Blooms of Darkness

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “He always brought me presents.”

  “What, for example?”

  “Books.”

  “Sometimes he would come to me, and we would talk and laugh. He always made me laugh. Where is he now?”

  “He’s in a labor camp with Papa,” Hugo answers quickly.

  “I liked him very much. I even dreamed about marrying him. You’re still hungry. I’ll bring you some sandwiches.”

  Hugo likes the food that Mariana brings him. In the ghetto food was scarce. His mother did everything possible and even the impossible to prepare meals from nothing. Here the food is tasty, especially the sandwiches. Because of the sandwiches, the place seems to him like a big restaurant where people come from all over the city, like Laufer’s restaurant, where his parents went on his birthday and on his mother’s birthday. His father refused to celebrate birthdays.

  After eating the sandwiches, Hugo asks, “Is there a school here?”

  “I already told you. There is one, but not for you. You’re in hiding now with Mariana until the end of the war. Children like you have to hide. Are you bored?”

  “No.”

  “In the afternoon, we’ll take a bath. The time has come to take a hot bath, right? But meanwhile I brought you a little present, a cross to wear around your neck. I’ll put it on you right away. That will be your charm. The charm will protect you. You mustn’t take it off either by day or by night. Come here, and I’ll put it on you. It suits you very well.”

  “Do all the children here wear crosses?”

  “Certainly.”

  Hugo feels the way he felt on the day he was called up to the blackboard to get his report card from the teacher. The teacher said, “Hugo is a good pupil, and he will improve.”

  It turns out there is a bathroom behind the cupboard in Mariana’s room. The bathroom is wide and luxurious, with little cupboards, a dresser, a mat, soap bars of every color, and bottles of perfume.

  “I’ll bring two pails of boiling water. We’ll add cold water from the faucet, and we’ll have a bath from paradise,” Mariana says in a festive tone.

  Hugo is stunned by the colors. It is a bathroom, but different from any he’s ever seen. The ostentatious luxury says that here people do more than take baths.

  In a few moments, the bathtub is full. Mariana touches the water and says, “Marvelous water. Now get undressed, my dear.” Hugo is astonished for a moment. Since he was seven, his mother had stopped washing him.

  Mariana, seeing his embarrassment, says, “Don’t be ashamed. I’ll wash you with perfumed soap. Plunge in, dear, plunge in, and I’ll soap you down right away. You start by plunging in, and only afterward you soap yourself.”

  The embarrassment evaporates and a strange pleasantness envelops his body.

  “Stand up now, and Mariana will soap you from your feet to your head. Now the soap will do wonders.” She soaps him and washes him hard, but it’s a pleasant hardness. “Now plunge in again,” she orders. In the end she pours tepid water on him and says, “You’re good. You do everything Mariana tells you to do.”

  She wraps him in a big, fragrant towel, puts the cross around his neck, looks at him, and says, “Wasn’t it nice?”

  “Excellent.”

  “We’ll do it often.”

  She kisses his face and neck and says, “Now it’s night. Now it’s dark. Now I’ll lock you in your kennel, honey. You’re Mariana’s, right?” Hugo is about to ask her something, but the question slips out of his mind.

  Mariana says, “After a bath, you sleep better. Too bad they don’t let me sleep at night.”

  Why? he is about to ask, but he stops his tongue in time.

  That night is quiet. Though he does hear voices from Mariana’s room, they are muffled. He can feel the chilly darkness and the thin night lights that filter through the cracks between the boards and make a grid on his couch.

  The bath and the cross that Mariana put around his neck seem to mingle into a secret ceremony.

  Both gestures gave him pleasure, but he doesn’t understand what is visible here and what is a secret.

  That night Hugo dreams that the closet door has opened, and his mother is standing in the doorway. She is wearing the coat she wore when they parted, but now it looks thicker, as though she has filled it with wadding.

  “Mama,” he calls out loud.

  Hearing his voice, she puts her finger on his mouth and whispers, “I’m also in hiding. I just came to tell you that I think about you all the time. The war is apparently going to be long. Don’t expect me.”

  “When approximately will the war be over?” Hugo asks with a trembling voice.

  “God knows. Do you feel well? Mariana isn’t mistreating you?”

  “I feel fine,” he says, but his mother, for some reason, narrows her shoulders in disappointment and says, “If you feel well, that means I can go away quietly.”

  “Don’t go.” He tries to stop her.

  “I mustn’t be here. But there is one thing I want to say to you. You know very well that we didn’t observe our religion, but we never denied our Jewishness. The cross you’re wearing, don’t forget, is just camouflage, not faith. If Mariana or I-don’t-know-who tries to make you convert, don’t say anything to them. Do what they tell you to do, but in your heart you have to know: your mother and father, your grandfathers and grandmothers were all Jews, and you’re a Jew, too. It’s not easy to be a Jew. Everybody persecutes you. But that doesn’t make us inferior people. To be a Jew isn’t a mark of excellence, but it’s also not shameful. I wanted to say that to you, so that your spirits won’t fall. Read a chapter or two of the Bible every day. Reading the Bible will strengthen you. That’s all. That’s what I wanted to say to you. I’m glad you feel well. I can go away in peace. The war will apparently be long, don’t expect me,” she says, and goes away.

  Hugo wakes up in pain. For many days he has not seen his mother with such clarity. Her face was tired, but her voice was clear and her words were orderly.

  Several days ago he had promised himself that he would write down the events of the day in a notebook, but he didn’t keep his promise. His hand refused to open the knapsack and take the writing implements out of it. Why aren’t I writing? Nothing could be easier. I only have to put out my hand and immediately I’ll have a notebook and a fountain pen. Thus Hugo sat and spoke, as though he weren’t talking to himself but to a rebellious animal.

  15

  Meanwhile, the days are growing shorter. Cold filters through the cracks and freezes the closet, and the sheepskins don’t warm Hugo. He wears two pairs of pajamas and a woolen hat, but the cold penetrates every corner, and there is no escape from it. At night, when no one is in her room, Mariana opens the door, and the warm air from her room flows into the closet.

  Sometimes a vision from the past flashes by, but it quickly dies away. Hugo is afraid that one night the cold and the darkness will form an alliance and kill him, and when the war is over, when his parents come to get him, they will find a frozen corpse.

  Mariana knows how cold the closet is at night, and every morning she says, “What can I do? If only I could move the porcelain stove from my room to the closet. You deserve it more than I.” When Mariana says that, he feels that she does indeed love him, and he wants to cry.

  But the mornings in her room are very pleasant. The blue stove roars and gives off heat. Mariana rubs his hands and feet and orders the cold to leave his body. Amazingly, the cold does indeed go away and leave him alone.

  Sometimes it seems to him that Mariana has assigned an important role to him, because she keeps saying, “You’re a big fellow. You’re one meter and sixty centimeters. You’re like your father and your uncle Sigmund, handsome men, as everyone agreed.”

  That talk encourages him, but as to reading or writing, it doesn’t get him that far.

  One morning he asks Mariana, “Do you read the Bible?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Mama liked to read from the Bible t
o me.” He tells her some of what he has on his mind.

  “When I was a little girl, I would go to church with my mother every Sunday. Then I loved the church, the hymns and the priest’s sermon. The priest was saintly, and I was in love with him. He apparently sensed my love for him, and every time I came close to him, he would kiss me. Since then lots of water has flowed under the bridge. Since then Mariana has changed a lot. And did they take you to synagogue?”

  “No. My parents didn’t go to synagogue.”

  “The Jews aren’t religious anymore. Strange. Once they were very religious, and suddenly they stopped believing.” After a few minutes of silence, she says, “Mariana doesn’t like it when they preach morality to her or ask her to confess. Mariana doesn’t like it when they mix into her life. Her parents mixed in more than enough.”

  Every day Mariana tells him something about her life, but the hidden part is still greater than the visible part.

  When she gets drunk she mixes things up and says, “Your father, Sigmund, would spend hours with me. I loved him. Why don’t the Jews marry Christians? Why are they afraid of the Christians? Mariana’s not afraid of the Jews. On the contrary, she likes the Jews. A Jewish man is decent and knows how to love a woman.”

  Hugo knows that in a little while a man will come to her room and scold her for drinking. He has already overheard many quarrels, curses, and blows. When men hit her, she shouted at first, but soon she fell silent, as though she were choking or who knows what. Hugo was very frightened by those sudden silences.

  However, there were days when she came back from town happy: she had bought a dress or a pair of shoes. She would apologize for being late, bring him a good meal, hug him, and say, “Too bad I can’t heat the closet.” Hugo would be perplexed and tell her what he had thought about during the day. He wouldn’t talk about his fears.

  Some nights bad dreams persecute him, and in the morning he gets up and can’t remember a thing. He has already learned that a dream forgotten in the morning has not disappeared. It is hiding and secretly burrowing. There are forgotten dreams that break out and rise up in the middle of the day.

  Some days Hugo’s father and mother are so distant that even in a dream they seem strange to him. His mother tries to approach him nevertheless. He looks at her and is surprised that she doesn’t understand that from such a great distance it’s impossible to draw near. Mama, he calls out, to share her sorrow more than anything. It is clear to him: the distance between them is steadily growing, and in a little while he won’t see her anymore.

  It isn’t always that way. There are days when his parents appear to him in a dream and remain with him all day long. They haven’t changed. They are exactly as they were. That they are unchanged is felt every step of the way. For example, the way his mother hugs the coffee cup in the morning, and his father puts a cigarette in her mouth. When he sees that picture, he is certain it will be that way forever. He has to be patient. The war will end soon, and the trumpets of victory will sound all over the city.

  16

  One day Mariana comes back from town drunk and angry. Her face is rumpled, and lipstick is smeared on her chin. “What happened?” asks Hugo, rising to his feet.

  “People are bastards. Just to steal from Mariana. Just to take from her. Whatever she gives them is never enough. They want more and more, the leeches.”

  Hugo doesn’t understand why she is angry, but he isn’t afraid. In the months he has been with her, he has learned her moods. Now he knows that in a little while she will curl up in her bed and sleep till the evening. Sleep is good for her. When she gets up, her face will be peaceful. Darling, she will ask, what did you do? And it would be as if all her anger had never been.

  This time it is different. She sits on the floor and doesn’t stop muttering: “Bastards, sons of bitches.” Hugo approaches her, sits next to her, takes her hand, and brings it to his mouth. That gesture seems to move her, because she hugs him and says, “Only you love Mariana. Only you don’t want anything from her.”

  For a moment it seems to him that she is about to say something else. Now Mariana is going to sleep, and you, darling, will sit next to her and guard her sleep. Mariana is quieter when you watch over her. This time she surprises him, turns to him with a wink and says, “Come and sleep with me. I don’t want to sleep alone.”

  “Should I put on my pajamas?”

  “No need. Just take off your shoes and your trousers.”

  Mariana’s bed is soft, the covers are pleasant to the touch, and perfumed. Hugo immediately finds himself embraced in her arms. “You’re good. You’re sweet. You don’t want anything from Mariana. You pay attention to her.” Hugo feels the warmth of her body flow to him.

  His mother used to sit next to him before he went to sleep. She would read to him, she would answer his questions and look in his eyes, but his legs had never touched her knees.

  Now he is embraced in Mariana’s long arms and close to her body.

  “How is it to be with Mariana?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re really delicious.”

  In a few minutes, she falls asleep. Hugo remains awake. Images of the day he came to Mariana flash before his eyes. Now it seems to him that even her drunkenness is beautiful. The lipstick smeared on her chin adds to her charm. If Mama comes, what will I say to her? The thought passes through his mind. I’ll tell her that I was cold, that the closet froze my legs. That sudden thought casts a shadow over his coziness.

  The day grows darker. Mariana wakes up in a panic. “Darling, we slept too long.” She speaks to him as if to a member of her household, not someone who has slept in her bed for the first time. “Now we’ve got to get dressed. Mariana has to start working in a little while.”

  Mariana quickly puts her clothes on, makes herself up. Remembering that Hugo hasn’t eaten lunch, she rushes to bring him soup. There isn’t any more soup, but she brings thin sandwiches decorated with vegetables. “I starved my darling. Now let him eat his fill,” she says, kneeling down and kissing him on the face. Mariana kisses hard, and sometimes she also bites.

  “I’m sorry you have to go back into the closet. Don’t worry, Mariana won’t forget you. She knows it’s very cold there, but what can she do? She’s got to work. Without work, she has no food, she has no house, she can’t support her mother. You understand Mariana, right?” She kisses him again. Hugo doesn’t restrain himself this time. He takes her hand and kisses it.

  Soon a man’s voice is heard in Mariana’s room. The voice is stern. Mariana is ordered to change the sheets, and she does it in good spirits, joking with him and saying, “You’re wrong to suspect me. I change the sheets and pillowcases after every customer. That’s the basis of all trust. My job is to give enjoyment, not unpleasantness. I’m changing them so you’ll feel good.”

  The man doesn’t stay in Mariana’s room for long. When he goes, she opens the closet door, and the heat of her room comes into the cold closet. Hugo wants to get up and thank her, but he restrains himself.

  The two pairs of pajamas he is wearing, the hat, and the heat that comes from Mariana’s room finally warm him, and he waits for sleep to come and gather him up. He manages to hear another man come in, who immediately announces that it is very cold outside. He has been on watch for five straight hours, and it’s a good thing that’s over.

  “Did you always keep guard?” Mariana asks.

  “I’ve already been on all sorts of disgusting missions. Guarding an installation isn’t the worst thing of all.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “A soldier isn’t a poor guy,” he corrects her. “A soldier does his duty.”

  “Right,” says Mariana.

  Then he tells her about funny letters that were sent from home, about the strange packages that reach the soldiers from parents and grandparents, and about a soldier who received a pair of slippers. It’s clear he needs someone to listen to him, and he has found a ready ear.

  Hugo eavesdrops and eavesdr
ops, gets tired, and falls asleep.

  17

  In Hugo’s dream he sees Otto. At first sight, no change has taken place in him. The same skepticism and the same pessimism that he inherited from his mother are spread across his face. Only the pale pink of his narrow cheeks has turned brown, gotten thicker, giving him the look of a farmer. “Don’t you know me?” asks Hugo.

  Hearing his question, Otto smiles, and suntanned creases spread across his forehead and cheeks.

  “I’m Hugo, don’t you recognize me?” He makes an effort to emphasize the words.

  “What do you want from me?” Otto shrugs his shoulders. Hugo recognizes that gesture very well, but at home it was accompanied by a few swallowed words of pessimistic justification. Now it’s a silent twitch.

  “I have come from far away to see you. I miss you.” Hugo tries to rouse him from his forgetfulness.

  What do you want from me? Otto’s gaze rejects any further approach.

  Hugo sits and observes him: a peasant lad, with loosely fitting clothes, shoes made of coarse leather, and leggings wrapped around his calves. “If you deny me, I’ll go on my way.” He finds the words to say to him.

  Otto responds to this appeal by lowering his head, as though he has grasped that it’s a question of bad manners.

  “Otto, I didn’t come to bother you. If you decide to ignore me, or to forget me, or I don’t know what, I’ll clear out right away. You’re allowed to choose your friends as you please, but there is one thing I want to say to you. You’re deeply embedded in my soul, no less than Anna. You may forget me, but I won’t forget you.”

  Hearing Hugo’s words, Otto raises his head, looks at him as if to say, Don’t waste your time, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Clearly it isn’t denial or ignoring or contempt. Otto has changed completely. From his earlier incarnation nothing remains.