Psalm 44

“There’s the blue one!”—as if she had run into a neighbor from her building or a classmate or at least run across one of her toys, because she enjoyed riding on this blue streetcar and the blue ones are less common and are prettier, because it’s not at all a matter of indifference whether they are blue or yellow, it matters a great deal, but instead of stopping at the station and knocking the dust off their clothes and finally sending away the cart with the worn-out horses, her mother pointed out the way to the driver in his thick sheep’s-wool coat (she who had been wondering the whole time how he could stand to wear it in this intolerable heat), and Marija said to her mother in a pitiful, imploring voice Aren’t we taking the streetcar? and it seemed, in the midst of so much consternation, that it was simply a matter perhaps of inviting her mother to remember by means of this exclamation the thing that she had perhaps forgotten in the village, namely that you could ride the streetcar all the way to their house, perhaps she had merely overlooked the comfort and other advantages of the streetcar as compared to an ordinary team of horses. And Marija thought that as soon as her mother heard her question and as soon as she had been brought to her senses she would clap her hand to her forehead and laugh about her forgetfulness and say something like, “Aha, you see, I had totally forgotten the streetcar,” but her mother didn’t clap her hand to her forehead and she didn’t say it, for the first little while she didn’t say anything, in fact, but just sat there and looked straight ahead, acting as though she couldn’t hear her daughter and as though looking at the façades of the houses so delighted her that she actually couldn’t hear anything at the moment, nothing at all. Therefore Marija had to express her amazement again, but now (for the sake of caution) with a bit of humor in her voice, as if she were saying, “Hey, want to guess what we forgot?” and as if she had to laugh in anticipation of the way her mother would clap her hand to her forehead and reply, for instance, “The thermos!” and Marija would then produce it from her little travel bag and laugh at herself, naturally, laugh; but none of that occurred, and instead of marveling and laughing, her mother, barely turning her head, said:

Riding the streetcar is forbidden, and before Marija could feel astonishment at that, her mother continued: “That’s the reason you aren’t allowed to tell your father why you got mad at Ilonka Kutaj.” And that was the first time Marija put various facts together and finally comprehended more or less why they had kept her in the village with the excuse that it was good for her health, and why she couldn’t tell the father anything, but precisely because it was still not entirely clear to her and something was still concealed from her she resolved firmly to tell her father everything, naturally not right away, but she would definitely find a good reason to force herself to say it, and she would come up with an excuse to use on her mother and on herself, thus she said to her mother now, as if she couldn’t even understand the little bit that she did understand or suspect:

“I don’t understand why it’s forbidden to ride the streetcar! I just don’t understand. . how could riding a streetcar can be forbidden?”—And at that point mother tapped her head, not in the way she would if something had crossed her mind, or not just in that way, Marija saw her mother raising her hand to her forehead and holding it there, not as someone would if they were wondering about something but as if she were brushing away a broken-hearted resolution from her forehead along with a strand of hair, and then Marija continued watching as her mother stretched her arm out with the same hopeless gesture in the direction where the streetcar stood, like a toy, and her mother stared, still searching with her eyes I don’t understand why riding the streetcar is forbidden as if she were seeing a streetcar for the first time, wondering, lips pursed, what purpose that blue tin can with the lyre on top served, whether it was a vehicle or a children’s toy or maybe something even more obscure, maybe a dangerous or even a sinful thing; and then Marija heard her mother’ voice, like a rebuke: