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myself and then brushed my hair into a quiff, even though she knew I didn’t like it.
    “You can stay upstairs for a bit, with Aunt Odette.” She put me down on the floor. “Downstairs you’d just get in the way.”
    I had never seen Aunt Odette looking so stately, all in black. Cascades of pleats enveloped her skinny frame and she smelled even older than she was. Even dustier. Even drier.
    “She’s the sort that snuffs out like a candle,” my father used to say. “The sort you come upon all stiff in a chair, like a dead crow on a branch.”
    She had spread an old bedcover on the floor and tipped the building blocks on top.
    “Why don’t you build me a fine tower,” she said sweetly, but her smile betrayed impatience. I knew she wanted to have done with me.
    She took up one of her old photo albums and began to turn the stiff cardboard pages, and the tissue paper separating them made a soft, pattering sound like raindrops, making me glad to be with her in spite of her aloofness. Aunt Odette rarely addressed me directly, unless I needed chiding, and even then she preferred summoning my father as if he were her servant, but she made strange secret sounds, which intrigued me like the words of a foreign language.
    I set about creating the tallest tower I had ever built, merely for the reward of her feigned amazement. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her rise quickly to rummage in the dark wooden cabinet. Thinking she was unobserved, she carefully unwrapped a ruby-red boiled sweet and popped it into her mouth with a practised air, as though it were an extra-large indigestion tablet.
    I felt my cheeks burn with indignation. Once she was seated again I heard the click of the sugary gem against her molars. Her lips parted from time to time to emit soft sucking sounds. Soon I was drooling so profusely that my saliva tasted almost as sweet as the real thing.
    Aunt Odette breathed serene contentment. Now and then odd-sounding words passed her lips. She was so engrossed in her photographs that she seemed to be in a blissful dream, inthe middle of which she sighed and said, with a rare tremor of ecstasy in her voice, “Yugoslavia,” or “Prague. Such a lovely city.
Praha
, they call it.”
    Fired by her emotion, I shouted “
Praha
” in response, accidentally knocking down my tower, at which she gave me a look of affectionate surprise and ruffled my hair with her bony fingers.
    “Yes,” she laughed. “
Praha. Praha
is a thousand times lovelier than Vienna.”
    I waited for her to doze off. She had already slipped off her shoes and put her legs up on the sofa with a great swish of petticoats, and propped a cushion in the small of her back.
    Downstairs was busy. I could make out the tinkle of spoons against teacups and the occasional dull pop of a cork bursting from a bottle-neck.
    After a while the noise died away. Aunt Odette had already shut her album. Now her chin sank on to her breast. I got up.
    *
    The door gave willingly when, standing on tiptoe, I twisted the handle. There was no teasing little whinge as it swung open.
    Of all the doors in the house there were some that colluded with me when I ventured on forbidden forays, and there were others that gave a tell-tale creak as they fell to behind me. There were drawers that responded eagerly when pulled open, as though jumping at the chance, and other obstinate ones that resisted or jammed halfway or refused to budge once they were sticking all the way out like gaping jaws, no matter how hard I tugged. Hidden inside them were entire worlds, compact universes, held together by a logic or gravity thateluded me. Bits of string tangled up with locks of snipped-off hair. Lame-fingered gloves clawing at frayed collars, perhaps in search of their other half. Loose cuff links. A scattering of stamps, some unused and others heavily postmarked, but all of them yellowed.
    How many more treasures were there, hidden away in all the drawers I couldn’t reach? What could