Unto the Soul

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Now Amalia clearly remembered the tall, noble woman whose husband and both her sons had been snatched away by the epidemic. She used to sit at the edge of the clearing and pray, and every time Amalia approached her to offer her a roll or a drink, she would raise her large eyes and say, “May the Lord bless you for your deeds.” Once Amalia dared to ask her name. The woman, surprised, drew her face up from the prayerbook and said, “My daughter, I have but little hold onto this world.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My dear ones are already there, and I am preparing to go to them.”

  Amalia was stunned by her directness and simplicity. Now that woman once again appeared to her, as though descending steep slopes into the abyss.

  No more people came, and the peak withdrew into silence. The harvest was abundant, and Gad brought wheelbarrows full of potatoes, onions, and beets from the field. Amalia cleaned the vegetables and stored them in the cellar. The orchard also produced a bounty of fruit. Gad brought in a crateful of late-ripening plums, and Amalia set about making jam. Her stance next to the copper pot was that of a young girl. The storm has passed, the nightmare is over, he wanted to cry out. Now the cold, clear autumn days will come, and we can sit quietly. That was a temporary diversion. Amalia reminded him that the day was rapidly approaching when she would have to travel to Moldovitsa.

  “In a little while,” he would say and dismiss her words with a strange gesture.

  That autumn there were several thefts, and Gad went out with Limzy to circle around the mountaintop. We mustn’t shut ourselves in, we mustn’t fear. Shutting ourselves in encourages the thieves; it’s better to go out and anticipate them. Limzy was alert and tense, and Gad was glad to go out on nightly patrols with him. When they returned the dog’s eyes sparkled like those of a creature content with his lot. The patrols did have an effect. Limzy ran after the thieves and sank his teeth into one of them. On those nights Gad was like a soldier whose way of life has been stamped with the pattern of extended service. He loved the earth at night, the rustle of the breeze and the screeches of the birds of prey, but more than that he liked to lie down in a position he had dug out with his own hands, listening to the rustling of the trees and bushes together with Limzy.

  Sometimes Amalia would be reminded of the people who had stayed there, and she said, “What are our miserable folk doing?”

  “It’s impossible to worry about the whole world.” He would cut her off.

  “What can I do? I see them all day long.”

  “What do you want to do? Should we leave everything behind and go down to them?”

  Meanwhile their staples had run out, and Gad decided that next day he would go down to the village and lay in supplies for the cold season.

  “Meanwhile I’ll get everything ready for the trip.”

  “Where?”

  “To Moldovitsa.”

  “I still can’t figure that out.” He spoke to her as though it were a matter of housekeeping.

  “I must go down to Moldovitsa.”

  “Not now; by no means.” He spoke with a stammer.

  Later she said, “Still we have to lay in supplies for the cold seasons. They’re on their way.”

  “I’m prepared to go down, but the same wagon can’t take you down below. By no means.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a supply wagon, only for supplies.”

  “But I must get to Moldovitsa.”

  “Not now.”

  What could she reply? She said, “If that’s your opinion, I won’t contradict you.”

  The next day he went down. Amalia and Limzy stood at the door of the house and watched his descent. He went down the path next to the abandoned Christian cemetery. His stride was young, and the morning lights were pleasant to touch. When he was close to the slope, he raised his right hand and called out, “Goodbye until evening. I’ll see you in the evening.”

  This, in fact, happened every year. In previous years other fears would fill her heart: the gentile women. She knew his weaknesses and used to be jealous and frightened. There were years when fear for his safety dissipated, and only jealousy seared her heart. This time it was different. It seemed to her that she was guilty for everything.

  Afterward she sat at the window and sipped a few drinks. Her fears gradually dissolved, and sights from distant days flooded her eyes. After Uncle Arieh’s sudden death, Gad had been full of youthful energy and faith, and he had promised himself to make an effort to study Talmud. Without Talmud, a Jew was disfigured. In his youth his father and several teachers had tried to teach him the easier tractates, but it had been no use. It was hard for him to grasp the complicated arguments. Then too he had known that without Talmud his life was flawed, but even that awareness hadn’t opened his mind. But this time he had been resolved to learn it, no matter what. During the first summer on the mountaintop he had not parted from the men as they studied, and whenever he found someone studying, he approached him. In the end he had been mistaken. In places like this a person does not study but rather begs and prays for one’s soul; one tries to arouse the dead forefathers and to tear open the firmament. Even the learned didn’t study here. In the end he lost hope. Now Amalia remembered his efforts as though it had been her own efforts that had proved futile.

  Late at night Gad returned from the Plain. From his disheveled features Amalia learned that the purchases had been successful. After making them he had sat in a tavern and downed several drinks, and after that he had gone to Sophia’s house, lain with her, and whispered in her ear whatever he had whispered. Meanwhile the wagon driver unloaded all the sacks and packages, and Gad paid him with coins.

  “You drank too much,” she said when they were alone.

  “I was cold.”

  “How did the buying go?”

  “It wasn’t easy this time.” He concealed the truth from her.

  “I was beginning to worry about you.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Your face tells me that after you drank in the tavern you went by Sophia’s house, she was almost about to say to him.

  “I’m very tired; the trip wore me out,” he said and sat on a chair.

  You promised me you wouldn’t lie with her. At one time she had spoken to him like a woman betrayed.

  “The trip was long and tiring.” He spoke like a peasant trying to conceal his sins from his wife.

  “Now you can rest.” Something of the peasant in him clung to her too.

  “Did you make something to eat?”

  “I did.”

  Gad ate with a strong appetite as though he had worked all day in an open field. As he ate he told her about the grain and oil merchants who had tried to cheat him. His sunburned face, his coarse speech, gave him the look of a cunning old peasant. She was sorry for his awkward face, the way he slurped his soup, his unpleasant way of sitting, and the lies he scattered shamelessly. For a moment she was about to tell him, It doesn’t suit you to talk that way. That’s not the way a Jew talks. She sat at some distance from him, sipping drink after drink and examining every one of his movements.

  Afterward, without any connection, her heart opened and she spoke about long days of oppressive solitude and nights of bitter darkness and about friends who had not stood the test of time, and about desires that sully the soul.

  Gad sat stunned. He had not imagined so much anger was laid up in her heart. Finally he approached her and said, “What’s the matter?”

  “You won’t understand me. You can’t understand me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you drank in the gentile tavern. Their cognac thickens your soul. You mustn’t drink their cognac. It’s a drink without any soul. It’s a coarse-souled drink that burns up good thoughts.”

  Now Gad surprisingly remembered Amalia as a girl who wore a long poplin dress and laced shoes and would sit for hours in the narrow corridor they called the cellar. In those years she had had a rare beauty. Silence wo
uld envelop her face. Only occasionally did she open her mouth, and she would mainly utter monosyllabic words, unusual words that had the sound of thin glass. Now too it seemed she was uttering them, but the sound had become a stammer, as with the deaf.

  “I want to go home.” That utterance burst from her mouth. “The time has come to go home.”

  “Gladly.” He grasped that used word and repeated it.

  “I want to go back to Father. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. We mustn’t leave him alone.”

  “I’ll get a wagon.” He was scared.

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll watch over the place until you return.”

  “I won’t be able to return. Don’t you understand I won’t be able to come back?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m dirty.”

  She sank to the floor, and the great blunt words were crushed together in her mouth, becoming a torrent of tears. In vain he kneeled down to calm her. Since he couldn’t stop the flow of her weeping, he took the sacks that were leaning against the door and dragged them one by one down into the cellar.

  CHAPTER 30

  When he got up the next morning, he found Amalia already kneading dough and preparing big loaves of bread. The oven glowed and gave off a thick brown light. Gad felt fatigue in all his limbs, but he overcame it and went out to tend the cow. For some reason it had seemed to him that she would pester him about Sophia this time too, but to his surprise she said nothing. She was immersed in kneading the dough, and even when he returned from the barn she said nothing that could be interpreted as a reproach or a recrimination. He prepared a cup of coffee for himself and sat not far from her. Now her pregnancy was clear to see, but she worked erect, with steady motions, like a person who loves his work and doesn’t spend his time idly.

  “I’m going to the cemetery,” he said.

  “Go in peace.” She gave him a strange blessing.

  “I’ll be back at noon,” he said, surprised by her odd benediction.

  With no further delay he took the hoe and left. Low clouds flowed across the peak and the visibility was poor. He had intended to go straight to the cemetery, but for some reason he turned to the side and went to the vegetable garden. The garden was empty already. A few heads of cabbage grew wild and gave off a smell of rot.

  Now he remembered clearly the old trench he had dug to lay bare the potato tubers, which were a dull red and protruded from the earth like breathing organs, and how he had picked them one by one and placed them in the wheelbarrow, and how Amalia’s face brightened at the sight of the laden barrow. And the beets too were heavy and saturated with juice this year. The harvest had lasted a week, and as it went on, it had seemed there was no end to the crops. For many days afterward he could still feel the clods of earth crumbling between his fingers. For years these silent plots had produced plentiful crops, and now it was as though a widowed sadness had come and slapped him in the face.

  Without his noticing it, that sadness reminded him of the pilgrims’ faces. Panicked fear of typhus had driven them out of their minds. The cry, Where are the old men? Where are they? once again echoed in his ears, stripped, frightened voices that continued to seek the gates of mercy.

  Afterward the silence returned and covered the peak. The sky grew clear, and the smell of damp vegetation came to his nostrils and reminded him, unawares, of Sophia’s bed. This time she hadn’t complained that he had neglected her for a long time. She was relaxed, laughed a lot, and even made jokes about the Jews.

  “The Jews bring me boxes of candy, always boxes of candy.”

  “I hate boxes of candy,” Gad said.

  “Me too,” she said and made a face.

  “Have there been Jews here recently?” He was curious.

  “Sophia likes Jews. They’re always nice to her.” She spoke of herself in the third person, as though she weren’t a woman but an institution. Within himself he had to admit that in the past few years the finest hours he had passed were on her couch. She was no longer young, she was moody, but with a stroke of her hand she still knew how to raise a tempest that tossed within him for many days afterward.

  This time she was pleased with the gift he brought her: a bracelet decorated with semiprecious stones. He had found the bracelet in the attic, in one of Uncle Arieh’s hiding places. He had occasionally considered selling it, but in the end he decided to give it to Sophia. Sophia was overjoyed, flattered him, stroked him, and whispered several pleasing compliments in his ear. Gad knew those were words she said constantly, but they were still pleasant. He had a fierce desire to sleep with her and knead her body all night long, but concern for Amalia was stronger, and he left her house while it was still twilight. Fortunately he happened upon an old peasant who was willing to take him to the peak. This time he didn’t bargain with him, and the two of them loaded the sacks on the wagon. The old peasant knew what he had done at Sophia’s place, and he didn’t hide his disapproval. When he was young, he told Gad, the village elders used to beat whores in the market square, but now debauchery was everywhere. She and her like corrupted the youth, and no one protested.

  Strangely, the peasant’s reprimand didn’t sway him. The few hours he had spent with Sophia were so intoxicating that even harsh words lacked the power to ruin the sweet memory. Only as they drew near to the mountaintop did he know that Amalia had worked all day without pause, and in the evening she had stood at the window many hours and waited for him. When night fell she had lit the stove and sat next to it.

  At first he was sorry about her fears, but as he advanced, rage gripped him, like a soldier whose leave is finished: Once again now the dreary platforms, the trains loaded with masses of soldiers, and, in a little while, back to the trenches, to the lookouts, with no light and no solace.

  Had it not been for those pleasant, earthy, generous parts of Sophia’s body, the world would have been even darker. Nothing remained now of that marvelous earthiness except the cheap perfume, weak traces of which clung to his nostrils. It is also the way of odors to fade. Although the visit had been made only the day before, and her fingers, rather the memory of their touch, still fluttered on his back, it seemed to him that it had been a long time ago, not in a neglected village but in a city with gardens and fountains.

  When he reached the cemetery the sky opened, and a bright light flooded the clearing. Words that had been hidden within him rose on his tongue, and he said, “Amalia is tormented, though she is innocent. I must redeem her from her torments.” Those two sentences had already haunted him, and now he said them aloud as though he were speaking them in the ears of a tall man. When he raised his eyes he saw the money changer who had stood in the clearing and sold army boots. His eyes were open, and a crazy smile, saved for when everything is done and gone, gleamed in his eyes, something like Mauzy’s smile when he made his last run around the mountaintop.

  As his glance circled the clearing he noticed that two gravestones had been knocked down, and that Simcha Leifer’s monument had been broken to pieces. When he entered the cemetery, the sight was even more appalling: vicious slogans had been smeared in red paint on some of the gravestones, saying in the gentiles’ language, Death to the Jews who are alive and a curse on the dead Jews. The villains had done their dirty work only a few hours before. Damp air still rose from the overturned earth, and the paint was fresh. Gad put the hoe down on the ground and hid his face in both hands. As in a dream at night, his legs felt as if they were stuck in the damp earth and if he tried to take even a single step he would be unable.

  Then he approached Reb Simcha Leifer’s smashed monument. He knelt, picked up the fragments, and placed them next to one another. The hammer blows still sparkled on the broken stone. Now it seemed to him that buried life, life that is forbidden to be seen, had been revealed to him. He took off his coat and placed it over the fragments.

  He soon noticed that the overturned gravestones had also been vandalized. The letters had been complete
ly eroded from those two gravestones, and not even the old men knew what had been carved on them. He raised them, lifting them up the way you help a sick person sit up, to make his breathing easier.

  When he returned to the house at noon he found Amalia sunk in sleep. A dark silence permeated the room. A calamity has befallen us, he was about to call out loud, but seeing her face, a face contracted in bad sleep, he restrained himself. He drew near her bed and, quietly, said, “Amalia.”

  Amalia opened her eyes all at once, raised her head, and asked, “What’s the matter?”

  Large loaves of bread, braided challoth, and rolls, which Amalia had baked that morning, lay on shelves. The smell of poppy seed hung in the air. The sight of the rolls on the shelves reminded him of the sight of the people who had run away from here a few days ago in panic. Then too Amalia had baked day and night.

  “Who’s there?” Amalia cried out from her sleep.

  “Me.”

  “It seemed to me as if the stove was lit.”

  “Nothing is burning.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I dreamt that a pogrom had overrun the house.”

  “That was a dream, nothing.”

  Later, when she was roused from her sleep, sitting up, leaning on her arms, he told her that vandals had smashed Reb Simcha Leifer’s tombstone and knocked over the two worn-down monuments. Upon hearing that bad news, she leaned her head to the side and a foolish smile wrinkled her lips.