In the afternoon, Dr. Wolf, the district physician, arrives to play chess with Father. He’s a tall man with a thick mustache, like us in some of his manners, but still different. Unlike us, he drinks beer and smokes cigars. Christina told me that he was born a Jew and converted.
I can’t keep myself from asking Mother, “What does it mean to convert?”
“Dr. Wolf goes to church every Sunday,” Mother answers, with a haste that’s unusual for her. I sense that she has no intention of adding to what she has said, and so I let her alone.
Father taught me how the chess men move, but I don’t know how to play. Even so, I like to watch the secret strategies that are woven around the board and played out with the movement of each piece. Dr. Wolf is an excellent player, but Father is no duffer, and he surprises his opponent with a brilliant move. On several occasions I have seen Dr. Wolf raise his hands and announce, “There’s nothing to be done. You won!”
Between games, Mother serves a mug of beer to Dr. Wolf and a cup of coffee and some cheesecake to Father. The conversation flows. Dr. Wolf tells us about the peasants’ superstitions. They prefer their ancestral witch doctors to modern physicians, and in describing their beliefs, he uses his hands and face and makes us laugh until we cry. “Jews aren’t supposed to be stupid,” I’ve often heard him say, “but the Jewish country doctors are frightfully naive. When a patient comes in to be examined by a Jewish doctor, not only does he not pay for the examination, but he also asks for free medicines. When the doctor refuses, the peasant threatens to burn down his house. Everybody says the Jews are smart and sophisticated. I don’t know every Jewish doctor, but I do know the ones who work in the villages, and I can attest to the fact that they’re frightfully naive.”
Sometimes Dr. Wolf changes his tone and tells us about the Jewish merchants, who talk a lot—explaining and interpreting. Because of their passion for talking, they forget that there are things they want to conceal from him. “I remind them that I was also once a Jew, and I know how to explain and interpret, and how to make a straight line into a bent one. Then they laugh, as if I weren’t talking about their weaknesses but about my own. The Jews are a strange people.”
I notice that Father and Mother don’t argue with him. They like to listen to him and observe his gestures. Once, Mother had a high fever, and Dr. Wolf was called early in the morning. He examined Mother and diagnosed typhus. My parents’ bedroom was quarantined, and I was sent to the most distant room, the guest room. Dr. Wolf came to see her every day. His frequent visits imposed an aura of fear on the house.
“Is Bunia getting better?” Father kept asking. Dr. Wolf didn’t withhold the truth.
“She’s in crisis,” he said. “The crisis will pass in two or three days.” Indeed, Mother felt better just when Dr. Wolf had predicted she would, and his face glowed. I didn’t see Mother for two weeks. When she finally got out of bed, she had to lean on Victoria, the housekeeper. I didn’t recognize her.
When I’m sick, Dr. Wolf comes to see me and says, “One day we’ll have to get rid of those infected tonsils. We’ll give them a bit of a deferment for now, but then we shall see.” I know this is a warning, and I’m secretly afraid.
On Saturday night Mother doesn’t rush me to get into my pajamas, and I stay up late, listening to the radio or sitting on the floor and playing cards.
Victoria used to play with me. Since she left, the house has felt drained of her vitality. Every time I sit on the floor or on the bench at the entrance to the house, I see her standing in front of me. She wasn’t tall, but she was solid, bubbling over with smiles and laughter, and she knew how to imitate animals. She loved Mother with all her soul, and it was too bad she didn’t listen to her advice. Mother warned her about her violent suitor, but Victoria loved him. In the end, when she wanted to leave him after they had a fight, he stabbed her with a knife and almost killed her. Dr. Wolf bound her wound, and Father and Mother took her to the hospital in the carriage. The wound was deeper than Dr. Wolf thought, and for a long time Victoria fought for her life. When she recovered, she didn’t return to us but to her parents. Mother sometimes goes to visit her. I’m waiting for her to take me, too.
68
At dawn I finished the last sentences, and a fatigue that was more like paralysis gripped me. The first light was still wrapped in darkness. I opened the window and put out my hand to touch the silent coolness.
Suddenly, the melody that had drawn my fingers over the white pages returned to me, and I knew that the gate that had blocked my way had burst open. From now on, I would be quarrying.
I heard Mother’s voice.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “You did what Father wanted to. But what a price you paid!”
“How do you know, Mother?”
“I was with you in all your pain, and what I didn’t know, I asked Dr. Winter.”
“I feel much better. I can even go out by myself.”
“May God help you.”
I was surprised by those words, but I understood that they weren’t hers but those of her father and had come down to her.
Mother, I was about to say.
She looked at me in amazement.
“You’re allowed to be happy,” she said.
“Mother,” I said, “when I think of the path that lies before me, I want to fall to my knees and ask for grace and mercy.”
“What path are you talking about?” she wondered.
“I just broke through the gate, and what was revealed to me is beyond my strength.”
“Now I’m permitted to disclose to you that Father was certain you would do this.”
“I pray with all my heart that I’ll be as dedicated as Father was.”
“My dear, you’ve already shown your devotion.”
That was Mother, her voice and her concern, but not in her usual clothing. She was wearing white, like a nurse. Suddenly, the operating room—the one I’d been taken to seven times—appeared before my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Mother said. “I’ll be with you wherever you go.”
“And where’s Father?”
“Father has not yet returned from the camps. The moment he does so, I’ll tell him about your breakthrough. He’ll be happy. A father doesn’t envy his son. I have no doubt that he’ll tell you things that will help you.”
I once again saw the opening of the tunnel. I knew I was at the beginning of the path, and from here on, I must dig.
Mother appeared to be alarmed by my fear.
“You’ll do the best you can,” she said. “A person isn’t required to do anything that is beyond his abilities. You began to study Hebrew in Naples, you kept on learning in the orchard and during night training, and after you were wounded, you sat and copied from the Bible. The work in the field and the copying forged your tools, and with such marvelous tools in hand, I have no doubt that God will help you.”
“Mother,” I said, “where did you acquire that language?”
“I must tell you that in my world everything has changed. The old is no longer old, and what is new sometimes looks out of date to me. I now pronounce with ease words that I heard in my youth, and my usual way of speaking has broken down.”
Bless me, Mother? I think of asking her. Mother apparently expected that request.
“I’ll ask my ancestors to bless you,” she said.
“Don’t you want to bless me?”
“In my childhood I knew the prayers and blessings, but over the years I lost them. I can only ask my ancestors to bless you. I’ll hug you, and that will be my blessing.”
69
I raised my head and saw Rivka. She was standing by the stove, making me breakfast.
“You didn’t sleep last night,” she said.
“I was writing,” I told her.
“What did you write?”
“What I saw.”
She smiled a thin smile that filled her face and didn’t ask anything else.
Rivka had been aiding me for nea
rly a year, and she was still a riddle. She apparently understood only the language of action. I was moved by her powers of concentration. All my efforts to get close to her were in vain, and every question I asked embarrassed her. She had been that way since I first saw her. But she was devoted to me in heart and soul. Every time I took a few steps, she stopped what she was doing and watched, as if I were her son who had managed to overcome an obstacle.
“I broke through the gate, and now I have to move forward,” I said.
She looked at me in surprise but did not respond.
My fatigue returned, and even more than before. My arms and legs still felt tense. I got out of the wheelchair, sat at the table, and ate Rivka’s farina.
Sometimes I felt as if Rivka was trying to tell me something about herself but was prevented by her limited vocabulary. But this time she overcame her inhibitions and said, “I’m glad.”
“What are you glad about?”
“That you managed to write,” she said. Without looking at me, she burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” I barely managed to ask before she shrank back into her shell. She didn’t raise her eyes, and her entire being contracted.
—
Dr. Winter came to visit me and told me that he’d made an appointment for my final operation. My legs weren’t paralyzed after all. I was able to feel them, although not as in the past. I staggered about, and it was hard for me to lift my legs, but I was no longer a motionless lump.
“Is the operation necessary?” I asked.
In most of our meetings Dr. Winter spoke in High German. But this time his accent sounded exactly like my parents’, and for a moment my throat tightened. I was sad that this language, which Mother had cultivated with love and in which Father wrote his stories, was no longer mine. Tears flowed from my eyes.
Dr. Winter was stunned by my weeping. He came over to me and touched my shoulder.
“It’s a surface operation, my friend, not like the earlier ones. It’s the last one, and from here on, you’ll be able to set out on your way. Are you afraid?” He leaned over me.
“A little.”
“There’s no reason to fear. This will be a lot easier than the earlier operations.”
For a moment it seemed as though he wasn’t talking about broken bones, torn tissues, and damaged nerves, but about an enigma that was going to be deciphered. But the tears that had been locked inside me for such a long time wouldn’t stop.
“Are you afraid?” he asked again.
I was ashamed to say that hearing my mother tongue, which I hadn’t heard for a while, had moved me. When I told him, he laughed, hugged me, and kissed my forehead.
“If that’s what is making you sad, this is a sign that the eighth operation will do what it has to do, and you will start to run.”
70
Robert came to visit one afternoon and showed me some copies he had drawn. He had found a book of paintings by Giotto in the library, and every day after work, he would sit and copy. He had changed over the past months. When he looked at me, I saw that a gentle wonder dwelled in his eyes. But I couldn’t be happy because I also noticed that he kept blinking.
“Are you happy when you copy?” I asked.
“I’m doing it willingly.”
“It seems that every artist has to learn how to bow his head before the great works in order to feel the secret of creativity,” I said.
“Giotto is divine,” said Robert, smiling, as though he felt that the word “divine” wasn’t one that should be used.
Because of his smile, I asked him what he meant by “divine.”
We sat and were silent.
Finally, Robert asked about my writing. I was afraid to tell him about the enthusiasm that gripped me at night.
“I’m trying,” I said, and was sorry that I had concealed my exhilaration.
“God sent me Giotto,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
“I didn’t know what painting was until I saw Giotto. He opened the gate for me, and now I know what to look for.”
I hadn’t heard of Giotto, and I expected Robert to tell me more about him, but he was so fired up by his discovery that he just kept showering praises upon the artist. Then he cut the visit short, as though someone was waiting for him somewhere else. Or perhaps he wanted to return to his copying.
—
Friends came to visit me, but not as often as before, and I hadn’t seen some of them for a year. Edward came. I was alarmed by his appearance. His body had shrunk, and his handsome face had softened. Of all his splendor, only the breadth of his shoulders remained. But that broadness didn’t suit the rest of his body.
For years he had known how to give of himself and to be good to his friends. Now he stood helpless.
“Don’t you want to return to the group?” I asked, stupidly.
“No,” he said with his head lowered.
Eventually, he told me that he was thinking of leaving the bakery. An old-age home called Abraham’s Tent had offered him the janitor’s job, and he was probably going to move there soon. He would have his own room, meals, and a small salary.
I felt sorry for Edward, bone of my bones, who had given up all his dreams. Now, at age twenty, he was imprisoning himself in an old-age home. He would work, he would serve, the old people would pick on him, and his bosses would exploit his goodwill. His handsomeness would wither even more, and in a few years he would look like a prisoner, with jail stamped on every step.
“Edward.” His name popped out.
“What?”
“Why are you going there?”
“It’ll be okay. There’s nothing to fear.”
His words dammed my mouth. The warnings that I wanted him to hear from me slipped away.
“Every place has its disadvantages. No place is perfect.” He spoke with a frightening equanimity, as though he had already absorbed the spirit of the place to which he was planning to exile himself.
—
At night I saw Mother.
“I broke through the barrier, and I intend to return home.”
“To what home?”
“To our home.”
“Nothing is there,” she said and flinched, as if she had been hiding that from me.
“I want to once again be in all the places where we were together. The Carpathian Mountains were with me in all my wanderings, and now the hour has come to return to them, with my own eyes. It’s hard to live for so many years alone and exiled.”
“My dear, what you say frightens me. Flesh and blood cannot take such a journey upon itself. First you have to get better and stand on your own two feet.”
“The journey will make me better. Dr. Winter keeps saying, ‘Go, my friend, go.’”
“This is beyond me,” said Mother, throwing up her hands.
“Mother, I have to do it. What I don’t understand, the trees and the cliffs and the hills will tell me. And if I don’t see those marvels, the child who remained behind will show them to me. I saw many sights in my childhood, but I didn’t know how wondrous they were. And so I’ll go from place to place, until I reach the places where we were, or that I’ve been told about.”
“Wait, dear, until Father comes back from the camps. You mustn’t go out on your own. These regions are cold and dangerous. For now, stay where you are living. Let the distant places come to you,” she said, and then she disappeared.
About the Author
Aharon Appelfeld is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Iron Tracks, Until the Dawn’s Light (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award), The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger), and Badenheim 1939. Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. Blooms of Darkness won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Appelfeld is a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honorary degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, and Yeshiva University. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, he lives in Israel.
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The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping Page 22
