Unto the Soul

by Aharon Appelfeld

  “Here the winter was long and hard. No one came and no one went. The snow reached the top of the houses.”

  “Are you alone here?”

  “My sister and I,” he answered, and immediately felt that the stranger’s eyes had pierced his secrets.

  “When does spring reach here?” the man asked, as though asking about something hidden.

  “Very late. After the Feast of Weeks. Sometimes there’s no summer here at all. Two years ago the snow didn’t melt until Tammuz, and it immediately came back anew. We aren’t our own masters here.” Gad was glad the man wasn’t touching on his personal life anymore.

  “All these years we haven’t been here. Only now we remembered to come. This is a marvelous place.” The man spoke with elation.

  “What do you do in that long darkness?” The other man raised his eyes from the book and asked clearly.

  “I saw wood. My hands never stop feeding the stoves.”

  “And you never get angry, so you want to leave everything behind and go down below?”

  Gad was flustered by the question, but he recovered himself and replied, “One mustn’t leave this place unguarded. Sometimes the snow melts, and with enormous power it sweeps away everything that stands in its way. Someone has to be here, isn’t that so?”

  “Correct,” the man said in a prosecutor’s tones.

  “Someone has to keep watch,” he emphasized.

  “Is there a lot of ice here?” the man asked for some reason.

  “A great deal. In the winter the whole mountain is ice, one big block. We’ve been guarding this place for many generations already. Now it’s fallen to my lot. I’m not complaining. On bright days the visibility is clear, and the Plain lies before us as though on our palm. These graves are very precious, and a person feels at home here.”

  Now all three of them raised their eyes and looked at him. The yellow on their faces paled, and they seemed like men immersed in a deep vision.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” said Gad and withdrew slightly.

  Now the yellow color returned to their faces, and Gad told them that three years ago there had been a bad epidemic, and many people had come up to ask for mercy. The old men tore the firmament, and the epidemic had been halted.

  “When will the good old men come?” asked one of them, and a sigh of pain was torn from his chest.

  When he returned to the house that night, he didn’t tell Amalia a bit of what his eyes had seen. For a long while he stood by the water barrel and washed his hands. Amalia served him hot soup, cheese pie, and borscht. The food was fragrant and savory, and Gad ate with an appetite. The people’s tortured faces gradually faded from his mind, and he was glad he was alive and that the food was tasty.

  CHAPTER 27

  The next day cold rain fell, and Gad stood at the entrance of the synagogue and asked the people to come and take shelter in his house. The thought that he was capable of doing an important good deed filled his soul with the desire to act. But no one was quick to say, I’m coming. Fear that the rain would trap them up above gave them a miserable look. Some of them approached Gad and asked whether there was a shortcut to the villages, and others asked about the villagers’ disposition. Gad’s mind was distracted, and he spoke about the frost and about the dampness that creeps into the marrow of one’s bones, and said it was preferable, for the moment, to sit and wait, and better in a closed house next to a warm stove.

  Morning prayers did not allay the panic. The clouds that had settled on the peak and the rain that came in its wake strengthened the feeling that if the old men had not come yet, it meant the epidemic had not halted. Everyone there was trying to do the impossible, and it would be better to hurry back down. Who could know what the angel of death was achieving?

  Where are the old men, where are they? the eyes implored. Every year those stubborn human skeletons stood and aroused the heart, shredding fear to bits. Only when fear is uprooted is there a place for faith. For faith a tranquil soul is needed. Now the peak seemed to be wrapped in swirling fog, as though the earth had been removed from beneath it, and the people were like gnarled knots of fear. Who are we and what is our life here? Why don’t we go down to save what it’s possible to save? They groped like blind men. Years before, carried on a stretcher, a paralyzed old man had arrived at this season. The old man could barely talk, but his devotion to the place was clear and evident to everyone. He addressed the saints and called them by their names, and the people saw with their own eyes; heaven was no longer blocked off. It was possible to open up and speak to it. Since then many old men had come, and they too, each in his own way, showed miracles.

  At night, as the cold grew more intense, the women and two children agreed to come and take shelter in the house. Amalia was embarrassed, and in her great shame she mumbled, “Please come in, the house is empty.” The two stoves rumbled as in the winter, and Gad hurriedly sliced the large loaf of bread. Amalia poured coffee in pottery cups, and the women gripped the cups and sipped thirstily.

  “When will the old men come?” a woman asked with a trembling voice.

  “They must come.” Gad spoke in a voice not his own.

  “Sick children are waiting for us below.”

  “The old men have come here even at times when the army blocked the way. Someone always brings them.”

  Upon hearing that answer, a smile spread on the woman’s face, as though he had told her a secret.

  The next day the sky cleared, and a large pale sun appeared in the heaven. Everyone went out and stood in the clearing, and there was a feeling, which Gad shared, that in a short while many good folk would come, and they would bring the old men with them. The people went out to gather twigs, and they lit two bonfires. The smell of the twigs and the smell of coffee restored the place’s firm status: here it was possible to pray and not give in. If one didn’t give in, there was hope. A person climbing cliffs must never despair, not even for a second.

  After prayers Gad brought fresh rolls and cherry jam. Amalia had baked all night long. Toward morning her face glowed from the fire of the furnace, and she muttered words that sounded like spells. Gad did everything in haste, with a kind of compulsive diligence, and as he worked he implored the people not to descend too soon, for now that the weather had improved, no doubt the old men would not be long, and they mustn’t miss out on their blessing.

  Again a day passed and the old men did not come. People’s minds were made up more and more strongly that if they did not arrive by the evening, there would be no choice but to descend. Gad brought out two bottles of slivovitz and poured drinks for the men. They made the blessing and drank, and suddenly a kind of fury grew on their faces, but the women, loyal to the place, did not move from the graves and prayed in whispers. The boys stood at the gate, and their faces expressed wonderment. Gad brought them cheese cake and cups of milk, and they ate and said grace. When he returned to the house in the evening, he found the door open and Amalia lying in bed. For a moment he clenched his fingers angrily, and he was about to call out, What’s the matter, what’s this self-indulgence? but when he saw her face, pale and weak, he asked softly, “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel very dizzy, and I vomit all the time.”

  “If only I knew what to do now,” he said and turned to the stove. He poured himself a cup of coffee, and for a long time he sat quietly.

  At night she felt better and spoke about the mountaintop with great emotion, as though it weren’t an exposed place, thrown upon the mercies of the wind, but rather the village of her childhood, where people and animals grow together, where the grain turns golden in the summer, and in the winter it is hot and pleasant in the houses, and only when a person is sick is he uprooted from those wonders and taken down to the city, to the hospital or the sanctuary.

  “That’s it.” She accepted the verdict.

  “But you’ll come back.” He had to say that.

  “With God’s help,” she said, and for a moment she confided
her life to the hands of the Creator of life.

  Gad was scared by that submissiveness and said, “I still don’t see you going.”

  The next day the sky’s clarity persisted, and everyone knew they had to get down from the mountain promptly. The boys’ long linen tunics had gotten dirty, and their faces were ruddy from the sun. Now they no longer looked like polite choirboys but like two tired shepherds who had found a moment to rest under a tree. In vain Gad tried to delay them. After prayers they headed hastily for the slope. Gad watched them as they went away. He was angry that they hadn’t taken their leave of him or thanked him. Immediately afterward he became depressed and sat in the empty clearing. It seemed to him those people had uprooted some great feeling from his heart, and now the feeling was absent, the meaning of life had been taken away. When he returned to the house he found Amalia sitting outdoors. Her face was quiet, and she smiled at him.

  “Their patience was at an end, and they didn’t want to wait anymore,” he said.

  “They have sick children at home.”

  “All of us need the old men’s blessing.”

  “Correct,” Amalia said, as though she had been reminded of an important principle.

  Inwardly he was pleased that she wasn’t talking about traveling to Moldovitsa. Her face was as full as formerly, and Gad remembered the winter now and its sharp sweetness, and the darkness that had isolated them from the world and its tumult. A kind of dark yearning washed over his body, as though the sky were about to close up again.

  “Amalia,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I wonder whether anyone else will come.”

  “They’ll come.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A warm wind is blowing outside, and it always brings people.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Toward the High Holy Days many people came from the cities, the towns, and the villages, enough for about three prayer quorums, with peddlers clinging to them, along with some charlatans and a few cripples who made a living from their deformities. A money changer who had not shown himself on the mountaintop for years was not offering money now but army boots. His face was reddened by the sun, and he looked healthy, carefree, as if he’d completed a military service unharassed. No one looked at his merchandise, but he didn’t rant. As if in spite, he smoked fine cigarettes and looked at the people with a kind of tranquility. The old men hadn’t come, and people stood by the tombs as if abandoned. In the summer it had seemed the epidemic was about to halt, and indeed there were many indications to that effect. But this turned out to have been merely a lull. At the end of the summer it raged mercilessly.

  God, remove this dreadful plague from us, for Thou art our father, and we have no father or protector but Thee.

  The people were silent next to the graves, but there were women who could not restrain themselves, and they cried out, “Where are the old men? Where are those marvelous high spirits who know how to pray, how to thunder at the world, and how to keep silent when you have to keep silent? Where are those wonderful men? Why have they abandoned us?”

  Gad stood at their side but didn’t know how to help them. He and Amalia baked rolls, and in the morning they served everything they had prepared for the needy. The cow’s milk dwindled, but the little there was sufficed for the sick and the children. The people were sunk in their grief and accepted what was served to them without thanks. However, their muteness did not weaken him. Now for some reason he was certain that this was the way they must behave. Needy people who give thanks with every step they take are like beggars. When someone is grieving, his grief conquers him, and one must accept him as he is.

  Now his life was settled and well paced. He would rise early, light the stoves, fodder the cow, prepare coffee, and immediately rush over to take part in morning prayers. After prayers he would work for an hour or two in the garden. The carrots and cauliflower were coming up nicely, and the tomatoes blushed red. He would bundle together a few vegetables, wash them, and take them to the clearing. Amalia, for her part, spared no effort. She cooked and baked, as in a wealthy household laden with guests, until late at night. The icy immobility of her life thawed out, but she did not attain happiness. Everything she did was done with a kind of tension.

  Sometimes they would work in shifts. When Amalia sank down on her cot at night, Gad rose. Thus day followed day. Amalia did not complain. Now she did many of the things she had intended to do all those years. She cleaned out the cellar and the attic and planted bushes next to the fence around the house. “A bare fence isn’t pretty,” she said. Now, among other things, she fulfilled that small wish.

  Sometimes in the middle of the night a kind of sigh would moan out of the depths in the darkness and set the peak trembling. Gad knew these were longings for the old men and pains for which there is no balm, someone’s desperate effort to summon the holy patriarchs on his own, so they would act where necessary and without delay. In those dark hours the distant epidemic would take on the tortured features of Aunt Sarah, their father’s sister who had died in her youth of a typhus epidemic that felled many young people one winter.

  But meanwhile bad news came from the Plain. A pogrom had broken out in the town of Halintsa, and the mob had plundered it. Though a few families managed to flee, most of them were caught in their sleep. The bad news came with two thin men whose look was more eloquent than the words they brought.

  As always: What shall we do? Where shall we go? It was impossible to fight on two fronts. Having no other escape, they threw themselves down on the graves and implored. The sight of the people next to the graves recalled other times and pogroms. In truth, there was never a year without pogroms. This year the mob and the epidemic had worked in tandem. The money changer, who had sat next to the fence all that time, expressionless, smoking fine cigarettes, as though the common cause had nothing to do with him, suddenly gave out a strange shout. First it appeared that he was lowering the price of his military boots so as to sell them. The strange shout was repeated with a force conveying a request and also anger. Finally it turned out that he was calling to his wife, who had recently died and left him alone with five orphans. At first the people ignored his cries, but in the end, when they realized what was the matter, they approached him. He pushed them away, saying, “Don’t mix in. You don’t understand anything. You have no concept.” He spoke like someone who had awakened from a deep sleep.

  Before Rosh Hashanah fierce rains fell, and the people hastily left. Gad vainly entreated them to stay, saying it would be better to wait until the storm had passed. Their flight was strange. Amalia stood on the threshold and waved her hand with the expression of an abandoned soul. A few women approached her and hugged her and immediately turned their backs as though running away. Gad stood by the gate rigidly and saw them off on their descent.

  When darkness fell he did not return to the house but rather turned and went to the clearing. Unlike previous years, the clearing was clean and without litter. Nothing remained even of the bonfires. It was as though people had not assembled here but rather passed by like the wind. The two acacia trees spread their bare branches and imperceptibly reminded him of the sturdy and mad face of the money changer.

  When he returned home, darkness already hung on the peaks. Amalia was sitting by the extinguished stove, and her face expressed cold astonishment. “That’s it,” he said.

  Hearing that grunt, Amalia bent her head.

  “I told them, We have enough room. You can get sick from the damp.”

  “True,” said Amalia distractedly.

  “All serious diseases are caused by dampness. I told them, but they didn’t want to listen tome.”

  Afterward the sky cleared, and on the horizon fiery furnaces flowed into the dark valley. The sight reminded him of the frosty days that were approaching. For some reason it seemed to him that Amalia was about to burst out crying.

  He stood up and adjusted his voice. In artificial tones he said, “You mustn’t sink
into melancholy.”

  Amalia didn’t respond. Her eyes were open with a kind of sharpness he hadn’t noticed in her previously. The look said, Why are you wearying me with empty speech? Empty speech saddens me.

  “What should we do, then?” he said, as though he had been asked.

  “What?” said Amalia, as though she had just woken up.

  “What could we have done that we haven’t done, I’m asking.”

  “Why are you asking?” The sharp look returned and tensed her eyes.

  “Have I made a mistake?” He retreated.

  “This year you helped many good people.” She spoke in a voice not her own and with words that were not hers.

  “I’m ashamed,” he answered, not to the point.

  “You have no reason to be ashamed.” Her eyes were open wide. “In a few days I’ll go to Moldovitsa. I’ll hire a room from one of the gentile women. They tend to women with mercy. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Gad lowered his head and put his face in his hands as though she had hit him on the head with a hammer.

  CHAPTER 29

  After that the days were clear, and Gad worked in the orchard for many hours. When he returned to the house at night, his head was swollen and ruddy like one of the watermelons he carried in his rucksack. Amalia worked too, cleaning the house and preparing hot meals. For hours they would sit by the window and consume plate after plate. Occasionally in the evening a voice would burst out in the distance and shatter the silence. “Did you hear?” Amalia would ask, shocked.

  “It’s nothing. They’re loading logs onto barges.” He calmed her down, and the night would return to its pace.

  Her pregnancy advanced, but it was not yet noticeable in her movements. She worked briskly and quietly, which made Gad forget that she was a wounded woman preparing herself for a long journey. At night he would remember the old men, and a sigh would escape his throat. It had been hard during the summer. The people were in despair and had fled. He had done everything diligently, but it had been a labor without blessing. He missed the old men, especially the silent ones, who did not reproach people but sat, clinging to the place, until one felt their silence was causing a stirring in one’s body. Several years ago old Mordecai had blessed him, a silent blessing, without touching him. All that winter the blessing had hovered over his head, and although the winter had been hard and frightening, with both stoves roaring without respite, his mind nevertheless had been alert and without sadness. In the evenings he had studied The Path of the Righteous, and his sleep had been that of hard-working people.