All Whom I Have Loved

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Also by Aharon Appelfeld

  Badenheim 1939

  The Age of Wonders

  Tzili: The Story of a Life

  The Retreat

  To the Land of the Cattails

  The Immortal Bartfuss

  For Every Sin

  The Healer

  Katerina

  Unto the Soul

  Beyond Despair: Three Lectures and a Conversation with Philip Roth

  The Iron Tracks

  The Conversion

  The Story of a Life

  1

  My father and my mother—their life together was not happy. They did not quarrel and they did not blame each other, but the silence in the house was as hard as ice and could have been sliced along its length. Sometimes my father's head would rise up, emerging out of this cold, as if he were about to shout. But this was just an illusion, for he did not raise his voice. I also learned not to disturb the silence, and I would sit on the floor playing dominos.

  Father works until late, and when he appears at the front door, I put on my coat and go with him. We walk around the streets for hours and eventually we drop anchor in a café. Father drinks a coffee and I, a hot chocolate. People sit differently in a café than at home. They talk loudly and their voices flow. Only Father does not change. Sometimes it seems that among people his silence is more intense. In the evening he brings me back to my house. I still remember how he would sit on the floor and play dominos with me, go into the kitchen and prepare himself a cup of tea, and light a cigarette. Now he no longer crosses the threshold.

  “Why doesn't Father come inside?” I ask Mother.

  Mother shrugs and that's her answer. It's hard to know if she's hurt or angry. She, too, has learned how to keep silent. But in the evening, before I close my eyes, words return to her, and she sits on my bed and reads or tells me things. Her voice is open, her face full of light. The words flow from her, and it feels good to be close to her.

  I turned nine, and Mother told me one day that Father would no longer be living with us but would come to visit me from time to time. I did not know what to ask and said nothing. Father is tall and lean, and even when he sits on the floor, he's taller than I am. With his legs crossed, he leans back on his arms. I knew that from then on we would no longer be playing at home, just in the park. In the park Father's silence is attentive; occasionally he'll say a word or a sentence, but aside from that, nothing.

  On days when it's not raining, we walk along the river. Even here he hardly speaks. If I ask something, he'll answer with a word or two. On the way, we come across wooden houses with thatched roofs, wells from which sturdy peasant women pull up overflowing buckets, stray animals, and many wooden crosses, but most exciting of all are the chapels. They are usually near tall trees, and you can spot them by their miniature forms, as if children had built them. We go into one with our heads bent and are greeted by a small icon, at whose feet there's a shelf of dried flowers. There's a footstool on the floor, for kneeling. The icon is old and cracked, and the face of a tortured man gazes from it. In one of the chapels we see an icon of a young woman carrying a baby close to her bosom; wonder is diffused over her full features. Father loves chapels. Once he's inside, his face is all attention, and he's alert. Sometimes a light glows in the chapel, casting shadows on the icons.

  The outing with Father lasts until dark. The darkness by the water is more frightening than the darkness near the trees, perhaps because it brings to mind a sleeping animal. I grip Father's large hand and overcome my fear.

  When it's cold, Mother wraps me in a warm coat and a woolen hat and Father takes me downtown. In the center of town, the streets are wide and the chestnut trees throw their shadows on the sidewalk; at every corner there's a café or a fabric store. In the late afternoon a moist light hovers over the iron railings, and in the cafés a thick pall of cigarette smoke hangs in the air.

  Father sits and plays chess with an elderly acquaintance. The man touches the chess piece and his hand trembles. When the game is most intense, I hear Father humming to himself. A game of chess can last an hour, sometimes two. Father plays and drinks coffee. I get a hot chocolate and a poppy seed cake. Father's fingers are long, his fingertips stained with tobacco. He moves the piece, dragging it slowly as if to say, that's it, no need to hurry, the enemy may be threatening, but he's not all that strong. It's easier for Father to talk to himself than to others. When he speaks to himself, entire sentences flow from his mouth. When he wins, he doesn't boast. With his back hunched over, he tries to appease his opponent.

  It's already dark when we return home. The streets are empty, and here and there someone will pass, a lit cigarette in his mouth. When it's cold and there's a wind blowing, Father lifts me in his arms, and then I can see straight into the gardens and inside the windows of houses. Sometimes I see a girl sitting and playing the piano, and even though there is no one next to her, I imagine that someone is listening.

  I want to ask Father many things, but I don't. I know that he doesn't like it when he's asked things, so I hold myself back and swallow the words. Sometimes we drop in at the tavern. Father downs a drink or two and we hurry to leave, yet I grasp how the tavern is different from a café. In the tavern, peasants sit around on the benches, heavy cigarettes hanging from their mouths. The air is dense with the smells of tobacco and beer, and young girls cheerfully pass around the tankards.

  When I return home, Mother asks me: “How was it?”

  To her question I respond with only “All right.”

  It's hard for me to part from what I've seen, and all through the night, these sights filter into my sleep. In sleep everything is different and sometimes the opposite, even Father's silence. Sometimes it seems that Father has lost control. His mouth is gaping open, and he is seized with fury, hitting people on both sides of him. People are scattering, but he's fast and grabs them; only when they promise to obey him does he let them go. I wake up from sheer terror. Mother rinses my face with water and takes me into her bed. It's hard to fall asleep again.

  I see Father once a week. When he's away or busy, he doesn't come. His face disappears from my memory, and when he comes back, he seems like a different person.

  2

  Then it was summer, and Mother and I left for the country. The village is all woods and fields, and streams from the River Prut that winds through them. Mother rented a small house next to the water; she unpacked the suitcase and put on her green dressing gown. I stood at the window and saw no trace of streets, only children and sheep and horses galloping over the green fields.

  Later, a peasant woman brought a basket with fruit, bread, and butter, and Mother paid her with two banknotes. The woman folded the notes, put them into a kerchief, and tied it up. Mother asked if she had vegetables in her garden, and the peasant woman smiled. “I have all kinds.” She promised to bring some.

  Then it was night, and Mother spread butter on slices of bread and served them on an earthenware plate. The bread was fresh and tasty, and with each bite I felt the tiredness from the journey. I tried very hard not to close my eyes, I drank water and I talked, but the tiredness was heavy and it overcame me. From within my sleep, I felt Mother's hands as she carried me to bed.

  When I awoke, the sun was already full at the window. Mother prepared breakfast and said: “We'll soon go down to the river.” We sat at the table, and we saw how the sun bathed the two rooms of the house with its light, and for a while we were filled with wonder.

  This was how our vacation in the country began. We would get up early, eat something light, and then go to the river. The river was not deep and flowed quietly. The first dip would be cold, and immediately we would wrap ourselves in towels and jump around to warm up, but th
e higher the sun climbed, the more it would warm the water, and so we would dip in again and again. Mother would swim. Her strokes were rhythmic and supple. I was afraid when she swam out far and glad when she came back to me.

  “Mother!” I'd call out with excitement.

  “What?” she'd say, her arms reaching toward me.

  I'd run and hug her legs.

  Every few days we walked out farther, as far as the lake. The lake was in the heart of a forest, and its waters were black. Mother would dive and dive again, and at last she would take me in her arms and swim along with me. I would feel a fear full of pleasure, and we stayed in the heavy shadows for hours, bundled up in large towels, and only as the sun set would we pack the knapsack and return home. On the way back, we would sometimes come upon a calf or a colt. It would gaze at us for a moment and then flee, but apart from that, nothing stirred. The fields of clover had been harvested and appeared grayish, and the trees huddled together, ready for their nightly slumber.

  In the afternoon the yard was shady, and Mother would spread out a reed mat, and we would sit and have tea. Mother baked a large cheesecake smothered with forest berries. We ate half of it and placed the rest in the pantry. Mother's dishes were so tasty that I ate and ate and asked for more.

  At that time of the year the skies were aflame until late at night. Hues changed, and in the end what was left was a transparent gray with fragments of flickering fire. This thin grayness pressed us into the reed mat, and we gazed and gazed without tiring, but sometimes we got up to take a walk into the clear night and came back very late. And so we went on, day after day. The sun and the water enveloped us, and our skin became tanned. If it hadn't been for the nightmares that kept coming back to me, there would have been no pain at all there. Mother said that dreams don't tell the truth, but for some reason I did not believe her, even though it was plain to me that there were no monsters prowling in our backyard.

  Sometimes the sun awakened me very early in the morning. Mother would still be sleeping, a sweet shadow hovering over her. I wanted to remove the shadow and gaze at her up close. It was hard to see her face, which would be wrapped in her long hair, but I could see her clothes, scattered on the chair and on the dresser. Mother's clothes were gauzy and satiny, pleasant to the touch, especially the silk stockings that she had bought just before our trip. I liked to watch how she stretched out her leg and drew the stocking up over it.

  Sometimes, she woke up while I was gazing at her. “What are you doing, my love?” she'd ask.

  “Nothing,” I'd tell her, and I could not help laughing.

  There, the days were long and went on deep into the night. Were it not for the few clouds, the difference between day and night would have been blurred. Sometimes a wagon full of children passed the house. The children would shout: “Jews! Jews!” and momentarily break the silence. But apart from these unexpected voices, there were no human sounds. The fields breathed quietly, and you could see the dark waves of night floating over the earth.

  Sometimes fear gripped me, and I felt as if I was alone alongside the water. There was no reason for this fear. Whenever I called out “Mother!” her response was quick in coming: “I'm here!” Even when I awoke in terror and confusion, Mother leaned over to me and said out loud: “I'm here!” These magic words immediately took away the nightmare, and yet it would still be there when I closed my eyes.

  “There are demons everywhere,” said Mother.

  “Here as well?”

  “Even here, unfortunately.”

  “Can't you make them go away?”

  “We'll drive them away,” Mother promised.

  I'd already heard the word “demons” in the city, and yet it was only there in the countryside that I understood at last what they looked like.

  “The demons are small, aren't they?” I asked.

  “True.”

  “And what do they do?”

  “They pester people.”

  “That's all? Just pester?”

  “On the whole.”

  Then it seemed to me that I'd seen them by the garden fence.

  The days were clear, with not a cloud in the sky, and every day we returned to the river, to exactly the same place, as if we were trying to get to know it better and better. Mother had grown taller here; only I had stayed short. I was no longer afraid of the water, but I was still not ready to dip my head into it.

  The time got shorter and shorter. Mother counted off the days on her fingers and said: “We have another week left.” I found this counting unpleasant, and I wanted to say: “Mother, don't count like that,” but I held back, so as not to make her sad.

  But meanwhile we spent a lot of time at the lake. There, by the water, we were either naked or wrapped in large towels. There was not another soul inside this shadowy canopy. And yet I sensed we were in danger. “Mother,” I'd call out, but Mother wasn't frightened. Alongside the brackish water she was lithe, her face open, and there was a moist sparkle in her eyes. She dove and surfaced, dove and uttered incomprehensible sentences. Once she put some squares of halvacovered chocolate on her palm and said, “Take it, my love, it's tasty.”

  “Mother, I'm not a bird,” I said for some reason. When she heard this, Mother burst out laughing and hugged me.

  Some Christian festival was being celebrated, and throughout the night cows and pigs were slaughtered in the village. The lowing and the squealing was enough to rend the heavens, but no one went to help them. I asked Mother if it was possible to save them, and Mother said it was their fate and that we couldn't change anything. The entire night I saw the blood flowing in the sky and pouring into the horizon.

  The next day we didn't go to the river; Mother took me to the church. We walked along dirt roads and saw the clear morning like a canopy over the gardens. The fruit had already been picked from the trees, but on the highest branches a few large apples still swayed, reddish, as if drunken. At times we came upon a rooster or a sheep that would take fright at our footsteps; I was happy that they had been spared from the night slaughter.

  “What do people do in the church?”

  “Nothing. They pray.”

  “Will we pray, too?”

  “No.”

  The church wasn't tall; it was domed, made of wooden beams, and a golden cross rose from the roof.

  “Nice,” said Mother, and we went inside.

  The priest wore a long ceremonial robe and stood next to the altar. He read from a book, and the choir responded to him in song; there was a magnificence in this ceremony that deeply moved me. Mother must have been moved as well, for her face was tense and she grasped my hand. I was sorry that I had to be silent and didn't know how to sing the song that the choir and the worshippers were singing together.

  After that, in a gesture that was slow and extremely impressive, the priest lifted a bowl of incense and waved it over the faces of those assembled. When they saw the smoke rising, they bowed their heads and I burst into tears.

  “What's wrong, my love?” Mother bent down to me. “There's nothing to be afraid of.”

  I wasn't afraid; I was overwhelmed by the singing and the pungent incense.

  The next day Mother packed our suitcase and paid the landlady. The landlady watched us with a kindly eye. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Home,” said Mother in a cold voice, and the openness in her face shut tight. I knew that if I were to ask her something, she would answer but in one word only. We still had two hours at our disposal, but Mother was in a hurry, as if the road beckoned to us.

  3

  It was night when our train arrived in Czernowitz. The station was in turmoil, with whistling trains and an overflow of people. We tried to make our way through, but all the exits were blocked. Seeing this reminded me of the nightmares that had kept me awake in the country. I gripped Mother's hand. Mother did not give up but tried again and again to push inside the waiting room with all her might. It was useless. People stronger than she shoved against us. In t
he end we were pushed aside, pressed against the wall.

  We sat on the suitcase and waited for the crush to subside. I pictured the fields and the water that we had left behind, and longing choked me.

  While we were sitting there hopelessly, Father appeared, as if the ground had split open and he'd emerged from it. He was wearing his usual clothes, but he looked so different here, as if he were a stranger. He immediately grasped the suitcase and led us outside through a dark opening. A carriage was waiting for us. Even now, Father behaved as he always did. He asked no questions. When we reached the house, he pulled down the suitcase, carried it up to the apartment, and said, “I'll come tomorrow.” Then he was gone.

  Mother had brought a few provisions from the country, and we sat down to eat. Her face was still tan from the country, but its freshness had faded. She tried to recall sights we had seen, but there was a hollow ring to her words.

  Then, for no apparent reason, she began to cry. It was a bitter weeping that left her face blotchy. I fell at her feet, hugging her legs. Yet this time my love did not help. Her crying only intensified, as if drawing upon the depths of her hidden pain. I was so moved that when I went to bed I could not fall asleep. It then seemed to me that Mother was about to say, “I'm going to pack the suitcase, we're going back to the country. I feel out of place in this crowded city; everything is dirty and tasteless.” But I was wrong; her sorrow passed and little by little she accepted our old place.

  That same night Mother told me about her childhood. Her parents died young and she had grown up in an orphanage. The orphanage is at the edge of the town, near the trees and water. When she was nine, her class was taken to the city, and there she saw the Great Synagogue for the first time.

  “And you didn't have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, I'm an only child,” she said with a shy laugh.

  At the age of twelve she was already an apprentice at the large garment workshop owned by the Stein family. She worked from morning till night, and in the evenings she studied. Eventually, she passed the matriculation examinations with low grades, but she graduated from the teachers' seminary with distinction.