“Faith commands us to forgive, does it not?”
“My parents lived all those years with a feeling of guilt for not doing enough for me.”
“That happens only among Jews. With us, parents accuse the children.”
“Interesting.”
“Now that they’re no longer here, why bother them?”
“You’re right.”
Later, he wandered along Salzburg Boulevard and followed the river until midnight. Sitting with Kirzl had drawn him out of the swamp, but his feeling that that simple woman had some kind of advantage over him did not fade. Neither his studies nor life had taught him to live properly. His life was passing in a haze of hopeless anxiety.
CHAPTER
7
In October he saw neither Martin nor Freddy. Once he glimpsed Martin from a distance, staggering and barely staying on his feet. He wanted to approach him but couldn’t bring himself to. Their last meetings had been awkward and unpleasant. Martin had made remarks that had hurt him. He avoided Freddy altogether. He would run into friends from childhood in the halls of the municipal building, but he didn’t talk to them long. One thing occupied his mind without letup: the appointment. As if to drive himself even more crazy, he occasionally saw Hochhut, who did not seem the least bit ill at ease. He stood at the entrance or in the hallway, chatting with contractors and senior officials. If a woman happened across his path, he didn’t begrudge her a compliment. But those casual ways seemed like a ruse to Karl. He kept his distance from Hochhut.
For some reason he thought the appointment would surely slip through his fingers unless he fetched Gloria from her native village. Yet he put off the trip from week to week.
One night he realized that he had to break through the barrier and address Hochhut directly. But when he awoke the next morning, the idea seemed more senseless to him than the trip to distant Schenetz.
“You mustn’t worry,” said Kirzl. “Worry shortens your life. If the appointment goes through—fine. If not, maybe it’s for the best.”
“The whole thing angers me,” said Karl, unable to contain himself.
“We’re commanded to love without anger.”
“To love whom?”
“Those close to us, at least.”
“No one wants me.”
“God loves you, Karl, as if you were His only child,” said Kirzl, her eyes shining.
Her faith shook him. Karl felt an emptiness in his body, as if his will had been drained.
When he left the White Horse, he forced himself to walk for a long while along Salzburg Boulevard to the river. The river was serene, its water still. At first Kirzl’s words seemed simple and straightforward. But the more he walked, the more he felt that there was a trace of self-righteousness in what she said. Years ago, someone had said to him, “Life is a stream of confusions and torments, and it’s best to say so forthrightly.” Now he couldn’t remember the circumstances.
When he returned home after midnight he found a telegram saying, “Franzi Hübner has passed away. The funeral will leave from her home at twelve o’clock.” He put the paper down on the table and lit the kitchen light. When he looked at it again, he had no doubt; the old ghosts had returned to life.
Aunt Franzi, his father’s sister, would appear like a breeze and vanish. It was no surprise, then, that as a child he thought she had a pair of wings concealed beneath her green sweater, and that whenever she felt like it, she could unfurl them and take off in flight. She belonged to his most hidden dreams. As soon as the shutters were closed at night, he would open the gates of dreams and secretly let her in.
Of course his mother had contempt for her, calling her “a woman of the world.” At an early age Aunt Franzi had left home with some of her friends, and ever since then the reversals of fortune and scandals had never ceased.
She had been a nightclub singer and occasionally a dancer. She had wandered across Europe with all sorts of troupes. She had married, divorced, and been involved in untold scandals, but for some reason she had never converted. In fact, at every opportunity she would declare herself Jewish. She had even composed a provocative ditty that she sang in bars:
I’m a Jew and not so pretty.
Before you kiss me, you ought to know,
I come from the fires of hell
And live in Satan’s glow.
That was Aunt Franzi. Some people feared her, repelled by the scandals, but for the most part she was admired. Whenever she appeared, his parents sent Karl out of the house. Perhaps this was another reason he remembered her so fondly.
After years of adventurous wandering, she bought a little house for herself in a remote village and rarely left its confines. The villagers didn’t like her, and few of her friends came to visit. Had she converted, perhaps the priest would have helped her, and the hoodlums wouldn’t have tormented her. But she refused. The local physician, who was half-Jewish, tended to her when she was sick.
In time, all mention of her faded from the house. Karl’s mother fell ill, and he concentrated on his career. Sometimes at night a crack would open in the veil of silence and Aunt Franzi’s face would rise up like a spirit. It was said that Prince von Haben, a relative of the Kaiser’s, had been infatuated with her and would send her presents everywhere she went. But because of her beauty, people didn’t take her seriously as an actress, which apparently hurt her deeply. On the stage she may not have reached great heights, but she was brilliant as a cabaret singer. People would travel great distances to see her performances. Why, then, had she withdrawn from life and the stage? There were differences of opinion about that. Some said she was tired of luxuries and sought simplicity. Others, her detractors, called her capricious. As for the power of her charms, there was total agreement. Young and old were smitten with her, and when she decided to retire, people in Neufeld wrung their hands, as if they had heard she was about to die.
Karl’s father was secretly very proud of her and regretted that she lived so far away. More than once he had intended to go to her, but his mother said, “Oh no you don’t,” and he obeyed her. Sometimes Karl would find her name in municipal files. One of these came his way with the following label: “The Adventures, Betrayals, and Villainies of Franzi Hübner.” The file passed from department to department, the clerks adding vulgar comments as it circulated. He had wanted to destroy the file, but the bureaucrat in him was too scrupulous.
After his father’s death, he had wanted to bring her some money, but he kept putting off the journey. Meanwhile, his visits to Father Merser had begun. And after the conversion, he saw himself as cut off from his former life, and imagined that henceforth he would have to build a new one. To some extent he tried to do that, but now the telegram had come and struck him from the depths: “Franzi Hübner has passed away. The funeral will leave from her home at twelve o’clock.”
CHAPTER
8
At five in the morning, with the last darkness, he left the house. At first, he headed for the office. Then, immediately realizing his error, he turned right and coasted down the slope. Below, the fog streamed densely. Only the church steeple floated up out of the darkness.
By five-thirty he was at the station. The customs sheds were still locked, the cashiers’ windows shuttered. On a bench a vagabond slept on his back. Karl stared at the man as if he were a creature from out of his nightmares.
Meanwhile, the train appeared. It was a small train, loaded with coal, and only the last car was meant for passengers. The farmers must have gotten on during the night. The carriage reeked of the earth and pipe tobacco. “To Brauntier,” he said to the conductor, glad the name had emerged from his mouth with the correct pronunciation. The peasants smiled the way they do when they hear the name of a remote place.
Only now, enveloped in smoke, did he see Aunt Franzi as he had not for many years: sitting in an armchair, cigarette in hand, her large head covered with curly hair. She always brought him presents from her wanderings, wooden blocks or dolls, and once sh
e had brought him a company of toy soldiers, packed in a large wooden crate. “Here, Karl,” she had said. “These soldiers are at your command. Now go and conquer the world.” For many years—even while at the gymnasium—he and Martin would play with them on the floor. The splendid regiment in imperial uniform inspired the two of them with something that was apparently embodied in Aunt Franzi: the desire to rise to great heights.
After her first divorce she arrived with a wagon full of furniture and valuables and said, “This is for you, children.” There were carved chairs, chests of drawers, treasures from the Orient—everything she had collected or received as gifts from lovers and admirers. Of course, Karl’s mother refused to allow these treasures into the house. For several weeks they lay in a dark storeroom. Finally, his father sold them to a furniture dealer for a pittance. He never forgave his wife for that refusal, and every time they fought, he would speak of it as a crime.
Standing for so long in the crowded train erased visions of the past. Karl tried to make his way to the door, in which a panel was open.
“What’s your hurry?” one of the peasants asked.
“I need a breath of air.”
“Oh. If a person needs a breath of air, that’s another matter. But wait a minute. What’s the matter with this air? It’s not good enough for you?”
“I just need a little more,” Karl spoke softly.
“You’d better forget the comforts of the city. Here everything stinks of manure, you understand?”
Karl stared at him without answering.
“Do you understand?” repeated the peasant, adding provocatively, “If you don’t understand, I’ll explain it to you.”
“Explain it to your wife,” Karl said, losing patience.
Sensing the firmness in Karl’s voice, the peasant’s impudent face dropped.
When Karl was a child, the Christian boys would beat him up on the way to school. Until third grade, Gloria used to walk with him. But at the end of that year, his mother decided he should walk alone. Karl was frightened, but decided not to show it. Sensing his fear, the Christian boys would throw stones at him. Once or twice he complained. Then he decided to keep it to himself. The wish to grab one of these fellows and pound his rude face now throbbed in his arms. He wanted them to see what the Jews do to someone who picks on them. But the peasant who had quarreled with him had retreated and fallen into conversation.
In their youth, neither he nor Martin had ever hidden their Jewishness. More than once they had struck those who had bullied them and said, “Jews also know how to punch.” When had they become so self-effacing? He couldn’t remember. It had been a gradual retreat. Now he felt that if he had only managed to visit Aunt Franzi, his life would have been different. She wasn’t what you would have called religious. Her knowledge of Jewish history was slim, but the tribe was dear to her. When she spoke about her women friends or about her fellow Jews, her eyes lit up. Her love for her tribe was a fierce love, quirky perhaps, but constant. She had changed her lovers like dresses, but her love for her people was solid and unwavering. If anyone spoke ill of the Jews or made accusations against them, she would immediately rise up like a mighty fortress.
Among her lovers had been princes, bankers, and manufacturers, but not apostates. She despised them. She would say, “I consider apostates dead. I was born a Jew, and I’ll die a Jew.” Karl’s mother, of course, would mock these oaths and call her “unstable.”
The train passed harvested fields, woods, and cattle pens. Peasants weighed down with bundles and boxes got on at the stations. One peasant shoved in a cage full of chickens. The crowding was intense, but no one complained. Some people sang, others chatted. Whoever had nothing to say, pinched a woman’s behind. The women slapped the pinchers in the face with great pleasure.
Finally, after five hours of jostling, he squeezed out at an empty rural station that looked like nothing more than an abandoned farmyard. For a moment he leaned against the fence, dizzy from the shock of fresh air striking his face.
The train pulled away, and a frozen silence spread from horizon to horizon. He was in a smooth plain, created not in a fever of heat but with a surveyor’s straightedge. Here and there a spotted cow or a black horse, daubs of color in a sea of gray.
“Where from and where to?” a peasant said, popping up out of the silence.
“To Franzi Hübner’s house.”
“A strange name, a city name.”
“True, she settled here just ten years ago. And yesterday she passed away.”
“May God keep us from harm,” said the peasant, crossing himself.
“Hadn’t you heard?”
“No.”
“Where’s the village?”
“This is it.”
“Where are the houses?”
“If you take this road, sir, you’ll get to the grocery store. There are always people in there.”
“Is it far?”
“An hour, if you’re not lazy.”
He set out, the bright noon light flowing over the fields. Here and there a puddle glistened. Otherwise, there were no obstacles. For a moment it seemed this dirt road would lead only to another dirt road, and so on, to a dead end. But he saw no point in going back either. With every step he had a mounting sense of isolation—a feeling that since the fields had been harvested, not a living soul had been there, only the wind and the sun. While lost in the cataracts of light, he noticed a small wooden structure nearby. And he heard himself speak a strange sentence: “One cannot know what happiness awaits him upon the earth.”
It was apparently a Jewish grocery store, of the rustic type. Noticing the approaching stranger, the owner and his wife came out and stood in the doorway.
“Good morning,” Karl called out in his parents’ voice.
“A good and blessed morning,” they answered together.
“Where from and where to?” asked the husband.
“I came to see Franzi Hübner,” he said, immediately regretting his words.
Hearing them, both the husband and wife bowed their heads.
“I heard about it. When does the levaye begin?” he asked, glad he had remembered the Yiddish word for funeral.
“She was a wonderful woman,” said the wife.
“Everyone is busy with his own affairs. That’s a sin that cannot be atoned,” the words rolled out of his mouth unnaturally.
“Are you a relative, if I may ask?” She addressed him formally.
“I’m her nephew. My father was the eldest. He also passed away.”
“And so it goes,” the woman said, releasing a deep sigh.
“When is the funeral?”
“The burial society has just arrived. They’re eating breakfast.”
“I’ll wait for them,” he said.
“You’ve come a long way,” she said in a motherly voice. “I’ll make you some coffee.”
“Thank you.”
“Where are you from?” asked the husband, approaching him with a soft step.
“Neufeld.”
“I was there once, a very pleasant city. How many Jews live there?”
“Not many.”
“We’re stuck in this swamp.”
“But the view is nice, isn’t it?”
“Farm animals and grain make you stupid in the end.”
Meanwhile, the woman brought in a wooden tray with a cup of coffee and two slices of black bread spread with butter. Her husband brought out a chair and said, “Sit.” The two of them stood at his side, looking at him with wonder.
Karl sipped the coffee and said, “It’s excellent.”
“There’s more, if you wish.”
The sun hung in the middle of the sky, and no one seemed in a hurry. A broad wagon harnessed to two sturdy horses stood in the courtyard. The animals were clearly enjoying the oats and their repose. Karl raised his eyes. The couple standing at his side seemed younger than his parents, yet they were very similar to them. All of their tense being expressed willingness t
o help.
“Did you know Franzi?” The sound of his voice startled them.
“Of course. We knew her well. She would come here every week to buy food. In the winter she would stay with us. The storms here are terrible. She was a woman with broad horizons. It’s too bad she was imprisoned here. We liked her very much, but we always told her, ‘You’ve got to go. This is no place for you.’ She was a Jew in her heart and in her soul. In the last year she was very sick and didn’t leave the house—just like we are chained to this store from morning to night. We barely make a living.”
“I’ve wanted to come here for so long,” he blurted.
“This isn’t such a wonderful place, as you can see.”
The afternoon light was moderate and pleasant. Now he could see the inside of the store, the sacks of salt and sugar, their tops folded over, and the green wooden cash box. Salt fish peeped out of a short barrel. Their skin transparent, they lay on their sides, looking as if they were frozen in sleep. The smell of corn filled the air. For a moment Karl deluded himself into thinking that he had fulfilled his duty. He had arrived, been fed, and now it was time to go.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t thank us,” the woman chided him gently.
Suddenly, three men and a woman appeared. Karl rose, leaving the tray on his seat. Dressed in linen, they seemed like laborers. At the sight of the stranger a knowing look flickered in their eyes.
“My name is Karl Hübner. I’m Franzi Hübner’s nephew,” he said, introducing himself.
Hearing his words, the men bowed their heads, and the woman stared fixedly at him.
“We’re the burial society,” one of them announced with restraint.
“Thank you,” said Karl awkwardly.
“It is far to come, but doing a mitzvah is its own reward,” said one of them, smiling.
“I’ll pay you,” said Karl foolishly.
“It’s hard to gather ten Jews for prayer, but we managed, thank God,” said the man, ignoring Karl’s offer.
Every word he spoke jolted Karl’s body, as if they revealed his deepest flaws.
The Conversion Page 5