Unto the Soul

by Aharon Appelfeld

  In previous years he hadn’t kept accounts, but now he said openly that not only had they stopped making contributions, they also were registering complaints: the place wasn’t properly maintained. Uncle Arieh had been high-handed and severe with the pilgrims, dogging their steps and demanding substantial contributions. Anyone who slipped away was publicly reviled. “Let everyone know,” he used to say, “that without charity there’s no life. Anyone who doesn’t give charity here is like one who murders a soul.” And indeed people gave; they had to. “Prayers are not answered unless they are accompanied by charity,” he used to castigate them.

  Gad didn’t know how to demand. Because he didn’t demand, people stopped giving. After Uncle Arieh’s death, awe of him still hovered over the people, but gradually that awe had dissipated. Gad muttered, threatened, and finally decided he would stand at the gate and collect an entrance fee. But not even that stratagem was successful. People snuck in and slipped away.

  True, there were also a few, the faithful, who brought what they could afford to give: a canister of oil, a sack of sugar, or a bottle of slivovitz. “If anyone doesn’t give, I’ll kick him out.” He surprised Amalia with his words.

  “No,” she blurted out.

  “I’ll do exactly what Uncle Arieh did. I’ll kick them out.”

  In her heart Amalia knew that her brother wouldn’t do that. He had neither his uncle’s strength nor his faith. Nevertheless, she was afraid to say so.

  “The winter is long, and we need food. I won’t give in.”

  Imperceptibly, other things also rose up from the thick of the years. After their parents’ death no one had come forward to help them. Their few relations had avoided them, and other people ignored them. Amalia had worked as a housekeeper and Gad as a day laborer in a lumberyard. The work was hard, and they earned a poor living. Strangely, those oppressive memories brought an odd kind of religiosity to her face, but Gad mercilessly laid bare the truth: If our own people hadn’t driven us away, we wouldn’t be here.

  “They didn’t mean to drive us away.” She tried to find a point in their favor.

  “If it hadn’t been for Uncle Arieh, we would have starved to death. The Plain is crueler than the mountain. The mountain is cold, but it isn’t wicked. The winds knock down trees, but they aren’t evil.”

  It was clear: he bore a grudge against the Plain in his heart. “Everyone has his place. I have no regrets. The Plain disgusts me. We, thank God, have open spaces, a different way of seeing and hearing. I wouldn’t live there for any price in the world.”

  Later, after he had drunk a few drinks, he was aroused and spoke with a different kind of eloquence about a life of devotion and sacrifice of the soul. “Without spirit the body too degenerates. A ruined body oppresses the soul and blinds its eyes.” Those were sentences he had absorbed from the old men who used to teach a chapter of some holy book between one prayer service and another, and now, as he repeated them, they sounded like crazy yearning.

  “I dreamt about home last night,” Amalia remembered.

  “Whom did you see?”

  “I saw Father.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I promised to visit him. He was pleased by my promise.”

  For a moment he was charmed by the look of her face. There were hours during the day when her face was bright and her look was clear and her years didn’t show on her. She would be very similar to the little Amalia who used to sit in the yard, as though the years had not passed.

  “One day we’ll go down,” he said, almost distractedly.

  “When?”

  “We have to find a substitute, a faithful substitute. In the summer I’ll get advice from one of the old men,”

  Hardly had he said the word “substitute” when her face brightened, and she said, “Father will certainly be very glad.”

  At night, when the rain grew harder, she wanted to let the dogs in. Usually Gad refused to admit them, but this time, for some reason, he agreed. The dogs bounded in and yelped with joy. Gad knew in a short while they would curl up on the floor in front of the fire, and Amalia would sing them an idle Ruthenian song she had heard in her childhood. You mustn’t lie on the floor with the dogs, he wanted to call out to her, but the words failed him.

  Later he recovered. He sat at her side and spoke of the need to act with severity, to demand substantial contributions from the pilgrims, because the roof was likely to cave in and the fence wasn’t stable, either. If he didn’t make repairs in time, they would collapse. For a moment it seemed as if he wasn’t annoyed with the pilgrims but with himself and his weakness.

  “You did everything in good faith and honestly,” she said, gathering the dogs up against her body with both arms.

  “No, my dear,” he said, with a kind of excessive emphasis.

  “You’re wrong, my dear.” She spoke to him softly. “The people are hypocrites. The prayers of someone who prays while unclean won’t be answered. If a person wishes to be purified, he is helped from on high. But to come here and avoid responsibility, to steal, not to leave a contribution for the people who stay here in the winter—that’s fraud. You can cheat flesh and blood but not heaven.”

  Gad was amazed by the words and phrases she had spoken. He had not imagined that the old men’s reproaches had been absorbed so deeply in her heart.

  “Amalia,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You listen to what the old men say, don’t you?”

  “I love to hear their voices. Sometimes it seems to me that they’re speaking with the voice of Greatness.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “There’s a light in their faces. Didn’t you see the light in their faces?”

  But later he got very angry because her eyes were red, her hair was disheveled, and she was hugging the dogs with wanton abandon. According to Jewish law, anyone who lies with a beast will be put to death. It’s only permitted to love human beings, he wanted to cry out loudly.

  “We drank too much, didn’t we?” she said.

  “How many bottles are left?”

  “There’s more.”

  “We have to keep a sharp eye on the drink. We mustn’t be left without drink. How much is left?”

  “There are six more bottles.”

  “That’s very little.”

  “You’re right.”

  “If anyone comes without bringing us a bottle, I won’t let him cross the threshold.”

  A kind of drunken rage thickened in his eyes, and it was clear he was about to fall upon the dogs and throw them out. He was going to raise his voice against Amalia and shout, Go to bed. You’re not allowed to hug the dogs!

  CHAPTER 9

  The days grew dimmer as the season advanced. At last storms swept the mountaintop and darkened it. The walls shook from the force of the wind. Every year saw the same frightful spectacle, but nevertheless it was hard to get used to it. Years ago he had been enthusiastic and had swept Amalia away with his emotion. More than once he had been amazed by his words. True, they had not been his own words. Nonetheless, they had a certain strength. And sometimes, when he was very enthusiastic, he would also grasp and understand a word or verse from the Torah, and that would astound him for a moment. However, as time passed, his enthusiasm had progressively faded, not by itself. He tried to inspire his life with patience and faith, but desire for a woman, the darkness of the winter, Amalia’s frequent relapses—all these had extinguished the fire bit by bit.

  Amalia’s face gradually became opaque. She neither complained nor rebuked him, but her entire life was embodied in her indifference. When she relapsed, as she had often done during the past two years, longings, pains, and recriminations would burst out, as from a smoking maw. Their main point was: Why are we tormenting ourselves here? The darkness is devouring us, and our flesh is rotting.

  Amalia’s rebukes would awaken and inspire him with words. He would chasten and console her until he momentar
ily blunted her fears. But that ability grew steadily weaker, speech was locked up within him, and even the little that he said would cost him his soul. Only slivovitz, only that and no other strong drink, would briefly open up the channels of his heart.

  During the first winter they had already learned to drink. In fact there had been no need to learn. The darkness of the winter had led them to the bottle as to a life raft. At first he had reproached her and proved with signs and wonders that drinking was an original sin and debased man. Meanwhile he too was trapped by excessive liquor. During the winter nights a kind of closeness flamed up between them. He would call her by pet names, and, for her part, she would make provocative gestures and say to him, “But you love the gentile women.”

  Now came the seventh winter. Henceforth, time was no longer divided into day and night, but everything was a tumultuous river of black snow. In the first years Amalia had suffered severe lapses in this season. She would wrap herself in the army coat and say, “I don’t want to see how they shut us up behind locks and bolts.”

  “What locks and bolts are you talking about?”

  He used to sit at her side for hours and try to banish the horrible sights that paralyzed her. But talk was useless. She was sure that at night the winds would strangle her. Then, in the image of a hidden redeemer, the bottle of slivovitz would appear. She would drink and vomit, drink and vomit. In the end, she came to love the bitter liquid. She learned how to sit alone with a bottle and sip from it until she reached oblivion. Gad’s path to slivovitz was simpler, perhaps because he had seen how his Uncle Arieh, at the age of ninety, used to swallow a whole glass without batting an eyelash.

  “It’s coming again,” said Amalia, smiling.

  “As long as we have firewood, there’s nothing to worry about. Let the winds run wild outside. Let them rage. But here we won’t let them get a foot in the door.” Again he invoked the old answer, worn from frequent use.

  “Down below people dress up and go out in the street, don’t they?”

  “Here too we go out. Between one storm and another there are lulls. They have streets and we have firmaments. This is no prison, my dear.”

  Amalia opened her large eyes, and, at the same time, they expressed suspicion, sadness, and pain.

  “It isn’t a prison, thank God. We have everything.” He grasped at that straw.

  “I promised Father I would visit him. One mustn’t break promises.”

  “We received greetings from Zhadova this year, Haya Bronfman herself,” he answered indirectly.

  “She frightens me.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She told me, ‘Don’t move from here. Down below there are nothing but pogroms and epidemics. Death devours with all its mouth.’ I don’t understand why she said, ‘With all its mouth.’ ”

  He was almost about to say, I told you so, but he restrained himself, and instead he summed up with the following words: “The town is hovering above the jaws of disaster. Anyone who doesn’t run away in time is doomed to destruction.”

  Hearing that dire prediction, Amalia bent her head, and her hair, which had gone gray in the middle of her scalp, stood out all the more.

  “Haya Bronfman is a very unfortunate woman, may we be spared her fate. All her offspring died in the great typhus epidemic,” Gad said in a tired voice, like someone doing his duty.

  “And the epidemic won’t reach here?” Amalia asked in a distracted way.

  “We have nothing to fear. The air here is clear and pure. Only us, with no barrier.” Amalia had never before heard the phrase “with no barrier.” It sounded strange to her, as though it came from a doctor’s mouth.

  “And what about the promise I made to Father?”

  “A promise that’s impossible to keep is automatically void.”

  “But what shall I say to him when he appears in a dream again?”

  “Don’t say anything to him. He’ll understand.”

  Sometimes it seemed to her that if she returned to her native city her life would be cured of all its oppressions and bad dreams, and bright visions would surround her again as in her youth. Several times she had wanted to talk to Gad about that, but she was apprehensive. This time the words came to her, and she said, “I would like to ask forgiveness of Mother. All these years I’ve borne a grudge against her.”

  “Why do you recall it now?”

  “I saw their graves, and they were neglected.”

  “We haven’t abandoned them. We sometimes think about them.”

  Later, like an echo from other conversations, he said, “I feel detached from there. A place with a lot of Jews has troubles. There are epidemics and persecutions. I prefer this place. It’s isolated.”

  Upon hearing that answer, Amalia placed both her hands on the table as though to say, I no longer have the strength to struggle.

  Now he had a desire once again to lecture her about the advantages of the place and its sanctity. But he remembered that he had already lectured her several times, and it was better to avoid repetition.

  “How many years have we been here?” she asked, as though waking up.

  “This is the seventh year. Have you already forgotten?”

  “It seemed to me this was the eighth year.”

  “Who would have imagined we’d hold our own here for seven years? When we first came you wept a lot, and I didn’t know what to say to you. The winter was dreadful. The walls shook with the power of the wind. We prevailed, thank the Lord. If one has faith, one prevails.”

  Amalia knew the faith in her heart was progressively shrinking with the passing years, and in the dark hours of the day even that little bit abandoned her, and melancholy took absolute dominion over her. She knew it, but she didn’t dare say it. Where is that faith you’re talking about? Where is it to be found? This mountain has destroyed me.

  Gad knew what her silence meant, and he raised his head and said, “Our faith was never great, nor is it now, but still we have done something. Let that be no small thing in your eyes. Were it not for us, were it not for our seven devoted years, this would not be a place to which people come to pray but just a barren mountaintop. That’s no small matter. Someone has to pay.”

  Later Amalia prepared two pies, one with corn and one with cabbage. Imperceptibly the warm aromas evoked an old and forgotten feeling of home and, in addition, another feeling, frightfully selfish: It’s good that we’re here, far away from the towns, where not only storms are raging now, but also sicknesses and epidemics.

  CHAPTER 10

  During the winter month of Kislev the days were as dark as night, and Amalia never crossed the threshold of the house. The dogs howled like wolves. Gad started sawing wood in the shed early in the morning to lay in a supply. Every time he came up from the shed, he would say, “It’s good that we’re here. In the Plain people are dying from the cold.”

  The stoves roared indeed. It was difficult to retain the heat, but if they didn’t let the fire go out, some of the heat was preserved. As in every Kislev, Amalia sank into a kind of frozen silence. The dark yellow patch on her forehead seemed to sink in, and her cheeks were shrunken and stretched tight. Leave your hands on the table, he wanted to tell her for some reason. Open hands dissolved the dread. But he grasped immediately that his thought was baseless. At night he spoke with her nonetheless about the sadness that devours everything good and darkens the soul. One must extricate oneself from the mud as long as one lives and has the power to do so.

  Amalia did not respond. She looked at him with her large, extinguished eyes, as though to say, Why are you tormenting me?

  “You mustn’t complain,” he said, as though she had complained.

  In the afternoon he would peel potatoes, dice onions, doing all the housework Amalia was too indolent to do, and they would eat. For hours they would sit and eat. The silent actions of her mouth would give her face the expression of a mute. Sometimes she would fall asleep at the table, her blouse unbuttoned, her mouth puffed up,
as though this were not a home but a bustling railroad station where porters loaded bales and kegs and refugees curled up in every corner and slept. Redness spread upon her neck and cheeks like a peasant woman in a tavern.

  Thus the month of Kislev passed, the Feast of Lights ignored. The snow fell without letup, and the darkness was great. It was hard to arouse her from her sleep in the morning. Even strong coffee failed. Sleep drew her down as though by strong cords. Only at night a few drinks of slivovitz would rouse her extinguished eyes, and she would smile.

  One night he felt that her right leg had crossed over to his bed. First he tried to shove it away, as he did when she snored. Indeed he did push it, but the full leg, extended across the bed, wouldn’t move.

  “Amalia,” he called in a whisper. Years ago, when she had been about six, she used to sneak into his bed toward morning and tickle his foot. She had apparently guessed that tickling gave him pleasure. After a while their mother had caught her in the act. She had pulled her aside abruptly and slapped her on the face. Amalia had stood, abashed, and had not uttered a word. Their mother, seeing that, had fallen upon her again and beaten her thoroughly. Strange, their mother had not reprimanded her, and Amalia hadn’t cried. Perhaps because of that the nightmare had been engraved in his memory. Afterward, although they had slept in the same room, she had not dared approach his bed.

  Now Amalia’s face was burrowed into the pillow, but the nape of her neck was lit, a broad neck as though planed in both her shoulders. That side of her body had been hidden from him up to now.

  When they had first come up to the mountain her figure was thin and long, and a kind of white youthfulness was spread upon her face. The first two winters had changed her beyond recognition. Her body had filled out, her arms had turned red. She looked like one of the peasant women who lived on the nearby peaks. The change that had taken place before his eyes was absolute, but he became used to it, not without being pleased that his sister was no longer a weak creature but a full woman.