“Nothing, why?”
At first glance, there's no change at all, but when she gets up and goes to the writing table, I notice a movement I haven't seen before. She pulls back her hair with both her hands, shakes her head, and then lets it fall loose. Mother has long, golden tresses, which used to be gathered in a heavy braid. When we left the city and moved to the provinces, she cut off the braid, but her hair is still long and flowing and looks lovely on her back.
We sleep together in a wide bed. I usually sleep deeply now and seldom awaken at night, but sometimes toward morning I awaken and gaze at Mother's face. I see that she is fighting off bad dreams, and I want to wake her up and help free her from the clutches of the demons. But in recent weeks, I've noticed that her sleep is calm and her lips parted, and she seems to be smiling.
“Mother, you were smiling in your sleep,” I tell her.
“Was I?”
“I saw you smile.”
“Perhaps.”
The rain falls incessantly. Halina no longer takes me out to the fields, and most of the day we sit on the floor or by the window. When the rain lets up, we go to buy ice cream. At the end of the street, Halina has found a shack where they sell homemade ice cream. It's soft and tasty. Then we hurry back home so that we won't be caught in a sudden shower.
In the afternoon, the windows darken even more. Halina sits and knits and I sit and daydream. My daydreams are sometimes so real that they make me dizzy. “Halina!” I shout. Immediately she comes to me and enfolds me in her arms, explaining that bad thoughts are the waste products of good thoughts and that they have to be cleansed from one's mind.
“How do you cleanse the mind?”
“With song.”
So she begins to sing, and I fall asleep in her lap. I sleep for an hour, sometimes two. This sleep in Halina's lap is a soft sleep. She strokes my head and sings quietly. Sometimes I sleep until Mother returns.
When Mother comes into the house, Halina says, “The child is sleeping.” I hear her voice clearly but don't open my eyes. Halina tells Mother everything she's done and everything that we've done together. She concludes by saying, “The child's already been sleeping for two hours.”
Now I expect Mother to come over to me, but she doesn't. She takes off her clothes, puts on her dressing gown, and sits in front of the mirror for a long time, cleaning her face. I'm upset that she doesn't come to me and doesn't ask how I am. I've already noticed that in recent weeks she makes up her face frequently, she is easily confused, and in the morning she leaves but immediately returns—she's forgotten the key to her classroom or her umbrella. I have no doubt that there's something going on with her; all her movements tell me. Sometimes she seems angry with me for watching her so carefully. I'm afraid of my thoughts and tell myself over and over again that Mother would never abandon me.
Halina again surprises me. “Don't you want to go to school?”
“No.”
“All Jewish children excel at their studies—don't you want to be outstanding?”
“No.”
“Strange.”
Mother had tried a few times to have the ban that Father had put on my schooling rescinded, but Father stood his ground and it never happened. Sometimes I believe that Father invented my sickness only to free me from school. Father hates schools and vowed, in his heart of hearts, that he would never send me to one.
“Who taught you how to learn by yourself?” Halina asks.
“Father. You can test me,” I say, sure of myself.
“Me?” Halina bursts out laughing. “I should test you? I've forgotten everything I learned.”
12
Just as autumn was bearing down and it began to rain incessantly, Father appeared. He was probably surprised to find Halina at home, since he said, “I'm Paul's father.” Halina moved aside and blushed. I was also astonished, but I immediately recovered and ran toward him.
During the preceding weeks, I hadn't thought about him. He would appear to me sometimes in dreams but as a fleeting shadow. Now he stood there, as if he had come from a different world. I almost said, “Where have you come from, Father?” Halina says that you should not reveal all your thoughts, and so I didn't this time.
A fine rain was falling, and Father covered the two of us with his large umbrella as we left the house. He seemed to have grown taller since I had last seen him. I must have been wrong. We walked down the main street, with Father striding along on my right. His silence was unchanged, and I comforted myself by thinking that we'd soon be sitting in a café. In a café he sometimes came out with some complete, understandable sentences. This time he surprised me; we went straight to a tavern. There was a statue of a black horse at the entrance.
It was three o'clock and the bar was almost empty. Father had brought me a gift: a wristwatch. He immediately put it on my left wrist. I was so moved that tears pricked my eyes. I had known how to tell time from the age of five. Mother was proud of my knowledge in math, and whenever we were sitting around the table or taking a walk, she would give me an exercise and I would work it out.
Father must have forgotten that I knew how to tell time. When I accurately did so, he gulped down his drink with joy and laughter. When Father has a bit too much to drink, his closed face opens up slightly. I told him I also knew fractions. He immediately gave me an exercise, and I solved it easily. “A head full of wisdom,” said Father loudly. I don't recall when I had ever seen him so happy.
Later, he told me that his work in the high school was exhausting. “But it's certainly going to change one of these days,” he added. I did not ask if he was painting. It was a wound I dared not touch. Then he opened up to me, telling me about his studies in the academy and his long stay in Vienna. He spoke rapidly, as if trying to shorten a long tale. Because he hurried, I didn't understand very much, but his voice was penetrating, and there before my eyes were the stone, fortress-like buildings of the academy. I saw the art gallery that was part of it, with tall people walking about. I saw Father, too, dressed in a white suit, like the time we had gone together with Mother to the wedding of Felix Sommer, the artist. I remembered that wedding so well because it was on the banks of the Prut, and at the end of it I had been stung by a bee. Father went on talking and talking. I had never heard him talk so much, and so easily. Only after he's had a few drinks does he begin to loosen up. This time he must have overdone it. More than anything he said, I recall one gesture he made with his right hand, as if to say, “One day I'll remove the impediments and I'll be on my way.” There was no anger in his face, only a steady determination.
And so we sat for about an hour. Then he told me things that I will never, ever forget: “Paul, my love, forgive me for not coming to visit you more frequently, but I've been trapped in that high school like a dog.” I looked into his eyes, wide open and bloodshot, and it seemed to me that he was about to break a chair or a table. I was wrong. He lit a cigarette and chuckled to himself.
When we left the tavern Father's face shut down and his eyes narrowed, and all the way home he did not utter another sound. Our parting, as usual, was hasty, and he immediately disappeared.
I showed Halina my watch, and she said, “You have a very handsome father. Why did they divorce?”
“I don't know.”
“Your father is a charming man.”
I had heard the word “charming” more than once, but this time it did not sound pure to me. We sat by the table and watched the rain. In my imagination I saw Father running in the rain to catch the train, and I prayed silently that he would make it. The last train left at five o'clock.
Mother was late, and when she appeared in the doorway, I told her immediately that Father had been here and had brought me a watch.
“Wonderful,” said Mother, and was silent. Apparently she hadn't expected him to come. “What did the two of you do?” she asked.
“Nothing much,” I said, and didn't tell her that we had sat in a tavern and that Father had talked with great enthusias
m.
“So, what did you do?”
“We took a walk,” I lied.
The lie weighed on me. Several times I almost admitted that I had lied. Father's surprise visit must have bothered her, for the following morning, she again asked, “So, what did you do?”
“Nothing much,” I lied again.
I wore the watch and felt Father next to me. Since he brought me the watch, I could see his face clearly, and it seemed that any moment he'd come into my house.
“What does your father do?” Halina asked in a voice that carried an unpleasant ring.
“He teaches in high school,” I hastened to answer. I didn't tell her about the painting. There were secrets that I wouldn't tell her, like the way Father drank and had difficulty painting. Sometimes I could feel the tremendous effort he made to save himself from his own silence, and I wanted to go to him and be near him. I knew that Mother wouldn't let me.
“Your father is a charming man,” Halina said, as if to tease me.
“What is charming?” I pretended not to know.
“Don't you know?”
“No.”
“Your father is a very handsome man, and all the women want to kiss him,” she said, bursting into wild laughter and collapsing on the floor. Halina was lively and amusing but a chatterbox. After seven hours with her my head was full of noise, and I fled to the bedroom and curled up under the blanket so as to get away from it.
13
The days pass and Halina learns more and more German words. I'm embarrassed; my Ukrainian vocabulary is weak and jumbled, and I can hardly string a sentence together. When I finally come out with a Ukrainian sentence, Halina bursts out laughing, hugs and kisses me, and says that one of these days she'll take me to her village so that everyone can hear my accent.
“Is it a strange accent?”
“Extremely funny.”
Halina's German sounds different from ours, but it's not funny—it has charm. I love to hear her ask a question or just say something. She tells me about her village and her parents. She seldom talks about her fiancé. She must understand that I don't like to hear about him.
A few days ago, she told me that her father would beat her when she was a child. Then she hitched up her dress and showed me the scars on her thigh. I was frightened: there were two long pinkish scars.
“Why did he beat you?”
“Because I was naughty.”
“What did you do?”
“I would steal money and go to the store and buy chocolate.”
“How often did he beat you?”
“Nearly every week.”
“And you weren't afraid to steal?”
“I was afraid.”
“So why didn't you stop?”
“Because I loved chocolate,” she breathed, her nostrils flaring.
I love to listen to her voice. When she talks, her entire body speaks. Yesterday evening she told me that she would never forgive her father for beating her. “When I shouted, he would strangle me with his two hands.”
From what she said, her mother was hardly blameless. “A bitter woman.”
“They don't beat me,” I bragged, perhaps unwisely.
“You're lucky. Jews don't beat their children.”
“Why not?”
“I don't know.”
We sit and talk for hours; so many amazing things have happened in Halina's life, and I want to hear more and more.
I hardly talk with Mother now. She returns home tired and distracted, and after dinner she settles down to grading homework. It's strange that she has hardly told me about her parents. Lately, I've meant to ask her about them, but when I see how distracted she is, I don't feel like doing so.
Eventually, when I summon the courage and ask, she says, “That's a long story, not for now. I'm so tired, I can barely keep my eyes open.”
I'm angry with her, but I don't show it.
I sit and look at her. When I look at her, my love for her returns. I love her hair, her neck, and her way of leaning over the notebooks. I recall the long walks we took on our last vacation, the riverbanks, and the sandwiches we ate on the reed mat in the garden. I'm afraid that the closeness we shared will never be there again.
Mother lifts her head from the pile of notebooks. “You're not asleep yet, my love?”
“No.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“Close your eyes and count to a hundred. I still have another pile of notebooks.”
Before, Mother would have turned out the light and immediately gathered me in her arms, and I would have drifted into a deep sleep. But now she's preoccupied, and I find it hard to fall asleep. Thoughts devour my sleep. Even my dreams are not what they used to be. In dreams I see Halina, now as an angel and now as a demon; she tugs at my heart with magic powers and frightens me.
14
The days grew shorter and by four o'clock darkness fell outside our windows. We would spend most of the day sprawled on the floor, playing with dominos or wooden cubes, or rolling around under the beds. Halina knew how to be happy and how to entertain me. When the sun appeared from behind the clouds, we ran out to the candy store to buy a bar of chocolate. Every time Halina handed me the bar, I saw her father beating her with a thick belt, and I immediately offered her half. Halina refused my offer and said, “It's for you.”
“For you, too.” I extended the chocolate to her.
“Only one square.”
“Don't you like chocolate?”
“Not that much now.”
I asked her if I could cross the fence and enter the synagogue where the bearded Jews are.
“Why would you want to?” she asked, with a sour expression.
“I want to see how they pray.”
“They don't pray nicely.”
I climbed the fence easily and entered immediately. It was dark inside, and some bearded Jews sat around a long table. They seemed astonished to see me and looked me up and down. One of them came up to me and asked, “What's your name?”
I told him.
“And what's your Jewish name?”
“I don't know.”
He put a skullcap on my head and said, “Come, sit with us.”
They sat and sang with their eyes closed. Their singing was different from Mother's or Halina's. When they sang I felt that they were dredging up a viscous darkness from the bowels of the earth. And that is in fact what happened: the place was gradually filled with darkness, and the men on the benches cloaked themselves in it.
When they finished singing I wanted to return to Halina, but the man who had taken me to the table asked, “Where is your family from?”
I told him.
“And will you be staying here a long time?”
“Mother is a teacher at the school.”
“Sit with us; we're going to sing some more,” he said, and immediately started to sing.
These people did not look like us and were a little frightening, but for some reason I watched them closely and found myself drawn to them. At night they slipped into my dreams: an army of insects that devours everything in its path, even trees. Mother avoided them, Halina recoiled whenever we met one of them. To me, they sometimes seemed like one of the tribes that Mother told me about—the ones who sleep during the day and come awake at night, who love the moon and not the sun. The other tribes refer to them scornfully as “creatures of the night,” but they are proud of their beliefs and claim that the light of the moon is more beautiful than the light of the sun, that it opens the heart to tranquillity and peace.
I left, and Halina was waiting for me outside. Her face was filled with anxiety and displeasure. “Why did you stay so long?”
“I listened to the singing.”
“And what did they ask you?”
“They asked me my name.”
“What else?”
“That's all.”
“Don't go there anymore.”
“Why?”
> “They are not honest people.”
Then she added, “They steal.”
When Mother returned home I did not tell her that I had visited the bearded Jews.
I tell her very little these days, for I feel that her thoughts are elsewhere, and I repeatedly ask myself what she could be hiding from me. Sometimes it seems to me that she is drawing close to people whom she knew many years ago, but other times this impression recedes, and I see that her life is now free of Father's terror. Her gestures are more fluid, and she speaks freely, giving examples that make things understandable.
That evening I asked Mother, “Can I say that I'm a Jew?”
“To whom?”
“At the candy store.”
“They know.”
At night I dreamed that the bearded Jews tied me up me in the synagogue. I saw Halina and shouted for help, but she was clasped in her fiancé's embrace and didn't notice me. With all my might, I tried to free myself from my captors, but my arms were heavy, paralyzed. I awoke from sheer terror.
“What happened, my love?” Mother awoke, too.
“I was dreaming.”
“Just disregard it,” she said, as if it were unimportant, immediately falling back to sleep.
15
One evening a tall, blond man appeared at the door and Mother went to greet him. The man stared at me without saying a word. Mother's face filled with light and they began talking animatedly, as if they had known each other for a long time. I had never seen her speak to a strange man with such ease. They talked about school and about another man named Karol, a music teacher who was apparently rather stupid. I understood every word, and yet still the words seemed strange to me.
Only after they had spoken and laughed and made fun of Karol did Mother turn toward me and say, “This is André—he's the gym teacher at school.” She wanted to show me off and said, impulsively, “Paul is already learning fractions, and he'll start percentages soon.” André wrote an exercise for me, but I got muddled and it came out wrong, embarrassing both Mother and myself. Mother said, “He usually gets it right.”
All Whom I Have Loved Page 4