When the darkness overcomes him, Ernst destroys his manuscripts, tearing them to pieces and throwing them into the garbage pail. Irena’s heart sinks, but she doesn’t dare say to him, Calm down.
A few days ago Irena entered Ernst’s house toward evening and found him drunk. This time he didn’t mix things up. He spoke about his failures in an orderly way, more or less saying, “A person isn’t an author just because he has a certain ability to write. If you’re not connected with your parents and grandparents, and through them to the tribe, you’re a hack, not an author. Russian literature is true and great because it is connected with the faith of the Russian people. Russian authors don’t feel contempt for icons. They themselves bend at the knee and implore, ‘Jesus, father of those who suffer, save me.’ ”
A few years ago some of Ernst’s acquaintances tried to have a small selection of his stories published in Hebrew. Two passages were translated as a sample, but no publisher was willing to take on the financial burden of having more material translated. Then came delays, letters that expressed reservations, and letters of outright rejection. Ernst knew that most editors were practical people, lacking sensitivity and taste, but it seemed to him that they felt the weakness in his writing. Ernst was firm in his opinion: I write according to inner imperatives. He tore the rejection letters to shreds. For years he hoped that a German or Austrian publisher would take an interest in his writing and publish his books, but letters of chilly courtesy came from them as well. Years passed without any hope of his work being published. Ernst wrote feverishly and sometimes with blessed diligence, but there were months when he never touched his pen. And after his operation he was overwhelmed by doubt. Weakness and attacks of depression undermined his self-confidence. While in the past the letters of rejection and reservation aroused his wrath and spurred him to write, now he agreed with his critics. Not only that, he would add, they’re being kind to me. If I were the editor, I wouldn’t have reservations. I would condemn. After the operation Ernst felt that the mighty engine that had powered his body, transmitting images and thoughts, had now slowed its pace. Cognac did help fire up his will, but not as before.
Irena sees Ernst’s struggles and doesn’t always know what to do. One thing is evident: his deep depression doesn’t make him unattractive. Sometimes she thinks that he refines his thoughts in his darkness. Nobility resides in his hands, in his slender fingers, and in the way he moves his lips. Every day she stands to the side, observing him, and wonders, How can I relieve this prince’s pains?
When Irena returns home, she downs two glasses of cognac. It makes her dizzy, and she pictures Ernst, wearing a blue suit, entering the gate of a splendid palace. An honor guard salutes him; he raises his arm and blesses them with bowed head. He climbs the steps, and the king himself, wearing a uniform, comes toward him and greets him.
Irena rouses herself and tries to get to her feet, but she feels heavy and dizzy, and she sits back down. Then she realizes that from now on her task will be different: she must stand close by Ernst’s large body and be his constant helpmate. If he gets angry with her, she will say to him, I want to be with you in the darkness, too. Your darkness is as beloved to me as the light that shines from your forehead. For a moment Irena panics at this thought. She goes to the sink and washes her face, and immediately sees Ernst as she had never seen him before: his face is full of light, as if he had finally freed himself from the chains that had shackled him.
19
THE NEXT DAY, ON HER WAY TO ERNST’S HOUSE, THE pleasant image from the day before comes back to Irena. Then she imagines Ernst sitting in the armchair, reading the Bible. Of late, this book hasn’t left his hands. Sometimes it seems to her that he is not reading it so much as being thrilled by every line; so great is his amazement, he doesn’t advance very far in his reading.
Irena is surprised to find Ernst in bed. “What’s the matter?” she asks. She sees right away that once again he has been attacked by depression. The weakness is visible not only in his face but also in his arms. They are inert on the blanket.
Irena goes to the kitchen to make breakfast. In the past she would announce, “I’m making breakfast.” Now she knows that there is nothing like the fragrance of coffee to draw Ernst from his bed. Before long Ernst is sitting at the table, drinking the coffee. “Too late,” he says to himself.
Irena guesses his meaning and says, “There’s no such thing as early and late.”
“What do you mean?” Ernst embarrasses her.
Irena laughs as though she has been caught in an error, but she immediately adds, “I don’t know where I heard that saying.”
Ernst shaves, dresses, and leaves for the café. Near the stairway he turns and says, “What did I want to tell you?” Irena is frightened when she hears that because it’s likely to be followed by, “My manuscripts are in the two upper drawers. If something happens to me, please burn them.” He had said that only once, but she is still frightened. This time he forgets what he had wanted to say to her.
The walk from Ernst’s house to Café Rimon takes twenty minutes. When rain falls and the wind blows, it takes longer. Not too many years ago there were study groups in literature, philosophy, and Jewish mysticism in his Rehavia neighborhood, and in the Yeshurun Synagogue there was a regular Talmud class. The 1950s and 1960s were years of great activity in Rehavia. Ernst was one of the regular participants in the literary circle. There was also a time when it appeared that a new Jewish culture, different from the culture of the kibbutzim, was in the making. Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem would lead it. Most of the study groups were held in German, but among the participants there were those like Ernst who knew Hebrew and Yiddish as well.
Back then Ernst wrote a lot and crossed out a lot. Sometimes he did have the feeling that he was digging in the correct place. Though the excavation was slow, he sensed that if he persevered he would reach the living water. There were also days of despair, of feeling distant from the goal, of fear of the future. When he divorced Sylvia and took early retirement, Ernst felt great relief. He felt as though he was setting out on a journey and that what had been hidden and blocked would return to him.
As long as the literary circle continued according to form and he was immersed in his writing, reading a chapter or passage at meetings every month, hearing comments and compliments, Ernst’s life had meaning. But when the circle disintegrated and the participants scattered in every direction, Ernst felt that his life in this world had shortened considerably.
20
SO THE WEEKS PASS, WITH DAYS OF ASCENT AND DAYS OF collapse. Irena does everything she can to make things pleasant for Ernst: she wears makeup; she makes sure that her clothes will catch his eye each morning. Ernst’s vision is sharp, and he notices details. Every time he sees her wearing a new outfit he says, “That becomes you.” Irena knows that Ernst’s compliments are not just so many words, and she lays them away in her heart.
Ernst has been struggling with his health on two fronts of late, with his long-standing heart disease and with a malignant growth that was removed two years ago. His condition has stabilized, but he nevertheless feels constantly threatened by death. The threat takes many shapes: pains and the images and visions they bring up. When the pains intensify, Ernst returns to the years before the war, when he was the commissar of Jewish Affairs and he would attack religious institutions, rabbis, and religious judges. A few days ago he dreamed that one of the old rabbis fell upon him, knocked him down, tied his hands and feet, and called him “doomed to death.” Nightmares have been his greatest enemies in recent years. After a night of bad dreams, the depression returns as though by itself. Ernst knows that these attacks are the doing of the Angel of Death and that he has to prepare himself for the final battle.
And there is another matter, one that he keeps trying to repress: the dread that his illness might worsen and he might be taken from his home and transferred to one of the hospices in the city. He once discussed this with Irena, and she immediately
promised she would be with him always, no matter what. Ernst doesn’t doubt her, but there’s really nothing he can do about this. The unknown gives him no rest. When his spirit is feverish, he repeatedly requests: “Don’t give me over to a hospice. I want to die next to my books.”
“Why don’t you believe me?” Irena’s voice trembles.
“I apologize. A thousand pardons.”
Noon comes again, and with it vegetable soup. The way Irena prepares it, it is a masterwork: a burst of colors and flavors, and served at just the right temperature. Irena never studied cooking. Her mother’s dishes were traditional, but her desire to improve the taste of the low-fat meals that Ernst must eat has made her an excellent cook. Ernst likes her dishes and often proclaims, “You serve me royal delicacies. Who taught you how to work miracles?” It isn’t only her meals that he likes. Her presence instills in him the feeling that he is connected to life. Once he tried to thank her and failed. Her simplicity is so sturdy that he sometimes feels inferior to her. Shame overcomes him when he remembers what he told her about his writing plans, how he had tripped over his own tongue, spoken in clichés, and piled on flowery expressions.
Irena offers him dessert. “There’s baked apple,” she says.
“Of course I want some.”
When Ernst says, “Of course I want some,” it means that the cloud that darkened the morning has scattered, that he’s feeling better, and that soon he will tell her about something that happened to him. Indeed, he started speaking right away.
“Today I saw Professor Stauber being led by a tall, strong man. I went over to him and introduced myself. He stared at me without any sign of recognition. You should know that Professor Stauber was the leading authority on German romanticism. I introduced myself again, but he ignored me, raised his eyes toward the man who was escorting him, and asked permission to speak with me. This man, who not long ago had been the prince of scholars, on the level of Gershom Scholem, was now walking down the same street where he had walked for the past thirty years, and he didn’t know what world he was living in. For years he tried to learn Hebrew, but that intelligent, hardworking man, who mastered Greek and Latin and spoke fluent German, French, Italian, and Spanish, was unable to do so. Every sentence that came out of his mouth was faulty and clumsy. Just two years ago he used to walk down Ramban Street, healthy and optimistic. ‘Don’t laugh at me!’ he would say. ‘In a few years I’ll speak Hebrew like the children of the old-time settlers in Petah Tikva.’ Now a man escorts him as if he were a shadow. In a little while I’ll be like him.”
Irena responds immediately. “You are quite mistaken,” she says.
Ernst smiles. Irena likes that smile very much. It’s not a smile of weakness or of arrogance but one of inner acceptance. When Ernst feels in harmony with his senses, he is full of inner joy. One can see it on his lips. A few days ago he took Irena’s hand and kissed it; since then she has felt that she has an even better sense of him.
21
THE WINTER DEEPENS. IRENA BOUGHT AN ELECTRIC heater for Ernst’s study, for the times when the central heating is turned off. Ernst’s financial situation is apparently satisfactory. Every few months he gives Irena a raise, and on holidays he buys her a silk scarf or some jewelry. For Hanukkah he bought her a pendant and earrings.
“Why do you spend so much money?” she complains.
“You deserve it,” Ernst answers briefly.
Irena keeps the gifts in a drawer, and on special occasions she wears them. She is secretly very proud of these ornaments, and at night, when she can’t sleep, she takes them out of the drawer, places them on the table, and stares at them.
Ernst has returned to his nightly work. How strange, I live in Jerusalem and I write in German. Sometimes he is puzzled by this. Years ago a coarse-minded editor had written to him, “Why don’t you write in Hebrew?” Ernst, who was then forty-five and in the midst of a desperate struggle with his writing, replied with a long and detailed letter in which he explained his ambivalent attitude toward the German language and the way it scratched at him every day. “But nevertheless,” he added, “it’s my mother tongue, the language in which I spoke to my parents, and I read my first books in that language. It’s the only language in which I have the power to write.”
Ernst secretly envies all those whom fate had endowed with the ancient Jewish language. He feels that the primal Jewish essence is rooted in it. For him, as it was for the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, Hebrew is a promised land he will never reach. Still, Ernst does not let a day pass without reading a chapter from the Bible or from one of his books on Hasidism. There are days when he wanders about drunk from the heady scent those books give off. And sometimes after reading from the Bible, he sits and weeps like a child.
One evening, before Irena left for the day, Ernst turned to her and said, “I want to say something to you.”
“What?” she asked nervously.
“Don’t be alarmed. I want to make you my heir.”
Irena was startled. “Me?” she exclaimed.
“You’re the closest person to me.”
“I don’t understand. Why think about death?” She was mixing the two matters up.
“There’s no reason to think about death. But I … well, you know.”
“You’ll live for many years.”
“That’s true, but still.”
“I can’t.” She made the gesture of an obstinate child.
“We’ll talk about it later. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s simpler than you imagine.”
Irena hid her face in her hands, and Ernst retreated.
Irena was restless that night. Scraps of thoughts and images wandered through her head. The short conversations she would have with Ernst at the door always frightened her, and now it was as if the fear had come out of the darkness and shown her what reality was. If God had given her more words, she would have stood fast and said to Ernst, Don’t charge me with tasks that are beyond my strength. This work isn’t hard for me, but don’t unsettle my thoughts.
All night long Irena composed in her head sentences that she would say to Ernst in the morning. In the end she decided to say, I’m an uneducated woman. I can’t even write Hebrew without mistakes. I’m prepared to do physical work, but don’t give me tasks that I don’t have the power to do. I barely finished tenth grade.
But when she returned the next day and found Ernst wearing his gray suit, sitting in the armchair and reading a book, all the fears that had oppressed her during the night dispersed. Ernst ate breakfast and went out to the café. She was relieved. It appeared as though what had happened the day before at the door was just a passing nightmare, and now reality had returned to erase it.
For a long while Irena sat at the table and imagined Ernst’s struggles at night. His life and his writing had recently become one single thing. Some days the words respond to him, and other days he is helpless. When she sees him fail, she wants to cry out, Death is an illusion. It’s deceit. Don’t be afraid. We’ll always be together. There are days when something of her mother, perhaps something of her grandparents as well, overwhelms her. Then other words rise to her lips, and she feels strong.
After returning from the café, Ernst stood taller. The sights he took in on the way excited him. If he hears an unusual word or a proverb, he’s as pleased as if he had found a jewel.
“I prepared a light meal today,” Irena announced.
“I like light meals,” Ernst said. “All the meals you make are light and tasty.”
“Today there are squash dumplings.”
“As the Bible says, ‘A righteous man knows the soul of his animal.’ ”
22
THAT NIGHT BAD DREAMS PREYED ON IRENA’S SLEEP. SHE got out of bed several times and stood by the window to see whether the dawn had arrived. Ever since she had forgotten to visit her mother’s grave on the anniversary of her death, evil spirits were tormenting her.
As always in time of trouble, Irena clung to the two thin p
hoto albums her parents had left her. She especially loves the photographs that survived from Europe. Her parents didn’t tell her much about the war. But before his death her father would open the album and go through it with her. Every photograph was a world in itself: their branch of Hashomer Hatsa’ir, the abandoned palace of Count Potocki, the stream that divided the village, the tall church that was painted green, the wooden synagogue. And at the center were her strong grandparents, God-fearing Jews who tilled the soil and who looked, outwardly, like Ukrainian peasants. Sometimes Irena feels that she, too, had been in their house, eaten their bread, and worked in their fields. Every time evil visions take hold of her, she says to herself, I mustn’t sink into them. I have a task, and I must stay on watch. But what can she do when Ernst’s surprising requests shock her? When he stands at the threshold and says, “What did I want to tell you?” she becomes dizzy with fear of the words that will come.
This morning, before leaving the house, Ernst once again scares Irena when he again asks her to burn his writings should something happen to him.
“I can’t take on that role.” Irena speaks boldly.
“If you won’t promise me, I’ll burn them myself.”
She raises her head. “Don’t do that.”
“I don’t want strangers to grope my writings.”
“Good God!” Irena exclaims, without knowing what she was saying.
While Ernst is out of the house, Irena involves herself in her work and tries to dispel the fears from her heart. She knows that in his condition she mustn’t defy him, that she must say, I’ll burn them, if only to give him relief. Yet it’s hard for her to say it. Her mother used to tell her that for the sake of reconciliation or to prevent sorrow one occasionally has to turn a blind eye or tell a lie. Telling the truth is sometimes harder than lying. Irena loved her mother and loved to listen to her. But she wasn’t able to absorb her practical life wisdom.
Suddenly, Love Page 6
