TE23 Double Feature

Andrea Tompa

The Hangman’s House

should be, in principle below the knee, at least to mid-shin, and Granny had begged her to let her raise the hem because it was a size 52 uniform, Oh, mother, of course I can buy myself a uniform! —she’d begged her mother at the end of August to be allowed to go to the shop by herself— You can’t be serious, I can do a thing like that! —and her mother had very reluctantly handed over the 45 lei, but in the shop in Szentegyház utca she’d simply asked the assistant how big the largest uniform was she was getting it for her sister, and they all had the label ‘Made in Bîrlad’, because invisible Bîrlad, which she couldn’t even place on the map, was the holy city of uniforms, and when her mother came home that evening and saw the enormous dress she slammed the door of the room and told her: you’re not going anywhere tomorrow, not even to your Grandmother’s, and Mother could have exchanged the dress if she wanted, after all, she was in charge of the big department store, but the enormous ankle-length uniform 350

couldn’t fail to be spotted, last year’s was a disgrace because Your backside’s hanging out, love , said Mother, it had become so short, Grandmother sighed and turned it up for next year’s uniform and never said a word when a certain Pisti, Juci’s classmate, often appeared after school or in the garden at Father’s, and she was put in Square because in fact it was knee-length, and there was a number on it, and the pockets hadn’t been altered, but it was so tight, so close-fitting that she could hardly get it on and it was hard to walk in it, but she was so slim in the dress— Ta, Granny —because Granny had let it out very carefully at the side and put in an invisible, narrow zip from bust to hip on the left so that she would be able to get it on, and wearing it the Girl looked like her mother in her school-leaving dress, that checked dress which, as it happened, Grandmother had also made, but now at the sight of the ankle length nun’s habit purple patches appeared on the teacher’s hitherto immaculate, smooth 351