The Retreat

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “Are you too a member of our race?” Isadora turned to Lotte, addressing her in the tone of an older woman condescending to a younger one.

  “I am.”

  “You are in store for some surprises here.”

  “I’m ready,” said Lotte, and opened both her arms.

  “Miss Schloss is an actress by profession,” said Herbert.

  “What is an actress doing in this graveyard?” said Isadora, without blinking an eye.

  “I,” said Lotte, “have learned to have no regrets.”

  “So, we still have something to learn,” said Isadora to Herbert, not without a trace of irony.

  FIVE

  In the afternoon Lotte went out for a walk. Some compelling desire drew her outside. It was full daylight and a deep calm lay over the dense forests. I must go out, she said to herself, as she used to say in days gone by, when the company was touring the remote mountain villages. It was different now. Just how different, she was yet to learn. In any case, the burden dropped from her shoulders and she felt relief, as after an exhausting journey.

  For some reason she remembered the resorts she used to visit with her parents during the summer holidays. They stayed in seedy pensions where the food was gray and elderly Jews in black skullcaps haunted the corridors like ghosts. Her father would have preferred to stay at home with his beloved books, but as soon as summer arrived her mother, tormented by hidden desires, would begin to fill the house with an evil spirit, a restless wanderlust. She must get out, get out at any cost. There was no money; they had to take her gold necklace to the pawnshop. This shameful expedition did not pass off without recriminations, complaints and abuse. In the end they set out, in the hope that this time the pension would be respectable, clean, that coffee would be served in the afternoon, the band would play waltzes and the guests would speak proper German. Disappointment soon followed. Resigned to their fate, they took two narrow rooms in one of the cramped pensions where a few textile merchants, smugglers and moneychangers lurked in the passage. After one day’s stay the fraud was exposed in all its nakedness: the food was inedible, the mattresses filthy and in the afternoon children ran up and down the corridors as if the place were an orphanage. Her mother, beside herself with rage, would pounce on the janitor and upbraid him. And in the end, after an exchange of threats, they would leave. It was the same every summer, ever since the distant days of her early childhood. Her father was a quiet, withdrawn man, who never said, I told you so. But her mother, afraid of hearing just these words, would get in first and attack him viciously. His books. All their money had been wasted on books.

  Her mother had invested all her love in her. Her father’s presence was not felt in the house. From year to year he secluded himself more and more in his room, a narrow room filled with books. He worked long hours as a clerk in a department store, and when he came home at night he would bury himself in his narrow room, emerging only to make himself a cup of tea. Lotte could not remember even one look of his, but many years later, in some remote inn, she met a woman, a Jewess as it transpired, who had known her father well in Transylvania, in the town of his birth where he had been regarded as a genius in his youth, and where at the age of sixteen he had published a booklet which had made a great stir. This simple woman spoke about her father as if he were a saint, cut off from his origins due to some terrible mistake.

  After the performance was over they sat together all night long. The woman had talked and she had listened. There was a strange serenity in her voice. Lotte said to herself: One day I’ll go to my father’s birthplace, to Marmoresh. But it was only a passing thought. The tours devoured her time. Her mother, who lived to a ripe old age, never mentioned her father except when speaking of the rundown house, the shabby furniture and the constant hardships of her life. But her love for her daughter was boundless. She was sure that it was only because she had not given her enough clothes, enough money, that she had not reached the top. All her daughter’s eccentricities, and they were many, she interpreted in a favorable light. Strangely enough, Lotte did not feel much love for her in return. When she fell on hard times she would go home to her, not to talk but to eat a home-cooked meal. When she graduated from high school and entered the acting academy her mother’s joy knew no bounds. She bought a new dress and went out to buy furniture for the house. She had no money, of course, but her pride, after all the years of humiliation, took a new lease on life. The neighbors, of course, saw things differently: delusions of grandeur had made her lose her wits. The thought that her only daughter had been accepted by the acting academy, and even been awarded a partial grant, nourished her dreams for many years to come. And once, when the grocer refused to give her bread on credit, she did not curb her tongue and said, “You will not be invited to the opening night.”

  It did not take long for Lotte to get into trouble. One of the directors, a man without morals, seduced her and she allowed herself to be seduced. She imagined in her innocence that her lover would stand by his promises and marry her, but the moment he heard that she was pregnant he scowled and shouted, “Damn it all!” Lotte wept. In the end, in order to console her, he said, “Believe me, it’s nothing. All the girls have been to the gynecologist. He’s a Jew, he’ll do anything for money.”

  The next morning she was already sitting in the waiting room. The doctor, a short man with a horribly Jewish face, examined her and said, “Girls your age should be careful. We’ll do what has to be done.” This sentence, steeped in a smell of drugs and disinfectant, she would never forget. In an instant her youth lay trampled sordidly underfoot. She went on studying diligently and resolutely. She did not visit her mother often. Her mother went short in order to send her part of her pension every month. These banknotes too, which reached her every month by registered post, wrapped up in newspaper, she would never forget.

  At about this time the first, bitter lines began to appear on her face, and soon her neck too was ringed with lines. When she first discovered these lines, a girl of twenty-one years old, she sank into despair. The next day she made up her mind: Come what may, I shall never betray my mother’s dreams.

  That winter her mother died. One of the neighbors sent her a telegram. When she arrived the next day the house was already standing empty. The funeral, it transpired, had taken place the evening before. At the offices of the Jewish congregation nobody knew the reason for this indecent haste. One of the clerks, a coarse-natured fellow, said casually, “We didn’t know if you were coming.” Lotte, who had intended making a scene, froze in her place.

  The following days were shockingly practical. She paid the death duties, the municipal taxes and the grocery bills. The house with all it contained she sold to a Jewish dealer. Of all that cold commotion she remembered only the red face of the dealer. He paid in cash.

  She graduated from the academy with distinction and immediately began work in a cabaret. She had a pleasant voice, clear pronunciation and no mean dramatic talent. Not long afterward she found work in the theater.

  She married Manfred at the age of twenty-three. He was a man with no distinguishing features, bald and bespectacled. He looked like a grocer or a doorman. Of one thing she was sure: he would not come between her and her career. And in fact, no sooner were they married than her ambition rose to new heights. She worked on every small part with grim determination. Manfred did not stand in her way. He cooked dinner himself. Sometimes she was away from home for weeks on end. On her return he would ask no more than was absolutely necessary. His kindness, to tell the truth, maddened her. He was a gentle man by nature.

  Julia was born and brought her no joy. Manfred asked for leave and looked after the baby. Lotte took off on a tour with the company. When his leave was over Manfred hired an old woman to take care of the child. Lotte came back from her travels exhausted. Manfred asked few questions, spent hours practicing in the basement.

  And thus the days passed. Each of them went about his or her own affairs. Sometimes Manfred too went on tour wi
th the orchestra. His trips were for the most part short and he always came back on time. Later on, when she felt that her career was in danger of failing, she yelled at Manfred, but Manfred never yelled back.

  The separation brought her sudden relief. When she heard that Manfred had gone east, to the town of his birth, she felt no anger. The thought that Julia would now be exclusively hers made her very happy.

  When she discovered her own style on the stage, it was already too late. She was nearly forty, one of many actresses playing minor roles. In vain she tried to put up a fight. One after the other younger performers came to the forefront and she was pushed aside.

  In the spring of 1937 it was already clear that her days in the theater were coming to an end. She was the only Jewess in the company. Nevertheless, they spoke of the Jews who were taking over the theater and not giving the younger generation a chance. She fought, wrote letters and called on old friends for help. One after the other the doors were closed in her face. The letter of dismissal came in the post. The reason given was a breach of solidarity. It was as if her thirty years in the theater had never existed.

  For two days she shut herself up in her room, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Immediately afterward, defeated and exhausted, she got on a train and went to her daughter.

  George did not like her. As a middle-class Austrian he disliked independent women. He was a man of limited education and the sophisticated city words his mother-in-law bandied about the house embarrassed him. At first he said little and examined her suspiciously. Later on, he said that the theater corrupted the youth. What was the theater, when all was said and done, but a lot of half-naked women and the kind of language decent people would never use. He was not a religious man, but on Sundays he went to church. When his sons grew up he took them with him so that they would learn how to behave themselves. The boys resembled their father, healthy and dull. In the evening, when he came home from work, he cast fear into the hearts of his family. And on Saturday night, like every respectable Austrian, he came home drunk.

  She was looking for a refuge and she found a hell. What wasn’t said and what wasn’t shouted! She soon realized that not only her friends but even her family, her last resort, all of them, her only daughter too, had turned their backs on her. In the end, with no other choice, she announced in the voice of a person announcing his own suicide: If nobody wants me any more—I’ll go to the Jews.

  SIX

  She walked down the hill, and the pictures pursued her like jumbled scenes from a movie. Each picture with its own fiasco, but above all, the dark offices in which she had stood and asked for help. Nobody wanted to help her, not even her so-called friends. Since nobody came forward to help her, she and Julia hurried up and down the streets. The spring sunlight poured down from the sky and the trees on the pavements were in full blossom. All that simple and familiar loveliness only cast her deeper into despair.

  She did not hurry now. She passed from path to path, pausing from time to time to lean against a tree. In the light of the sinking day there was a kind of melancholy sweetness whose like she had not experienced for many years. She was not afraid. Her steps grew shorter, more careful. As if she wanted to draw the hour out and make it last.

  And as she stood leaning against the trunk of a tree, she noticed a little sign made of wood. She approached and read: “On this spot our friend, our sister in spirit, Sophia Traube, took her own life. 15.6.1937.” Lotte, who had been about to bend down, recoiled. She looked again: a board nailed to a narrow strip of wood planted in the ground. The writing was neat, but plain. It was evident that the hand that had written these words had done so with great care. “There must be some mistake,” she said out loud, as if to dispel some frightening shadow.

  Then she stood up straight and threw back her hair. This gesture, which she had affected since her high school days, always revived her and brought to mind a phrase or an idea. But now it seemed to turn her temples to ice. Fear sent cold shivers down her spine.

  She began to climb back up the hill. She strayed from the path and grasped at branches growing low on the trees. The gently fading daylight suddenly turned gray. She began to hurry, and the more she hurried the farther she strayed.

  When she reached the building at last the sky was already dark. Next to the hatch people were standing in a queue, their tin bowls in their hands. They stood still, without exchanging a word. And through the glass of the dividing door they looked sunk in contemplation. When she recognized Herbert, she was emboldened to open the door.

  “Where is the ritual bowl,” said Herbert without formality.

  “Upstairs. I’ll run and get it.” She recovered her voice, and it sounded surprisingly young.

  “Time will soon be up. Another ten minutes.”

  Her calf muscles were cramped from running up the hill, but she made the effort, not without a vigorous grace, as if she were running too close an open door in winter, so that the cold wind would not burst into the house.

  In less than a minute she was standing in the queue, the tin bowl and cutlery in her right hand, the mug in her left. “I’m ready,” she said. Herbert straightened his shoulders like a soldier in the reserves, whose temporary service in the army showed that the marrow had not yet dried up in his bones.

  The cook took the two bowls and placed in each a potato in its skin, a piece of fish, and a slice of beetroot. Herbert took the two bowls and when they reached the table he gave one of them to Lotte. “Something new today,” he announced. “The color red has made its appearance among us again.” Next to them people ate silently. Every now and then a complaint made itself heard from the sidelines. Herbert looked satisfied. The dense color of the beetroot brought a jovial twinkle to his eye.

  There were a number of latecomers, of course. They stood next to the hatch, despairing or bitterly amused, among them two men dressed with simple elegance. They looked like a couple of department heads whose instructions had not been carried out. Only the tin bowls bore witness to a different status. One of them approached the hatch and tapped on it with the cry: “Two minutes late. Will even they be counted against us?” His cry was not answered. Afterward they sat down beside their empty bowls.

  Lotte asked, “Did you know Sophia Traube?”

  “What a question.” Herbert raised his eyes. “I sat next to her as I’m sitting next to you now. Who could have guessed.” His modest happiness clouded. “A poetic soul, without any exaggeration. We tried, how shall I put it, to draw her in, but Sophia was devoured by her own longings. She could not reconcile herself.”

  “And did no one come to visit her?”

  “No, unfortunately not.”

  Lotte regretted having darkened Herbert’s modest joy. Although he went on eating, his face remained despondent.

  “Forgive me,” said Lotte.

  The meal was coming to an end. A few people stood by the long sink and washed their dishes. The sight reminded Lotte of the yard of an army camp, but she immediately realized her mistake. These people were no longer young, well-dressed, their movements too were restrained and subdued, and showed consideration for each other’s privacy. “There’s no hot water,” said one of them. There was no tone of exaggeration to his complaint. He stood to one side and dried his bowl and cutlery with a white cloth.

  Isadora sat in the armchair. She had taken no part in the hurried meal. Herbert approached her, bowed, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Fried fish is not enough to get me out of my chair.”

  “Beetroot,” said Herbert.

  “Beetroot reminds me of the cook’s face.”

  “Do not, I beg you,” said Herbert pompously, “desecrate that wine-red, Dionysian color.”

  Isadora laughed.

  The meal came noiselessly to its end. And for a moment the place seemed like a country hostel, where no one paid much attention to etiquette.

  “What I miss most is a good cigar,” someone whispered in Herbert’s ear, as if confessin
g a weakness.

  “Haven’t they sent you any?”

  “Unfortunately not,” said the man, and turned away.

  And as the darkness gathered at the windows they began to prepare for the nightly games. Some of them brought the chessmen and placed them on the boards. It was evident that they had been waiting for this moment for many hours.

  “How do you find our little retreat?” a man approached her and asked.

  “Charming,” said Lotte absent mindedly.

  SEVEN

  And one by one the days passed by. Lotte rose early in the morning and went out immediately to walk around the mountain. The last days of summer were fine, mild and flawless. The evenings were fresh and cool. Little by little the sights dropped away, not all at once and not entirely, but they no longer disturbed her as they had done at first. I’m on holiday, she would say when a sudden memory pounced on her. But her nights were troubled. At night the old terrors ruled her without restraint. She would wake in the middle of a nightmare and not be able to fall asleep again till dawn.

  And thus the month of September passed. In the month of October her heart told her that Julia would come to visit her. For several days she kept close to the building and waited for her at the door, but when she did not come she stopped expecting her. But Isadora was not forgotten. She received a big parcel full of goodies: boxes of chocolates, coffee, cigarettes, English tea and dates. They were all happy, but not Isadora. She spread these luxuries out in front of everyone and announced: “Take whatever you wish.” And thus she gave expression to her disgust with the charity sent her by her daughters.

  It was a long time since the inmates of the retreat had set eyes on such luxuries. They were happy and made jokes. Once more they began to talk about the plain. About the bustling cities, the cafés and restaurants. Isadora did not react, save for a couple of cutting remarks.