The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Our abrupt departure from the Carpathians was like being plucked from a pleasant sleep. The coach appeared early in the morning, having come from the city to our door. My heart wept, but I didn’t allow any tears to flow. Grandfather enfolded my head in his two large hands and blessed me. Grandmother cried and wiped her tears away with a white peasant kerchief.

  All of this I saw again in my deep slumber, and I knew that none of it had been permanently snatched away. On the contrary, I now saw it even more clearly. The years had not spoiled these images. There was nothing temporary about them. There were no newspapers or radios in the Carpathians, no theater or cinema. After a month’s stay in Grandfather’s sanctuary, the city seemed foul, and its places of entertainment graceless.

  36

  As promised, they transferred me to a convalescent home. Benno got a day off and kept me company. Before leaving, I had a short conversation with Dr. Winter. I asked him whether there had been any improvement in my condition.

  “Your condition is definitely encouraging,” he answered, emphasizing every word. When I went on to ask whether there was hope that I might stand on my own again, he lowered his head for a moment, then raised it and said, “You must be patient. We will do our part, and your body will do its part.” For a moment I wondered about the statement “Your body will do its part,” but I didn’t pursue it.

  Dr. Winter spoke very objectively, but I felt that he hadn’t told me the entire truth. Of course he didn’t wish to sow any illusions, but I had the feeling that in his heart he knew that one day I would rise to my feet. When I asked what would be done with my belongings at Misgav Yitzhak, I was told they would wait for me in my room, and when I returned, I would find them in their place. That answer also told me that my banishment was temporary. I took my Bible with me, and my notebooks. The transfer was done in great haste, and I barely had time to be moved by the flowers that the nurses gave me.

  —

  The convalescent home distanced me from my friends, but it didn’t distance my thoughts from them. They were still training and going out on missions, and from time to time, they came to visit me. They had changed since I was wounded. In the first days after I was wounded, they whispered in my presence and waited for me to speak. Now as they stood next to me, they spoke about their dangerous deeds and laughed out loud. They took my injury for granted.

  They were my friends. Through all my recent changes, I was still with them. I remembered their old names and I was familiar with their reactions, but in recent weeks I sensed they were drawing away from me. At first they believed, perhaps under my influence, that my rehabilitation would be rapid and that I would return to them. But when it became clear that my recovery would be long and I was unlikely to return, their attitude toward me changed. It wasn’t rejection, but withdrawal, as though they were distancing themselves from a sick friend whose fate had shunted him onto another path. Now it was clear to me: they would go their way, and I would remain here or in a similar institution.

  Only Benno and Robert came every week. Benno doubted that he would be able to play the violin again. The war years and the time that had passed since then had kept him away from the instrument. Benno marvelously combined an agile mind with deep sensitivity, and I wondered why he doubted his ability.

  “The violin loves flexible, trained fingers,” he told me. “The music is hidden in my fingers. For years, they haven’t touched strings.”

  I noticed that he was speaking about the practical side of playing. In the small city of his birth, he had been a soloist with the local orchestra from the age of eleven, and many people admired him. Everyone—not just his parents—was sure he had a bright future. All during the war years, music enveloped him and protected him. But at the end of the war, Benno discovered that music didn’t flow in his fingers as before. I wanted to shout with all my might, You’re worthy of it! But I was gripped with the fear that he might take my exclamation in the wrong way, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Before coming to see me, Benno had been with Edward. Edward had sunk into a depression, and the nurses were trying to pull him out of it. He spent most of the day turned inward, not saying a word, and toward evening he would start sobbing.

  “Mama, mama,” he would call out in a choked voice. So it was, every day. The staff was helpless.

  “Did you talk to him?” I asked, stupidly.

  “It’s hard to talk with him,” Benno replied. “He doesn’t answer.”

  It seemed that Edward’s melancholy was clinging to Benno, too. I raised myself up on my arms and said, “We’ve gotten out of worse situations. You mustn’t despair.” Benno hadn’t expected that response. His face changed, as though he was about to burst into tears. He didn’t cry, but a cold gloom enveloped him and tightened his face. He covered it with his hands.

  For the moment we were joined in sorrow, and we didn’t speak until sunset. After a while, Benno tried to recover, to talk with me and cheer me up, but the words that came out of his mouth were fractured and said nothing.

  “Excuse me,” he said and left. He appeared to realize only now that the gates to playing the violin had been locked.

  37

  The schedule in the convalescent home was different from that of the hospital. It was quieter there and not as strict. If I wasn’t seized with pain, I would get up and drag myself to the dining hall on crutches. How strange that walking on crutches wasn’t humiliating. But when I was pushed in a wheelchair, I felt submission and shame.

  Just a few months earlier, I could stand, and I was a member of Ephraim’s unit. Never, not even in the darkest moments of the war, did I see myself lying helpless in bed. Even in my gloomiest imaginings, death refused to show itself to me. The war hadn’t harmed my body. My friends, who also got no exercise during the war years, regained their strength rapidly, and we came together as a unit within a short time. When we went out to do our exercises early in the morning or returned at night covered with dust, the crowd of refugees would cheer for us. We were their pride.

  “Look how handsome they are, how muscular,” everyone would say. “This is the army of our future. From now on, we won’t go like sheep to the slaughter.” But truth to tell, this was ultimately just lip service and superficial enthusiasm. The refugees were busy with commerce, with smuggling, with money changing, and with theft. At night, around the kerosene stoves, they would argue using the old expressions, each accusing the other and repeating, “We can’t stay together. Jewish togetherness has always been our downfall. We have to disperse, to shed every vestige of Jewishness that has clung to us, and sail to Australia or New Zealand. The new ingathering to Palestine is just another one of the illusions of Jewish history.” Their conversation was a mixture of well-known facts, bitter words, and fears.

  Once, an older refugee grabbed my coat and whispered to me, “Don’t be seduced into going to Palestine. Our enemies haven’t died. They have gone underground, and when the day comes, they’ll rear their heads.” I didn’t know how to answer him, and I went on my way. But his face and his bald head clung to me for many days.

  —

  Other patients who were recovering from their operations came to see me and ask how I was. They wanted to know where I came from, who my parents were, and how I had been saved during the war. It was hard for me to talk about myself. I was afraid they would pity me. I had already noticed that people adopted a didactic tone toward the survivors. But the nurses didn’t ask about my earlier life. They took care of me with dedication and not a word about my injury.

  One night I dreamed about Mark. He looked exactly as he used to.

  “Hello, Mark. What are you doing here?” I allowed myself to speak to him in my mother tongue.

  “I’m walking through the farm. I didn’t manage to see the vegetable garden,” he answered, also in my mother tongue.

  “Strange.” The word slipped from my mouth.

  “What’s strange?” Mark looked at me in surprise.

  “Just a few month
s ago they bore you to your final rest. Am I mistaken?” I couldn’t help but say that to him.

  “You’re mistaken.” Mark’s reply was swift.

  “Sorry.” I retreated.

  “You’re not to blame. Most people think that death separates us forever. That’s an error. There’s no greater error than that. Death is another facet of our lives.”

  “Marvelous!” I couldn’t restrain myself.

  “Don’t be too impressed before you understand the whole deal,” he said, and turned his back to me.

  “Mark, don’t be angry with me,” I managed to call out before I woke up.

  —

  Robert was standing next to my bed. I couldn’t keep from him that I had just dreamed about Mark.

  “What did he say to you?” asked Robert, leaning toward me.

  “He denied his death.”

  “Exactly what did he say?”

  “He said, with marvelous directness, that death is a facet of our lives.”

  Robert didn’t respond, and we were silent.

  Robert had brought some sketches, and he showed them to me. At first glance, they looked excellent, but the more I looked at them, the more I saw they had no inner essence. I set aside that impression and said, “They’re good.”

  “I’m not sure.” He surprised me.

  “Why are you in doubt?” For a moment it seemed to me that my critical thoughts had made him say, “I’m not sure.”

  “They’re good,” I repeated.

  “I always ask myself, ‘What would Father say?’” Again Robert surprised me.

  “What would he say?”

  “He would never say, ‘Good,’ but ‘There’s something more to do.’”

  “Is there always something more to do?” I wondered.

  “For Father, it was endless. In other words, we’ll never get to the right level.”

  “Is that discouraging?”

  “That’s how he worked all those years.”

  That evening Robert didn’t tell me anything about our friends. I felt that I hadn’t behaved truthfully with him, but I didn’t know how to make amends. He, for his part, cut his visit short. I, to add insult to injury, said, “Bring more drawings.”

  38

  I tried to cleave to the Hebrew letters, and the effort cost me deeply. It was hard for me to make them part of my thoughts, and without that close connection, everything was chaotic, falling into the depths of darkness. I felt that the Bible was calling on me to get to know its sentences, but I didn’t dare. Everything there was crowned with ancient splendor. I read, understood the words, but this was the thin air of high altitudes, and those who dwell there are far above us.

  I remembered the teacher Slobotsky, and I was flooded with longing for Misgav Yitzhak. Slobotsky tried to connect us to the Hebrew sentence, but I wasn’t ready for it then. Now, I was far from my friends and from Slobotsky’s voice.

  In my childhood Mother loved to read to me. Her way of reading was quiet, with no mimicry. When I got older and read by myself, Mother’s voice would accompany my reading, and I would read at her pace. By the age of ten, I was already addicted to books. Sometimes Mother would pull me out of the fervor that swept me away and serve me a cup of cocoa. She understood my spirit and didn’t rebuke me, even when I read until late at night.

  “What are you reading?” Father would sometimes surprise me. I would tell him the name of the book. If it pleased him, he would say “Fine,” and smile. Father was sparing with speech, not to mention explanations. I didn’t understand his inner struggles or his moods. But it was impossible not to love him.

  Once, I entered his room and saw a card on the table. “We are returning the manuscript, ‘Wild Roses,’ which you sent to us,” it read. “The book is interesting, but it does not suit our publishing program.” At that time, I of course couldn’t know what damage that card had done. Mother had to muster her entire soul to calm the tremor in Father’s fingers.

  “You don’t write for the masses,” she said. That was the sentence she kept repeating.

  Suddenly, an image of our house rose up before me. It wasn’t a big house, but it was covered with carpets and embroidery and full of good smells. Mother made sure that pleasant-looking curtains hung at my window and at Father’s. She believed that pretty accessories enlarged a person’s vision.

  —

  One of the patients, a quiet one, approached my table.

  “Where were you during the war?” he asked cautiously. I was alarmed, as though he had pulled off the thick blanket in which I’d been wrapped for a long time and exposed my shame.

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I just said, “Like everyone.”

  “But you, what place were you in?”

  “In a cellar.”

  “In what cellar, where?” He wouldn’t leave me alone.

  It was strange: outwardly, the man didn’t look too pedantic or insistent, but his questions left no room for doubt. He wouldn’t let me off easily.

  “I committed no crime,” I protested.

  “I wasn’t talking about a crime—perish the thought—but I wish to know.”

  I hadn’t spoken about those dark years, neither to myself nor with my friends. Nor did my friends tell me anything. Once, I asked Mark where he was during the war. He pierced through me with his gaze and silenced me completely. From then on, I knew the boundaries of conversation between us.

  Now this strange patient was standing next to me, demanding to know my secret.

  I looked at him again. He didn’t seem like someone who was plotting to harm me. But his face didn’t display any softness or a desire to compromise.

  “In Vaska’s cellar,” I said

  He smiled at my words, as though he understood that I didn’t intend to reveal any more.

  I remembered Vaska from my earliest childhood. He frequented our house. We would buy from him fruit and vegetables, which he would deliver to us in his wide wagon and store in our basement. Father liked peasants, their way of thinking and their way of life. He would pour a drink for Vaska and himself and sink into conversation with him. Vaska was among those he was fond of.

  A few days before we were driven out of the ghetto, Father brought me to Vaska. He agreed to take me in, and Father paid him, on the spot, with gold and silver coins. Vaska laid his hand on his heart and swore that he would watch over me like the apple of his eye.

  “How long were you with Vaska?” the patient asked me with a smile. He understood that I wouldn’t reveal what had really happened to me. War stories, even simple ones, don’t emerge from hiding easily.

  At Vaska’s, I learned very quickly what imprisonment was and what darkness was. Images and thoughts tormented me day and night, but I didn’t open my mouth and I never asked for anything. Twice a day, Vaska would bring me a cup of milk and a piece of bread, and at night—not before tying my hands—he would take me to use the latrine. Sometimes he would forget me for a day or two, and I would be tortured with hunger until I could hardly breathe.

  After two months of imprisonment, it occurred to Vaska that his wife could teach me to knit socks and gloves. I knitted for most of the day. If I didn’t fill my quota, Vaska would threaten to hand me over to the police, and if he was in a foul mood, he would beat me.

  I plotted to run away and die. Vaska, who always feared I would flee, secured the cellar with two locks. That’s how I lived for almost two years.

  Once, about a year before the end of the war, Vaska forgot to lock the door, and I ran away to the forest. Long after the war ended, my fingers moved by themselves to the rhythm of knitting. Even when I lay in bed, my fingers would tense up, anxious to fill the quota.

  —

  The patient wouldn’t let me alone. He stared at me intently, following my thoughts. Finally, he said, “In any event, I expected you to tell me.”

  I didn’t know what to answer.

  “There are things one mustn’t talk about,” I said.

  The patient bowed
his head and didn’t bother me anymore. He returned to his room.

  39

  That night I dreamed I was traveling on a train. The train moved slowly and paused at small stations. I remembered those stations from my childhood. They were made of gray wood. A thin barrenness woven from gray threads covered them. Not even the locomotive, breathing with great force, could tear that barrenness from the stations. The passengers on the platform were few. They were wearing long, thick garments, which made them look short. The stationmaster wore a red hat. He stood at some distance from the locomotive, rubbing his hands together. Then, with the sweep of a flag, he sent the train on its way.

  Once again, I was in a green, mountainous landscape dotted with horses, colts, and cows. I was very moved, because in a short time I would be in the city of my birth, at my home, with its broad garden that extended across the front and the back.

  One of the passengers turned to me. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  The question upset me, but I didn’t conceal the truth from him.

  “I’m going home.”

  “Where is your home?”

  I told him.

  He looked at me with great wonder.

  “I’m from this region,” he said, “but the place—at least, the way you pronounce it—is unknown to me.”

  I repeated the name of my neighborhood, which was on the outskirts of the city.

  “Perhaps it isn’t widely known,” I quickly added.