"Come where?"
"Itтs Thursday, Mama!"
"Oh," said Bruna Fabbre, retreating toward the stove, making vague
protective gestures at the saucepans, the dishcloths, the spoons.
"You said."
"But itтs nearly four already--"
"We can be back by six-thirty."
"I have all the papers to read for the advancement tests."
"You have to come, Mama. You do. Youтll see!"
A heart of stone might resist the shining eyes, the coaxing, the
bossiness. "Come on` she said, and the mother came.
But grumbling. "This is for you," she said on the stairs.
On the bus, she said it again. "This is for you. Not me.
"What makes you think that?"
Bruna did not reply for a while, looking out the bus window at the gray
city lurching by, the dead November sky behind the roofs.
"Well, you see," she said, "before Kasi, my brother Kasimir, before he
was killed, that was the time that would have been for me. But I was too
young. Too stupid. And then they killed Kasi."
"By mistake."
"It wasnтt a mistake. They were hunting for a man whoтd been getting
people out across the border, and theyтd missed him. So it was to. . . ."
"To have something to report to the Central Office."
Bruna nodded. "He was about the age you are now," she said. The bus
stopped, people climbed on, crowding the aisle. "Since then, twenty-seven
years, always since then, itтs been too late. For me. First too stupid, then too
late. This time is for you. I missed mine."
"Youтll see," Stefana said. "Thereтs enough time to go round."
This is history. Soldiers stand in a row before the reddish, almost
windowless palace; their muskets are at the ready. Young men walk across the
stones toward them, singing, "Beyond this darkness is the light, 0 Liberty, of
thine eternal day!"
