There was a sour cherry tree in my grandfather's garden. I remember him picking clusters of ripe cherries out of the polished dark green foliage, just for me. The brightest, the ones that seemed to be filled with light, looking almost transparent, he would hang carefully in pairs on both my ears, whispering solemnly: "I give you the jewels of the land, your heritage; be worthy of it." This was our sacred ritual. We did not speak further. I looked up at him, squinting into the sun, and in his approving glances I felt the sunshine and I could not distinguish the blue of his eyes from the sky above him. Quietly I took his large hand and walked slowly beside him. I carried the heaviness of our treasure. I held my head erect and imagined the bright transparent glow of our heirloom shining like a light about me. I glanced with reverence to the ground before me. As we walked, I tried to keep my head very still so as not to disturb the light. The soft rich scent of the ground followed us as we walked, my grandfather and I, out of the garden.

The ground was sacred in my grandfather's garden, but not only there, it was so in the village, in the fields, in the vineyards and beyond as far as I knew. Everything on that ground was itself, mysterious and significant, gifted with the power to express the individual quality of its spirit. Everyone - people, animals, plants as well as things - participated in intimate communion with the ground. It seemed as though all things received their identity in this communion. Even the air was a solid entity that spoke in scents of the ground. Woven out of a myriad essences, past and present, it filled every breath with remembered existence. Everyone spoke this language of the land, and everything was in fluid conversation. Ordinary sounds were audible aspects of this communication. Silence itself could speak. One was part of the mystery and understood. And all things were known, familiar and open like one's own house; one could go in and out of everything and feel at home.

I knew every tree in my grandfather's garden. The blue plum tree was like any other of its kind, small and scraggly with angular branches and a gray scaly trunk with dried drips of honey colored sap encrusted in its bark, which gave it the appearance of being neglected. The texture of this chewy sap was as distasteful to me as it looked, but the neighborhood children taught me to respect its flavor as part of the ritual of growing up. The plums themselves, except for their color, were a disappointment to me even when I found them halved and sugared in dumplings that my mother made. I liked them better cooked beyond recognition into a thick dark paste that, though it looked much like the stuff I saw being put on axles of wagon wheels, tasted delicious spread on bread. The best effort of plums, I thought, went into something my grandfather cooked. It took a very long time and required a great deal of vigilance but in the end the plums themselves altogether disappeared. This transformation, the change into a clear colorless liquid, was magical and produced the most remarkable fragrance, better smelling than any of my mother's perfumes, which she kept in closed little bottles in her bedroom. My grandfather called this brew Schnaps or šljivovica, interchangeably. I liked its second name. It seemed more loyal to the plum. Because I liked its fragrance so much, I could detect its presence anywhere in the house. No matter how cleverly my grandmother would hide the bottle, I knew how to help my grandfather find it. This pleased him and earned me his respect at a very early age.

Our plum tree not only had a collective identity; it was itself and not interchangeable with any other tree of its kind. It was something larger than its name or anything one could say about it. Like every tree in the garden, that which it was could not fit into a name. Because everyone knew this, no one questioned it or needed it explained. The sweet cherry tree in our neighbor's garden made this very clear. Although it was the same kind of tree as one of ours, it was itself and had, one might say, its own attitude. This tree stood firmly on the ground. Its branches opened like an embrace, revealing a huge canopy of flickering greens from which hung, in grand profusion, uncountable red cherries; its opulence obscured the sky. Standing under this tree, looking up, one was aware of an overwhelming generosity. Our sweet cherry, on the other hand, showed itself pinched and proud. Its clusters of large fleshy red cherries looked almost artificial and seemed withheld rather than offered. Polished in form and color, this tree gave a lesson in arrogance and taught humility instead. I did not like picking its cherries, out of respect for myself.

The sweet apple tree, vibrant with light green foliage aflutter over the small and even lighter green fruit, had a way of looking and smelling like goodness, and sometimes, something about it would remind me of my grandmother and cause me to think about our family. It would make me feel sad at such times and it could even make me cry.

The apricot tree seemed most sophisticated, and the exotic fruit with its delicately aromatic orange fruit flesh was exquisitely balanced with the robust edible kernel encased in a hard almond-shaped nut that had to be broken with the aid of a stone. But the tree with the most fragrant fruit, a taste and smell so special it could not be fully recalled from season to season, the peach, seemed transient, offering its rare pleasure just for a time, a pleasure that could not be detained, that disappeared even from memory. I often tried to recall its goodness, but it was too complicated for me to imagine. Until it returned the following year, I could only remember it by its name.

The mulberry tree in my grandfather's backyard was as permanent as the ground itself. It had the appearance of a giant structure that had been standing forever and no longer had a need to distinguish itself as being anything. It grew beyond identity and personality and was simply present. In winter it had a somewhat malevolent appearance and one could get frightened by it on moonlit nights. In summer it was covered with playful leaves that seemed to have a life of their own. The large black berries, not intended for anyone, fell to the ground and covered it, lying there in their sweetness for everyone. Grown into its surroundings, this tree could not be anything but impartial.

The sour cherry tree, with its pleasantly rounded shape and low-hanging branches, was partial to the ground. It was, more than any other tree in the garden, in harmony with the surroundings and looked inconspicuous. Despite its vibrant colors seen against the stark white wall of the neighbor's house, its bright red cherries sparkling in deep green foliage, it was not easily noticed; it attended to the ground and was absorbed by it. Forgetting itself, it reflected this intimate communion, as if it was essential to its image to make the ground invisible in itself, to be one with the ground, to belong to it.

Some trees did not know how to belong. Through no fault of their own, they were misplaced. Some inattentive persons, who liked their image or some other aspect of them, brought them from a faraway place where, no doubt, they knew how to belong. Despite the care and affection lavished on such trees by their owners, they always looked unloved. Such were the trees across the street from my grandfather's house, at Stein's. They had a very fancy name, which I loved saying. They came all the way from America. My grandfather said they were distant relatives of the acacia trees we had in our village. I could see the similarity of their flower clusters and leaf structure, and the fact that they had thorns. For me this similarity only pointed out more poignantly how much like visitors they were. These fancy trees with light purple flowers and very delicate foliage, beautiful though they were, seemed too frail for these surroundings. With their thin trunks bound against wooden poles to give them stability, they appeared dressed up and posed, propped for picture taking, instead of growing into the ground. I thought that everyone could see their unfortunate displacement for the terrible mistake I thought it was, and I could not understand why their misfortune was so blatantly exposed. I could not look at these trees without wanting to cover them, to shield them, and often would cover my eyes instead.

The acacia indigenous to the surroundings were tall, slender trees with strong trunks. They carried their foliage and white flower clusters, together with their thorns, high above the ground, into the sky. They lined the streets of our village; standing in front of the houses to which they belonged, their rough bark painted white far beyond where I could reach, they looked domesticated. They were part of our lives. Around them children would play games until late in the evening, and under them people would sit on benches and talk late into the night. We would speak into the darkness and everything would listen, and the conversation would grow softer and more intermittent with long silences as the night went on. At times like these everyone was acutely present, and together we were securely cradled into the dark. Sitting in someone's warm lap, listening to the conversation, the darkness and the night air blending with the sound of voices, I was aware of a feeling I could not name, which felt like belonging. I wanted this feeling never to end. Sometimes the sound of words would accompany me into a half slumber where, disassociated from their meaning, they became comfort and reassurance and the sweetest way to fall asleep.

That the trees took part in these nightly gatherings was clear to me especially at parting; when everyone had gone, their presence remained with its sweet assurance. Left to themselves, outside, they could be heard rustling about as we, inside, were going to sleep. And they were there each morning, ready for play. Some children could shimmy up their slender trunks, but no one would climb into their thorny branches. The older children knew how to get sprigs of the sweet-smelling flowers out of these branches, from the ground. With long hollow reeds, ends cut into a prong, they reached and twisted the tender growth and brought it down. Everyone but the trees loved this trick. The children ate the white parts of the flowers immediately. The taste of this stolen delicacy brought out of the sky was like nothing on earth. Sometimes even my mother would resort to this trick, and out of the petals from many flowers, she would make a small salad with sweetened vinegar and water, just for me. It was a delicacy for children only, she explained. I thought it was, truly, a taste of heaven.

The acacia trees were tolerant. They were our friends. One could hold them tightly and cry quietly into their bark when one felt hurt. They would hide one's face behind their trunks when one was shy. And they knew wonderful games like hide and seek, and tapša lapša ko je moj drug?- a game like red-light/green-light, to the chant of “clippity clappity, who is my friend?” The acacia trees were present at all occasions and in all seasons. Their white flower clusters wove a veil of sweetest fragrance over the village and made it look like a bride in spring. The familiar rustle of their sensitive foliage was part of the sound of summer. Autumn winds played mellow wood sounds through their trunks, sounds that accompanied us into our houses and made them seem warmer and safer. And their exposed branches cut the winter sky into familiar pieces. Outside the village the acacia stood alone or in isolated clumps, marking the wide, flat landscape, giving it scale, offering shelter and shade. Against high skies, on the curved horizon, they appeared like a solitary traveler, giving the land its special image.

In the beginning it seemed to me that all things came into existence with my own being, that there was nothing before I was; everything was new and I filled all things with my own special power. Sometimes this power could surprise, as happened to me with the moon.

Late one night, when I was very young, my parents were walking home from a visit with friends who lived on the same street, far from our house, at the other end of the village. The acacia trees lining the street stood in pairs in front of the houses, like giant guards, holding their leafless branches stiffly into the winter sky. The sky responded by tossing their shadows silently before them. It was moonlight. The air was cold but I was bundled up snugly, sitting securely around my father's neck. All was quiet. The village was wrapped in darkness, sleeping. Nothing moved, and in this stillness, I was floating above my parents' heads and they where gliding below without a sound. Only an occasional barking dog in the distance and the changing shadows of the passing trees moving gently, with a dance-like motion, seemed to tie us to the ground. There were no footsteps to be heard; they were swallowed up by the deep silence in which everything only listened. I noticed the sky high above us making a domed ceiling of stars over the village, which now seemed small, huddled in its darkness. I saw the moon and kept looking at it. It seemed the moon and I were in intimate communion; we were gliding together, so to speak. We were doing a little dance. I was delighted. Made bold by this collaboration, I decided to test the moon's response to me. I moved my head, holding it this way and that, and the moon would follow, whatever I did. For a long time I danced with the moon and we kept this up in mutual delight, so it seemed. At some point, however, the moon became animated beyond my expectation, and I got a little frightened of it. It is then I said quietly, disturbing the silence, "The moon is following us." "So he is," my father said, looking up as he continued walking silently beside my mother, and the earth and the village seemed all of one piece.

The earth was at home in the village. The wide unpaved streets that separated long straight lines of houses facing each other, were like ribbons of earth ironed smooth by the steel rims of wagon wheels and the heat of the sun. Summer traffic ground them into a soft warm powder, ankle-deep, so friendly to bare feet. And summer showers transformed them into a playground to match in material abundance the rich imagination of children. We made things to play with and devised games to play. Balls of mud were pinched into potlike forms with straight walls; thrown, inverted, against the brick sidewalk, each pot would make a large sound and at the same time leave a great eruption in its base. It was a serious game. We spat into each pot for good luck in making the largest sound, the most impressive eruption; we did this not for the sake of competing with each other but rather for the sake of the pot, that it may shatter, breaking into the fullest possible sound.

In rainy weather mud was unavoidable in our village. One could follow the brick sidewalks next to the houses to wherever one wanted to go, but crossing the wide streets took some navigation. The mud with its sucking sounds could easily remove a shoe, and it stubbornly clung to one's clothes. One had to be careful of its prankish wiles. I sometimes talked to it or to myself just to keep my wits about me. I would pull my pant leg up and step carefully into the mud with one foot, lower the pant leg, and then proceed similarly with the other foot. I continued this rhythmic motion, lifting one pant leg up while letting the other down, and putting action into words, I sang: "Gaće gore, gaće dole," giving myself a verbal cue, chanting, "Pants up, pants down." I practiced this little ritual on my way home from Grandmother Korek's house, when I was very young, and it was observed by the storekeeper across the street, who would remind me of it, mimicking the gestures and words, to tease me when I was much older.

The ground was grass-covered only outside the village, past the Big Water, in a meadow we called Hutwaat, where ducks and geese were taken during the day by the older children of the family, and in fields where pigs and cows were herded by shepherds early each morning to graze all day, and where sheep and cattle stayed all summer long. In the village, the ground was exposed; it was the background of our every day and the base on which everything stood. Even our houses, their thick walls, and the walls that enclosed yards and gardens were made of earth. Earthen floors brought the ground itself inside. Here, in our rooms, it tinged even our dreams with its rich color.

I first thought the village was made up of my family and the people and houses I knew. My earliest memory was of my mother - more precisely, of my mother's hand. It was as if, suddenly, there existed something other, separate from myself, a hand beautifully shaped with tapered fingers, belonging to my mother. This realization gave me a new identity. It also made me sad, and it filled me with longing. Later, when I could already walk, I would recall this first feeling anytime I saw an article of my mother's clothing or discovered things that belonged to her.

Some early memories were predominantly sensuous: The feel of warm water rolling over me at regular intervals, waiting for it in anticipation, listening to the soft wooden sounds of the tub; the smell of my father's skin and the reassuring sound of his voice; the milky green color of furniture; a circular walker with two wooden rings, one encircling me under my armpits, not allowing me to sit down, the other making a wide circle around my feet, connecting me to a seamless motion over the surface of a yellow ceramic floor with hexagonal tiles.

In the beginning I identified people by their particular scent. Such orientation was comforting; it provided security without the need for much verification, and it was safe from rejection as well. Once taken in by a smell, one could feel at home in it. Lisi néni, who lived across the street, had a pungent smell that I liked very much. She came to our house daily and I liked being held in her lap and being carried off by her, for long stays at her house, which seemed plain and dark inside compared to ours. I called her husband Jebegaći, when I could not say Jakob bácsi. This always made him smile and caused others to laugh. Lisi néni's mother, Nancsi Omami, lived in the room at the end of the house. She wore black clothes, like my grandmother, and had an acrid odor that I did not like so much. Sometimes she showed, with looks and sounds, that she found fault with me; she would even scold me. Lisi néni had a girl of her own, Rosi, who, I thought, was mean. She would come to the blanket where Lisi néni had put me and would tickle me mercilessly; I would fall on my back, and she would not let me get up. Though I could not stop laughing, I had an overwhelming urge to stop her. I never grew to like this girl, and she did not mind. But I liked Lisi néni and the rest of the family, the house with the plain pointed gable, and the garden with the large walnut tree; they were part of my earliest experiences as a member of the village.

The house of my great grandmother was only a house away from Lisi néni's. It was a small yellow house with a rounded gable; it looked pleasant and inviting. Inside it smelled of anise. I would visit her by myself and she would always give me things to eat. I would sit on a footstool in front of a backless chair, which was my table. Hot cornmeal mush spooned into cold milk tasted good, especially in cold weather. Eating it at her house made it special anytime. We sometimes had gingerbread and anise tea with honey. She knew how to make tea from many things, even from rose hips. It was always warm and quiet in her house, and one could hear a wood fire burning and the mellow measured ticking of a wall clock. In spring we would pick strawberries from her garden and dunk them, washed, into the sugar bowl before eating them. And she would give me sweet wood to chew. She was the mother of my grandmother Korek, and my father was the eldest of her grandchildren. She was very fond of him. When he was a boy, she told me, she bought him the bicycle on which he took me for rides. Standing on a small table were many pictures of her other children and grandchildren who live in America, where she herself had been several times. I did not know any of these people. They were my father's aunts, uncles, and cousins, she explained, and she told me all their names. To me they all looked very remote, alike in their attire and their expression. One picture larger than the rest, of a young man all dressed in white, playing an accordion, smiling, showing lots of teeth, epitomized the expression on faces in the pictures from America. This picture of a favorite grandson, Albert, was responsible for my long held opinion that in America everyone was always smiling and all men dressed in white. I was not quite four when she, my Altkroßmotter, died. I don't remember seeing her ill or mourning for her; I only remember feeling her absence and often recalling for myself the strong sweet smell of anise.

I did not know about death. But even before my Altkroßmotter died, I had often heard about it. I knew death brought about change. I saw how Laci, the little boy at Högyis, shrunk into himself after his mother died. I often saw them together on the street in front of their house. He was lively and inquisitive and she spoke with a weeping voice. When she died he grew pale, became shy, and stayed inside. His sister, Kató, who had a large birthmark over one eye, which made her look kind, suddenly seemed older and sadder. Only their beautiful sister, Juci, remained unchanged and appeared hard because of it. The little house, between Lisi néni's and Altkroßmotter's, looked vacant and turned in on itself.

People talked about the dead. And often we knew them as well as the living. Mama Tijana always spoke of her daughter. I knew the dark-haired Jelena who died at sixteen when I was almost three. They said her death had to do with tending roses. The familiar image of mama Tijana - a large woman dressed in black, holding a stick upright under one arm, spinning the bound fleece on it with one hand and with the other twirling a spindle very fast, to wind the evenly spun yarn, walking and talking and only periodically looking down at the work while taking a breath - remained forever connected with the memory of her daughter.

Even the people I had not known before they died were still talked about in connection with the living. Sofija, tetka Mara's half sister, whose fall from a window ledge when she was an infant hurt her spine and caused her to grow up small and disfigured, was often talked about in relation to her exceptionally beautiful mother, who had died long ago, when Sofija was very young. The memory of the beautiful mother still clung to her willful, sickly daughter and was like a reflection in her. I remember Sofija leaning out of the window in the big yellow house that directly faced Altkroßmotter's. She would sometimes smile and say something to me as I walked by. The smiles she gave were more like grimaces. She had a terrible temper, which commanded respect and the attention of everyone in the household. They said she was always in pain. One day, she deliberately set fire to the straw stack while she was sitting in it. She wanted to die, they said. (Sofija died when she was only thirty. I was then already four.) Once, when I was visiting, Sofija took me up to the big house into the front room. There, on the wall facing the windows, in a massive gold frame, and larger then Sofija herself, hung the portrait of her mother. The huge dimly lit room with the unfamiliar scent of musk seemed like an exotic church in a far away land, a place one had to be worthy to enter. The two of us stood silently beside each other. The gesture with which she conveyed that this was her mother, was compelling, complete in itself without any words. A feeling of reverence for Sofija overshadowed the admiration I felt for the beauty in the picture. Her simple utterance recalled the painful sweetness of recognizing my separateness, the feeling of missing my own mother. It was as if I had seen Sofija for the first time, in a sacred place, in front of the dimly lit picture of her mother.

We lived on the summer side of the street. This only meant that the houses there kept their shadows away from the street to let the sunshine onto it. I remember our house changing when I was five. Deep ditches were dug, into which the wide walls of my father's blacksmith shop were sunk and out of which they emerged, turning the house sideways, giving it three instead of two windows and huge, twin wooden doors that closed in the middle. Its new facade was a tinted maroon stucco. Inside things kept their places. Three rooms in a row all opened into each other. The front room was bright only when the wooden shutters on the inside were open. When the shutters were closed there was nothing in this room but darkness and it could become a most frightening place when the only door out, the door into my room, was closed as well. This was my parents' room. Their almost life-sized, tinted portraits hung, oval-framed, above their wide bed. I thought my mother looked beautiful in these warm brown and rose tones. My father looked much thinner and darker than he really was. A disk-shaped light fixture, hanging low, flaunted its cool opalescence. The satin comforter, its crisp white cover buttoned on in such a way as to expose a square of tufted yellow satin at the center, only slightly covered the two stacks of large pillows with embroidered white flowers and my mother's monogram. The bed was usually covered up by a heavy, floral tapestry that closely matched in color and texture the upholstery on the ottoman and chairs. Two night stands, their contents concealed behind small doors, boasted of heavy medical books with intriguing illustrations: images of rashes, oozing sores, grotesque aspects of disfiguring diseases, each covered up by a page of translucent tissue that softened their effect with small crackling sounds.

A piece of furniture we called Spiegeltisch filled the span between the two windows. The drawers on each side of its large oval mirror secreted powders in boxes, creams in little jars, books with pictures, as well as treasures like rings, beads and lockets, and my father's pocket watch. Its ledges showed photographs under glass, bird-shaped salt stone sculptures (one of them, a swan with its head under its wing, made my mother cry when it broke), small bottles containing mists of floral fragrances, and vases with fragile, dried ornamental grasses, which sounded, when touched, much like their natural color, a delicate whisper of silver and gold. The soft light falling through lace curtains examined each treasure discreetly, and the mirror kept its secrets and reflected only the contents of the room and the upholstered bench before it.

Two massive wardrobes, so tall they almost touched the ceiling, held all that we possessed of clothes and linen, and out of them emerged new and forgotten treasures. My mother would show me the many nets and laces she made, and all the monogrammed linens of her dowry that my grandmother, with Grandfather's help, embroidered while the two of them were in America. That which must have taken years to accomplish now lay pressed and tightly folded, and all this effort procured the sweet smell of lavender that tinged the bed linen and pillowcases on which we slept. Summer dresses that a long winter made one forget one had emerged like a sweet surprise, making one feel glad having them anew. This was also the home of important documents, which were put into a green suede envelope-like briefcase and tucked between folded linens and laces, shirts and pillowcases.

A small oval table with two elegant armchairs found a place against the stenciled wall - a lush green field with leaves of lighter green outlined in gold. The floor made mellow wood sounds softened by woven runners. This room always seemed cool and everything in it was important; it was the room that kept our treasures. We called it the front room. It was our best room and the one we offered to our guests. The door to it was often closed.

My room was much smaller and had an earthen floor painted yellow ocher. Long strips of woven rugs laid next to each other obscured most of its color and muffled the sound of the ground. A window looking into the neighbor's yard was densely curtained with laces. A picture of a beautiful angel leading a little girl over a bridge hung above my bed; my mother said it was the guardian angel - all children had one, and mine perhaps looked like the one in the picture. I was puzzled. My bed cover, richly layered with lace netting and organza ruffles over a light rose satin, was the most decorative aspect of the room. At night I covered myself with the downs that were under it during the day, while it lay folded on the bench in front of the mirror, glistening softly on moonlight nights. It was a bright room and the furniture was a pale whey-green. A slender wood-burning stove with a silver exhaust pipe heated the room in winter. In summer my doll, Griseltis, stood on top of it held up by her funnel skirt. I liked sleeping with my head at the foot end of the bed, facing the window; below it sat my beautiful doll Nora attended by two white toy poodles. All my dolls and the doll carriage were in this room. Some dolls were ornamental and stood about only to be admired. I did not play with them. They looked so awkward and uncomfortable; they did not like to be touched. Often, lying in my bed, concentrating on the ceiling, I could invert the room. Looking at the ceiling as if it were the floor, walking about it unrestricted, gave me a different point of view and everything else a new identity.

One winter my father hung my swing, from outside, into the doorway of my room. It was a beautiful swing, hung on four instead of two ropes, enclosed on all sides by pale wooden dowels and large, light blue beads. The thought of being able to swing from one room into the other was exciting. Swinging itself, inside or out, was not a pleasant experience; I would get a sick feeling from it and would need to get off very quickly. Once on the ground, I would forget how it felt and try again. But the same sick feeling would come back, all by itself.

The back room was dark and cool in summer and bright and warm in winter. It had the only door to the outside. A double door: the inside door was half glass, the one on the outside was wooden. Between them was a generous space; a place to play. This room had many such places. Behind the wall-oven was the most private, and under the table, with the long tablecloth, could become the most secluded. The backless chairs, called Hockedl, when inverted, became a house, a wagon, or anything else one wanted them to be. The ceramic floor of yellow hexagonal tile, covered by a braided-grass rug, cushioned our walk to whispering sounds. The window, like that in my room, looked into the neighbor's yard, but it was so high one could only see the sky and was not a window for looking out; even my mother had to stand on a stool to open it, which she sometimes did when tetka Katica, our neighbor, knocked on it, calling: "Vavika".

The wall-oven that kept the house warm in winter was a large rectangular protrusion, bulging a bit at the middle. Attached to the back wall and almost as high as the ceiling, it stood away from the wall that held the window, leaving a warm space between them. High above, where I could not reach, was a small door into which my mother put pots of food for slow cooking. There was no door from this room to the summer kitchen; there was only a window, which my mother converted into a wall closet with glass doors. There she kept the beautiful floral china, its cups and plates and soup tureens, and the Japanese tea service, a wedding present from the Čurićs, which we rarely used. The cups were so thin one could almost see through them, and the painted images of bridges and Japanese ladies with parasols were so delicate one was afraid to breathe in front of them.

My mother often changed the appearance of this room by moving the furniture about. She did not seem to mind; perhaps she did not consider that something was lost by such changes and that one had to have time to get to know the room in its new arrangement. Such changes were difficult for me and I always showed my displeasure. I did not mind, however, when in winter the black cooking stove from the summer kitchen and a wooden chest that served as a washstand, with the large white-enameled washbowl we called lavor, were moved in. This change filled the room with wonderful sounds and smells and made it even better. The two large cerulean blue enameled water cans were then placed near the door, where they looked almost ornamental. They contained the drinking water from the artesian well at the corner of our street, where it flowed (from an iron pipe) like a silver ribbon. Everyone in our street fetched water there. It was a long way to carry things so heavy, but my mother used a bowed wooden bar with prongs at each end on which she hung the lidded cans and so carried both on one shoulder. We called this utensil obramica (it was a carrying yoke). When I was a little older, I would carry one of these cans, half full, from the well by myself. But I had to put it down many times along the way, and I had to be careful not to let the can be tripped by the ground. The deep lid, inverted, was like a mug; the water tasted sweetest drinking from it, and I could drink almost to the bottom.

Drinking water from the artesian well was a memorable pleasure. I would often prolong my thirst just to be able to look forward to this, and I could always determine the exact point of satiation and not drink past it. Artesian water was sweet, cold in summer and in winter pleasantly tepid. It flowed from deep within the earth, day and night, interrupted only by cupped hands and the mouths of water cans. When it filled to overflowing the large cement trough from which horses drank, it followed, almost unnoticed, the rills and ditches of our street, losing some of its crystalline clarity, and gathered into a body of water outside the village. There it became part of what we called Kroßwasser. Big Water.

We, like everyone in the village, had a well in our yard, but the water there was bitter by comparison; it had a metallic taste. We never drank it. Only the animals did. Well-water, as we called it to distinguish it from the water we drank, was hard, and we did not bathe or wash our clothes with it. It was sometimes used in cooking and other preparations. My father kept it in the barrel where he dunked the glowing iron he had pounded into horseshoes or plow shares. This made the water sizzle, and the steam from it smelled much like its taste. We carried well-water in watering cans to plants and flowers in the garden. It also was used to settle the dust and cool down the streets and yards in summer. In the early evening, women sprayed down the street in front of their houses with ritual-like concentration, swinging their watering can with one arm, the other arm slightly extended for balance, and with wide measured movements laid sprays of lyrical lilting lines onto the smoothly swept ground. They continued this twofold dance- walking backward, keeping time with the graceful flowing line that followed them, leaving a pattern of their movement on the ground - until the space in front of their house was full of the dancing design. Such patterns greeted one in the evening all over the village, adding their soothing order to the end of the day, and the cool familiar fragrance spoke of an anointed earth.

Our well was the most prominent structure in our front yard, looking quaint amid flower beds and vegetable garden. The huge, bright green, gathered-up leaves of the horseradishes grew tall around its square enclosure. Mounted under the roof canopy of the well, a round beam turned with the aid of a crank would lower the chain with the bucket and pull it up; it seemed like a big toy. The well itself was round, its shaft bricked in. The water level glistened darkly from depths below. Ever since I was tall enough to see over its encasement, I did not look down its narrow shaft without feeling a particular horror. That there were sometimes frogs in the well added disgust to this horror. But the quaint outward appearance of the well continued to belie the terror it held, and one got used to its double image.

Only a small slit, a window from the neighbor's pantry, squinted in on our front yard like a bad eye and watched the vegetable garden below it. Our open hallway, sheltered by a dense cover of climbing ivy, looked across flower beds of tall summer chrysanthemums, multicolored velvet pansies, red geraniums, violets - asserting privacy to house and yard.

The summer kitchen, an addition to the house, had its own roof, and its shallow attic was accessed by a moveable ladder. I could climb this ladder to the top when I was three, but getting down would require urgent calls for my mother. Here, at the end of the house, where the brick walk continued into the backyard, a wire fence with a gate that latched separated front from back yard and kept the chickens out of the flower and the vegetable gardens.

The window of the summer kitchen, with its single pane of glass to the outside, had a ledge the width of a wall; it was the perfect stage for the small dolls I made myself. They were no larger then three inches and looked more like crosses to anyone else. To me they were complete, perfect in themselves. I made them from the old broom, cutting out sections of its reed handle. It was a soft, pulpy reed with a polished pale yellow surface. By making a slit a third way down the cut section of reed, I cold easily slide in a narrow sliver from its polished skin to serve as arms. I imagined their faces. They had clothes for all occasions, which I cut from scraps of material: brightly colored silks and floral cottons for dresses, and small-checked woolens for coats. On the wide stage of the window ledge in the summer kitchen, these dolls acted out in intricate variation all I knew and could imagine of social interaction, adding the rich detail, their own personalities, to my experience.

On rainy days I watched the storm scatter the chickens under the young corn, were they stood still for long periods, drawing their necks into their wings, anticipating the fall of raindrops from leaves above. I felt sorry for them, and I sometimes tried to chase them into the chicken coop before the rain started, but they made a game of it and would not go, even when I cried. My mother said I need not worry - they knew how to take care of themselves. So I watched them through the rain-covered window pane and learned to let them be. During heavy storms she would say, "God is scolding," as if to ask me to listen for the thunder. I liked the large noises and the surprise of the lightning. I did not understand why she asked me, at such times, not to play by the window.

The summer kitchen was an easy place to be. The door was usually open and the doorway was covered by a long linen cloth that billowed gently; it was hung there partly to keep the room cooler inside and as a precaution, a warning for inquisitive flies. Once inside long, sticky, amber ribbons hanging from the low ceiling were waiting to catch them. Everything in this kitchen was simple. The walls were a pale yellow covered with minute, randomly spaced brown dots that my mother had flung on them, on purpose, using paint on a hand broom. The earth floor had a patina and texture from the many washes with a mixture of water and dehydrated cow dung. This application made a pattern of the wide, softly rounded strokes the length of my mother’s arm, and gave the floor the clean smell of hay.

Everything was open and exposed in the summer kitchen. The enormous built-in black iron kettle in the corner was used for big jobs, when fires were lit under it with straw, dried corncobs, roots of cornstalks, or the dried long stalks of sunflowers. Such kettles were not used just for boiling water but also for cooking fruits and vegetables into jams and preserves. Lard was rendered, bedclothes and linens were boiled, and even soap was cooked in them. Sometimes people would borrow our kettle; lifted out by its handles, it left a larger round hole in its square housing. On the wall next to the kettle housing, a hinged tin door concealed the opening to the oven that heated our back room and in which we baked our bread. Here in the summer kitchen, the other side of the same wall closet that displayed our good china in the back room held stacks of heavy white ironstone dishes we used every day. Its plain painted doors concealed all it contained, denying any resemblance to its interior glass facade. The large table in the middle of the floor, its backless chairs, and the bed in the far corner were all of the same simple construction. The brass scale and the mortar, both looking noticeably more sophisticated than their surroundings, adorned an open shelf with red enameled pans among the blue. Two embroidered wall cloths with appropriate phrases in Gothic script, praising cleanliness and good cooking, hung tacked above the washstand and the stove.

A small mirror hanging on a slant reflected in bits and pieces the events that had fallen into it here in the summer kitchen. The awkward silence of an evening left alone with Péter, my father's apprentice, who seemed grownup at fourteen when I was five, fell into it and dimly reflected on its slippery surface: I shyly showing off two foil-wrapped chocolate chickens I had received for Easter; he quietly watching. The silver hen, sitting on a basket of multicolored eggs, was a miniature replica of the real hen brooding in the corner next to the washstand. The rooster, foiled in robin's-egg blue, paraded over the red-checkered tablecloth, conscious of being watched. A subtle persuasion that it was chocolate and something to eat lead to a bold action, a sweet taste, and a quiet tearful disappointment. The silvery rustle of the hollow form meant the toy was gone. I wanted to be brave, and tried not to cry. In the corner, the hen shifted her position and turned her head from side to side as if to get a better look at the cause of my dismay. Soon the chicks would hatch and move about in soft yellow clusters following their mother, taking shelter under her, making the pleasant noises of reassured comfort. Perhaps the mirror would lift up one of their gestures and keep it. Later, when they start getting feathers among the down, they would be outside and on their own, waiting for the transformation. As sleek young hens and roosters with glossy plumage, they would strut about the backyard. Some would find their way back, and their image would appear again, raised up from the floor of the summer kitchen onto the silvery surface of the mirror.

We had lots of chickens. I liked watching them. A game I devised for myself was to asses their personality from their form and action. Another such game was to pair animals. With chickens this was easy; male and female turkeys fit the same model. Ducks and gees were a convincing pair until I observed two geese chasing a duck away from their goslings. Cows and horses were a match according to stable wisdom until I saw donkeys, mules, and oxen, when the whole scheme became complicated and confusing, but I went on relentlessly correcting and repairing. My observations of animals led me to form definite opinions. I noticed, for instance, that when released to the back yard, the hens that had been with chicks for a long time showed excessive fondness for the rooster's attention. They would repeatedly lay down in front of him in submission. That would confuse the rooster; it made the elaborate dance he did around all the hens unnecessary. It was amusing to see the rooster looking surprised, awkward, and somewhat annoyed - first lessons of the backyard.

On Sunday mornings I would watch my mother catching chickens in the yard; sometimes I would help her by holding my arms stiffly in front of me, to keep them cornered. She was quick and always caught just the one she wanted. Usually it was a young rooster; we had too many of them, she said. If it was one I particularly liked, she would choose another, until next time. With her arm at her side, she carried it carefully, her hand around its legs. It, hanging upside down, bent up, trying to bite her. On the floor of the summer kitchen, its wings fluttered against the ground. The simple economy of movement proceeded like a dance. Everything had meaning, and nothing was wasted. She held the chiken’s feet pinned down only by the ball of one foot; the other she placed on its folded wings. She shielded its entire head in one hand, making sure its eyes were closed, and then turned its long neck up. Holding a knife in the other hand, she carefully plucked some feathers from its neck as if it required a cosmetic procedure. One gliding stroke of the knife and the bowl of the wide-rimmed ironstone plate filled with bright red blood. All of this was done skillfully, with precision and the concentration and reverence required of a sacred ritual. I would watch my mother and learn. Such learning was a bodily acquisition and wholly unlike knowledge acquired by instruction. One saw and intuited each action and it became one's own. These ritual-like activities transformed the preparation of a meal into a rich sequence of experiences and made it an important event. The summer kitchen was a place where such events culminated, where all activities integrated, and only the mirror reflected the countless separate images.

Sundays were especially pleasant at our house. My father was home. He would play the accordion, and my mother and I would dance. He always closed his eyes when he played, to concentrate on making the sounds. He had taught himself to play; he said this as if it were an apology. He was always smiling as he played. His smile seemed to be an underlying aspect of all his expressions; it was a sign of his pleasant disposition. I equated my father's smile with his goodness and associated both with the smell of his skin. When my mother or I was ill, the darkness of his eyes seemed to color his entire face, and the underlying smile in it looked betrayed. He did not often play with me, even when he was home. He had a serious nature. But he was attentive and would call me his Menschl, his sweetheart, and he said it so softly that I sometimes felt I did not know what to do - it made me so happy. He carried me around and talked to me, but we did not know how to play with each other. For me, his affection was evident just in his presence, and our Sundays were filled with special pleasures. The Sunday meal with its many curses - clear soup with delicate dumplings or finely sliced lacy noodles, cooked meat with fruit or herb sauces, fried or roast meat, perhaps Wiener Schnitzel, creamed vegetables in countless variations, fresh salads in spring and summer, desserts from the simple to the exotic - was followed by a nap in the cool of the back room. Baying sladoled (ice cream) and soda water, cold yogurt from earthen jars or a watermelon drawn from the well, bicycle rides accompanied by a self-conscious hardly audible whistling, outings to soccer games, and the sweet presence of my father are Sunday memories.

And other days were memorable too. My mother was always doing something important, and I was allowed to practice my version of everything she did. Pealing potatoes, making noodles, stirring egg yolks and sugar till they were creamy when she was baking cakes, and later licking the bowl clean were activities that needed practicing. When she baked bread, she made me a miniature of the large, round loafs, and when she backed Strudel, I helped to pull the dough till it looked transparent draped over the tablecloth, reaching halfway to the floor; she taught me how to trim the edges of the pliant dough, and I watched as she filled and rolled and placed the strudel into baking pans, making her every gesture my own. I watched her build exotic desserts and delicate pastries: madártej, also called Schneenockl, white mounds of sweet meringue cooked in milk, floating in a yellow vanilla sauce, krempite and šampite, a delicate, flaky, powder-sugared pastry, one with vanilla filling, the other filled with sweet meringue; Schaumrolle, cream-horns, an architectural feat; many layered tortes - all took a lot of patience. One had to be careful not to get in the way; when things went wrong, she could become very irritable, even cross. Usually there were remnants to sample, leftover filling and cut-off bits of pastry, all tasting delicious.

Visits from my grandparents, Nancsi Omami, Lisi néni, Altkroßmotter (while she was alive) and tetka Mara, my mother’s best friend, were an integral part of the day. That my mother continued whatever she was doing was not only acceptable but appropriate, since they liked taking part in what was going on. All visits were welcome, and our visitors were an extension of our family.

And all belonged, as the beginning of things, firmly rooted to the ground.