Unto the Soul

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “What can I do?” He stood before her helplessly.

  She answered with a barrage of words. Distant, repressed, forgotten matters rose up from the depths of the years and flooded her face, and it was clear there was no longer any connection between her and those years. Nevertheless they were feverish within her. This was typhus, and he knew it was typhus, and fear immobilized him. One evening while he was putting a damp cloth on her head, she called out in a voice not her own, “Why are they feeding me porridge? I hate porridge.” That wasn’t Amalia’s voice but the voice of her older sister, Deborah, who had died of typhus as a child. She too, like Amalia now, had spouted feverish words, and their mother, desperate, had knelt down and said, “Child, I’m not giving you porridge. I’m putting a damp cloth on your head.”

  Now he regretted that during the summer, imprudently, he had brought many people into the house, old and sick people. Amalia had not objected. She had served the women submissively, like someone sated with sorrow, who had forgone her own desires and wanted only to be allowed to serve. Gad knew the people bore the dreadful plague but nevertheless had not kept a distance. He had been certain, for some reason, that the disease wouldn’t harm them. Amalia’s desire to help the people was also stronger than her fear or revulsion. She had slept in the same room with the women and served them coffee in the morning, and she had washed two old women with her own hands. Other fears had preoccupied Gad then: Amalia’s pregnancy.

  Meanwhile her face grew empty and her glance became dim. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead with a frightening glint. Sometimes she would wake up in delirium and attack him with curses. That anger no longer hurt him. It seemed to him she was gradually overcoming the many enemies who were preying upon her. That too was an illusion. The disease grew stronger from hour to hour, and she would vomit every spoonful of tea he managed to feed her.

  Now there was no alternative but to go down, and he decided to do so.

  In the afternoon he went to the cemetery and asked forgiveness of the dead. He promised them: The moment Amalia got better, he would return and watch over them as before. A thin rain fell, and he returned to the courtyard and gave the cart a push. The cart, to his surprise, moved. He took off the wheels and smeared the axles with grease and tightened the brakes. The concentrated work made him forget Amalia’s illness. For a moment it seemed to him it wasn’t illness but a hallucination inspired by fear, and if he managed to uproot fear from her, the fever would also abate. When he finished the job he went inside and called out, “The cart is ready, and we are prepared to set out on our way.” Amalia didn’t react. Her breathing was labored, and her face was splotched with pale pink. Her big eyes were open, and fear sparkled from their pupils. Now she no longer spoke, but her muteness was blunter than any speech. It’s my fault; he wanted to ask her pardon, but there was no need. She closed her eyelids tightly, and all at once her whole being was shrunken.

  Then he left the courtyard, set the cow free, and sent it away. The cow was surprised and at first it refused to leave the barn. But finally it responded to his exhortations and turned aside with an insulted expression at being driven from its corner. Limzy whimpered with short barks, tucked his tail between his legs, and stepped to the side. Gad approached him and said, “Now you’ll watch over the cemetery and the house. You mustn’t be frightened. Fear is unseemly.” Limzy bent his head as though he’d been scolded, and Gad kept on talking about Amalia, the poor thing, who was gripped by frightful hallucinations and fever. “I have to take her down to the medic. The trip will make her feel better, and I’m sure they won’t hospitalize her. But meanwhile don’t let anyone come near the house. Keep your eye on the cow too, because without her our lives are worth nothing,” he said, and smiled as though he had caught the foolishness of his words. He considered taking vegetables and dairy products in the box in the back of the cart, but he gave up the idea and instead he shoved in two blankets, two pillows, and three bottles of slivovitz. He placed the strongbox full of money and jewels in the front. He pushed the cart up to the door of the house, cushioned the floor with two quilts, and, in his large arms, carried Amalia out and placed her inside. He went back and closed the door as though they were leaving on a short trip.

  CHAPTER 34

  The cart was lighter than he had imagined. The brakes worked fine, and the downgrades weren’t steep. Every hour or so he would stop the wagon, stick his head in, and look at her for a moment. Amalia didn’t respond. Her face was sealed, and a thin film of darkness hovered over it.

  After he had been pulling for some time, rain fell, and he took shelter under some oaks. Amalia’s face opened up for a moment, and he told her that by now they’d made half the trip, and if everything went properly they would reach the medic by evening. The medic would examine her and give her medicine to relieve her fever. For some reason he expected her to react, but her face, though awake, didn’t move.

  When the rain stopped, he harnessed himself to the shafts and set out. Something told him he had to hurry, and indeed he gripped the shafts hard, took care to avoid the shoulders of the road, went around potholes, and braked well on downgrades. He managed the final steep section with his last strength. When he finally reached the river, his ankles were wounded, and his shirt was wet with sweat. But he did not delay. With the same determined breathing he pulled the cart to the medic’s house.

  The medic, who had lost something of his peasant look over the years, was surprised to see a man harnessed to a cart, and he said, “What’s this here?” Gad slipped the rope from his shoulders, and without moving from his place he said, “My sister is very sick, sir.”

  “Let’s see,” said the medic.

  Gad took off the covering and stepped aside. He expected that now the medic would lean over Amalia and examine her, but the medic didn’t move. He stood at a distance, looked at her closed face, and said, “Yes, she’s very sick.”

  “What am I to do, sir?” Gad asked in a lost voice.

  “Straight to the hospital.”

  “Can’t you do anything here? You have to give her some relief, don’t you?” He spoke with a choked voice.

  “What can I do? I’m only a medic,” he said, and a crude smile spread across his face.

  “Pardon me,” said Gad, like someone who has been caught doing something foolish.

  “You have to hire a wagon immediately.” The medic spoke like an army military medic.

  “Where is there any wagon? Where will I find one, sir?”

  “We’ll send the boy, and he’ll bring a driver.” He spoke like someone offering a tried-and-true remedy to some familiar ailment.

  The boy set out at a dash, and for a moment Gad followed his run with his eyes. “Why isn’t she talking?” he asked distractedly.

  “The illness is at its peak,” he declared, without further explanation.

  “Isn’t there any drug that will make her feel better?”

  “There is, but only in the hospital. We medics don’t have drugs like that.” Now the peasant in him was talking, a mixture of ingenuousness and feigned ingenuousness. Gad knew that style of speech, and now he was frightened of him.

  “Is the medicine there?”

  “It certainly is.” He spoke in a tone that sounded like a lie.

  Gad looked again at Amalia’s sealed face. “She’s breathing heavily, isn’t she?”

  “That has to be taken care of too.” He spoke in military fashion.

  The driver was tardy, and Gad knew it wasn’t an innocent delay. In times of trouble the drivers raise their prices, and if the patient is mortally ill they become exorbitant.

  “Did you know my Uncle Arieh?” Gad spoke to him in a different tone.

  “Certainly I knew him. He was a man of the great world.”

  “ ‘The great world,’ you say?”

  “Indeed. We would get information from him about everything that was happening in the world. Plenty of reliable information reached him. Are you his replacement?”


  “I do my best.”

  “Once masses of pilgrims used to go up there.”

  “Now too,” Gad said, for some reason.

  Before long the driver appeared. The price he asked was close to that of a cow. Gad was stunned by the sum he demanded, and, very angrily, he said, “If a sword is pressed against your throat, you can’t bargain.”

  “It’s night, sir. Trips by night have a different price.”

  Gad went over to his cart, lifted up Amalia together with the quilts, and laid her in the peasant’s wagon.

  “Something in advance,” demanded the peasant, and Gad gave him some money.

  Gad had heard about the district hospital from the people who came up to the mountaintop. That was where they took patients who had to be isolated and those who had no hope of recovering from their illnesses. Gad now remembered they had also wanted to take his mother there, but his father had refused in a final act of desperation. No doubt that had hastened her death, but it had also spared her further affliction.

  “When will we get there?” asked Gad.

  “We never know God’s will.” The peasant’s reply was not slow in coming.

  “Have you been there often?”

  “When necessary.”

  “How is it there?”

  “We don’t talk about it,” he said curtly.

  Now Gad regretted having taken the medic’s advice. A sick person must first be returned to his native city and to the grave of his fathers, so that they, in their love, can pray for him.

  “And there’s no hope.” The words left his mouth.

  “Who said so?”

  “I’m asking.”

  “You mustn’t ask that way.”

  “You’re right,” said Gad, abashed.

  Afterward he asked no more questions. Just once he asked to stop the wagon to look at Amalia. When the lantern light struck her face, her lips quivered and pursed. That was how her lips used to contract when dreams frightened her in her winter sleep. That piercing memory gave him hope that their journey through darkness would end with the light. When they had gone up to the mountaintop Amalia had also been sick and vomited, he remembered.

  “Amalia,” he called, “do you recognize me?” Amalia didn’t respond. He called her again, and fear gripped his limbs. That was how their father had called their mother when she had closed her eyes.

  From there on, the road became twisted and very bumpy, and fears and regrets filled his head. For a moment it seemed to him that the medic and the peasant had conspired to mislead him. But fatigue was greater than all else, and in the end he succumbed to it and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 35

  As the darkness thinned, they reached the bank of the River Prut and the square in front of the hospital. Gad roused from his doze and asked, “Where are we?”

  “We’ve arrived,” said the peasant.

  “Is this the district hospital?” Gad asked, as though he had been rehearsing the question.

  “It and no other.”

  Dozens of wagons crowded around the low building. The smell of scorched milk and the odor of horse manure congealed in the morning darkness. The driver got off his wagon, put out his hand, and said, “The time has come to pay the rest.”

  Gad took silver coins out of his vest pocket and paid. The peasant counted and counted again, demanded more, and received it.

  “What do we do now?” asked Gad, grasping his head with both hands.

  “This is the hospital, and now my duty is done.” The peasant tried to sound decent.

  “Good Lord,” Gad cried out. “I don’t know what to do!” As he spoke, he overheard a conversation in Yiddish. A few people who were sitting in a wagon and a few others who were outside of it were arguing angrily. The argument was about a difficult decision, and no one was willing to bear the responsibility. Finally they consulted with an old man who was sitting deep inside the covered wagon, and he made the decision. The mutterings kept fluttering in the air, as after an argument with recriminations.

  “Let’s see who’s standing at the entrance.” The driver came to his assistance. Men and women were crowding around the gate at that time, putting out their hands and yelling loudly. It looked like the entrance of a prison on Tuesdays, when packages are delivered to the prisoners.

  “There’s nothing to be done. We have to wait,” said the peasant in peasantlike tones.

  “What will I do here alone?” Gad implored him.

  “Everybody here is Jewish.”

  “I don’t know anyone.”

  “You have to pay a bribe.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the director.”

  “Do you know the director?”

  “No, but the Jews know him.”

  “Just wait with me for another hour until the sun rises,” said Gad, handing him two more pieces of silver.

  The peasant didn’t bargain.

  Gad tried to find out from people in the neighboring wagons when and how new patients were accepted. “All the places are taken. There’s a line of hundreds. They don’t bring in anyone new until a patient dies,” they told him.

  “I’m going away,” he told the peasant absentmindedly.

  “Where?”

  “Home.”

  For a moment he saw the gate again. A robust guard was standing in the entrance, and with both arms he was pushing away the people who were trying to approach him. Imprecations flew in every direction, and the guard threatened that if they didn’t step back he would call the gendarmes.

  “Is it like this all the time here?” he asked the peasant awkwardly.

  “Bribery solves every problem.”

  “But who do you give the bribes to?” Gad spoke like a storekeeper.

  “I’ll go in by the back door. Sometimes you find the right man there,” said the peasant and walked away.

  Gad didn’t move. A cup of coffee. Isn’t there a cup of coffee in this whole place? An old morning yearning was roused within him. Years ago, when he was still a boy, his father had taken him to the hospital to have his infected tonsils removed. Then too it had been a purplish morning like this, and his father himself had shivered in the morning chill. He had spoken with the kind of words he normally didn’t use. He spoke about the need to remove the evil from the body and to purify it of harmful illnesses. Many people were bustling about, and wagons loaded with sacks and people stood as if they had been there forever. The boy, who had stifled his fear for a long time, burst out in bitter tears, and the father hugged him and promised him it wouldn’t hurt much and everything would be over in a jiffy. But the boy’s fears were stronger than the father’s assurances, and he cried and begged, “Not now, not today!” Since his comforting words had been useless, the father scolded the boy out loud and told him then that everyone suffers, and there are dreadful illnesses and harsh pains, and you mustn’t indulge yourself in this world, because this world lasts only the wink of an eye, and truth and righteousness come to us in the world of truth. But those words hadn’t soothed the boy’s fears, and he kept on crying as though he had just learned that the world was an abyss and in a short while he would be thrown down its maw.

  During the long wait, the boy became reconciled to the thought that in a moment the abyss would yawn and he would be devoured. The father grasped the boy’s trembling hand and promised him again that it wouldn’t hurt much. When the doctor’s door finally opened, the blue walls had suddenly sparkled in a damp light, and he had tried to flee. His father had seized him with both his hands, which were so lean they seemed not like hands but tongs. The doctor, an old man whose long eyebrows shaded small benevolent eyes, ordered him to open his mouth. He looked and looked again and said softly, “There’s no need to hurry. Why rush? Let’s wait a month or two and see.” So instead of tying him down, putting him to sleep, and removing the tonsils, he wrote the name of some medicine and that of a pharmacist on a white slip of paper. For that good advice he asked only a few pennies. “Redemption comes in the
wink of an eye,” said his father when they had gone out the doctor’s door. That was also an indirect reproach to himself for not believing and for giving himself over to despair. The boy was greatly relieved. He cried with a different kind of tears until he fell asleep in his father’s arms. From that nightmare only a small scar was left, which would suddenly wake him in the darkness and remind him that the wound was not completely healed.

  Meanwhile the peasant came back and said, “It’s very crowded. The guards are hitting people mercilessly.”

  “What shall we do?” Gad raised his eyes to the peasant.

  “Not far away there’s a private hospital. Maybe they can take her there.”

  “Will you go with me?”

  “If you pay.”

  Gad handed him some silver coins. The peasant counted them, narrowed his eyes, made a calculation, and said, “It’s not worth my while, but I’ll do it for the sake of the mitzvah.” Gad was surprised by the peasant’s voice, by the way he used that Jewish word and pronounced it correctly.

  “You know the Jews well, I see.”

  “To a certain extent.”

  “You worked for them?”

  “When I was young I used to transport their wares. They always paid the price we agreed upon, but once a merchant cheated me. He ran away without paying. Since then I won’t move until I’ve been paid.”

  “That’s wise,” said Gad.

  “People are known to be sinners, isn’t that so?”

  They drove south, and Gad was glad he had found the right peasant to ramble about with. For a moment he wanted to thank him, but he immediately remembered that the peasant would interpret that as a weakness and ask for more money. Amalia neither opened her eyes nor uttered a sound. He touched her arm and called, “Amalia. I’m by your side.” She gave out a rasp that sounded like a groan. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” he asked the peasant.