Unto the Soul

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Later, when Gad returned to the synagogue, he found it silent and washed. The smell of fresh lye wafted through the air. The light and the moisture gave the place a new simplicity. He nearly went to the bookshelf to take out a prayerbook. During the first year he had prayed regularly. During the second year he had come to pray occasionally. But since then, contact with the books had become more difficult every year. When the people come, I’ll pray; he acknowledged his duty. But it was precisely the recollection of the pilgrims that brought the odor of winter darkness to his nostrils, the roaring stove and Amalia’s rumpled face. “You should go back home,” he called out, “soon.”

  The daytime hours passed, and he did nothing. Thoughts carried him from place to place, and when he returned to the house, he found it wide open and flooded with light. Amalia stood in the courtyard and groomed the brown cow with a large brush. The wet animal submitted.

  “Lord Almighty, what are you doing?” He raised his voice.

  Amalia was startled by his sudden shout and said, “Did I make a mistake?”

  “There are more pressing things.” He interrupted her.

  “I’m ready to do anything,” she said, without releasing the bucket from her hand.

  “The cow can wait. Nothing will happen to it.”

  “The cow was very dirty.”

  “It can wait.”

  “I’ll step aside. I won’t do anything. If what I do isn’t wanted, I won’t do a thing,” she said and put the bucket aside. Those words, seeking to express abnegation and willingness to obey, kindled Gad’s rage, and he spoke with increasing anger about that holy place which had been entrusted to him, so there would be a window to heaven, and now it was a neglected field; not even a single path was cared for.

  For a long while he stood in the courtyard and spoke aloud of the need to raise up the ruins of the winter, and first of all to uproot the weeds while they were only sprouting, for if they didn’t pull them out now, they would spread and cover the entire place, and it would be impossible to overcome the neglect. This was not her beloved brother but another man who was rolling strange and hostile words about in his mouth. Amalia stood frozen and silent. Her silence kindled his rage even more, and he turned to her with a theatrical gesture and said, “Go. You don’t care. You want to go down and leave everything on my shoulders. I cannot bear that burden.”

  Amalia burst out crying, and Gad approached her.

  “Weeping won’t change the facts.” He pronounced a sentence to her that he had heard years earlier in the market.

  “You torture me from morning to night.” The words were strangled in her mouth.

  “I don’t do anything to you. I want to open up your eyes.”

  “I cleaned everything and washed everything.”

  “That’s not important.”

  “What is important? Tell me so I’ll know.”

  “We have to pull out the weeds, to pluck them out while they’re just sprouting, otherwise they’ll spread, and it will be impossible to pull them out anymore.” A sharpness was in his voice, the sharpness of a bark.

  “Don’t hit me so hard,” she said and retreated into the house.

  “I don’t hit.”

  “Every night you beat me like a beast of the field. If you don’t want me, send me away, but don’t strike me.”

  “I don’t hit.”

  “You hit me with the ox goad. My whole body is a wound and a bruise. I can’t bear it any longer.”

  It was hard for him to fall asleep that night. The weeping and the mumbling, “Don’t hit me, Don’t hit me,” seeped into his ears. He was angry that his beloved sister was making false accusations. The matter of the trip home now seemed to him like a kind of unfair evasion. He forgot, of course, that he himself had raised the idea.

  Later he remembered that Amalia had not said, Don’t hit me with the whip but with the ox goad, which showed she couldn’t have meant it seriously. That thought rolled about in his tired brain and consoled him for a moment, and he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 20

  Afterward the spring showed its marvels, and Gad sank into his work. The bushes all around blossomed, and the dark peaks were covered with a green carpet. The visibility was clear, and it was possible to see the distant villages distinctly, spread out at the foot of the mountains. Horses drew long wagons, laden with clover, and they, for some reason, reminded him of expansive life throbbing to the pulse of the seasons, without anger and without pain.

  They did not discuss the matter of the trip. One evening when she asked, “When will I go home?” he answered impatiently. “There’s time. Not now.” Her face grew rounder, and health throve in her limbs. The fetus in her womb throbbed, and she could feel it every hour of the day.

  What would happen and how her life would be managed from now on, she did not know. In nightmares she would see the path homeward, and she was rolling down it and falling into the heart of the fish market. Robust women stood next to the broad stalls, and red fish flopped in their hands. When she awakened she knew clearly that she would not return there. The old gentile women in Moldovitsa are better for me.

  Gad too nurtured hope in his heart. Perhaps a miracle would happen for him, and people wouldn’t come this time. Four years earlier the summer had been pleasant and green, and Gad had expected a lot of people, but robbers cast their dread upon the roads, and only a few reached the peak, frightened people who prayed in haste and returned whence they had come. He hardly exchanged a word with Amalia. She worked with severe diligence from morning on, and in the evening, upon returning from the vegetable garden, she would prepare a hot meal. Sometimes, overtired, she would fall asleep without tasting anything.

  “Why don’t we have a drink?” He would turn to her from time to time, seeking closeness. She would respond and drink two or three glasses. But no conversation emerged from those sips. Even practical words were scarce in her mouth. From time to time she would nevertheless utter two or three words, which she had used in her childhood. The words would brighten his face all at once. But the fears were hardest of all, they silently bubbled up and poisoned even the clear twilight that softly seeped through the windows.

  “Amalia.” He would suddenly address her.

  “What?”

  With those words a whole night would sometimes be exhausted.

  One evening Gad returned from the cemetery, his face ruddy from the sun, and a strange force abounded in his shoulders and neck. Amalia recoiled. That evening her brother seemed like one of the Ruthenian peasants who, during their holidays, would terrify the Jewish market stalls; there was always someone killed or several people wounded. Their father too, that gentle and beloved soul, had not escaped from them unscathed. On one of their holidays, a peasant had brought a sledgehammer down upon him. Amalia was then five years old, and the sight of that brawny peasant was engraved in her eyes. Her father had suffered for years from the injured shoulder, but he did not complain, as though it were his private secret.

  “You must return home,” said Gad, when he had consumed his meal.

  “I’m ready,” she answered immediately.

  “I see no other possibility if we are not to commit suicide.”

  “We could repent,” she said, as though he had threatened her with a drawn knife.

  “For some deeds there can be no repentance.” He continued striking.

  “I will try to do everything in my power,” she said. She was no longer defending herself but the embryo in her womb.

  Gad bent his head, and it was evident that the words he had spoken had been simmering for many days, and now that he had brought them up from the hollows they had weakened him, as it were.

  “Soon wagons will come, and I’ll descend.” She spoke, not in her own voice.

  Her acquiescence apparently frightened him. He let Mauzy and Limzy off their chains and went out to take what he had once called “a turn with the dogs.” That sudden departure seemed to her like a new threat, and she stood frozen next to
the window. Meanwhile she remembered that once on Yom Kippur eve one of the old men had stood and preached about the scapegoat upon which all the sins of the Jews were hung, and how they plunged over a cliff into the abyss. Then it had sounded distant and frightening, like the ash of the red heifer and the bitter cursed waters, but now it sounded like a clear threat: the slope. When he returned to the house, his face, to her surprise, was quiet, and he spoke about the vegetable gardens and the orchard. Everything was plentiful. Even if the people didn’t come, there would be enough to eat, he concluded with strange practicality.

  Later, as though remembering, he spoke with great excitement about the peak. Regrettably, angry people shattered its silence. The place must be silent. It was forbidden to arouse it from its silence. He spoke in a calm voice, and something of the light returned to his face.

  Amalia said, “We shall always remember the peak.”

  “Why do you say ‘shall remember’?” he scolded her.

  “I was mistaken.”

  “You mustn’t be mistaken. We have a great obligation.”

  That evening Amalia knew this was no longer her brother of bygone days. His face was open, he was not angry, and he did not raise his voice. His gait was quiet and measured. Also, the words he spoke to her were familiar, but the tone was frightening. When he said “I want” or “I am going,” it was as though he were not speaking about his own will or about his own motion. Also, his drinking was not like in the past. He would pour down a drink with a narrowing of his eyes and bite his lips. When Amalia asked whether to serve him more soup, he would say, “No need. That was more than enough.” In his day their father used to say “more than enough,” but since his death no one had used that phrase. Now she was afraid not of her brother’s anger but of the silence that hung on his face like a mask, and when he returned to the house in the evening he would sometimes fall asleep on the couch without tasting anything.

  While they were still secretly looking forward to reasons that might prevent people from coming, Mauzy broke away from his chain and ran away. At first it seemed like an outburst of joy. He quickly climbed up the slope, and when he reached the end he began to bark. There was no sign of anything bad in that barking. Gad stood in the courtyard and called to him: “Mauzy, come home, don’t go wild.” Upon hearing Gad’s familiar call, he did indeed come down and approach the courtyard. Now it seemed he was about to return to his chain. Amalia bent to her knees, planning to welcome him back with petting. But precisely that gesture drove him out of his mind, and he reared up and bared his fangs as though he intended to pounce. Gad was quicker and hit him. The dog went wild. First it stayed in one place, then it raced out to circle around the peak. It came back and rushed at them. Having no choice, they retreated to the house. “Limzy, why don’t you come out and help your brother?” Amalia called out in desperation. Mauzy circled the peak in a mad run and returned to storm the door. Gad, without asking Amalia’s opinion, went down into the cellar, opened up the hiding place, and removed the shotgun from its bed of straw. He stood at the window and aimed the barrels. The shot thundered, and the pellets killed the dog on the spot.

  CHAPTER 21

  That night they sat next to the open windows and gulped down drink after drink. Gad spoke about Mauzy’s wickedness and about his earlier sins. Several times he had attacked pilgrims, and once he had even bitten an old Jew. It seemed to Amalia, for some reason, that he was not speaking about Mauzy but about things that had happened to him in his distant childhood, about oppressive burdens that the years had not wiped away, which floated up whenever a crack was opened. That, of course, was an error in hearing. Gad stood and listed Mauzy’s sins one after the other, like a peddler. Finally he summed them up categorically: he had not died by chance. A can of worms had been lying on his back.

  When she grasped, finally, that he was talking about Mauzy’s old offenses, she became angry at Gad for speaking about Mauzy without mercy. If there had been moments of pleasant tranquility on this dark peak, they were moments passed in the company of Mauzy and Limzy. True, Gad sometimes used to be incensed at their closeness, but he himself liked to walk around the peak with them, and more than once she had found them curled up together on the floor.

  Now Mauzy was lying dead in a ditch. The thought of big Mauzy, who had grown thick fur during the winter, who liked to doze off on the floor in a heedless sprawl, responding to being patted and yawning with pleasure—the thought that that friendly creature had become a ferocious animal all at once filled her body with dread, and she was seized with trembling.

  “What happened to poor Mauzy?” She tried to defend him for a moment.

  “He went out of his mind,” he answered, almost offhandedly. Hardly had the words left his mouth when he remembered that Uncle Arieh had told him a few days before his death that the peasants had once tried to poison Mauzy and Limzy, but he had discovered them in time and run after them and caught them. They admitted it and swore they wouldn’t do it again. He had let them go on their way.

  “The peasants are always trying to poison our dogs.” He spoke distractedly.

  “Why do they do that? What harm did those creatures do them?”

  “It’s very simple: to make it easier for them to steal.”

  Hearing that practical answer, her voice trembled, and she said agitatedly, “He died innocent.”

  Gad, for some reason, was wounded by her words and said, “No one kills a dog because he’s a dog.”

  “But they poisoned him.” The old tone returned to her voice.

  “Right. What could we have done? You saw with your own eyes how dangerous he was.”

  “Wasn’t it possible to save him?”

  “A poisoned dog is as good as dead.” He was glad to have found the correct words.

  Amalia bent her head. All her fears were enfolded in her face. That is how she sat after her father died. For a moment he was about to stand up and scold her, but his words were mute and he withdrew. After a long silence, he said, “We mustn’t wallow in the memory of animals. Trees too collapse.”

  “How can we forget them?” she asked, with the wonderment of a child.

  “We must forget them. We must even forget our own dead. This world and the next world are not connected to each other.” He remembered the voice of one of the old men.

  “Mauzy loved us.” She spoke with a choked voice.

  “As long as he was sane,” he said, feeling that words were returning to him.

  “We didn’t kill him.”

  “You’re right. We watched over him. But the peasants conspired against him. We only saved him from tortures.”

  Upon hearing those words, tears welled in her eyes. She restrained herself and didn’t cry.

  Later Gad tried to distract her. He spoke about the fence he had restored without the help of gentiles, and how he would put up a fine gate. The old gate had rotted out over the many years. Once again he was her familiar brother, whose big eyes often reflected a childish innocence, and now when he again spoke about the fence and about the gate, it was as though that innocence had returned and grown stronger in his eyes.

  “Too bad we don’t know how to pray.” She surprised him.

  “True,” said Gad, as though he had been shown to be in the wrong.

  “When I was a little girl I knew how to pray.”

  “Sometimes I have a strong desire to pray.” He clutched at her voice.

  “Why have we lost prayer?” The wonderment lit up in her eyes.

  “I hope it will come back to us one day. The pilgrims sometimes give me back the desire to pray. You have to learn to pray for the whole community, and then you are answered. Whoever prays for the whole community is answered first.” he said and smiled.

  “What happened?” Amalia was alarmed by his smile.

  “I have lost the feeling for the whole community.” The laughter froze on his face.

  “Once Father told me one doesn’t ask questions, one opens the prayerbook and pray
s.”

  “He was right. When one does the right thing for the wrong reason, it’s still the right thing,” he said, laughing again for using words that were not his own.

  “When I open a prayerbook, I choke immediately.”

  “One starts to pray and overcomes that.” The former voice returned to him, the voice of the older brother.

  “We are living in sin, aren’t we?” She chuckled and hid her face in her right hand.

  “We haven’t harmed anyone.” Gad rose from his seat. “We are guarding this place faithfully. The summer comes to us very late, and we don’t always have vegetables.”

  “True.” She tried to join with his voice.

  “Everyone who lives down in the Plain ought to know that our task is not an easy one here.”

  “I must return to the Plain.”

  “Not now. You’ll go down when the time comes. But not now.” He repeated those words with a strange kind of emphasis. That night they consumed two bottles, but they weren’t drunk. Gad would say over and over, “Our task is not easy, but we shall do what is incumbent upon us.” Amalia’s face grew rounder, and the wonderment did not leave it. Suddenly she raised her head as if about to tell him, You say the same sentence over and over. Gad grasped her mute comment, but he did not have the power to be still.

  Later the acknowledgment of Mauzy’s death filled her body, and she said out loud, “Mauzy is no longer among the living. It’s hard to understand that. We will miss him a lot. Mauzy, may he rest in peace.”