The Retreat

by Aharon Appelfeld

  Order, needless to say, was not maintained. The search party descended the hill, holding onto each other and shouting at the tops of their voices: “Lang, Lang, where are you? Give us a sign of life.” And a certain satisfaction was felt. Some of them were reminded of scouting camps in the winter season, and some of the First World War. Then too people had gone out on search parties and lost their way.

  After an hour of wandering about, talking and stumbling, Betty calmed down and caught up with the others. The snow fell thickly and covered the ground with a white blanket. The village houses stood wrapped in darkness. Balaban strode ahead without urging them on, and Rauch in his smart winter coat spoke, no longer with pathos but with absolute clarity, of the great obligation to go out into the snow and search for the lost and the brave. Questions of death and honor had engaged his mind in recent months. Of Lang he said that he had prepared himself for this hour. Life was precious, but not at any price.

  Lotte now understood that she still had a long way to go in the art of public reading. Reading was like music, you had to make every note ring true, get the rhythm and the melody right. Perhaps she would have to begin again from the beginning. And then there were the veterans, the loyal fighters against weak bodies, broken accents, ugly Jewish gestures. These, for some reason, now celebrated the search with a few words not lacking in significance. A man is not an insect. The time for action has come at last.

  And thus they advanced. Lang’s disappearance seemed to have been forgotten. Their feet carried them forward, their sense of duty seemed to have found its proper course at last. And they were all pleased with themselves. Even Betty Shlang was pleased with herself for having succeeded in climbing down the mountain without slipping. She spoke at length about the queer legs which she had inherited from her parents. Her words sounded silly in the extreme, but since she walked without complaining nobody told her to keep quiet.

  At midnight they found Lang near the tavern, drunk as a lord. The local brew, it appeared, had proved too strong for him. He sat on the ground with his legs crossed and delivered a long and confused monologue about himself, his past and the future of the Jewish people. Balaban was in a good mood and called him “My friend.” “My friend, why sit on the ground,” he said.

  “It’s not cold. The snow is my comrade and my bosom friend,” said Lang poetically.

  “True, very true,” said Balaban, speaking slowly in a mild, calm voice. “But, nevertheless, don’t you want to come home?”

  “I am at home. Nature is my home. There’s no home to beat it. So peaceful.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to have a cup of coffee with us?”

  “I have no need of such things any more,” said Lang, pulling up the sleeve of his peasant shirt and exposing his arm, a thin, delicate arm. He rubbed it with snow and displayed it to them. “This arm no longer knows the meaning of fear.”

  The dialogue went on for a long time. And Lang was not satisfied until he had taken off his shirt and announced: “This snow no longer has any effect on me at all. Jewish fear is behind me.”

  Balaban did not scold or shout. He spoke to him quietly and cunningly, as if he were a disobedient animal, coaxing him to put on his shirt and rise to his feet. Strong men, he said, always stand on their own two feet. And wonder of wonders, it worked. Lang stood up and said, “If it’s a question of walking, I know how to walk.” And he walked. And as he walked he spoke again of the Jewish fears which were the source of all their defects and weaknesses. They had to be pulled up by the roots. Balaban was pleased with these remarks and asked him questions.

  In the early hours of the morning the weary convoy returned. Lang dropped to the floor and fell asleep. The snow was still falling, covering the windows with a thick layer of white. They were all pleased with themselves. They drank coffee and made jokes. Balaban sat down, an expression of great satisfaction on his broad face. He spoke about his early days in the famous Krautkraft stables. It was there, to tell the truth, that he had learned his trade. And although he used the language of stable boys and grooms there was no coarseness in his voice. It was as if he were seeing them from a great distance.

  Lang lay curled up on the floor, his face dirty and confused. It was hard to tell if he was still drunk. His mouth was open and he breathed rhythmically. No one approached him. But for Mrs. Kron, who hurried off to fetch a blanket to cover him, his presence on the floor would have been forgotten.

  SEVENTEEN

  But not every day brought grace and salvation. The financial situation of the retreat went from bad to worse, a state of affairs which could no longer be hidden. Herbert went to the provincial capital once a week to sell Isadora’s jewelry. And when he returned the expression on his face was not encouraging. He looked bowed and downcast. The price of coal had gone up. Potatoes too were not cheap. Balaban no longer spoke of important, spiritual matters but of his rapidly dwindling resources. If only they had worked in the garden in summer there would now be potatoes and cabbages in the cellar. There would be something to cook. It was true, not everyone had worked, but some had. They had tried their best, but the sowing had not been a success. Robert thought that the birds were to blame, the wicked birds had ruined the crop. At the time Balaban had been well content, even developed a special vocabulary to express his satisfaction. But all this, of course, was forgotten in the new circumstances and the cold winter.

  And while winter raged at the door, the old standard-bearers came to life again, as if rising up from the dead. We didn’t come here to eat and sleep and play cards and listen to the empty-headed chatter of Betty Schlang. We came here to uproot an old disease, corrupt characters, sick legs, to purify our souls. This was the voice of one of the old lecturers whom Balaban had brought to the mountain to lecture on Jewish abnormality. In recent months he had gone into a deep decline and secluded himself in his room. Now the old drive to preach and chastise reasserted itself.

  He looked like a high school teacher, thin and sour-faced because of his old disease, the cursed ulcer which had troubled him since his youth. His voice had a special quality, stirring a man’s soul until he knew that he was indeed weak, full of defects, lacking in will power and depressed to the point of despair. What was to be done about this melancholy, the enemy of humanity, which the Jews had fostered more than anyone else.

  Ralph Glanz was a past master of this mood, intimate with all its secrets. There were times, not so far in the past, when he had held them all spell-bound. The magic had dimmed, but not vanished. Especially when he spoke of the melancholy deeply embedded in the soul of our tribe. For the most part, he spoke of this subject in a whisper, with a kind of reverence for the subtle and unpredictable human sensation in question. A sad tribe which bequeathed its sadness to its children. But when he was in a bad mood he spoke of the same sensation in harsh, insulting words.

  From his boyhood he had been afflicted by melancholy moods. And it was this melancholy which had ruined his life and spoiled his chances of advancement, a career, stability and a permanent post. The two articles he had published had been well received in the right quarters, but he had not persevered, he had let things slide, failed to follow up the necessary connections, left letters unanswered. All this and more had closed the doors of reputable academic institutions to him.

  For over two years now he had been living on the mountain, subsidized by Herbert’s grants. The trouble was that here too he did not write. He read, and he had a card file, but he had not been able to write. Herbert did not badger him. Far from it. Articles worthy of the name did not write themselves, there was plenty of time, the fund for art and research was a standing fund. The board chose the recipients of its grants with the greatest of care. But what was the use of all these consolations: he was not satisfied with himself.

  Lotte’s modest joy too was spoiled. A week before Engel had received a long, detailed letter from her ex-husband, Manfred. He was living in a little town called Shimitz, teaching singing in the local school. He had a numb
er of private pupils, had organized a small band, and traveled to Warsaw once a week to buy books and sheet music. It was a small, traditional Jewish town. On Saturdays he too took part in the prayers. The place was remote, but the scenery was stunning, the people pleasant and hospitable. His income was small but he had security and enough to live on.

  Lotte read the letter with astonishment. The voice was Manfred’s voice, and in writing it seemed somehow even milder. Her life, which in the past few months had come to rest in this place, grew clamorous again. What am I doing here? Nobody wants me. As always, this time too she felt nothing but self-pity.

  Sometimes she sat and spoke to Robert. “We were born flawed, we have to stay here. But you, a man of the land—what are you doing here?” she teased him.

  “It’s comfortable here.”

  “What comfort do you find here?”

  “Sitting and talking.”

  “And in the village don’t people talk?”

  “Not at length.”

  “And don’t you miss the fields?”

  “I’ve been working for Jews for years.”

  “I never knew that. And how do you like them?”

  “I’ve grown accustomed to them.”

  He was telling the truth. In his youth he had worked in a Jewish department store, then he had run away and tried country life again. But not long afterward he had returned to the city. He was strong and handsome, many women fell into his net. He had always worked, with occasional interruptions, for Jews. In their shops and their gardens. He did not like them, but he had grown used to their ways. They were easier to satisfy than the farmers and estate owners, it was easier to talk to them. They had good-looking women, and the women were generous with their favors. What more could a man ask for? A man should be content with his lot. There was truth in his quiet voice. As if he wasn’t talking about his own fate, but about a law of nature. Now he was sixty-five years old, an age when a person should rest and not trouble his mind with strange ideas. If there was anything he missed, it was the mountains of his native village. But the village was far away and it was better not to think of it.

  “And you have no complaints.”

  “No.” As he said this he seemed to recover his peasant’s face, and to Lotte he looked strong and ageless.

  EIGHTEEN

  But in the meantime Balaban fell ill. At first it seemed no more than a trifling cold, but when his fever did not drop Herbert decided to call the village doctor. The doctor, a converted Jew, refused to come at first, but in the end he came.

  Balaban’s illness was as strong as his body. With one blow it destroyed the language he had acquired at school, German, and gave him back his mother tongue. Now he spoke this tongue for hours on end. He recalled his parents and his brothers and sisters, calling them by many names, some of them incomprehensible. He blamed himself and accepted his punishment and fate.

  Herbert sat by his bedside for hours and tried to calm him. “Your parents have forgiven you, believe me. They know that you never denied them in your heart. You always loved them. You’ll still go back to them one day. That’s the reason you came here in the first place, to help them.” But Balaban refused to be consoled. He had not sent them money. What were they doing in this freezing cold?

  “You did great things for the sake of the many,” Herbert rebuked him.

  “But I didn’t take care of my sisters.”

  There were days too when he succumbed to foul, black moods, burned with fever and shouted to high heaven: all his property, the labor of years, had gone to the dogs. Strange, it was precisely these black moods which roused the inmates from their apathy. They exercised, ran, cleaned up and worked on their accents. Betty sat by the mirror for hours improving her accent. For years she had been trying to improve her accent; her accent was to blame for the fact that she had not been accepted in the drama classes at the night school. Now she had the chance to improve. There were people here who knew what it meant to speak with a proper accent. The abandoned gym too came back to life. Even Lauffer, that shirker, exercised. Balaban’s illness inspired people with a new spirit, they wanted to conciliate him. But Balaban was not satisfied: too late, he complained. There was a nasty sound to this combination of words, which he repeated whenever Herbert came to tell him that the inmates were exercising, cleaning the yard and improving their accents.

  Late at night they read excerpts from Sophia’s diary. During her short stay among them she had managed to fill a number of notebooks. She was forty-three years old when she died. She arrived on the mountain almost by accident. Herbert met her down below, in a café, and when he found out that she wrote poetry he invited her to join the retreat and offered her a grant. And Sophia, who was then at a crossroads in her life, saw this offer as a temporary solution and accepted.

  Her life in the retreat was modest and secluded. She fought her battles in the privacy of her room, with her notebooks. She had a big coat in which she liked wrapping herself in the summer too. And it was thus that she would remain in their memories, wrapped up in her coat. It appeared that she had written very little about herself. She had observed the inmates closely in her search for vertical and horizontal lines, concave and convex shapes, everything that constituted form. Of Herbert she wrote: he reminds me of marble pillars veined with green. Polished, but still bearing within themselves the smell of the hills from which they had been quarried. Of the dead Isadora she had written: she courts death with broad, sweeping glances. As if to trap his fleeting steps. A noble beast of prey. Her opinion of Balaban was different: evil spirits were attacking him on every side. He tried to ignore them. But they were legion, malign, and they would overcome this lofty tree in the end.

  In other passages she seemed to lose her steady, resolute vision. She spoke of her own weaknesses, of the fact that she had no roots in the soil, not this soil anyway, her writing lacked the sap of life. Sensitivity, even hypersensitivity, was not enough on which to found a life. The wood, the fibers, were the marrow. Without them all was fog and mist. And there was a special section too devoted to grace and honor. To the Jewish religion which was collective and tribal, and necessarily a religion of the herd. It trampled the honor of the individual underfoot. Christianity, in spite of everything, cherished the individual and believed in his salvation. It was clear that she had waged her battle with grim determination. And in her own words, the demons had won because they were stronger than human flesh and blood.

  Balaban’s illness dragged on. He refused to go to hospital. Every afternoon Herbert took him into the lobby. His face had changed beyond recognition, his cheeks were covered with stubble. He looked like a simple Jewish laborer. The language he had acquired so laboriously had been lost. He mumbled in a tongue which nobody understood. It was this metamorphosis, more than anything, which cast a gloom over the hall.

  Herbert gradually lost even the modest egoism he had brought with him to the retreat. He no longer brooded about the journalistic hack work which had destroyed him, the dead wife he had loved, the daughters who had denied him. He had no time for himself, he was busy working. Ever since Balaban’s illness he had been managing the retreat and, to a certain extent, Balaban’s collapsing business affairs too. Thieves, among them Jewish merchants, were devouring everything he possessed. Herbert tried to save what he could. Once a week he went down to the village, and sometimes twice, and when he returned he was pale with anger. But he recovered himself immediately, smiled good-naturedly, apologized for the poor food, the heating which did not work. He too had changed. His face was haggard and his fine gray curls had turned quite white. But his bearing still maintained a certain mute dignity.

  Balaban’s grumbling was hard to bear. When Herbert brought him out people scattered in all directions. Strange, it was this fear which brought the smell of the old days back to the retreat. If anyone was content, it was the cook. Her hard, austere face seemed to have found a temporary relief. The meager meals were served on time.

  Balaban had
brought Trude from Vienna. As a student she had been attracted to Christianity but her father, a simple Jew with opinions of his own, had asked her on his deathbed not to abandon the religion of her fathers, and she had promised him. She was true to her promise, but it wasn’t easy. At first she went to work in a factory. At the end of the year she was elected to the workers’ committee, and she waged a determined struggle with the owners to improve conditions. This struggle earned her much respect, but as soon as her fellow workers discovered that she was a Jewess they dismissed her from the committee without a moment’s hesitation. Not long afterward she was fired from her job. In the factory she had learned to get up early in the morning, persevere, and overcome the pain in her back. She never had a bad word to say about her life as a factory worker.

  After that she went to work as an unregistered nurse at a hospital, in the sanitary department of the municipality. People who had known her father wanted to help her but she refused. She met Balaban in Vienna and was impressed by his personality. From her girlhood she had disliked the Jews. She thought that they were selfish and dishonest. She had not hidden these opinions from her father and she did not hide them from Balaban. Balaban thought she would be suitable for the post nevertheless and appointed her head cook of the retreat.

  At the retreat people detested her. Even Robert, who avoided name-calling as a rule, called her the nun. She fought her battles grimly and harshly, and she was especially harsh to Mirzel, who broke the rules and served coffee and sandwiches outside regular hours. Trude made no overtures to the inmates and they made none to her. But she took it upon herself to keep the building scrupulously clean, and late at night, when everything was quiet, she would go from passage to passage cleaning and polishing. Lately she had been working harder than ever. One night Lotte came across her in the passage and asked in surprise: “Are you still up?” Trude, kneeling on the floor, raised her eyes and said nothing. If Trude had dropped her eyes and gone back to work Lotte would have walked past, but Trude stared at her with a baffled look in her eyes.