The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Our liberation from the camp rescued us from this shame. Suddenly, and without any advance notice, we were all freed and dispatched by bus to every corner of the Land. They sent my group to Kibbutz Misgav Yitzhak.

  15

  Misgav Yitzhak lay in the very heart of the Judean Hills. There was abundant light. The few tall cypress trees cast no shadow. The sky was soaring and cloudless. One’s body wanted to lean on a wall, so as not to be the target of the great light, but there was no wall. We stood, exposed, in the courtyard.

  At our first meeting, the secretary of the kibbutz, a tall, bald man, spoke in a soft voice and used practical terms that we already knew.

  “Article One,” he said (it was a new word in our vocabulary). “Misgav Yitzhak isn’t a permanent place but a transit spot. From here, we’ll go on to more advanced training.

  “Article Two: Everything we’ll learn here is of equal importance. The work, the studies, the training. You mustn’t get lazy and neglectful. The staff will discuss personal problems every week.

  “Article Three: Three per room, and the rooms have to be tidied before you go out to work.

  “Article Four: Lights out at ten-thirty.”

  —

  Strangely, these simple, clear words didn’t gladden the heart. Life at the previous way stations—in Naples, on the ship, in Atlit—seemed soft compared to the life we could expect here.

  We weren’t wrong. We worked in the orchard. Alongside the orchard, they were building a new terrace, and we would make that stony earth into fertile soil. Dynamite had already uprooted the boulders, and now we would be breaking up the large rocks, which would be used in the retaining wall of the terrace, and we would be filling the pits with loose brown soil, which we would bring up from the wadi in rubber buckets.

  The hammers were heavy, and it was hard to break the rocks. Ephraim didn’t make a fuss about scratches and wounds. There were bandages in his pocket, and he promised us that in a month or two our hands would know what to do.

  Ephraim lifted the hammer easily, and his blows were strong and precise. Our blows didn’t break the rocks; they just scattered chips all over. Ephraim had learned from the Arabs how to split and dress stones and how to lay them. He spoke of the Arabs with admiration. They knew the earth like their own bodies and guarded it. Building terraces was their great secret. Their terraces withstood all the ferocious rainstorms.

  Ephraim spoke about the earth and its virtues in Hebrew mixed with Arabic. For us everything was foreign, adopted, and forced. We remembered with nostalgia the running and the training on the shore near Naples. They shaped our muscles and prepared us to absorb Hebrew words. Despite the hardships, there was happiness there. Here, breaking the rocks and carrying buckets up from the wadi was exhausting and joyless.

  Were it not for Ephraim, the chilly reception would have wiped out our hidden hopes. Ephraim knew that the journey from one point to another wasn’t a trivial matter. You had to admit that it wasn’t easy for hands to grasp the hammers and swing them.

  Ephraim was a great expert in manual labor, but he wasn’t arrogant. He spoke to us simply, the way you talk to a friend. Sometimes it seemed as if he was a member of a secret, ascetic order and what he was teaching us now was a mere smattering of what we would be learning later.

  “And the next stop?” one of the comrades asked.

  “Still far away,” Ephraim replied, laughing.

  —

  In the afternoon, we studied the Bible and Ethics of the Fathers. Our teacher, Slobotsky, promised that if we made good progress, we would start reading passages from modern Hebrew literature. But what could we do? During that hot hour, as though in spite, fatigue overcame us, our concentration weakened, and our eyes closed by themselves. The roots of the words floated before our eyes and weren’t absorbed.

  Our new life here was intense, and it overpowered us.

  But sleep at night was deep, like the sleep after the war, and I felt that the walls of the tunnel of sleep were only slightly distant from my body. As it turned out, that was only the opening of the tunnel. Every night the opening widened and brought to my eyes clear visions of my childhood, accompanied by the moist fragrance that follows the rain.

  —

  Mother and I were walking without speaking. Mother’s silences were among the wonders of her self-expression. When she was quiet, her face displayed a singular purity, and it seemed to me that she had been planted in a world that was entirely her own. I did not dare disturb her. Once, however, I couldn’t control myself.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  Mother turned to me, and I felt that I had caused her pain.

  Now it was different. Mother was sitting by my side, as she did when I was sick. I told her that splitting rocks wasn’t trivial work. When she heard this, she narrowed her eyes and said, “You’re using incomprehensible words.”

  “Me?”

  “You appear to be using a secret language.”

  I became confused and didn’t know how to reply. Finally, I realized that I was mixing words from home with new words, so I tried to separate them. I wanted to tell her about all my adventures since I had been parted from her. I knew I had a lot to tell her, but it seemed beyond my power, like a pile of broken stones that I had to load onto my back.

  “Mother,” I said, “I can’t right now.”

  “No matter,” she said. Her short reply implied that we had a lot of time. If I couldn’t tell her now, certainly I could do so later on. Mother never pressured me, but this time her patience seemed excessive.

  “Mother,” I said, “in a little while the bell will ring, and I’ll have to go to work. I promise to return as soon as possible.”

  “Work?” She was surprised. “At your age, studies are your work.”

  I wanted to tell her more, but the words stuck in my mouth. Or, actually, they clung to one another, and I couldn’t pull them apart.

  Then Dr. Weingarten appeared, pale but not without some irony. I was afraid he would scold me for not going out to look for him. I was wrong. He was glad to see me.

  “Every generation has its passions,” he said. “We wanted to reform the world from the foundations to the roof, and you smash rocks to build terraces. Let’s pray that your passion will come out better than ours.”

  I wanted to apologize, but the bell rang and cut off my sleep. It was six o’clock, and we headed toward the orchard. No worry: after two hours of work, we would go to the dining hall, where a splendid breakfast would await us.

  16

  Construction of the terrace progressed. Ephraim built the retaining wall, and we prepared the stones and handed them to him. Ephraim weighed each stone in his hands and studied it from all sides before placing it in its intended place. This careful placement of one stone next to the other was a skill we had to learn. For the time being, we could only be impressed by the work of his hands.

  During those weeks, we learned the words needed for the job: cornerstone, foundation stone, a stone left unturned. But more remarkable than those was the expression “loose soil”; this was the brown earth that crumbled between our fingers when we brought it up from the wadi in rubber buckets.

  —

  On another subject: at that point not all the comrades had changed their names. The name-changing began, to tell the truth, on the shore near Naples, but only two of us had agreed to change our names then. One night at the campfire Ephraim announced that Benno had changed his name to Baruch, that Robert would be called Reuven, and that from now on we were to use their new names. This was an unsettling announcement, as though their original names had been uprooted from their bodies and new names planted in their stead. We were all so ill at ease that we laughed.

  Ephraim now spoke with each of us separately about changing our names, and a consensus was reached that the name-changing ceremony would take place at the end of the month. Some of the fellows wouldn’t agree to it. They couldn’t explain their refusal, but it was cl
ear that something in them strongly opposed this difficult act. Persuasion was applied personally, adding an unpleasant secrecy to the whole process.

  The name-changing ceremony kept being put off from week to week. No one asked when it would take place. Ephraim understood that the collective renaming would be unsettling and might pain some of us. The secretary of the kibbutz was less sensitive. He spoke of the need to change our names as a national requirement.

  “Foreign languages will be our undoing,” he said.

  But what talk didn’t do, life did. Our names began to change without our being aware of it. Benno was called Boni. Every time he heard the new nickname, Benno would purse his lips and smile awkwardly.

  My given name is Erwin. Mother chose it from all the names that were fashionable at the time. She liked it. Father also liked my name, but he pronounced it differently. The thought that my name would be erased and that in its place I would bear another one seemed like a betrayal.

  “Think of appropriate names for yourselves,” Ephraim would pleasantly urge us. But then Mark broke through the whispered persuasion and announced, unceremoniously and with a certain rudeness, that he would not change his name. Thus he removed the veil of secrecy that had enveloped the name-changing. Back in Naples, certain opinions had offended him, and he had more than once expressed his opposition to them. Ephraim would speak to him softly, as though to a rebellious creature that had to be appeased.

  In my heart I knew that changing my name was bound up with changing my language. I repeated to myself the explanations that Ephraim had presented to us and tried to justify them. But one night I dreamed I was at home. Father heard the explanations, and his response was unequivocal: “A person shouldn’t change his name any more than he changes his mother tongue. Your name is your soul. A person who changes his name is ridiculous.” For him the word “ridiculous” meant not only inappropriate but also foolish. Father didn’t speak angrily but with a restrained seriousness. I was amazed that the war years hadn’t altered him. He was wearing a bright gray suit that lit up his face.

  —

  Ephraim met me one evening and asked whether I had found a suitable name. I was about to tell him of my dream, but I realized that it was a secret between me and Father, one that I wasn’t permitted to reveal to others.

  “I suggest that you change your name to Aharon,” Ephraim said. “There is something of Erwin in Aharon. Aharon is a name of the first order. Aharon was Moses’ spokesman.”

  I didn’t want to be Moses’ spokesman. I was my mother’s and father’s son. They chose my name, and I was content with their choice. I liked names in which you hear the parents’ love. I can’t clothe myself in a name with historical pretensions, I wanted to say, but of course I didn’t say it.

  Then it occurred to me to ask him, “What was your original name, Ephraim?”

  Ephraim was stunned. He hadn’t expected me to ask him that. He turned away from me, then looked back, and with his head lowered, he said, “My name was always Ephraim.”

  You’re lucky. You didn’t have to change your name, I was about to say to him. Ephraim apparently knew what I was thinking and said, “I’m doing this for those still to join us, so that we’ll be a solid group.” The word “solid” offended my ears, and I almost said, The individual comes before the group. Ephraim guessed that thought, too, but he didn’t react.

  I noticed that, unlike the kibbutz secretary, Ephraim knew how to keep his words from invading places and causing complications or pain. He had a considerable degree of sensitivity. Every time I asked for a sleep day, he authorized it with a nod, without asking, Why now? My friends were also not surprised by my need for sleep. Every one of us carried a secret within him.

  17

  My mother tongue was in constant retreat, and I was suffused with Hebrew words. They expanded my world and connected me to the land and the trees. I no longer had any doubt: my earlier life would dissolve, and I would be bound to the soil and the plants. I would have my own horses, plow, and harrow. I would build terraces and plant trees.

  During that time, nothing was as good for my soul as tilling the soil and learning Hebrew and the Bible. But something within me, whose full meaning I couldn’t grasp, undermined that complete world. It was mainly the feeling of betrayal. It had begun to bother me in Naples, and then I felt it later, in the camp in Atlit. It kept growing stronger in Misgav Yitzhak, and its essence was my aversion toward my brothers, the refugees. I didn’t talk about it with anyone. Our lives were filled with the feeling that we were attacking and conquering new realms. The new language didn’t yet serve all the soul’s needs, but for practical matters it was a wonderful tool, especially the agricultural vocabulary and the language of military training and weapons.

  But what could I do? Sleep overcame me with clear and penetrating visions; not horrors from the war but pictures from home: all the pleasantness that surrounded me in my early years as my parents’ only child. These sights were linked in sequence, one after another, night after night. I was pleased by them, but at the same time they clouded my day, as though saying repeatedly: We are your true life. All your new activity is merely a semblance, not to say an illusion. You belong to Father and Mother, and you will always be theirs. There is no region of truth beyond their borders.

  —

  One night I saw Father dressed in his white suit. The suit gave him a young and festive look. I often heard Mother say, “Why don’t you wear your white suit? You look good in it.” Father was sitting at a chessboard and told me that he had found a new opening that took his fellow players in the café by surprise.

  Father was addicted to chess. In the evening, on his way home from work, he would sometimes go to the Cézanne Café and play two or three games. I loved the way he sat at the board with intense concentration, enveloped in cigarette smoke, in high spirits. People liked him because of his relaxed temperament. Mother would sometimes get angry at him when he was late for dinner, but she forgave him easily. You couldn’t stay angry at him. He always greeted you with a radiant face.

  That night I went into the Cézanne Café and found him sitting in his favorite corner, deep into the chessboard. Suddenly, he looked up at me.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  His question terrified me. I didn’t know how to tie together everything that had happened to me since we parted, so I said, “In lots of places.”

  “That’s strange,” he said with a look of surprise.

  “What’s strange?” I was surprised in turn.

  “We were always together, right?”

  “Since we parted, we haven’t been together,” I said, and I immediately knew that wasn’t the truth.

  “I never felt any parting,” said Father, and his kind laugh lit his face.

  It occurred to me that Father never saw evil, even when it raised its head from every corner. He always saw the good, even when the good no longer existed. Because of that characteristic, some people called him naive, and they always tried to show him that he was. At such times, he would smile benevolently, as if to say, What can I do? That’s me.

  Father was a businessman, but he ran his business in a pleasant manner. He would sometimes say, “There’s enough for everyone.” He was cheated from time to time, but he knew how to distinguish between the essential and the trivial. He would forgive deceit easily, but whenever anyone tried to undermine his factory, he defended himself with all his might, like at the chessboard, and he would defeat the schemer. Afterward, he didn’t gloat. He used irony—not venomous irony—and showed definitively that trying to harm people wasn’t worthwhile. In the end, the wicked fell into the pit they had dug for their adversaries.

  Not everyone accepted that opinion. Some people said he was a bit blind. Some said he was willfully blind. Father heard them, but he didn’t change his views. He would just repeat, “Not everyone is evil.”

  —

  Now, too, the light in Father’s face was unextinguished. He sat at t
he chessboard, with the pieces arranged for play, but the Cézanne Café was empty and wrapped in thin darkness; only Father’s face and the chessboard appeared above the shadows.

  “Where have you been, Father?” I asked, struggling to breathe.

  “Here,” he said in a voice I knew in all its timbres.

  “But they drove us out and scattered us.”

  “You’re mistaken, my dear. We were together, we were always together, even when we were momentarily parted. The camps existed and then disappeared, but we remained together.”

  That was Father. Time had not stained his face. His pleasantness and benevolence were the same as ever. Only his white suit was a little rumpled. Aside from that, there was no change.

  “Were we together?” I repeated in wonder.

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you feel it? Soon Mother will arrive. True, the circumstances have changed, but we always remained together. You’re right. They tried to separate us. They sent us to different, strange places, but in the end we stayed together. Is there any need to prove that?”

  Just as he said that last sentence, Mother appeared and stood next to me, young, wearing a summer dress, as if she was about to go on vacation in the mountains.

  Then the bell rang, and I woke up. I remembered every word that was said in my sleep. I even remembered the saying from the Bible that Father used to murmur while playing chess, “One who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off,” which meant Don’t forget that your defenses aren’t properly fortified. There are many gaps in them. His opponent would reply with a verse of his own, “The conclusion of an event is better than its commencement.”

  18

  Our lives in the training program kept broadening. Our team performed our work duties and daily chores, and the tallest and strongest of us joined the guards, for which we trained at night in a basement. We learned how to take apart and put together a Sten submachine gun, and we would soon learn how to use hand grenades.