Embers

Chapter 20

The General walks toward his bedroom. At the far end of the corridor, Nini is waiting.

“Are you feeling calmer now?” she asks.

“Yes,” says the General.

They walk side by side, the nurse with quick little steps, as if she had just got up and was hurrying to her first morning tasks, the General slowly, leaning on his stick. They move through the picture gallery.

When they come to the bare space on the wall where Krisztina’s portrait once hung, the General stops.

“Now you may hang it up again.” “Yes,” says the nurse.

“It’s of no importance anymore.”

“I know.”

“Good night, Nini.”

“Good night.”

The nurse stands up on tiptoe, lifts her little hand with the yellowed skin lying in creases over the bones, and traces the sign of the cross on the old man’s forehead. They give each other a kiss. It’s an awkward, brief, odd kiss, and if anyone were there to see it, it would provoke a smile. But like every kiss, this one is an answer, a clumsy but tender answer to a question that eludes the power of language.