All Whom I Have Loved

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “I'll go to the synagogue,” I said, very frightened.

  “Every Sabbath, like your forefathers used to go. You promise?”

  “I'll try.”

  “That's not enough.”

  “I promise.”

  “Say ‘I promise and I will keep to it,’ ” he said, and a broad smile spread over his ruddy face.

  At this time of the year the landlord does not work in the fields, only in the cowshed and the chicken coop. But like me, he sits at the window for hours, gazing at the River Prut. On Sundays he puts on a suit and goes to church. He leaves quietly, circumspectly. But when he comes back from church in the afternoon, his face is red and he's singing hymns.

  Once I heard him talking to his neighbor, a peasant like himself, and this is what he said: “People have forgotten that there's a God in the world, and they think that everything's up for grabs. There is order and a purpose in the world. Whoever does not see this is blind or dumb—but how can I talk? Even my own sons have gone astray. If a man does not respect his father, he ends up not respecting our Father in heaven. His own father does not have it within his power to punish him, but God is wise and mighty, and He'll bring him to a reckoning.”

  32

  When Father returned home, I told him about the land-lord's visit. Father laughed and said, “Don't take any notice of him. In the winter he's drunk and talks only about God. But he's a good man.”

  “Is there a God in the sky?” I could not contain myself.

  “There is, apparently,” said Father, and chuckled, as if someone had discovered his weakness.

  Then he reconsidered and said, “Why did you ask?”

  I told him about Halina and how she rose to heaven. His forehead creased all at once, and he said, “The Ruthenians still have a simple faith, and we should learn from them.”

  It wasn't raining, so Father decided that in the evening we would go to the church refectory and celebrate, and so we did. I loved the city streets at night after the rain. Nights such as those become absorbed deep inside you, and you remember them for a long time. Once, on a night after it had rained, I went with Father to Herrengasse, where he met an old friend. They stood talking, and before they parted, the man said, “I don't know what to do; I feel lost.” The man and the words that had come out of his mouth seemed to me so inseparable, as if they were one, that now, whenever it stops raining and I'm in the street, I see that man and hear his voice.

  The refectory was full of heavy wooden tables and somewhat resembled a tavern, except that here people drank only lemonade. There were just a few drunks, and they didn't disturb anyone. Father got two pieces of corn pie at the counter, a jug of cream, and two glasses of lemonade. We immediately found seats by the window.

  The hall was completely filled, and it was hard to speak. If you looked up, you saw that the walls and the ceiling were covered with pictures of saints. A large metal light fixture hung from the ceiling. The place didn't look like a church, and yet it bore some resemblance. The corn pie was tasty, and Father hurried to fetch more. All the while, people came up to him, asking how he was. I noticed that here, too, everyone was slapping him on the shoulder and calling him by his first name. Father had had his hair cut a few days earlier, and he looked like a soldier just out of the army.

  After we finished the meal, the people buried their faces in their hands and started to sing. It was a restrained but powerful singing that seemed as if it would flow that way for hours, except suddenly the door at the back opened and a very thin, very elderly man came in and those singing fell silent.

  As the old man sat on a chair, all eyes were on him.

  “Dear brothers,” he began, “may the light of the Messiah be upon you and may your eyes see only the light and only the good. Do not quarrel among yourselves, for such dissention comes from darkness and from Satan. Beloved brothers, do not fight, for fighting removes us from His light and expels us into darkness.”

  The old man was dressed in peasant's clothing and spoke Ruthenian. A harsh light radiated from his long, gaunt face. I did not understand most of what he said, but I knew that he was talking about God and about the light and about people who are drawn to the darkness and refuse to see the light. He also spoke of Jews who deny the Messiah and have gone astray and lead others astray. There was great stillness, and the voice of the old man carried through the hall like a frightening threat. But apparently people were not afraid—they sat alertly, as if the old man was about to lead them into a world filled with goodness.

  When the old man had finished, two strong men went up to him, supported his forearms, and helped him to the doorway at the back. No one rose from his seat; it was as if everyone had stopped breathing. For a long time the silence hung in the air until a peasant stood up and called out, “There is none like our God and there is none like our Messiah!” and immediately the hall burst into mighty song.

  Once Halina had taken me to a church and shown me the altar. It was a small, wooden church with angels on its windows. The priest was wearing his ceremonial robes and reading from a big book, and the choir began to sing whenever he finished a section. I do not know whether this was a festival or a funeral, but in any case, then, too, the priest had called out, “There is none like our God and there is none like our Messiah!”

  We went outside and Father lit a cigarette. The night was dark and the gates of heaven, which only a moment ago had seemed open, suddenly closed.

  We crossed the street and waited at the tram station. There was no one there. I wanted to ask Father why the heavens were sealed off and for how long they would be sealed off, but his head was buried so deep in the collar of his coat that I didn't dare. The tram was not long in coming, and we sat in the front seat, as if we were about to set out on a long journey to a place where the heavens are always open and you can see God clearly, sitting on His throne.

  33

  The rain grew fiercer each day, and hail fell in the evening. Father would come back in the dark and immediately start to make dinner. The dampness that he brought with him from outside mingled with the scent of the wood burning in the stove. We mostly ate potatoes, cheese, and yogurt, but sometimes Father brought corn pie from the city and we dipped it in sour cream. When he was in a good mood, he would show me drawings his students made.

  “Very nice,” I said—an expression that Mother often uses.

  “Where did you get that shallow expression?” Father wondered.

  “Was I wrong?”

  “ ‘Very nice’ is not a nice expression,” Father said, and chuckled.

  My life at Storozynetz was forgotten, and Mother, too. When we walked around in the city, I sometimes thought I saw Halina. Once I pulled my hand away from Father and ran to a woman who looked like her. Her memory evoked sunlight for me, and I told myself that in summer she would return and we'd walk along the river. After our meal, Father sat and looked at a book, and I leafed through one of his many art volumes. The children's books that I'd brought with me from Storozynetz no longer interested me. I felt that the stories and pictures in them had died, and reading them wouldn't bring them back to life. Under a picture in one of Father's books I read the word “portrait,” and I asked Father what it meant. Father looked at me with a level gaze, and for the first time I saw two lines etched the length of his face. I sensed the hidden fury in them and I was scared.

  “Why are you scared?”

  “I'm not scared.” I tried to deny it.

  This time Father stood his ground. “You have to be strong and you mustn't be afraid. Fear is indecent. A man has to uproot it from his heart.” I marveled at these full sentences coming from him—he usually spoke in words and not in sentences.

  Sometimes Father raised his head from his book and asked me something. It was hard for me to explain to him what I felt or thought. Since Halina had left me, it was hard for me to talk. With Halina I would chatter, joke, and even invent words that would make her laugh. Now I found it hard to put a sentence together.r />
  Most of the daylight hours I was at home alone, and when the rain let up, I would go out and stand on the riverbank. The landlord came again and asked me about praying. It was hard for me to lie to him, and I said, “No.” A sad smile appeared on his lips, and he told me that years ago, Jews who believed lived in these parts. They would pray every day, to say nothing of Sabbaths and other festivals.

  “And where are they?”

  “They've scattered.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows?”

  “And there are no more Jews who believe?”

  “There are, but fewer and fewer.”

  Strange, it was easier for me to talk with this Ruthenian peasant than with Father. The landlord told me about the Jews in the countryside who used to till their land like the Ruthenians, keeping God's commandments, not working on the Sabbath, and giving to the needy. He seemed to miss them.

  “Is it good to be a Jew?” I asked for some reason.

  “It's a great privilege, my son. God spoke to the Jews at Mount Sinai and gave them the Torah. Since then the entire world knows that there is a God in heaven and that the world isn't up for grabs. You see?”

  “So why did they throw stones at me and call me a dirty Jew?”

  “They're afraid of you.”

  “Why are they afraid of me?”

  “Because you're the son of a king.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  It was hard for me to really comprehend his words, and I asked, “Why am I the son of a king?”

  “Because God spoke to your forefathers and adopted you as his son.”

  “I'm only nine years old.”

  “You're a little prince, and when you get bigger, you'll be a prince.” Then he added in a sad tone, “The Jews no longer know who they are. Once they knew, but now they've forgotten and we have to remind them. Do you understand me?”

  “A little.”

  “They've forgotten that they're the sons of kings.”

  I asked Father about what the landlord said. Father was brief as usual and said, “He's a man who believes.”

  “And we don't believe?”

  “Not to that extent.”

  Mother explained; Father never explained. He hated explanations. Once, when were sitting in a tavern, I asked him why he didn't explain, to which he responded, “If you understand, you understand; explanations are useless.”

  34

  One morning the door opened and there stood Mother. She had cut her hair and was wearing a long, heavy coat. I almost didn't recognize her. “It's me, my dear,” she said, and I went over to her. She tried to pick me up, but her heavy sleeves got in the way, and for a moment she stayed bent over my neck, embarrassed by her failure. But then she immediately took my face in her hands and kissed it.

  “How are you?” she asked, taking off her coat. A little of the strangeness left her, and I saw then how her face had filled out and her hair had faded.

  “You're alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where's Father?”

  “At work.”

  “Strange,” she said, as if only now had she grasped that she was there.

  “Why strange?”

  “I don't know.”

  She stood there, looking around the room. It was a mess, and she didn't like the soot. She put her hand to her forehead, a gesture that I remembered well, a gesture of dissatisfaction and sometimes despair.

  “Come, I'll show you the Prut.” I tried to extricate her from her confusion.

  “But it's raining.”

  “We'll put our coats on.”

  Reluctantly, she put on her coat and we went out.

  The Prut was now a dark brown; it cast its heavy waves against the bank. This was my mother, and yet she was so different. The heavy coat made her look shorter, and her long arms seemed truncated. We stood and watched for a short time. There was no beauty in the sight. The wet wind lashed at our faces. “Let's go inside, otherwise we'll be soaked to the bone,” she said. She was wearing rural galoshes that made her legs look thicker.

  We sat at the table, and Mother took out the gifts she had brought in her bag: a particularly large set of dominos, a pack of cards, and, best of all, Suchard chocolate.

  “How do you spend all your time, my dear?”

  “I read.”

  “What do you read?”

  “Father's books.” I tried to impress her.

  “They're very hard books,” she said, as if she had caught me attempting something that was beyond me. To tell the truth, I didn't like her inflection.

  “You've changed.” The words just slipped from my mouth.

  “In what way?”

  “I don't know.”

  Mother took some sandwiches out of her bag and then immediately removed them from the wax paper in which they had been wrapped. I remembered Mother's sandwiches. That's how she used to prepare them in our home in Czernowitz, and after that in Storozynetz. There was something of her grace in them. I immediately bit into one.

  “I've come to fetch you,” she said.

  “To where?”

  “To Storozynetz.”

  “No,” I wanted to say but stopped myself.

  Mother must have sensed my refusal, for she said, “I've found a nice girl, like Halina.”

  “And Halina isn't coming?” I interrupted her.

  “What are you talking about, my dear?”

  “I'm sorry.”

  She said nothing about André or the wedding. There was no need to say anything; the expression on her face said it—that she was now married to André, preparing meals for him, washing his shirts, and laughing with him. But her face was not happy. It was somewhat frozen, and the more I stared at it, the more frozen it seemed, as if the tiny veins of happiness had been drained from it. She was the mother that I had once loved, and yet not. We sat without talking.

  “We'll pack your clothes and go back home,” she said in a whisper.

  “I don't want to go,” I replied in a clear voice.

  My words must have astonished her; she put her right hand to her mouth and her eyes lost their luster.

  “I love the river.” I tried to soften it.

  “And you don't want to come with me?”

  “Not now.”

  “I understand,” she said, and her eyes moved slightly.

  Then she put on her coat and closed her bag. She didn't try to convince me, not even by so much as a word. I knew that I was being cruel to her, but I also knew what I wanted, and nothing in me stirred toward her.

  “I won't force you,” she said as she buttoned her coat. She must have expected me to waver, but I didn't.

  The falling rain struck the door and the windows, darkening the room. “It's raining,” I said, trying to keep her from going.

  “Never mind,” she said, lifting her collar. She kissed my forehead and went out.

  I stood in the doorway and watched her grow distant. She made her way heavily, as if leaving a place she found distasteful.

  “Mother!” I called, but my voice couldn't have reached her. I kept calling, my voice choking. I put on my coat and ran after her, but the rain and the mud dragged me down and I turned back. I sat at the window and waited for her to return. It was clear that she wouldn't, but with my thoughts I still tried to will her back to me.

  35

  Throughout the long hours of the afternoon I sat at the window, waiting for Mother to return. When it got dark, I heard footsteps approaching; it was Father. Father came back in good spirits. He had had a few drinks on the way home, and the moment he walked in, he announced, “Dinner should be lavish.” I was happy, too, and forgot to tell him about Mother's visit. I told him later.

  “And what did she want?” he asked lightly.

  “To take me back with her.”

  “I understand. And what did you say?”

  “I refused.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Nothing.”
/>   Father did not scold me, and he did not praise my behavior. We sat up till late, he on the bed and I on the floor. Father read intently and I watched, observing how his eyes raced from line to line. When he read, he looked like a man who is searching. Sometimes he seemed to be searching for something he lost many years ago. I noticed that when he finished reading, he made a gesture of dismissal with his right hand, as if to say, “It's all nonsense.”

  That night he revealed to me that Mother had married and was living in André's house. It was hard to know if he was angry. Whenever he spoke about Mother, he was careful, and it was clear he did not reveal all his thoughts to me.

  “Has she become Christian?” I asked for some reason.

  “Supposedly,” he said.

  “But we are Jews, aren't we?”

  “True.”

  Then I remembered what our landlord had said, and my heart was sore. I tried to remember it in detail, but I couldn't. Later, I recalled a bit and asked, “Is it true that Jews are the sons of kings?”

  “Who told you that?” Father laughed quietly.

  “The landlord.”

  “He lives in a world of his own.”

  “Jews are like everyone else?”

  “A little less,” Father said, and chuckled again.

  I was indignant that Mother had converted. “Why did she convert?” I asked.

  “Because she married André.”

  Later, I could see her before me: her cropped hair, her legs in their heavy galoshes, and the difficulty she had in walking. The expression on her face was that of a person whose thoughts had been uprooted, with other thoughts implanted in their place. We talked no more that night. Father read and I leafed through his art books. I didn't understand most of the things that I read in Father's books, but I still liked to go through them. Sometimes I wanted to ask him the meaning of a word, but I didn't. Once, he blamed me for interrupting his reading.

  One morning when I was looking through his books I saw Father's name and I gasped. I read it again: Arthur Rosenfeld. On the facing page there was a photo of him when he was young. Father, it turned out, was born in Czernowitz in 1905. His parents died when he was five years old, and he grew up in an orphanage. It was at the orphanage that his talent was recognized, and he was sent to study at the Academy for Fine Arts. When he was fifteen, there was an exhibition of his work at the celebrated Leonardo da Vinci Gallery; the exhibition traveled to Vienna and then on to Salzburg. Two years later, he exhibited at the Cézanne Gallery, then back in Czernowitz, and then on to Vienna and other major cities. “A remarkable artist whose marvels we'll likely see more of in the future,” ran a line from that paragraph. I read it again and again, unable to believe my eyes.