The Conversion

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “That’s no way to behave,” Karl called out to the employer.

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  On the way home he told her about his Aunt Franzi’s death. Hearing the news, she stopped and said, “She too has gone to her eternal rest. She was as lovely as a flower.”

  They turned onto Salzburg Boulevard, and Karl wanted to reveal his conversion to her, but he didn’t know how. Suddenly, the whole thing seemed dark and complicated to him, as if it belonged to another period of his life. Finally, he told her more about his appointment, about Hochhut’s opposition and the deputy mayor’s support.

  Gloria said, “I’m so pleased,” and the face so familiar to him from times past returned.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Gloria worked diligently, and the house, which had known many days of gloom and neglect, seemed to shed its gray mantle. It was the same house, illuminated by the same windows, but somehow different.

  “What are you doing?” he asked Gloria, the way you ask a magician about his tricks.

  “I’m tidying.”

  When he returned in the evening, the table was set and the aroma was pleasant. There was always a little surprise: like two flowers in a vase. Now he remembered with exactness her arrival at the house. It was winter. The stove in the dining room was lit, and tendrils of frost twirled on the wide windows. His mother hadn’t gone to the store because she had fired the housemaid. Karl was sitting on the floor, playing with big blocks that Aunt Franzi had brought him.

  His mother was not content at home, and she expressed her dissatisfaction in abrupt gestures. Karl missed the outdoors. All summer long he had run about the yard, building hiding places, watching the slow movements of a horse for hours as it grazed on the other side of the fence. Suddenly, as if out of the darkness, a short, swarthy creature had appeared, trembling with cold. It was Gloria. Karl’s mother had found her near the grocery store. A country smell wafted up from the bulky clothes that covered only half her body. She was wearing peasant sandals without socks, and her knees were exposed and nearly blue.

  “What’s your name?” asked Karl’s mother.

  “My name is Gloria.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “From a village.”

  “Which village?”

  “From Schenetz.”

  “How many years of school do you have?”

  “Four.”

  “And why did you run away from home?”

  “I didn’t run away. They sent me to work.”

  “You won’t steal?”

  “No.”

  That was the end of the interview.

  The next day Karl’s mother was back in the store, and he was with Gloria. She spoke broken German in a loud, strange voice. Not only was her pronunciation strange, her whole presence was unique. Unlike the earlier housemaids, she sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and played with him. After lunch she would tell him about her village, which rose up in his mind like a great green castle. Karl had not yet been out of the city.

  Gloria was his partner in play from morning to night. When his parents returned from the store, she would serve them a hot meal and withdraw to her little room. His parents were up to their necks in their business. The shop wasn’t profitable. Its gloom darkened the house, and every evening they bent over the account books and quarreled. Karl would play on the floor and, abandoned, tumble into sleep. When he awoke in the morning, his parents were already gone. Gloria would say, “Good morning, Karl,” and her voice had a pleasant, guttural sound. For breakfast she would prepare hot chocolate and two slices of bread. Her fingers were long, and he liked to look at them as she spread the butter. Later, they would sit on the floor for hours, playing jacks, cards, or whatever they chanced to play. Gloria would say that in the summer it would be warm and green again and they would stroll along Salzburg Boulevard as far as the river.

  Sometimes, to make him happy, she would dress him in his new suit, his high shoes, and the coat with the fur collar. Then they would go out to visit his parents. On the way she would show him the wonders of winter: crows and squirrels. His parents were anxious in the store, too. “Where are you going?” his mother would ask with frightening inattentiveness.

  Together they amused themselves on the grass in the parks and along the river. After hours of running around and laughter, he would tumble into her lap and fall asleep. One morning Gloria found a rabbit in the yard. The animal was frightened and tried to escape. Its efforts were in vain. That very morning Gloria built a cage for it, and Karl’s joy was boundless.

  His mother would say, “You’re starting school next year. You’re getting too old for these games. Gloria, you must teach him to count.” These words sounded like threats to him, and he began to imagine school like the monastery at the end of the road, a place whose iron gate seldom opened. When it did, two tall priests would come out and stand in the entrance for a moment. In their dark robes, they looked to him like escaped prisoners.

  His father was immersed in himself and paid no attention to Karl. After dinner he would stare at the chessboard, trying to find solutions. Karl’s mother would say, “You’re wasting your time on nothing.”

  “What?” his father would answer, as if in a daze.

  “Why don’t you go to night school? You can get a job only if you have a diploma. The store is about to collapse.”

  Even those nagging sentences did not pull him away from the chessboard.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “What?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  Those were their customary conversations. Karl remembered them well because they were repeated every evening.

  But the morning at Gloria’s side was always full of light. She had what his parents lacked—joyfulness. Everything made her happy—a bird, a flower. Even a slice of bread and butter made her smile. During that long enchanted summer he learned to skip rope, play jacks, and fly kites. The kites didn’t go very high, but their flight, low as it was, amused him to tears.

  During the first years of grade school, classes ended at one o’clock. Gloria would be there to pick him up, and they would stroll along the river, lingering near the fishermen and the boatmen. But the enchanted kingdom remained the backyard, where he and Gloria rolled on the grass, flew kites, and put leaves in the rabbit’s mouth. His parents, when they came home from the store at night, looked strange, alien. The question repeated every night, “How are you, Karl?” only embarrassed him.

  Gymnasium took him from the house and from Gloria. Neufeld didn’t seem like home to him anymore. It had become a jumping-off point, from which he would soar into the world. The house was cramped and limited, and he intended to abandon it, but it soon became clear to him that without money, university was out of the question. Martin’s and Freddy’s parents had saved money in the municipal savings fund. Meanwhile, Karl’s mother could do nothing but wring her hands in self-reproach. It was simply too hard a blow for her to bear.

  After the summer vacation, Martin and Freddy left for Vienna, and he became more and more immersed in beginning a career. He made a daily visit to the Green Eagle and a weekly one to Victoria’s. The girls knew him well and were fond of him. Whenever he showed up, they would vie with each other for him.

  In that deadening routine, everyone was lost to him, including Gloria.

  Now it took him time to absorb her return. When finally it sank in, he called out in a voice not his own, “Gloria.”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad you came back to us.”

  What would be now he didn’t know. His recent life had seemed to him like a wave that would one day fling him onto another shore. What he would find there he couldn’t imagine.

  One evening, after dinner, he said, “I want to tell you something.”

  Gloria, on her way to the kitchen, froze.

  “I don’t know whether or not I told you that I converted.”

  “No.”
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  “I have converted.”

  Gloria opened her eyes in disbelief.

  “Father Merser conducted the ceremony.”

  “Were there many people?” she asked for some reason.

  “All my friends.”

  “I knew that something had happened,” she said, covering her mouth with her right hand.

  “Without the conversion, my appointment would have been impossible.”

  “What can you do?” she said with a Jewish lilt.

  “Everybody’s doing it, it seems.”

  “That’s true,” said Gloria, turning toward the kitchen.

  “I know that Aunt Franzi would have condemned me, but you won’t.”

  Gloria laughed and said, “You’re the same old Karl to me.”

  Her comment pleased him very much, and he went over and kissed her on the forehead.

  CHAPTER

  11

  From then on the days moved along at a different pace. Karl moved into the well-furnished municipal secretary’s office. He had known that office since his youth. While still a trainee he delivered mail there, as he did for all the departments. The municipal secretary at that time looked like a replica of the Kaiser, with the same beard and eyebrows.

  His new office seemed suffused by a special light, by a special sense of ease. Never, not even in his dreams, had he imagined he would one day occupy this spacious office. Even as the senior committee discussed his appointment, he had not envisioned that this office might really be his. When it was finally given to him, with all due ceremony, he was not especially proud, or even joyful. In fact, he mainly felt self-conscious. The gestures that had clung to him over the years, like the slightly bent head whenever people spoke to him, or the covering of his mouth with his right hand, became so much more conspicuous in this roomy place.

  Only in the evening, with Gloria, did he feel comfortable. He would tell her about the events of the day, as in the past upon his return from school. Gloria, to his surprise, kept track of his colleagues by name—which one was a friend and which an enemy. She would listen without commenting, and speak only to foster some feeling he wanted her to.

  She had perceptions of people that he didn’t always understand. This one didn’t look you straight in the eye; that one’s paces were too long; another one would only go out with his dog. By comparison, the people he encountered on his way seemed of no consequence. Sometimes she would add, “That’s what your mother used to say,” or “That’s what they used to say in the village.”

  Occasionally he went to the Jewish pastry shop to sit for an hour. The merchants didn’t ignore him. On the contrary, they sought his company, and some of them even flattered him. Karl wasn’t fazed. At last he enjoyed what had eluded him all those years—their attention. They would close in on him as if in an embrace. Seeing their attentive faces, he would often fall silent. To their credit, the merchants didn’t pressure or annoy him. In fact, they went out of their way to put him at ease, regaling him with stories about the villages his parents had come from, and the relatives who remained there. He had heard a lot about those distant relations in his youth. Whenever they could afford it, his parents had sent them bundles of used clothing and sacks of food. The letters they got back were long and written in Yiddish. His mother would read them out loud and weep.

  These encounters were not exclusively cordial, however. Sometimes an old man would startle everyone in the place with his raised voice. The merchants would seize the offender and eject him, but sometimes the old fellow wasn’t easily quieted or sent on his way. Indeed, there were a few proud old men in the market district who lay in wait for him. Whenever he entered, they would shout, “Apostate! Down with apostates!”

  From the pastry shop, he would sometimes head for the Green Eagle, or else to Kirzl’s bar. It wasn’t easy to sit at Kirzl’s. All of the city’s wretched gathered there, cursing and vomiting. The bar resembled the dark corridor of an almshouse. Still, a sense of grace hovered over the place. Kirzl’s face was flushed like those of nuns working in a field, and when she scolded one of her customers, bitterness spread over her neck and face.

  In Victoria’s inn one day, he ran into Martin and Freddy, both happily drunk.

  “Look who’s here!” called Martin, in the voice of old times.

  “You too,” said Karl, hugging him.

  The place was decorated with vulgar posters and the food was tasteless, but their friendship returned, burning brighter from drink to drink. Freddy’s withdrawn face opened, and was lit by the hidden wonder of youth.

  “How many years have we been coming to Victoria’s?”

  “By now, twenty.”

  “More.”

  “I came here for the first time when I was fourteen,” said Freddy, and his boyish joy, which had been hidden in his eyes, was fully revealed. At the gymnasium it had been hard for him to compete with Martin and Karl. Still, he had managed the impossible and, when all was said and done, had earned passing grades. But a feeling of inferiority lingered in his heart. It showed itself in his posture and some of his gestures, especially that movement of his hand that said, “This isn’t for me.” But that evening at Victoria’s, he seemed to stand taller. He spoke of opening a clinic for the needy, because medicine without caring was worse than commerce.

  They drank happily but Martin spoke with muffled agitation about the years he had lost. Had it not been for his wives, his business would have prospered more, the branch offices would have grown, and he would be living in Vienna, and not this dark hole called Neufeld. Freddy tried to sweeten his sorrow, but his words were weak, disorganized, and powerless to bind the wound. Yet barriers fell that evening, and there was a moment of closeness.

  After midnight, Freddy, still drunk, rose to his feet and sang in Yiddish. His song astonished the other drunks. At first they laughed and said nothing, but when he refused to stop, they rose to silence him. Freddy didn’t care. He stood firm, in the center of the room, and sang louder. Victoria wasn’t in the room at the time, and the mood became rowdy. One of the drunks loosened his tongue and shouted, “That’s enough, Jew. If you don’t shut your mouth, we’ll shut it for you.” Until that moment, Martin had contained himself. But now he got up, moved to the center of the room, and called out, “Let no man accuse his fellow. God created us all in his own image.”

  “But not the Jews,” came the answer.

  Martin raised his fist and shouted, “God commanded us to love one another. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Anyone who refuses to obey that commandment here and now is asking for a punch in the nose.”

  The drunk ignored Martin’s soused warning. He stood and cursed the Jews with a long barrage of profanity. A trace of the lawyer within Martin must have still been on guard, despite the liquor, because he called out, “There are enough witnesses in this room to accuse you of provocation. If you continue, there will be cause for further charges.” In response, the drunk obscenely lifted his leg. Karl, who hadn’t intervened until then, immediately jumped up, walked over to the drunk, and shoved him down onto a bench shouting, “Shut your mouth if you can’t speak to others like a human being. Otherwise, I’ll break your neck. Understand?”

  “I’m not afraid of Jews,” said the drunk in a voice that suddenly sounded quite sober.

  Karl slugged him in the face, and that was how the brawl began. Everyone got involved, drunkards, waiters, barmaids, even girls from upstairs. Karl scraped up his hands a bit, but he fought well, swinging and rarely missing his mark.

  It took Victoria, who had been summoned meanwhile, to restore order. As after every drunken brawl there, the floor was soaked and full of shattered glass, and everybody was covered with blood and sawdust. It was very late, and Victoria didn’t hesitate to tell the waiters to throw everyone out.

  That night the old friendship between the three was renewed. For hours they strolled along the boulevard, eventually turning toward the river, whose surface glistened in a thousand little lights.

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nbsp; “You have to teach the goyim a lesson,” said Freddy.

  “Don’t say ‘goyim,’ say ‘drunkards,’ ” Martin reproached him.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re goyim too.”

  “I’m not a goy.”

  “You’re mistaken, my dear fellow. From the moment Father Merser baptized you, you’ve been what the Jews call a goy.”

  “I’m not a goy,” he insisted. “I’m an apostate.”

  “Okay. Fine.”

  “I’m an apostate, not a goy,” he repeated.

  “But, honestly now, why not a goy?”

  “The word disgusts me. By no means do I want to be called a goy. An apostate—yes.”

  “As you wish.”

  “I prefer ‘apostate.’ Why are you laughing?”

  His drunkenness wearing off a little, Karl was astounded at the change in Freddy’s behavior. He was the same old Freddy, yet somehow different. A certain power showed in his unshaven face.

  “Freddy,” he said.

  “What is it, Karl?”

  “I wanted to thank you for what you did this evening. You were very honorable.”

  “I did my duty,” Freddy said in a voice not his own.

  “Your song was wonderful. I didn’t know you were musical. Have you always liked to sing?”

  “My mother used to sing. They’re really her songs, not mine. She sang very beautifully. Yiddish is a beautiful language, isn’t it? Let everybody know that Yiddish is a beautiful language. One must honor what is beautiful, isn’t that so?”

  When they reached Freddy’s house, he stepped up to the door and pounded it with his fists. When no one answered, Freddy kicked it and shouted, “Open up immediately or I’ll break down the door.” Flora, who had been sound asleep, called out, disoriented, “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  “I’m there. We beat the daylights out of the goyim.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? We beat the daylights out of the goyim. Now do you understand?”