“We had nothing to drink.” She tried to mollify him.
“We mustn’t drink,” he burst out. A new gloom covered his face. Amalia did not respond to those outbursts. She would serve him a drink as though offering medicine to a patient. A kind of spryness took over her, as during the months when their father had lain sick and she had tried to save him with hot water bottles, thin porridge, and a great deal of devotion, but nothing had worked, and he had been snatched away all at once.
That devotion inspired him, creating words that he had not dared to utter previously, and their main point was: “You must return home. You mustn’t be away from home for so much time. Here everything is dangerous. Only at home, only among Jews, is one protected.”
“What will I do alone down below?” She tried to arouse his mercy.
“We have cousins.”
“I’ve already become accustomed to the mountain peak.”
“You mustn’t be here.”
And when he would press her with his words, she would say, “And what about you?”
“I’ll be here. The devil won’t take me away.”
“Alone?”
“Nothing will happen to me.”
Once she tried a different tack. “But we’ve sold the house.”
“I’ll give you the inheritance. You can rent a house. You can live decently.”
“I don’t need a house.”
“What do you want?”
Now the long nights came, cold and muted, nights during which almost nothing was said. Amalia would serve him a plate of soup and bread, without asking anything or requesting anything. She would eat her meals next to the stove. Nor did Mauzy and Limzy whimper, as if they knew their presence in the house was by special grace.
When he finally took out the box and placed it on the bench, she could no longer restrain herself, and she said, “If that is what you wish, I shall respect it.”
“If I could, I would go down with you. But I swore to guard this holding.”
“I understand,” she said, not showing she felt scorned.
“A person must return home, isn’t that true?”
“Correct.” She interrupted him.
“What can I do?”
She bowed her head as though it were not her loving brother speaking to her but rather a cunning, violent peasant. Now she realized: a few thick lines had grown on his face, giving it a coarse expression. Soldiers would return with faces like that after serving long sentences in military prisons.
Now she no longer pleaded. Her face closed up, and something of their sick mother’s pride showed at her temples. The winter continued without letup, and the darkness was full and opaque. Gad would have a few drinks, and the thick lines on his face would fill with a muddy redness. Strangely, that ugliness did not pain her. What pained her were his groveling, the contradictions, and the lies.
Sometimes he would apologize and say, “It’s not my fault, it’s the way of the world. We aren’t free in this world. In the summer people will come and discover it immediately. Things like these are impossible to hide.” Thus he would sit and heap up words, each word paining her, but she made no comment to him, though once she did say, “Other people are apparently important to you, because you live by their dictate.” Gad heard her and restrained himself. Later, without warning, he opened up the caged shed and sent the dogs out with kicks.
Sometimes, in order to appease her, he said, “What do you suggest?”
“Nothing.”
“But you’re angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.”
She would get up while it was still dark and begin working immediately. In her heart she was sorry for her big brother, her brother whom she had loved since childhood, who was afraid now of what people would say. She wanted to shout: We mustn’t be afraid of people; even if a person commits serious sins, he mustn’t be afraid of people. We are delivered over only to God. He is the Father, and He is the Judge, not people. People are evil and hypocritical. They have no innocence. That is what she wanted to shout.
For hours she would sit and look at him. It angered her that her beloved brother’s walking was stooped and gloomy, his spirit cloudy, and that toward evening he would sit in the corner like a persecuted man.
CHAPTER 17
While the house was still full of darkness, Gad was sawing wood without pause. Amalia was sorting potatoes in the cellar, and odors of rot mingled with the smell of sauerkraut wafted through the house. Everything stood as though it were about to be frozen, then a south wind broke out and drove away the clouds, all at once laying bare a huge sun, a round sun, and the spaces all around, which for months had lain contracted in gloom, were opened, raised up, and filled with brightness. Gad went out the door and stepped back immediately, but Amalia put out her hand and proclaimed, like a child, “Sun in the sky, sun.”
“This joy is premature.” Gad spoke doubtfully. His way of sitting curled up next to the window said, One mustn’t rejoice, one mustn’t trust, one must fear the morrow, which will be harder than anything we have known. Afterward too, when he went outside, the milk pail in his hand, he looked like a destitute village beggar, short and full of trepidation. No trace remained of his erect stature.
The frost was still bitter, but it was a different kind of cold, a sunny cold, that reminded one of youth and the will to live. Amalia went out and fed the dogs. The dogs, who had grown thick fur, were happy and expressed their joy with merry leaps. Amalia let them off their chains and said, “Go forth into the wide open spaces, go forth into freedom.” At the same time Gad headed mechanically for the woodshed. Before long the dull and rhythmical sound of sawing was heard throughout the house. For a moment she wanted to go down to the woodshed and beg him, tell him, I can’t stand that sawing. My head is splitting. The sun has returned to us, and we don’t need any more firewood. Later she went down and for the first time she saw her brother at work. He looked like a convict sentenced to forced labor who had been given an impossible task, and he was struggling with all his might to do it, frightened that a guard would come in the evening and beat him mercilessly. Now she saw him at work, she didn’t dare open her mouth.
The next day the sky was clear and spotless, and immediately after the milking Gad went out to the cemetery. He took short, slow steps, like someone who expects no salvation from anyplace else. Now Amalia remembered her brother who just a few years ago had been full of faith, innocence, and the will to act. Punctual about the times for prayer, on sabbath afternoons he would read through the weekly Torah portion. Only during the third year of their presence there had the strangeness spread out within him. He had grown stout, and his gait had become cautious and heavy. First that had seemed like a trivial change, but in time it became clear that the place was kneading him in its mighty hand, giving him the look of a Ruthenian peasant. Earlier he had been angry with Amalia for not lighting the sabbath candles, but soon he had stopped that. The days became mingled with one another, and time stretched out in an unbroken flow into the dark abyss.
In the evening Gad returned to the house, and a cloud surrounded his face. He sat at the table and did not utter a word.
“How are things up on the top?” Amalia asked cautiously.
“The frost hasn’t thawed yet.”
“I intend to clean out the synagogue.”
“It’s too early.”
“I want to clean everything before I leave.”
“For where?”
“Home.”
He knew this was the critical moment. “I won’t send you down below unless it’s your wish.”
“I’ll arrange everything and come back,” she replied quietly.
Hearing that answer, it was as if the dam of his heart had burst, and he spoke about this cold and cursed place that eats up a man’s marrow, also saying that the people who came here were not all decent. If they had stayed down below, they now would have a shop and a faithful clientele. Amalia did not reply to his words. She walked over to
the stove and, with quick movements, prepared his supper. Before long Gad sank into the bowl of soup, as though there were nothing in his world except that hot liquid.
When he finished the soup he remembered that the day before he had dreamed about the house, their mother, and the store. Their mother was standing by the scale, weighing flour. Suddenly she lifted her eyes and said, “What have you done to Amalia?” Her look was bad and cruel, as when she used to beat Amalia. “Now she cannot be helped in this world.”
“It wasn’t I.” He tried to slip away.
“It was you.” She said, without holding onto him.
She immediately returned to the scale and her customers. Gad wanted to beg for his soul, but his mouth was as though filled with gravel. When he woke up the dream was buried. All that day a heaviness oppressed his heart, and only now did the murky dream rise up and flood him again.
“It doesn’t matter what people say. It isn’t their concern,” he said. It was evident that that sentence had occupied him for hours.
“I feel I must go down below.”
The words “I feel” startled him up from his seat, and he said, “If that is your wish, I shall not stand in your way.”
“I want to clean the synagogue.”
“There’s no need. All the holy places are neglected.”
“It isn’t proper.”
“Anyway, no one contributes. That’s what they deserve, no more.” Gad remembered that sentence, which he had once used often.
“I must do it.”
“Do what you want. I won’t mix in,” he said and stepped aside. It seemed to Amalia that he was about to go down to the shed to do his daily task, to the saw and the stumps of wood.
CHAPTER 18
Amalia worked from morning to late at night. Gad helped her, but not willingly. He spent most of the day in the cemetery. The snow was melting, and he would stand for hours and wait for the earth to show. The thin bubbling and the muffled fall of clumps of snow reminded him of the sights of former days. Where, he did not remember. A prolonged absence from the cemetery uprooted his memories of the past as well.
The sun swept down from its path and performed simple miracles. It melted layer after layer, and before many days had passed the high plain was fully revealed to the eye. The peaks spread out white and soft, and azure geese, fleeing from their cages, flew about in the sky and voiced wild screeches. In the distance the great river overflowed its banks, the Prut, and its mighty flow could be heard even up here.
In the evening he told Amalia about the miracles that had met him during the day. How layer after layer had melted and the holy gravestones were revealed to the eye. Amalia listened with great tension. She was glad that his hidden feelings had taken form and he was speaking of them with familiar words. He spoke for a long time, as though it were not just a quiet thaw but subtle revelations of colors and sounds. She thought of announcing to him that she was about to go down soon, but seeing his joy she did not dare to put an end to it. She served him a hot meal and sat at his side.
The next day too he returned joyfully. Great words had returned to him, and he used them as before, without restraint. Now Amalia knew that, unlike her, he was attached to the holy graves and drew his vitality from them. Now he no longer spoke of the people’s miserliness, their blindness and selfishness, but rather of clear visions and the subtle bonds that sustain the soul. His eyes glowed as after taking a few drinks during the winter, but now the muteness had been shattered, and the words streamed out from him with enthusiasm.
And what will become of me? What will happen if it turns out that I’m pregnant? Her fears awoke within her all at once. Up to now she had not dared think about that. Gad’s enthusiasm and the high words he had spoken to her drew up her dread as though from a dark pit: What will be? The hope that in a few days she would return to her native town and all the sins of the winter would be forgotten and plunged into oblivion—that hope, which offered the promise of a way out, was abruptly ended. Gad was immersed within his small joy, and he did not notice that her world had been destroyed all at once. He kept on in his own way with a kind of swelling exhilaration, and as he continued, his face threw off its old dark skin, and oranges and pinks blossomed on his forehead.
In the evening his mood fell off. The great words that had fluttered like banners on his lips fell silent, and he sat, withdrawn, next to the window as though he has been emptied of all will. Nor did the cloud pass from his face next day. He sat in the corner and watched her movements in the house. Finally he said, “What is all that cleanliness for? Why all that polishing? Only ritual bathhouses give off that smell of lye all the time.” Amalia didn’t understand what he said. It seemed to her that the notion of her pregnancy had also reached him. You have nothing to fear; I’m taking all the responsibility upon myself, she wanted to assure him. His depression brought him near to her, and she sensed that a hint of her soul, which had been hidden within him, was returning to her. In the long dark winter nights they had not spoken much, but his sensations had streamed over to her and filled her. Now she felt that the warm closeness of the dark winter nights, that blazing closeness which she had tried to drive out of her memory, had, as it were, been aroused and rekindled. Suddenly it seemed to her that those bare days were nothing but a trick of the light, and in a short while the dark clouds of winter would return, the frost and the winds, and they would burrow again into the thick pillows as in the blind and happy days.
“The weather isn’t stable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it rained tomorrow,” she said distractedly. Hearing those words, Gad raised his eyes and his clouded look confirmed that he too expected it.
The twilight dwindled over a long while, and Gad fell asleep in his clothes on the couch. First she wanted to wake him, but when she saw his position, a shrunken, folded position, she sensed it would be better to leave him. His heavy boots, soiled with mud, expressed what his face had not been able to show: the descent into oblivion.
At night she decided within herself that if the sunny days persisted and the snow melted, it was a sign that she must leave the place, but she would not return to her native town and to disgrace; rather, she would travel to one of the old Christian women in Moldovitsa. Women went to those crones to give birth in secret. Afterward they left the babies on the convent steps, and the nuns took them in and raised them. If they were good, they trained them for religious vows. That thought, which had occurred to her by chance, pleased her, as though she had found an escape hatch from the dark tunnel, but when she closed her eyes and fell asleep, broad spaces were spread before her, yellow expanses after the harvest. She was alone, as though she had been thrown out of a wagon loaded with people, and it was clear no one would come and redeem her from that desert place. Henceforth only the low skies, cold skies, would protect her.
CHAPTER 19
What he had feared happened: the spring, in its full light, appeared. The hidden hope of an endless winter, which he had secretly harbored, seemed to slap him on the face. The sky grew higher, bluer, and Gad now knew that Passover, the holiday he loved best of all, had already been celebrated down below, and it could be that also the Feast of Weeks was behind them. As for him and Amalia, it was as though the darkness had thrown them up on the shores of another continent, an illuminated continent where everything was exposed and there was no place to hide.
Amalia stood at the door of the synagogue with her sleeves rolled up, the bucket in her right hand, like someone caught out of place. Why don’t you hide? Don’t you see that everything lies open to danger? He wanted to call out. Amalia didn’t move. The bright sights all around imprisoned her, and she stood enchanted.
“Amalia,” he called out.
“What?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I want to clean out the sanctuary.”
“There’s no need. Holy places ought to be neglected.”
Upon hearing that answer she smiled, and the bright ruddiness of her childhood days onc
e again blossomed on her cheeks.
“There’s no need,” he called out again. “Now we have to see what the snows have done.” He spoke loudly, as though to a deaf woman.
“I’m going to go away soon. I wouldn’t want to leave dirt behind,” she answered, also in a loud voice.
“Where are you going?” he asked in the old domestic way.
“Home,” she answered weakly.
“Not now,” he said and looked to the side.
Amalia was about to answer him with a long sentence, but he moved away abruptly. His departure was so sharp and hasty that she did not manage to utter a word.
Without turning his head, he strode toward the cemetery. The melting snow had swept a little earth into the drainage ditches, but there hadn’t been much erosion. Little puddles glistened in these ditches, and Gad was pleased that the damage was not great; in a day or two the water would seep away and the earth would dry.
It was only when he stood in the clearing that he grasped how long the winter had been and how the darkness had kept him from keeping track of time. The remorse that had seethed within him like venom for many days, remorse he had not heeded, rose up and emerged from its hiding place. It seemed to him that a year ago at this season he had already weeded the orchard and prepared the vegetable beds, but now everything still was untamed. Amalia, he was about to call out, we have been lazy all this time. We shall be held accountable for this laziness. No sin goes without punishment in this world. The words rolled about in his head for a moment and then floated off.
A year earlier an old man with a noble face had stood in the clearing and asked protection from the martyrs. A typhus epidemic was raging in the region, and it had struck down many victims. For two days the old man had stood there, fasting. “I shall not move from here until they receive their due from heaven.” Thus he proclaimed whenever people approached him and asked him at least to sit down. Calm was in his face. After two days of standing in one place, the silent stance of a soldier on guard, he took several steps backward, bowed, approached the bench, and sat down. Others sprawled on the stones, wept, and counted their sins like bargaining peddlers. There was no lack of confidence men who brought dubious merchandise to the mountaintop to sell it to the gullible. And there was someone who wrote down the names of all the saints on a pink tablet and offered it for the price of a piece of silver. He claimed the names were a charm against all plagues, that even lepers had been saved.
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