Unravelled Read Online Free Page A

Hajna and I interjected in unison. We jumped in our chairs like jack-in-the-boxes, our pink jaws falling at the same time and at the same angle. I didn't even have to look at her to know our expressions mirrored one another's perfectly.
    "Why can't we take Kiraly?" we spat out at the same time, a salty lump rising in my throat. I kept trying to swallow it, to make it disappear, but it only made hot tears brim in the corners of my eyes. I didn't want to be a baby, I didn't want my sisters and parents to see how upset I was, but we had wanted a dog so badly. We had begged our parents since our fifth birthday for a dog and finally they told us they believed us to be responsible enough to take care of one. And now, only a few months later, he was being cruelly ripped away from us, just when he was beginning to feel like a very best friend. 
    "The Germans won't allow pets," Mama answered quietly, speaking the words into her napkin as though if she kept the words contained, they wouldn't be true.
    "The GERMANS?" Hajna and I spat out once more, in tandem once again.
    "Yes," my father nodded. "The Germans are moving all Jewish families to a special part of the city, down near the temple. But don't worry, girls, it's just until the end of the war. I heard on the radio that the Americans and Russians were closing in. It's not going to be long. Maybe a few months at most."
    Papa spoke calmly, waving his fork in the air every third or fourth word, like a conductor leading a symphony.
    Lujza seemed composed, as if she had already been told the news before. As Papa explained what was going to happen, trying in vain to console us from a painful reality, Lujza began craning her neck. She began straining so hard that a bead of sweat appeared right at her red hairline. It trickled down the side of her face before disappearing into her milky-white neck.
    "The radio?" she asked, nibbling on her pink lips. "Where is your radio, Papa?"
    Hajna and I shot up like firecrackers, running to the living room to see for ourselves. Our radio, the beautiful wooden machine had been part of our evening ritual for as long as I could remember. We would gather around it, Hajna and I usually curling up on the Oriental rug, as Mama brushed our hair and we would listen to the whirl of the wires as Papa found the station. First, we'd listen to children's stories. Then, as our eyelids began to grow heavy, Papa would light his cigar and change to a classical station or the news. The strum of the violins or the monotone voices of the newscasters would lull us into a trance, and most nights we fell asleep to the comforting sounds and sweet smell of our parents' milk and tea and the murky smell of Papa's cigar. And on the rare occasion when I was sick, Mama would make a bed for me on the pink Victorian couch and let me listen to the radio programs meant to keep housewives company as they did the cooking and cleaning.
    "I gave it away," he nodded, smoothing the collar of his blue silk pajamas.
    "You gave it away?" Lujza's eyes grew wide, her hand to her heart, the way our grandmother lifted her wrinkled, browning hand to her chest when she heard shocking news. "Why?"
    "Because he had to," Mama nodded, running a freshly painted fingernail over her already made-up face. "The Germans have ordered all Jews to give up their radios. We can't have them in the new place."
    "What are we supposed to do at night?" Hajna asked, her little eyebrows knitted so closely together I worried she would give herself a headache.
    "Well," my father laughed, "We'll actually talk to each other. We'll make up stories. And you girls are going to have to go to school. There probably won't be one there, but I'll give you lessons. You want to be promoted into the next grade when the war's over, don't you?"
    I bent my wrist and rested my head on top of it, letting my loose hair fall over my face. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that mean kids like the boy at school who said we had made him poor, or The