The Choice

job at the warehouse—but he will live. e medical staff at the TB
hospital, taken by Béla’s charm and humor, promise that before he is
discharged they will help him ĕgure out a career path that can li us
out of poverty and give him plenty of healthy years. ey administer
an aptitude test that Béla thinks is silly until the results come back. He
is best suited to a career as an orchestra conductor or an accountant,
the test reveals.
“We could make a new life in the ballet,” he jokes. “You could
dance, I’d conduct the orchestra.”
“Do you ever wish you’d studied music when you were young?” It’s
a dangerous game to play what-if with the past.
“I did study music when I was young.”
How have I forgotten this? He studied violin, like my sister. He
wrote about it in those letters when he courted me. Hearing him talk
about it now is like being told he used to go by a different name.
“I was pretty good. My teachers told me I could have gone to
conservatory, and I might have, if there wasn’t the family business to
run.”
My face gets hot. I am suddenly angry. I don’t know why. I want to
say something that will sting, but I don’t know if it is myself I want to
punish, or him. “Just think,” I say, “if you’d kept it up, you might have
met Klara first instead of me.”
Béla tries to read my face. I can see him trying to decide whether to
tease me or reassure me. “Do you really want to try to convince me
that I’m not happy beyond happy to be married to you? It was a violin.
It doesn’t matter now.”
en I understand what it is that has upset me. It is the seeming
effortlessness with which my husband has put to rest an old dream. If
he ever suffered anguish over giving up music, he kept it hidden from
me. What was wrong with me that I was still so hungry for what
wasn’t?