, suddenly, the earth coughs and all the yellowed leaves fall off the trees to lie on the ground like shells. Sari feels like she’s waiting for something elusive and indefinable. Fond as she is of Judit, living with her is odd. Judit hasn’t lived with anyone for many, many years – village lore holds that she had a husband, years ago, in her youth, but Sari can’t quite believe this; it seems preposterous that Judit hasn’t always been as she is – and when she bumps into her early in the morning, Judit always seems surprised and a little put out. Sari’s quite aware of the need to adapt, to smooth herself around Judit’s angles and edges, but it’s not always clear how to do so.
    Still, Sari thinks that things could hardly be better. She misses her father, of course, both for who he was, and for how he treated her. As far back as she can remember, he treated her as if she was intelligent, involving her in every aspect of his work, and the older she grew, the luckier she realised herself to be, and the more at odds with the other women she knew. When he died, she feared that all that was over, that she would be crammed inexorably into the prefabricated mould out of which most village women seemed to step. Who would teach her things now? Who would care that she could read, let alone that she was at ease in both Magyar and German?
    Judit cares, and for that Sari is passionately thankful. Judit embraces her quick mind and is happy to fill it with knowledge, day after day, and Judit welcomes the knowledge that Sari has brought from her father and listens, head cocked, as Sari explains alternative properties of a herb that they’re using, or a more efficient way to prepare it. And Judit trusts Sari, letting her mix medicines and pick herbs, and, she says, Éva Orczy is due any day now, and when the time comes, Sari can accompany Judit to the birth.
    Much as she loved her father, Sari always realised that he taught her things in spite of her sex; she’s excited to find that there’s no such sentiment in Judit, but quite the opposite.
    ‘There’s power,’ Judit says, ‘in here’ – indicating her flaccid breasts – ‘and here’ – waving a hand over her midriff and the darkness enclosed – ‘and especially here!’ She points crudely at her cunt, elaborating with a salacious wink. Sari has dimly sensed the power of these things with Ferenc, but under Judit’s tutelage she begins to get an inkling of what this power can do. Perhaps, she thinks, there are arenas where being female is an asset, not a hindrance.
    She knows that Judit doesn’t tell her everything, however. Judit sets far more stock in incantations and mystery than Sari’s father ever did, and there are some parts of her work that she’s seemed reluctant to explain to Sari. Once, only a week or two after Sari had moved in, she’d woken, thirsty, in the middle of the night; stumbling through the unfamiliar house on the way to the jug of water that stood in the kitchen, Sari had been taken aback to find Judit sat at the dining table, lit only by a dim oil lamp, in deep conversation with a pale, tight-faced woman whom Sari didn’t recognise.
    When Judit looked up she’d frowned. ‘I’d forgotten about you,’ she said, sounding annoyed, and Sari had hurried to fetch her water and leave as quick as she could.
    In the morning, the woman was gone, and Judit had responded to Sari’s queries in even shorter sentences than usual. ‘She’s from the next village,’ she’d said, ‘Nothing you need to worry about.’
    Since then, there have been a couple of occasions when Judit has left the house, with a terse shake of her