Gad recognized that frightening smile, but he couldn’t contain himself this time, and he said, “There’s nothing to be done. We have to repair the damage ourselves.”
“Who did it?” she asked in surprise.
For a moment it seemed as if Amalia meant to treat him harshly and torment him because of Sophia. That was only in appearance. She was still tangled in the web of sleep, and the nightmare that had pursued her in her slumber still clung to her eyelids. Her pursed lips asked, “What’s the matter? Why won’t anyone tell me the truth?”
“Mauzy wouldn’t have let them deface the holy tombs.” Gad raised his voice. “Mauzy would have laid down his life.” And it was clear to his sister that he was talking not about the dog but about his other being, the hidden one, which was not subject to the temptations of the moment but did everything honestly and with firm resolution.
CHAPTER 31
In the afternoon, bent on their knees, together they scrubbed the defiled tombstones with rags soaked in kerosene. Amalia’s face was concentrated, and a muscle twitched occasionally in her upper lip. Gad, for some reason, spoke ceaselessly about Mauzy. If he had been alive, he would have prevented this desecration. But the hand that had poisoned him was the hand that had shattered the tombstones, and now we can only take vengeance for his spilt blood.
Amalia did not listen to the fatuous rhetoric that bubbled from his mouth. All her efforts were given over to scrubbing, and the many words he uttered only deafened her ears. She was almost going to say to him, Enough words, my head is splitting, but Gad finally fell silent of his own accord.
After hours of energetic cleaning, pale patches shone on the defiled tombstones. They were very careful not to damage the letters, but the letters still were damaged, and Gad passed over the scrubbed places, touching them as one touches a wound. He placed a wooden frame around the fragments of the shattered monument, and, wondrously, it was still possible to read what was written on it. He was pleased, and he expressed his pleasure with an odd clap of his hands.
Amalia was silent the whole time. After she finished the work of scrubbing, she sat down next to the fence and leaned on it. Her face was red, and large beads of sweat shone on her forehead. Arrogance was reflected in her eyes, as though she had acquired superiority by dint of the work of her hands. I didn’t shirk either, he was about to say, but didn’t.
Later he said, “Now everything is in its place. Nothing has happened. If they dare to come back, I’ll beat them.”
Amalia raised her eyes and looked at him coldly. It seemed she was about to close her eyes and pray.
“I’m going back to the house,” said Gad.
“I’ll sit here for a while,” she said.
“I’m going to prepare two lookouts. One next to the house and one here.”
“Do as you wish,” she said, in the voice of a woman encumbered with many children.
“I won’t abandon this property.” He spoke again with pathos.
Amalia looked at him without trust and said nothing.
“I’m going,” he said and left.
When he reached the courtyard he walked straight over to Limzy. Limzy bounded toward him with leaps of joy. Gad gave him the end of a sausage and said to him, “Soon we’ll go out.”
Perhaps because of the unmade beds, the house seemed abandoned. The smell of slivovitz mixed with the smell of kerosene stood in the air, and Gad remembered that not many hours ago he had poured out the two cans of kerosene. The doors of the stove were open, and cold darkness wafted out of its gaping interior.
Gad was frightened by the silent neglect. He went down to the cellar and brought up some dry logs and lit the stove. The fire seized the dry logs, and the smell of slivovitz stood out more. The thought that the day before Amalia had sat by the stove and drunk glass after glass aroused a kind of disgust in him. He stepped over to the window and opened it wide, saying, “Now that smell will get out of here.” As he pronounced those words, he remembered his trip at night from the Plain, the thick darkness, and the old peasant’s reprimand. He hadn’t imagined the look of his face would reveal his secrets to Amalia.
He thought of making a cup of coffee and sitting by the window. At one time sitting by the window used to knit together his scattered soul after a day of labor, but the evening was growing grayer, and he knew he had to go out and prepare the foxholes. Without delay he took up the spade and set out for the hill across the way with Limzy. That was one of his favorite lookout spots. From there he could see the steep peaks and the slopes beneath them, and now, after the rains, they spread out green and silent.
It was clear to him that bright days would no longer return. Everything was stained and besmirched. Nor were his thoughts as before. A kind of hidden sadness gnawed at his chest. “Amalia,” he called out, “I will work hard day and night and atone for my bad deeds. Don’t you understand?”
After digging for an hour he managed to hollow out a proper foxhole. He entered it and checked the visibility. It wasn’t limited. Broad expanses lay before him down to the Plain. “We’ll sit here and he in wait for them tonight.” He spoke to Limzy and was pleased to have him close by.
Now he thought of heading for the clearing near the cemetery and preparing a foxhole there too, but he remembered Amalia’s tense face and her cold expression, and he immediately rejected that idea.
While he was standing by the foxhole, he saw Amalia walking toward him, dressed in a brown dress. Her steps were young, as though she weren’t bearing a child in her womb. He immediately decided to go out to her. Amalia noticed him and stood still.
“Amalia,” he called out.
Amalia stood where she was without moving.
“I dug a foxhole up there, a deep and well-defended foxhole. Limzy and I will keep watch over the house.”
“I don’t understand that defense,” she responded and started walking.
“You shouldn’t sit in the house. You have to go out and meet them.”
“But they poisoned Mauzy. We already have one casualty. Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s why I’m with Limzy. That’s the reason I’m going out with him.”
When she drew closer and stood at his side, he saw how far her pregnancy had advanced. Her face had broadened, and it was as if her arms had pulled back and pushed out her belly. “You mustn’t sit in the house. You have to go out and meet them.” He repeated himself and immediately sensed that his words did not touch upon this meeting with her. They were the answer to some other question.
For a moment he forgot the fears and oppressions, and he spoke with a kind of youthful enthusiasm about the duty to guard the precious graves, because the vandals, Jew-haters, had one evil plan in mind: to destroy the Jews and expunge their memory from the face of the earth. Gad was stunned by his own voice for a moment. Amalia lowered her head, as though it were not her familiar brother speaking to her, the brother who had abandoned her at a hard time, but rather another brother, who had grown taller in a day and who had changed beyond recognition.
CHAPTER 32
Gad put on his Uncle Arieh’s fur coat and went out on watch. His eyes deceived him several times, and the night shadows looked like human figures, but Limzy didn’t make any mistake. The dog lay quietly, curled up around his own body. From time to time he would straighten up, listen with heightened attention, and then curl up again. It seemed to Gad he wasn’t guarding vigilantly enough, and he would wake him up and send him out into the darkness. Limzy would return promptly and curl up next to him. Amalia didn’t come out. The front shutter was open, and Gad could see her sitting there. She sat by the stove and sipped drink after drink.
Now he saw his late Uncle Arieh standing by him, wearing the very coat Gad was wearing. Marvelous earthiness poured from his figure. He was a handsome man even in his latter days. More than anything, his shoulders, broad and straight shoulders like those of the mountain peasants, testified to that. At one time Gad asked Sophia whether Uncle Arieh had been with he
r. She denied it, but she did say that no true man went without a woman. The old men were fond of him, and more than once they blessed his memory. They repeatedly recalled that, were it not for him, for his courageous guardianship, the place would have been abandoned, and without a holy place there is no prayer. They did not speak about his righteousness or about his loyalty, but about his courage. That disturbed Gad somewhat, as though they were casting doubt upon his own courage.
Toward morning, slumber suddenly overtook him, but he overcame it and ran back to the house with Limzy. First he thought he would milk the cow and feed it, but he changed his mind and went inside. Amalia was still asleep. The smell of slivovitz and the odor of sweat stood in the room, and it was clear that if he didn’t open the window now, the heavy odor would remain for many hours. He went over to the window and opened it.
Without opening her eyes, Amalia asked, “Who’s there?”
“Me,” Gad said and approached the couch.
“Who opened the curtains?”
“What curtains are you talking about?”
She sat up and supported herself on her arms, saying, “The curtains.”
“You were dreaming. On the Plain we had curtains, not here.”
Hearing that answer, she dropped her head back on the pillow like a girl who hadn’t gotten what she wanted.
“You were dreaming. On the Plain we had curtains, not here,” he repeated.
“I have a very bad headache,” she said, without removing her head from the pillow.
“I opened the window,” he said and walked over to it.
Amalia sank back into the pillow, and Gad went out, milked the cow, and gave it fodder. The cow was quiet, and Gad felt a hidden warmth for that mute beast which had lived by his side for years. For a long while he stood in the courtyard. Now he knew with a kind of clarity, as though after a great effort, that all he was fond of—the courtyard and all the tools: the sledgehammers, the pitchforks, the picks scattered about carelessly, which he and Amalia had used and, when necessary, repaired—all those mute souls would also remain for many days after he and Amalia were no longer there. Uncle Arieh had said several days before his death, “When the fruit of that tree ripens, I will no longer be here.” Gad felt a kind of hidden and frightening closeness to the broad wooden casks that stood full of rainwater. The cow sometimes used to plunge its head in them and slurp the pure water. Limzy would also stretch out his front paws and lap it. The rainwater was Amalia’s province. She used it for washing. Sunny days were also laundry days. She would bare her arms and immerse herself completely in the washbasin like a servant woman. Sometimes he would help her put up the clotheslines and hang out the wash. Her face next to the taut rope was that of a person happy with her lot.
Occasionally, at least on sunny days, a hint of jealousy would creep into his heart because she knew how to derive so much pleasure from her work, and he did everything in routine fashion, wearily, as though under compulsion. Only in time had he understood that she too lived with ups and downs. When she was on the rise, her face was bright like that of a young peasant woman, full of desire for life, happy and close not only to him but also to everything around her. But when she was depressed, which was frequently, her face was hidden behind a veil of darkness. He was scared then that she might alter and metamorphose into some other kind of creature. Those fears were vain. She would struggle with herself and finally be calmed. The light would return to her face. Now he saw the light in her face as he did not see it when it was truly lit up.
Meanwhile the sky was bare again, and the distant sun spread a pleasant warmth. He was tired from the night before, and yet he refused to heed his legs and go to bed. During the first years of their sojourn there, Amalia used to cut slices of golden russet apples and spread them out on mats in the sun to dry. Three or four days of sunlight would wrap the apple slices in a downy brown skin. Amalia used to make compotes out of the dried fruit, she baked them in corn pies, and sometimes she brought them to the table on large wooden platters. Now for some reason he remembered how she used to serve that fruit, with a kind of modest grace.
With the sun’s death the light in her face died. She would wrap herself in blankets and seemingly announce that she was withdrawing from the world. Not all the winter days were gloomy. There were also hours of light. When her malai came out right, high and browned and full of the smell of fresh cheese, she would say, “The malai came out well,” and the light of the summer would return to her face.
Now he was sorry the bright days were over and she would have to struggle with the little ghosts again. In the last few years he had clearly seen those dark creatures, a whole swarm of them, shapeless, like hairy lumps, plunging down and encircling her neck and her eyelids. Gad used to attack them furiously, and Amalia, hearing his shouts, would break out in a wild groan, as though warning him not to provoke them. These were the ghosts of winter, and more than anyone Amalia knew their oppressiveness. They plagued her with inordinate vehemence.
“Who’s there?” She woke up.
“Me.”
“I have a bad headache.”
“I opened the window. Do you want anything to drink?”
“No,” she said and sank her head in the pillow. Gad took a chair and sat at some distance from her cot. His colorful daydreams shrank, and he knew for certain they would never return. A vague sadness, which he had borne with him all night long, spread through his chest. They had celebrated her thirty-first birthday by drinking too much. Extremely drunk, she had burst out in wild laughter and called herself an old maid who has no hope left except unnatural death. Gad wanted to silence her, but he too was drunk. Now the memory of the night was like yesterday.
Amalia, he wanted to call out, don’t worry. I’ll help you. We have come a good way, and we’ll yet do a lot. No one will make us turn from this path. Through the good deeds of the multitude we too will be saved. Those were tired words that billowed up in his head.
She sank into sleep again. Her face was tense, and thin shadows of winter gloom hovered over her eyelids. It occurred to him that a damp towel would relieve her. Their father also used to lay a damp towel on his head when headaches assailed him.
“Amalia,” he said.
“What?”
“Wouldn’t you like a damp towel?”
“No.”
“A damp towel is good for headaches.”
“I don’t need anything,” she said, and Gad knew that evil visions were preying upon her sleep, and their remnants were still floating in her head. They were pressing on her scalp and temples. The pillows were powerless to dissipate the pressure, and the pain grew stronger from moment to moment.
“Why are you being stubborn?” he said and shut his mouth.
CHAPTER 33
The next day her face was feverish, and she vomited and shivered. Gad wrapped her in three thick woolen blankets and said, “They’ll warm you up, they have to warm you up.” Several hours passed and they didn’t warm her up. Gad stood by the burning stove, and in great desperation he cried out, “I don’t know what to do. Everything I do is useless!”
If he had had a horse and wagon he would have gone down and brought up the medic. Two weeks after Uncle Arieh’s death the horse had fallen down and died. It had been old, but its old age hadn’t been evident, and when they took it out to pasture, it sometimes used to raise its head and rush off at a gallop. Uncle Arieh had been very fond of it and said, “Sunik is a human horse. He understands what people want, and he knows his way around the roads.”
Since the horse’s death, the cart had stood in the courtyard like a body with no soul. At one time Gad wanted to buy a horse in the village, but Amalia had been strictly opposed. She feared the horse would carry him to the gentile women too easily. The matter of the horse would come up now and then and quickly fade away. Once he told her, “You’ll be sorry one day.” But she was adamant: “I accept the responsibility.”
“And if I get sick?” He wasn’t afraid to sp
eak bluntly.
“You mustn’t think about that.”
“What if we have to run away?”
“From On High we will be defended.”
Thus she closed the issue. Gad was stunned by that firmness of resolve, but in his heart he knew that Amalia knew his secrets. The dream that toward evening he would mount the horse and gallop straight to Sophia’s house, that dream, which he had secretly harbored for years, was nipped in the bud. In his heart he bore her a grudge because of that, but of course he didn’t blame her openly.
The next day the fever did not abate, and she was still shivering. Gad tried to serve her tea by the spoonful, but she couldn’t swallow the liquid, and he stood beside her bed, helpless, his shoulders narrowed.
In the evening a stream of words burst from her, words without any context, words only Gad could understand. For example, she suddenly called out, “You’re not my mother, you’re the store’s mother. You’re the Ruthenians’ mother.” Nor did Gad escape from her unscathed that evening. She called him “Sophia’s beau.”
He ignored her delirium and kept placing damp towels on her forehead day and night. For some reason he believed if he persisted she would calm down. That was merely a delusion. Heatedly she accused everyone who had shut her up in dark rooms, keeping her from the light of the sun and making false promises to her. She spoke a lot about Cimpulung, where their father had taken her when she caught pneumonia. She called the place the Garden of Light. For a moment she looked like that little timid Amalia who occasionally used to utter strange words, and whose mother used to hit her for that and insist that she speak in normal language, for otherwise people would think she was mentally handicapped. At moments of grace those unusual words would return to her here too and illuminate her face. Gad loved that face and would secretly keep watch for it, but now her mouth did not utter unusual words that she had collected in the store as a child but rather the words the Ruthenians used, harsh words that their mother used to say when she was angry. Strange, only one person escaped from her unscathed: Peter, the carpenter. That tall, pleasant gentile, of Polish origin, used to come twice a year to repair the shelves in the store, and once, on Passover eve, he brought four chairs with straw seats that immediately gave a feeling of newness to the house.
Unto the Soul Page 13