The Iron Tracks

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Weinberg used to be one of the last stations on my journey. Here I would burrow into an old pension and sleep for days on end. Five years ago they started holding wild parties in the pensions, or, as they’re called here, memorial balls. People would get drunk, sing, and revive memories of their youth and the war. I couldn’t bear that sickening sentimentality, and I would head south. My disgust was stronger than my sense of duty. Only later did I learn that Nachtigel was wandering about the region, and I forced myself to stay.

  Once I returned to Stark in the middle of the winter. He was very glad to see me, and for a few nights we sat together and read The Kuzari. He read with enthusiasm, explicating and arguing from many sources. You could tell that the man was no longer of this world, that he had only returned to it by mistake.

  Now that episode, too, was over. Of course, I had imagined the murder differently. I was certain that right afterward I would be killed or at least wounded. Angry people would drag me the length of the streets and slowly, slowly the blood would drip out of my body. The fact that I was alive, sitting on a train and spreading butter on toast, gave me a strange assurance. My anxieties had been in vain, and in a few hours the nightmare would be over. I could return to my usual ways and my regular schedule. The thought that in a few hours the train would stop in Salzstein erased the sights of the morning from my eyes and brought me memories from a time when people from all over would gather in Stark’s hut, and Yiddish was heard among the trees as once it was in cities inhabited by the Jews. For a moment it seemed that Stark, too, had come back to life, that he was standing at the door and greeting the people with a beaming smile. If Stark was alive, then everyone was alive. Gizi, too. A sandwich was surely waiting for me. One doesn’t easily forget Gizi’s thin sandwiches.

  I drank three cups of coffee. The liquid seeped into my limbs, and the cold that had barricaded itself inside my body faded. The cold morning light remained outdoors. Only the warmth of the sun penetrated the coach.

  While I was sitting and marveling over the annual cycle, which had suddenly reached its end, a short man dressed in a long coat approached me. He said in our language, “You certainly remember me.” I saw with displeasure that he was one of my rivals.

  “Where have we met?” I asked.

  He named the places, but I did not remember.

  “All these years I’ve wanted to learn from you, but I didn’t succeed. You always got there first. I’ve decided to leave, to move to Israel. I won’t deny it, I’m leaving because I have no choice. The chances of making a living have completely petered out. There’s animosity toward me on the trains. It’s better to be among unpleasant Jews than among anti-Semites.”

  “Is it hard for you to leave?”

  “I have no stake here. Except for this route, which I take once or twice a year, I have nothing. Still, it’s hard for me to leave that nothing.” He chuckled, the laughter of an injured man. “Traveling was once hard for me. Now it’s hard for me to do without it.”

  “Have you wanted to move to Israel for a long time?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth: I never thought of moving to Israel. The thought of all those Jews crowded in one place depresses me, afflicts me, but what can I do, where shall I go? Necessity cannot be condemned, as they used to say. Did they also say this by you?”

  The man’s appearance was wretched, and a stench rose from his words as well. But at that moment he was, for some reason, like a brother to me, one whom I had not seen for years. I am your brother, who suddenly appeared and said, don’t estrange yourself from me.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said.

  “You can be proud of what you have done.” He raised his voice. “Not everyone manages to do what you’ve done.”

  “What have I done?” I was startled.

  “What do you mean? You’ve discovered all the Jewish antiquities, manuscripts, books. Everything that was buried for years in cellars and attics you’ve brought out into the daylight. The Jewish people won’t forget your contribution.”

  “I sold it all.”

  “I used to sell, too. The only difference was, I didn’t have anything to sell. I just found leftovers, ordinary things. You found the essential things. Your discoveries are all safe with Max, and when the time comes, they’ll be gathered into the treasury of the Jewish people. The Jewish people aren’t dust. They’re the people of the book who fight for their values.”

  The more he talked, the more his misery was evident. I wanted to shout, Be quiet. Stop making so much noise. Your words sicken me. You’re an empty vessel, not a human being. He must have felt the anger raging within me. Without a word, he stepped aside and vanished from my sight toward the next car. Exhausted, I fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER

  31

  I slept for many hours. When I woke up, the sun had already set, and the train had increased its speed. At first I imagined that I was headed for Weinberg, but I immediately saw that this wasn’t the roomy train that brings vacationers to the pensions and ski resorts, but a regular express returning workers from the north to their homes and to the long winter idleness. The dining car was full. People were drinking, chatting, and cursing their bosses and their well-known companies.

  Why, then, am I going in the wrong direction? I ask myself. Now I imagined that I had forgotten a package of manuscripts in Gruenwald, one that I had acquired with great difficulty and was about to sell to Max. But a woman, not particularly pretty, had lured me to one of the pensions. In my confusion, I had left that important package in the buffet. I tried to console myself by saying that the buffet owner couldn’t read Hebrew, and anyway he wouldn’t understand the importance of the find. Then for some reason I remembered my rival and his misery. I couldn’t remember what he said to me, but I imagined that he returned to my car and leveled a grave accusation against me, cursing me and threatening to inform on me. Anger that I had suppressed for many days rose up and flooded me. I vowed that if I met him again, I wouldn’t spare him, I’d shut his mouth for him.

  Fortunately, the express stopped. I saw the familiar Salzstein sign and the platform, and felt relief, as if I had come out of a dark, narrow tunnel that was pressing in on me. I’m back, I said to myself. It was the familiar open area, and if the cold hadn’t hit my face, I would have stayed and checked to see if the others had also returned. But the cold was fierce. It drove me into the station and from there to the buffet.

  Without doubt this was the beloved Salzstein station, but without Gizi’s buffet. To my question, “Where’s Gizi?” the buffet owner went straight to the point. “There’s no Gizi, no Shmizi. I and no other own the buffet.” I said to him, not very cleverly, that every year I return here for a brief gathering, and that we all liked to sit in Gizi’s buffet because it was so cozy.

  “I threw all that furniture in the garbage. A buffet has to be clean and efficient.” So it was: a few plastic tables and chairs, a poster advertising a local band, a jukebox that, for a coin, would play twenty minutes of loud music.

  “Sorry,” I said and started to leave.

  “The man you were speaking of gave lousy service. For thirty years he cheated people.”

  “He never cheated me.” I didn’t hold back.

  “Maybe. But I wouldn’t eat from his loaf.”

  It hurt me that Gizi, in whose company I had spent many hours every year, that man who had tried to reproduce his lost home in the station, had been ousted. I knew that his wife had waged a massive battle against him. Through her lawyers she had written him threatening letters and filed suit against him. But I never thought he would end up destitute. Where is he, that dear man, I wanted to ask. But I knew that there was no one to answer.

  I went outside. I had stood in this place a few months ago and said goodbye to Stark. His look had been full of meaning, and he had stood there and marvelled at everything that took place on this earth. I knew that he had taken leave of me, but I refused to accept his farewell. His mind hadn’t gone soft like
some of the others. He had simply returned to his ancestors and their books, finding there what he hadn’t found in his youth.

  I walked up to his cabin. Unlike in the summer, the heights were exposed, and I could see the many fields and the orchards. I remembered the singing and the lofty speeches about recovery and reorganization, and a special program to help the scattered few out of their despair and mourning. I remembered the plan to establish a publishing house and a new journal. Above all, I remembered the ceaseless war against melancholy.

  When I reached Stark’s cabin, a young nun greeted me. She told me that the old man had gone to his eternal rest, and that the local council had transferred his house to the church. Now it served as a chapel for wayfarers.

  “And the books and journals?” I asked apprehensively.

  In response to my question, the nun opened the cabin door, to reveal an astonishing sight. The books, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets that had been scattered all those years on chairs, dresser, and floor were now arranged on new shelves. The evening light illuminated the empty space and a lucid serenity, found only in places devoid of people, pervaded the room.

  “And what will become of these books?”

  “They are here,” said the nun. “Whoever wants to consult them can do so.” Her face was young and round and flushed, suffused with a strange innocence. I bowed my head as if my shame were revealed.

  I turned aside and went out to circle the plateau. In the past we used to come out in twos and threes, sometimes five of us, to circle it. That was part of the ritual, one of the things we would do during the sleepless nights we spent at Stark’s. At dawn we would return and sing, “The Jewish people live, the Jewish people live.” Some comrades objected to it, arguing that Bnei Akiva, the religious youth movement, used to sing it before the war. But Stark approved of it. His argument was that now we had to fortify ourselves, and that whatever supported the sanctuary of life and inspired hope was permitted.

  Afterward we would drink coffee, and the debates were bitter. Old words and new ones would be woven together into a prolonged roar. Stark would produce arguments from Midrashim and from famous Hasidic works. Some comrades would dismiss them, saying you can’t bring evidence from decaying books. Others wept in despair, as if the yawning abyss had just been revealed before their eyes. In the afternoon sleep would descend on everyone. Stark would sit at his desk and write letters to close friends and to friends who had abandoned him.

  CHAPTER

  32

  When I reached the station it was already night. Once I knew the train schedule by heart. Now the connections seemed all wrong. I had forgotten: this wasn’t my usual place in this season. The winter schedule is different from the spring.

  “I have to get to Wirblbahn urgently.” I addressed the cashier, my voice slightly raised.

  “If so, don’t skimp, sir. Buy an express ticket. The express will arrive in one hour.” She spoke like one of the peasants who crowded around the ticket booth. Her direct, businesslike approach, which was meant only to be helpful, aroused a repressed fear in me.

  “I wouldn’t want to arrive in the middle of the night,” I said.

  “No,” said the cashier. “You’ll arrive in daylight.”

  “Many thanks,” I said, embarrassed that I had revealed my fears.

  I thought of Gizi and stayed out of the buffet. Standing in the plaza, I was surrounded by memories from the past. For many years this had been my life’s meeting place. From here I would embark on my journeys, taking the memory of my parents with me to every station. Once in a remote pension, one of Stark’s faithful had said to me in an anxious voice, full of fear, “I’m afraid to go up to Stark’s now. His soul has been reborn in another soul. He’s no longer the Communist I once knew.”

  “He’s returned to his ancestors,” I tried to convince him. But he wouldn’t accept that. He kept arguing that a frightening change had taken place in Stark, and that people should stay away from his cabin. Otherwise he would infect them with his strange thoughts. Now, as if in a dream, I remembered the man, the way he stood and his frightened look.

  An elderly traveler turned to me. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”

  “To Wirblbahn.”

  “My God,” said the man. “That’s a desolate place.”

  “Not for me,” I answered.

  “During the war I guarded the warehouse there,” the man confessed.

  “The place is going to change very soon,” I told him.

  “The ones with physical limitations were sent there.”

  “What was that like?”

  “Disgusting.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the men my age were at the front. They fought and were wounded and died like heroes. And I was sorting equipment, whitewashing paths, polishing shoes, and at night, guarding the warehouses.” The man was about seventy, and it was clear that that distant, shameful memory still lodged in his heart.

  “Everyone had his own war,” I said.

  “It was all because of a limp. An almost unnoticeable one. After the war the soldiers returned from the front and told of signs and wonders, and you were the fool of the family. You sat in the corner, mute as a stone.”

  “But a lot of them died.” I tried to console him.

  “To me in those years, death was preferable to service in Wirblbahn. Now I’m an old man.” He gestured in a way that reminded me, sharply, of the gesture that Nachtigel made before I killed him, a gesture that said, My life has passed me by, and there’s no point in changing it.

  I observed him again. He was slightly stooped, leaning on his cane, and it was clear that his life had not gone well. Now, approaching its end, it had become loathsome.

  “If they had sent me to the front, my life would have been entirely different,” he said in a trembling voice.

  “How so?”

  “In every way. I would have been a different man. I would have married a different woman. I would have had different children. There would have been light in my life.”

  The train arrived and our conversation was cut short. I hurriedly boarded one of the rear cars. It was a new train, open, the kind you don’t see in the provinces. A smell of fresh sawdust filled the air.

  The old man got on and sat down beside me. He continued talking about that disgrace known as Wirblbahn, which had blackened and disfigured his life. In the end he had had to make a living from what his ancestors had bequeathed to him, a wretched living.

  Later we sat in the dining car, and I offered him a drink. The drink also failed to banish the shame from his memory. Indeed it seemed to intensify it. He blamed his father, who had neglected to have his leg treated. Instead of sending him to Vienna he had scraped together pennies to give his daughter a decent dowry.

  “And what will you do in Wirblbahn, sir?” he asked me.

  “I intend to burn Wirblbahn down,” I said clearly.

  “How?” said the old man in a coarse voice, exposing what remained of his teeth.

  “Just as I said.”

  “Are you an engineer, sir?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That idea never occurred to me at all.”

  “It’s a dreadful place and it has to be destroyed. I’ll do it with a clear mind and without any pangs of conscience. You must not leave such places in the world.”

  “You’re right. And what are they planning build there?”

  “I don’t know yet. First, the place has to be razed to the ground. Only then can we see what’s to be done.”

  “That’s a wise step,” said the old man, and in his dulled eyes the painful memory was lit up once more. “It’s a shame I wasted my youth there.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t leave a trace.”

  “When are you going to do it?”

  “In the next few days. That’s why I’m going there.”

  “You’re doing a good thing, sir,” the old man mumbled, and his head sank wearily onto the table.

 
; I, too, was tired. My words weakened me and made me dizzy. Yellow flames writhed before my eyes, mingling with black flames. It was clear that my life in this place had burned up and come to an end. If I had a different life, it wouldn’t be happy. As in all my clear and drawn-out nightmares, I saw the sea of darkness, and I knew that my deeds had neither dedication nor beauty. I had done everything out of compulsion, clumsily, and always too late.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Aharon Appelfeld was nine when he witnessed the murder of his mother by the Nazis. After escaping from a concentration camp, he wandered in the forests for two years. When the war ended he joined the Soviet Army as a kitchen boy, eventually emigrating to Palestine in 1946. The author of twelve internationally acclaimed novels, including Badenheim 1939, The Conversion, The Age of Wonders, Tzili, To the Land of the Cattails, and Katerina, he lives in Jerusalem.

  GREAT LITERATURE FROM

  SCHOCKEN BOOKS

  A BOOK THAT WAS LOST

  AND OTHER STORIES by S. Y. Agnon

  Edited by Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman

  0-8052-1066-0

  THE CONVERSION by Aharon Appelfeld

  0-8052-4153-1

  THE RETREAT by Aharon Appelfeld

  0-8052-1096-2

  UNTO THE SOUL by Aharon Appelfeld

  0-8052-1097-0

  THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka

  A New Translation by Breon Mitchell

  Based on the Restored Text

  0-8052-4165-5

  THE PERIODIC TABLE by Primo

  Levi 0-8052-104,1-5

  THE SCHOCKEN BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY

  JEWISH FICTION