Angela first saw the light of day on a foggy November afternoon.

The mist condensed into droplets on the acacia trees stretching by the fence of the clinic and dripped onto the pavement. The last of the sere leaves also tumbled languidly to the ground. What did they know about the wonderful event that had just taken place in the delivery room inside the building with the cracked plaster? The life of the leaves had come to an end with the autumn but, for Angela, the great race of existence had just begun.

It was 1988, and an ideology that had powerfully permeated the ways of thinking in Hungary for decades was crumbling. Socialism was departing with a soft melancholy. The red star fell and withered, swept away by a fresh gust of wind from the west. It had no more life left in it. There were no fires, uproars or revolts, yet lots of hearts caught fire. ‘Revolution!’ they shouted a year later. ‘Freedom!’ Yes, freedom. It marched in with merry pomp, yet was frighteningly unfamiliar. It was marched in on a golden cart but it brought privations to many.

A weak, yet commanding, squeak ripped the thick air of the delivery room. It was the voice of Angela, who had just been conjured out of the birth canal. Truth be told, she had not really wanted to be born: she had felt a lot better inside. She had to come, though; had to toil, strive, slide and cry. Was this life?

She felt her head coming off as if a giant was pulling at it from outside. Her bones were almost crushed in the mole tunnel she had to squeeze through. At the end of the canal the midwife was waiting for her like an angel surrounded by fiery tongues of flame, shutting the way back to the garden of Eden forever.

‘She’s outside at last,’ the doctor on duty sighed as the light pouring out of the bulbs of the ward ran along her smock. ‘A girl!’

The warmth and silence that had protected Angela were at an end. The new tenant of Planet Earth was greeted by a strange brightness. Air spread painfully into her lungs as she took her first breath. Her eyes were burning. Fuzzy figures were bowing over her, occasionally screening the sparkling light.

‘Swabs, please! Help me to hold …’

The doctor was searching for forceps on the sterile tray. The fingers of her rubber gloves rubbed together squeakily.

‘More swabs, please. That one … swab it with propanol,’ she ordered the midwife while she clicked clamps on the umbilical cord.

In the neighbouring cubicle, somebody was still in labour. Angela’s mother turned her head weakly towards the screams but could see only the curtain. Her glance met that of the assistant beside her, who nodded, smiled and squeezed her hand.

‘It’s all right now, dear. The worst is over. Now she only needs to be brought up.’

She said it quietly, but the doctor caught her words. A smile flashed in the corner of her mouth.

‘Yes, the bulk of it is yet to come,’ she remarked, and cut the umbilical cord with an emphatic gesture. ‘But the bulk is the most wonderful part, dear.’

Angela, meanwhile, was trying to keep her eyes shut to lessen the stabbing lances of the floodlights. She pressed the air out of her lungs with all her might, then drew it in again. She then realized that it went in and out more and more easily. Suddenly, hands grasped her. She shuddered at the fingers crawling over her moist skin, and the neon tubes clinging to the ceiling began to move. Reliable, warm hands were taking her for a bath. She was shaking, which made her feel hungry for the first time in her life. Although she was still unable to understand what her senses told her – her eyes perceived only blunt outlines and piercing light, and her ears caught only incoherent hubbub – she had one distinct feeling: love was emanating towards her from the hands that were holding her so gently.

Love is such a strong and positive feeling that every living being is able to sense it. Husbandmen and peasants of old used to know this forgotten truth …

The man sitting in the waiting room before the labour ward was reading. He was holding the most recent issue of one of the esoteric publications piled on the glass table. He stood up with the magazine in his hands and walked about in agitation while his eyes ran over the lines.

They loved their animals and caressed the leaves of their plants after watering them. At home, they loved their children and ageing parents so they could live longer. People calling themselves civilized are made civilized by ‘forgetting’ to express their feelings, especially when they are positive and honourable …

The man shoved the paper back onto the table, but it slid and thudded on the floor. He was not interested. He pressed his forehead to the window in the door but could see nothing but the light-green curtain screening off the delivery room. The curtain gawked back at him, creased and sullen. He did not dare to knock or ring the bell, so he stood there like a dog, wistfully, expecting snippets of information to be tossed to him instead of gristle. Still no movement, only the unnerving, humming background noise of the hospital, and the smell of chlorine. His stomach tightened, a reaction that suddenly reminded him of his nursery school. He used to hate going to nursery school, he used to hate being separated from his parents.

After a few minutes, he despondently crouched back into the carmine imitation leather armchair, which had probably been placed in the waiting room especially to ease the agony of worried young fathers. It did not ease his agony though. It could be an electric chair as far as I’m concerned. He flicked the armrest with a finger. Part of him was recognizing the experience as a solemn occasion. I’ve never had a child … A new being … and it’s mine. He picked up the paper he had tossed away and decided to read through the article, however tense he was.

… The heart of the infant senses these colourful ‘love birds’ flushed towards her. She cannot name them, yet she is sure they belong to her. They rest on her shoulders, on her head, and relax her with their angelic melodies. They fill her with the ancient energy of the universe, a divine energy, a ray of hope arching through the cosmos, rattling through even the darkest of spaces. It overthrows dead chaos and rearranges it into life. It is energy which helps the enormous orcas in the oceans to leap out of the deep, stretch towards the sun and scatter hundreds of droplets of water …

‘What a stupid text! My God!’ he broke out. But then the curtain behind the door was drawn aside. A nurse with a green hairnet was smiling at him foolishly through the glass and waving to him vigorously. She only opened the door a crack.

‘The wee one has arrived. Congratulations, sir! It’s a girl. Have you already named her?’

The man nodded and straightened up happily.

‘Angela,’ he said, putting the force of his entire being behind the words. He was overcome by an ancient, exalted feeling as he pronounced it.

‘Hmm … a beautiful name,’ the nurse replied. ‘Well then, fine. Patience, sir, your wife will be transferred to ward two soon, you can meet there.’

‘And my daughter? Can’t I even see her?’

‘But of course!’ The nurse laughed as the question sounded stupid to her and she had heard it infinite times. ‘For the next five days you can see her, sir, through a TV link. So, go over to ward two and keep your chin up, you can see her often enough afterwards – you can even change her nappy.’

She shut the door in his face and felt especially proud that her job allowed her to tell a man where to go.

After she left, the dividing curtain flicked open for a second and he caught sight of his wife. He greedily absorbed the sight. She’s there! How is she? My poor darling. It must have been so painful. But it’s done. Hallelujah! His wife also caught sight of him. Space shrank between them. The unseen bonds between them, which had been multiplying since they had met, became even stronger. The strongest was sweetly cooing in the wheeled cot beside her mother’s bed.

On the whitewashed wall of the delivery room hung a battered clock showing the time in shaky numbers: fourteen minutes past seven. That was the time when the light pink wristband was put on the newcomer’s wrist. ‘Angela,’ read the lustreless paper ring that was to become her inseparable companion – at least within the hospital precincts.

‘God’s messenger, that’s what her name means,’ the old pastor, who was spending his last days on earth in the neighbouring ward, told Angela’s mother, Edith, a few days afterwards. He could not know that his words were a prophecy.

The doctor sat deeply in thought at the ECG machine and threw her rubber gloves into the waste bin. Her work was over for the day. The baby had been delivered, the placenta was outside and the episiotomy was sewn together.

‘I have no kids, but it must be wonderful,’ she whispered to Edith. ‘As this small life is growing, she’ll get cleverer and smarter. In the end, she’ll be like you …’

‘Thank you for everything, doctor. I wouldn’t have managed without you.’

‘Eh,’ the doctor waved her hand and stood up. ‘In the old days, women delivered on their own.’

In the neighbouring cubicle the other woman cried out again.

‘Have a look at her!’ the lady doctor snapped at the assistant, then turned back to Angela’s mother. ‘Edith. That’s your name, right? Believe me, nature solves the issue of giving birth without us well enough. We only give it a hand.’

‘You’re an angel,’ whispered the woman.

‘Now, now!’

The doctor left, her long coat fluttering above the chessboard-like tiles of the hospital.

‘Fag break!’ she hollered, with both hands up high. ‘I’m passing the rest over to you. Watch out for them. I’ll be back in five minutes.’

Angela cried out at the loud voice.

‘Look at the sweet little pussycat, she’s begun to weep,’ the assistant said in her rich alto. ‘We have to take her to the infant ward right away. You’ll get your treasure back,’ she turned to the mother, ‘but only for feeding. Good luck!’

Edith turned to the nurse and, with a relieved laugh, wiped Angela’s eyes that were gleaming with tears. She touched the softest velvet on earth with her fingertips.

‘It’s me. Mum. This is me, Angela … I love you …’

However, the word ‘mum’ did not yet mean anything to Angela. Her life was still a clean slate, her soul was untouched, like a spring deep in a cave.

Later, Angela woke up one morning to see that the white walls, the dazzling rows of light and the nurses were gone. The world had become dark, quiet and desolate. From then on, she felt she was dying when her mother put her in her cot and left her alone. She squalled at such times.

Days went by, and ‘Mum’ began to mean something to her: warm embraces, kisses, sweet milk, peace, dreams. Meals were celebratory occasions, which she anticipated with a joyful, leaping heart because they stopped the pain in her stomach instantly. So she cried when she was hungry and her stomach hurt, and cried when she was longing for hugs. She sometimes cried for the sake of crying. She always thought of the time she spent in happy and ecstatic embraces with her mum. Their hearts were clinging to each other so strongly that they could still feel like one body, although physically they had been parted. After the darkness and silence of the womb, Angela, was frightened by the noisy outside world. In the lost sanctuary, she had been able to float about in circles of silent sighs, but her experiences told her that every day she was getting further away from that quiet garden of Eden and there was no hope of return. Strange challenges had to be faced – growing, walking and teething. Fevers and the nightly horrors of darkness were only trifling additions. Only two things seemed permanent: Mummy and Daddy. To her, both were sweet.

Angela’s childhood was filled with lots of photos, knee and elbow injuries, and a number of playthings. The majority of those playthings seemed, however, superfluous because her real playground was the garden surrounding their house. She kept re-touching the vast green forest in her imagination: she placed kobolds, pixies and ghosts in it. It was a mythical fairyland, all her own. Relatives, friends and neighbours alike thought Angela was an exceptional little girl. She was a wide-open book but, at the same time, unapproachable and closed, like a strongroom inside the earth. Those who knew her described her as being inclusive and open at first, but noted that, after a while, she would retreat into the secret labyrinth of her soul, leaving them wondering what had happened. Radiant smiles and grace kept swapping places with grim turns of spirit; chatter and the silence of the desert strained against each other. She was both an azure sky and a madly expanding, pitch-dark universe.

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