“And do you pray?” Ernst surprises her again.
“Sometimes, but not regularly. But I light Sabbath candles. I love to look at the flames. They move me.”
Ernst knows there are things he can learn from Irena. What he’s concerned with now are the things people don’t talk about—what they cover up or cut off in silence. After reading Irena a passage or a chapter, he asks her opinion about it. But the direct inquiry embarrasses her; she withdraws into herself and is silent.
Sometimes, in response to his request for an opinion, Irena rises to her feet, and her whole body seems to say, Why are you bothering me with something I have no notion about. But at other times she wants to say to him, You must beg forgiveness of your parents. Don’t worry. They’ll forgive you. Parents always forgive their children. You mustn’t ignore them. A person who ignores his parents is an orphan forever.
Ernst trips himself up with a question he had asked before and stumbled over. “Are you religious?”
This time, too, she says, “I do what my mother did.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
What do you want from me? she says silently.
Seeing the look on her face, Ernst stops annoying her.
There’s a contradiction in what you say. That sentence is frequently on Ernst’s lips. Irena often imagines it as a sword that has come out of its sheath and is about to be thrust at her, but then she says to herself, Ernst wants to teach me something important, but since I’m not capable of absorbing it, he keeps saying the same thing over and over. Irena knows the word “contradiction,” but she doesn’t know how to use it.
One time he aimed another obscure word at her. She was wounded, and in her pain she burst into tears. Ernst didn’t imagine that a word could hurt so much. When he realized what he had done, he drew near to her and said, “Irena, I was just trying to make things clear, not to hurt you. Perish the thought.”
Irena didn’t sleep that night. It appeared as though Ernst had tested her, and she hadn’t passed. By now Irena ought to know: Ernst’s thinking wasn’t like hers. Ernst inquires, clarifies, entertains hypotheses, compares, constructs, and contradicts. If other people were around him, he would clarify things with them, but since only Irena is with him for most of the day, he tries to clarify things with her. After a sleepless night, Irena decided that from now on when she doesn’t understand something that Ernst says, she’ll tell him, I don’t understand; it’s beyond me. Why bother with me?
The next morning Irena found Ernst totally drunk. He mixed up languages, called her Ida, waved his arms, and was as embarrassed as a wayward child. Irena went over to the stove to make him toast and coffee. When he saw the steaming cup, he cried out, “You’re my redeeming angel.”
11
THAT NIGHT HIS WORDS WROTE THEMSELVES, INVOLUNTARILY, and in the first person.
More than we hated the religious Jews, we hated the rich Jews. Striking a blow against the owner of a factory who had withheld his workers’ pay was regarded as a good deed of the highest order. The owners of small factories, and even the owners of workshops that employed six or seven workers, were also regarded as exploiters, and their buildings were set on fire. “Justice must begin at home!” That was the slogan and the order.
At first every limb of my body rebelled against the violence, but in time I was convinced that if the rich and their armor bearers weren’t eliminated, injustice would never be corrected. Wealth and exploitation had to be rooted out.
During those years, I attended lectures in basements, and not only about Marx’s Das Kapital and about Freud on religion. I also read Gorky and Sholokhov and other works of Soviet socialist realism. This underground activity, which was most intense in those nighttime meetings, gave me the feeling that I was a partner in building a new world.
What were the Jews guilty of? The lecture started off with that question every time, and the answer came quickly: obstinacy. Their refusal to change, their clinging to the worthless old faith of their fathers. The new Jews were no better: wealth was their faith. In those years I hated the Jews, though most of the people handling me were Jews, as were their commanders.
Quite a few ideas were raised at those secret nightly meetings: to dismantle all the ghettos and transfer the Jews to agricultural colonies; to imprison the rabbis, the religious judges, the kashrut supervisors, and the heads of yeshivas in reeducation camps; to forbid studying in Jewish religious schools and in synagogue study halls. The fury of the commissars was directed especially at ritual baths. They were regarded as a symbol of ignorance and evil.
I left home at seventeen, when I finished school. Neither my mother’s pleas nor my father’s silences could keep me with them. The idea that from then on I would sleep in abandoned houses, live by stealing, and help my weak friends was more powerful than any feelings of guilt.
Of course the reality was different from what I had imagined. Abandoned houses weren’t ideal places to live. People fought over every bit of floor, over a rotten mattress, not to mention a slice of bread or a hunk of cheese. The commissars tried in vain to impose order on the mixed multitude. The police, who used to raid the buildings at night, did not inspire within us a desire for mutual assistance. Whoever was able to flee ran away, and the weak ones would be caught and put in jail. It was a violent, exhausting life. I would often fall asleep under a bridge or in the hallway of an apartment building, just to avoid the company of my comrades.
I never returned home. My mother’s pleas reached me from time to time: “Come home, son, my life is nothing without you.” They arrived in the form of short letters or in chance meetings with neighbors. I ignored them. Harden yourself! I would repeat during those times. I had to harden myself in preparation for the great struggles. Humanity came before the individual. The revolution came before everything.
I eliminated parts of myself. I regarded anything that didn’t contribute to the revolution as a luxury. I stopped reading the beloved poems of Rilke and the prose of Kleist. I didn’t permit myself to enjoy a melodious sentence or a special word, not to mention a phrase that contained mysteries of the soul.
I even denied myself strolls on the riverbank and visits to cafés. I took my meals in the soup kitchens of churches and synagogues.
I trained myself to be an ordinary soldier, one who receives orders and carries them out without thinking about them. Everything that I had learned in high school—doubts, hypotheses, comparisons, ambiguities—all that was like a sin for which I had to atone through exhausting labor.
12
THE COMMISSARS QUICKLY DISCOVERED ERNST’S ABILITIES: his mastery of languages, his articulate writing, and his ability to compose a series of tracts. Literature was his great love, but he suppressed his feelings and gave them no expression. The world would not be founded on poetry but on eliminating injustice, he repeated to himself. Instead of poetry or literature, Ernst created posters, open letters, and pamphlets. He learned to turn a personal feeling into a slogan that caught the eye and captivated the ear. Like all his comrades, Ernst divided the world into black and white, bad and good. In the good world dwelt communism, and in the bad world, everything that existed before it. The division was so sharp that no one around him doubted it. From time to time Ernst would feel a twinge in his heart at the sight of a word he had corrupted, but the belief that he was doing what was necessary was stronger than any other feeling.
Hour after hour Ernst would sit in his cellar, writing and rewriting. On the agenda were not only social and political matters but also culture, literature, religion, the plastic arts, and music. He called upon all his abilities and, even more, on his youthful energy, to produce splendid pamphlets. The publications of the other political parties seemed thin in content to him, faltering, and lacking vision. His texts shone with borrowings from literature and philosophy. They stood out in their simplicity and honesty, and they aroused the heart.
People were enthusiastic about his writing and quoted it; his work became well k
nown in Czernowitz. Of course no one knew who the author was. There were rumors that the polished pamphlets came straight from Moscow. The Communists of the city weren’t examples of good behavior, but Ernst’s posters and pamphlets were called “a model of good writing.”
Ernst was shunted from city to city like a workhorse. Everywhere he went, a cellar, an old desk, coarse paper, a pen, and ink awaited him. He knew what to elevate and what to cast down. Words flowed from his pen that were full of meaning and laden with irony, words that fired the imagination.
At restricted Party meetings, which were called “kitchen nights,” future actions and punishments were determined, and Ernst saw the regional leaders close up. They were mainly of his tribe, and they spoke better Ukrainian and Russian than the Ukrainians. They were short and nearsighted, and their eyes were filled with cunning, suspicion, and ambition. Their practical ideas were written in little notebooks that they would whip out of their pockets. They pronounced Jewish names the way the Ukrainians did, which immediately displayed the barrier they had erected between themselves and their brethren. Another thing was conspicuous at those kitchen nights: the little maps, the handiwork of anonymous women volunteers, that indicated the religious institutions, factories, and workshops that were to be burned down, or whose owners were to be attacked.
After two years without seeing his parents, Ernst decided to visit them. He didn’t do it willingly. Harsh dreams tormented his sleep. At first he tried to ignore them, but they returned night after night. His parents appeared in the dreams the way he remembered them, with no evident change. Their faces had grown thinner, and, as always, they expressed disappointment with themselves. He interpreted that disappointment as a demand for him to return home.
Ernst made his way in the dark from his cellar to the house. He knew that his parents locked up the grocery store at seven and returned home. At eight his father would stretch out on the sofa, immerse himself in the newspaper, and wait for his mother to call, “Dinner is ready.”
When Ernst opened the door, nothing new was revealed. His mother was in the middle of preparing a meal; his father lay on the sofa. Ernst’s sudden appearance riveted them in their places. In their great astonishment, they could say nothing.
“Where have you been?” At last his mother got a few words out of her mouth.
“Not far from here,” he answered in a voice not his own.
“Do you have an apartment?”
“Yes.”
Ernst wasn’t anxious to provide details, and his mother’s mouth was still. His father didn’t utter a syllable. His long face grew longer. His eyes were filled with astonishment. Seeing his father’s expression, Ernst said, in a self-satisfied way, “I’m working on important projects.” His father didn’t react to that, either. Ernst felt that the word “projects” was laden with empty pretension.
“We’re about to close the store.” His mother recovered herself and told him about their situation.
“Why?”
“No more customers.”
“How will you make a living?”
“God knows.”
Soon everything will change, he was about to tell her, but instead he said, “You have to think about what to do.”
Hearing her son’s words, Ernst’s mother’s face cleared and she said, “We have no one in this city whom we can consult. The big stores are devouring the small ones. We can’t offer customers what a big store offers.”
“I understand,” Ernst said and lowered his head.
“We’ll have to go to work somewhere.”
When he heard that, Ernst was gripped by irritation. “I’ll come again soon and stay longer,” he said.
“Won’t you eat something?”
“I’m in a hurry,” Ernst said, as he used to in the past.
“I made the sweet blintzes you like.” She spoke as if he had never left the house.
“Not now.” Ernst hastily kissed her on the forehead and went to the door.
As the door closed, his father emerged from his inertia. “I don’t understand a thing,” he said, curling up on the sofa.
Ernst dreamed about free love, but the Party forbade all contact between the sexes because it interfered with Party activity, which came before everything. You were allowed to marry and have children, but you weren’t allowed to kiss in the cellars, not to mention have intercourse. Delinquents were reprimanded, and comments were entered in their personal dossiers.
Once Ernst witnessed the trial of a lively, buxom girl who was accused of having had sexual relations with three boys. The poor girl didn’t blame the boys but only herself. The verdict was unequivocal and cruel. She was expelled from the ranks of the Party for life.
13
ERNST READS THE CHAPTER TO IRENA. IT’S HARD FOR HER to follow his words, but Ernst’s voice captivates her, and for hours afterward her body throbs with excitement. This time she understands the content, and she is stunned by the opacity of his heart. Why did you run away from your mother and father? she wants to ask. Ernst senses her astonishment and tries to explain, but it’s hard for him. He knows that Irena possess a language of her own and has her own images in her heart. When he utters the words he has written, they sound exaggerated and artificial to him, and he immediately retracts them. Were it not for the close attention she pays, he would not read his work to her. Every time he tries to explain something to her, he feels the same disappointment with himself.
“Why did I run away from my parents? you ask. Because I believed that it was possible to correct how life is lived. My parents belonged to the Generation of the Desert, which could not be reformed. For that reason I refused to accept their love. Is that so complicated?”
Usually Ernst addresses Irena abruptly, but this time he speaks at length. Irena can’t understand his words, but she feels that they have come from his heart. When Ernst is moved, his face and neck become delicately flushed. On her way home, Irena thinks again about all the things Ernst has said to her. She opens the door to her house cautiously and immediately lights a candle. She closes her eyes and says, “God, help Ernst find his way to You. If he finds his way, he will be cured. He is very ill, and his thoughts torment him. Give him words so that he can ask for forgiveness from his parents.”
Irena then begins to tidy the rooms. For years after her parents’ death, the house kept the form that her mother had given it. Now it is Irena’s private sanctuary. The clothes and most of the utensils aren’t used. Sometimes it seems to her that they have lost their former life, and no precious memories waft up from them. There are days when Irena sits in one place and tries for hours to absorb what the house evokes from within.
God, she prays silently, restore Ernst’s parents to him. Without parents, we have no grip on the world. They watch over us in this world, and when they’re in the World of Truth, they are no less connected to us. So devoted is her prayer that she actually sees Ernst’s parents. His father reclines on the sofa, and his mother is in the kitchen. The silence between them is tense. It’s hard for her to erase that image, perhaps because Ernst keeps describing it in different ways.
So far he has written nothing about his grandparents, who lived in the Carpathian Mountains. Irena feels closely connected to her grandparents. She knows about their lives in detail. Every night for many years her mother would tell her a story about them or relate an incident. No wonder they have a shadowy place in her memories. Two portraits hang on the eastern wall in her home: her grandfather, a tall man, is leaning on a cane, wearing a peasant shirt belted at his hips; sharp honesty shines from his face. Her grandmother is a short, heavyset woman with a warm smile.
Irena loves to look at their photographs. She often soars away and visits with them in their house and in the fields, accompanying them to synagogue and back. The stories her mother told her become alive, and they bring up images and visions. When she is by herself at home, she is not alone. Irena knows what happened to her grandparents during the war, but the feeling that they
live on is stronger than the reality of their deaths. Once her mother told her, in her own father’s name, that death was an illusion and that it should be ignored. This has stayed in her mind.
Irena is sorry that Ernst’s parents don’t come to comfort him. His illness vexes him, and his writing is impeded. Though he does write, he crosses out and rips up what he has written. Irena feels that if he were to ask for forgiveness from his parents, he would rouse them in the World Above, and they would enlist his grandparents to help him as well. Irena doesn’t know how to speak to Ernst about this; she worries that if she does so, he will scold her.
That night Irena lights some candles so that the house won’t be without their flickering flames. When the house is lit by candles, the evil shadows have no power over her or over her dreams.
14
WHEN ERNST TURNED TWENTY-THREE, THE PARTY APPOINTED him Commissar for Jewish Affairs in his district. By then he had read what every devoted Communist was required to read, secretly visited the Soviet Union, taken part in advanced courses on organizing, and was involved in everything that was being done locally within the Party.
The committee that appointed Ernst knew that no one was better qualified than he. His loyalty to the Party and hostility to the members of his tribe were intertwined. They also knew he never stayed in one place for more than a day. He was systematic, his initiatives were innovative, and he did what he promised.
Within a month of his appointment, Ernst already had a file on the wealthy Jews, on the religious elite, and on everyone who should be recruited for the Party—especially young people in the high school and technical schools.
Suddenly, Love Page 4
