The Door by Magda Szabó Read Free Book Online Page A

films about prison camps in the Far East. The victim would be buried up to his ears, with sand covering his mouth so he could communicate only through his nose. He couldn't cry out, so he whimpered. This dog was whimpering too. Whoever had counted on someone coming to his rescue was a clever psychologist. Who could pass by a living creature in the jaws of death, on the night of Christ's birth? It was one of those moments against whose power my animal-hating husband was defenceless. He certainly did not want a stranger in our home, least of all a dog, which would demand not only food but also affection; and yet he helped me dig it out of the freezing snow. We had no plan to keep it; we imagined someone else would probably give it a home. The creature promised nothing but trouble. But it couldn't stay where it was. It would be dead by the morning. It wasn't in need so much of food as a vet.
    "Well, there's an unusual present for you," said my husband, as I buttoned the little dog inside my coat. The terrified black face peered out from under my fur collar, sniffing the air as we went, while from under the coat itself came a steady trickle of melting snow from its legs and belly. "You don't often get a real Christmas surprise."
    Emerence meanwhile had completed a major clean of our apartment, and every room was sparkling. Strolling back with the puppy, we had been debating where he should be housed, and had decided on my late mother's room, with its beautiful antique furniture, a room we didn't even bother to heat. "I hope he likes the eighteenth century," my husband said. "Dogs only chew things until they're about two. After that, they stop all by themselves." I made no reply. He was right, but what else could we do, even if the poor creature snuggling into my neck was likely to destroy the whole lot? And thus we made our way, like some mysterious and very minor religious sect on its Christmas Eve procession, its one black relic borne on my neck.
    Never before then, or later, when she would have given her very life for me, did I witness such an outpouring of maternal passion from Emerence as when she saw what, or rather who, we'd brought home. We found her tidying up in the kitchen and laying out the Christmas pastries on a platter. She immediately threw down the knife and snatched the dog from my hands. She seized a duster, gave the puppy a thorough rubbing down, then placed it gently on the worktop to see if it could walk. The animal flopped down helplessly on its skinny backside. It was still frozen stiff from the snow and, in its fright, instantly made a mess. Emerence threw a sheet of newspaper over the evidence, and then searched with me in the built-in cupboard for the smallest of our fluffy bath towels. Until that moment I hadn't realised she had any idea where our things were kept — she'd always insisted that I put them away myself, so terrified was she of taking something that wasn't hers. But she obviously knew where these things at least were in our cupboards. She might not touch anything, but she made a note, double-checked, and remembered. Other people were not allowed secrets.
    I gave her the terry towel, she wrapped the puppy with great care, as if it were a baby, and walked up and down the hall, murmuring in its ear. I went in to use the telephone. There was no time to waste if we were to save the animal's life. The television was on, and everything was Christmas. The lights, music and smells of the season filled the air. I had put almost everything of my past behind me, but the Stardust atmosphere of Christmas lingered on, made manifest in the child in glory in the arms of the Virgin. To all this, Emerence was blind and deaf. She walked up and down the hall with the little dog, wheezing out some old song in her rasping voice, in her own cock-eyed, upside-down, and intensely moving celebration of Christ's birth. With the tightly swaddled black puppy in her arms, she rocked back and forth, a caricature of