Unto the Soul

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “It would seem so,” he answered. Now he noticed that the peasant never committed himself to a definite opinion. For a moment he was astonished by that wisdom, but he immediately grasped that it wasn’t ingenuous.

  After a two-hour journey he stopped at an inn. They had a few drinks, and the peasant expressed his opinion: “You know how to drink. Jews usually don’t know. But you do.” It was an old-fashioned tavern where Jews never stop. The sweat of animals and the smell of ground corn stood in the air. They sat in the open courtyard. The morning had spread out in its glory, full and chilly. Gad suddenly saw the mountaintop before his eyes. He hid his head in his hands and knew that now the peasants were looting the house. Before that they had scattered poisoned meat and killed Limzy. They had brought the cow down to be slaughtered. I have to go back, to go back at once! he wanted to shout, but his voice remained imprisoned in his throat. Still, the words “go back” escaped his mouth.

  The peasant raised his eyes, surprised. “Go back where?”

  “I was mistaken.” He recovered his wits. “Let’s go on. Do we still have a long way?”

  “An hour or two.”

  “Thank the Lord.”

  “Among us, we never give thanks until things are all over,” the peasant corrected him.

  CHAPTER 36

  They advanced along the Prut, and the peasant wasn’t content. The Jews always made him go out of his way. Money can’t solve everything. There are things more important than money. Life is more important than property. Only the Jews are never sated with money. He was drunk, and the words flowed from his mouth. Gad forgot his distress for a moment and looked at him. He had known peasants like that from his childhood, but the years on the mountaintop had made him forget their faces. Now he looked at him as though he were recounting wonders to him.

  “Is it a long way?” asked Gad.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that makes the way longer.”

  The strange reason amused Gad, and he chuckled. The peasant looked at him scornfully and said, “Jews laugh at everything. Everything strikes them funny.”

  Later he sobered up and his mood improved. Gad asked him to stop the wagon. Amalia’s face was exposed as though it were floating on the covers that wrapped her. “Amalia,” he called. “I’m by your side.” He put his hand on her forehead. “She has no fever, it seems to me. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  They started out again. The peasant told him that once the hospital had been famous, and it was called Dr. Marcus’s Hospital. People used to come from the whole region, and of course a lot of Jews. The peasant’s moderate voice blunted Gad’s fears for a moment, and he said to himself, Now she’s asleep. Sleep is good for her. Sleep will cure her. Those weren’t his own words. Apparently he had absorbed them during his childhood, or perhaps on the mountaintop. Relief poured down the length of his body, and he was glad he was doing his duty without shirking. As they continued along the banks of the Prut, Gad raised his eyes, and the mountaintop was revealed in its full earthliness, a gigantic boulder rising up among the mountains, shaped like a wild mushroom.

  “Is that the mountaintop?” asked Gad with a blocked voice.

  “That and no other.”

  “Is that how it looks from here?”

  “Do you live there?”

  “All year around.”

  “Do the Jews still go up there?”

  “They do.”

  “Once, I remember, a lot of them used to climb the trails.”

  “Fewer now.”

  That short conversation brought the vision of the mountaintop before his eyes in all its concreteness, green and in its full clarity, as though the rain had purified it. Within that green sea stood Amalia. She put her hand on the abandoned cart in the courtyard, and the look on her face was that of a person who feels remorse. Ever since the horse had died she was depressed. It was forbidden to mourn for animals. Even for people it is forbidden to mourn excessively. He scolded her. When the big acacia tree collapsed she had also mourned for it. For days she would say repeatedly, “The snow killed it.” Only then did he grasp that her life was unlike his. Her contacts with objects and animals were different. He realized it, but it was hard for him to admit it.

  Meanwhile he roused and asked out loud, “Where are we?”

  “We’ve arrived,” said the peasant.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Behind the oaks stood a low building, surrounded by wagons, huts, and a few bonfires that sent up thick smoke.

  “It’s all full,” said Gad.

  “We’ll overcome that obstacle too. You mustn’t give up hope.” The peasant’s moderate, self-righteous voice had returned.

  “Correct,” said Gad, without noticing what had left his mouth. Only now did he sense that he was in the midst of a nightmare. His legs were tied, and if he were required to walk, he would be unable to take even a single step.

  “Amalia,” he called out.

  “What do you want from her? You mustn’t wake her up.”

  “Correct.”

  “I’ll go and see who’s at the gate.”

  The moment the peasant expressed that intention, Gad realized he had made a grave error, an error that could not be corrected but only atoned for. But what was that error, and how could he atone for it? He didn’t know. The cold lights of the night lit up the clearing. The place looked like a Gypsy encampment, full of hubbub and crammed with children. They were talking Ukrainian, the Ukrainian of the mountains, Sophia’s language. “I understand that language. I can express myself in that language,” he said, as though he had been asked.

  “They want a bribe.” The peasant returned with news.

  “How much.”

  “Five thousand, no less.”

  “If I have to, I’ll sell the house,” said Gad, careful about what he was saying. He would never let the driver know how much cash he had in his pockets, for fear he would rob him on the way.

  “What house are you talking about?” the peasant asked in surprise.

  “What do you mean? The house on the mountaintop. It has four spacious rooms, a kitchen, a woodshed, and a cellar. Nothing’s lacking there.”

  “And who’ll watch over the graves?” The peasant surprised him.

  “To save a life you can break the sabbath, as the Jews say.” Hardly had he said those words when he realized that once he had wanted to send Amalia back to Zhadova, and he had even offered her the inheritance that Uncle Arieh had left them, but his motive wasn’t pure, and she had refused. Her face had been clear that evening, and her look had implored him, Don’t trick me. Why are you tricking me? Cheating disgusts me.

  Night fell, and Gad approached one of the wagons to ask, “When do they take in new patients?”

  “They don’t take in a new patient unless someone dies.”

  “Everywhere it’s the same thing.” Something of the peasant stranger’s voice clung to him.

  “Are there Jews here?” he continued asking, for some reason.

  “There certainly are. You can find them everywhere,” said the peasant and turned his back to him.

  Hardly had he moved away from the Ruthenian when a cold torrent sliced down his spine, gripped his knee joints, and spread over his legs. His feet were heavy as though they were cast in metal. “What’s this?” he said to himself. “I should have taken a scarf. Without a scarf you can easily catch a chill.”

  The driver returned with only a single word: cash. Only for cash could something be done. Gad knew it was a plot. If he entrusted the jewels to the peasant, he would run away.

  “I have a house. I’m willing to give you the house.” Gad raised his voice.

  “Here you need cash. Without cash no one will let her in.” He spoke cunningly from the throat.

  “I have a fifty note. That’s all I have.”

  “There’s nothing even to talk about. I’m going back home. You can’t depend on Jews.”

  “You can’t
leave a person in an open field.” Gad spoke to him in his own dialect.

  “This isn’t an open field. There are people here.”

  Now Gad felt weakness spreading over his whole body. He gripped the edge of the wagon and said, “Take me home. I’ll pay you double and twice over.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Take me to Zhadova. It’s not far from here. I can’t bear this blow.”

  The peasant’s face turned red, and anger flooded his features. “You tricked me. You told me that you’d put her in the hospital here, so we brought her here. I found a guard who is willing to let her in, and now you change your mind and want to go home.” Now it was clear he had been plotting to steal the jewels, but because the scheme hadn’t succeeded, he was angry. “The Jews are cheaters, always cheaters.”

  “I’ll give you this watch.” Gad tried to cut off his anger. “It’s an expensive watch, pure silver. If you take me to Zhadova, it will be yours. This watch is worth a fortune.”

  “I don’t need watches.”

  “You won’t find watches like this one anymore, a work of art. If we leave now, we’ll be in Zhadova by midnight.” Weakness frothed in his legs, but he didn’t let up. As though it were a wonder, he showed him how valuable the watch was: you could buy a cow for it.

  His words had their effect. The watch charmed the driver, and he agreed on condition that he receive the watch immediately. “Now I’ll give you the money”—Gad found a way of outwitting him—“and when we get to Zhadova I’ll give you the watch.”

  “The Jews always mix me up. I won’t drive on until I have the watch in my hand.” Gad also overcame that resistance. He added a small pearl-handled pocketknife to the money, and the peasant agreed. Amalia’s face was sunk in sleep. A few yellow patches clung to her forehead. Gad recognized those patches, and for some reason he saw them as a good sign.

  Later, already prostrate at Amalia’s feet, rocked by the rutted, unpaved road, he knew the chill wasn’t a cold. That was the way Amalia had shivered before she had fallen into deep sleep.

  A quiet evening spread over the green fields, and the horses ambled along lazily. Gad now remembered that many years ago, while he was still a little boy, he had been sick and burning with a high fever. His father had taken him to the medic to decide whether he had to be hospitalized. They had traveled in a wagon lined with straw. His father was very tired from his fear and from his irritation, and he had fallen fast asleep. The boy was suddenly frightened by his father’s sleep, and he had burst out in a shout. The father had been very alarmed and, not knowing what he was doing, he had slapped his face. That distant recollection, which had been buried in his memory, made him very happy, as if his father were standing some distance from him with his arms held open toward him.

  “Driver,” he called out.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. It seemed you had fallen asleep.”

  From then on his memory was burning but clear, like a globe of blown glass expanding with every breath. The long fish of the Prut appeared to him again. In dry years they used to lift their heads up out of the water and beg to be saved. The next day one would find them thrown up on the bank, their mouths open, their fins muddied, with despair floating in their dead eyes.

  The evening twilight lasted a long time, and he saw the years on the mountaintop as though they were spread out on a carpet of green fire. It seemed to him he heard Amalia’s voice saying, Why don’t we have a drink? I need a drink like air to breathe. At one time those demands used to frighten him like the way she hugged Mauzy and Limzy. But in the last years he had become accustomed to them. More than that, he looked forward to them. During the past year, sometimes, after a drink, he had fallen upon her and stripped off her clothes the way you peel the skin off a cooked vegetable. The memory of her naked body flickered before his eyes as though borne on the waves of the evening.

  Afterward his memory narrowed, and he no longer saw anything. The pain was strong, and his fever was high. But the feeling that he was suffering from the same illness and burning with the same fever dispelled his fears. He curled up at her feet and let his head sink down in the straw.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Aharon Appelfeld was eight when he witnessed the murder of his mother by the Nazis. After escaping from a concentration camp, he wandered in the forests for two years. When the war ended he joined the Soviet Army as a kitchen boy, eventually emigrating to Palestine in 1946. The author of eleven internationally acclaimed novels, including Badenheim 1939, The Age of Wonders, Tzili, To the Land of the Cattails, and Katerina, he lives in Jerusalem.

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