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enigmatically.
    “Is that why they don’t let students study and expel them from school?” Blanca asked.
    “What can you do? That’s nature.”
    “Isn’t our motto that everyone should work according to their ability and receive according to their needs?”
    “That principle doesn’t apply to the study of mathematics.”
    “If mathematics leads to discrimination, I don’t want anything more to do with it.”
    “Dear, you’re going too far.”
    “I’m completely serious.”
    Blanca’s father was proud of her, and now, hearing her opinions, he was even prouder. Her mother didn’t enter the argument. In matters of logic, her husband and daughter were better than she. Every time they caught her in a contradiction, she would say, “I raise my hands in surrender.”
    That summer they didn’t go to Winterweiss. The doctors ordered Blanca’s mother to rest at home.
    “I’m sorry, Blanca,” her mother said.
    “Why are you saying you’re sorry, Mama?”
    “Because of me, we’re not going to Winterweiss.”
    “What are you talking about, Mama? I love being at home.”
    Meanwhile, Adolf surprised Blanca by inviting her out for a bowl of ice cream. They sat in the busy café, and Adolf told her about his plans. Next month he would start working at a dairy, and he would be making a living. He was tired of being dependent on his parents. A man should work and make money.
    Blanca was embarrassed and didn’t say a word. Being close to Adolf’s strength dazzled her.
    “And you’re going to go on studying?” he asked, like someone who had himself been liberated from such things.
    “What can I do?” She wanted to draw near to him.
    “Aren’t you tired of it?”
    “In another year, I’ll finish, too.”
    When they parted, she, too, felt disgust for the institution called high school, which tortured the weak and raised the talented up to the skies. Her fury burned against the teachers who were so good to her, Dr. Klein and Dr. Weiss; because of them, about twenty students were expelled from school every year. High school without Adolf would be barren. “By virtue of the weak, we are humane.” She had heard that once from her uncle Salo, her father’s brother, who was a communist, heart and soul, and had been imprisoned for a number of years. After his release, he died suddenly of a mysterious illness.

9
    FROM THEN ON, Blanca would see Adolf everywhere, in her dreams and while awake. She wanted so much to see him that she walked as far as the dairy where he worked. Adolf was surprised and embarrassed by her sudden appearance. But he recovered immediately and introduced her to his fellow workers. This was the first time Blanca heard the German peasant dialect, and she didn’t understand a word of it. The workers were tall and clumsy, and the odors in the dairy were pungent and stifling.
    “Why did you come here?” Adolf asked.
    To see you,
she was about to say, but then she thought better of it and said simply, “I was taking a walk.”
    “Isn’t there any school today?”
    “There is, but I took a little vacation.”
    “I understand,” he said, but showed no sign of excitement at her presence. But that very lack of emotion enchanted her. She interpreted it as inner quietness, as natural behavior, as masculinity of the proper kind.
    Blanca’s thoughts were now filled with fantasies of Adolf.
When will I see him again?
she wondered. Her grades were no longer as brilliant as they used to be.
    “What’s the matter with you, Blanca?” Dr. Klein wondered.
    “I don’t know.” She didn’t reveal even the slightest thing.
    Dr. Weiss was more merciful and spoke to her like a father. “Blanca,” he said, “you have all the talent and potential of a mathematician. Please, do yourself a favor, concentrate, and make an effort so we can give you a scholarship to study in Vienna. The mathematics department in Berlin may be better, but they’re no slouches in Vienna, either. I don’t have many students