It’s strange to see the school in its silence. This is how the building looked when he returned from summer vacation, but then he had returned thirsty for his friends and his city. Now he fears every corner.
Hugo continues on. In this part of the city he can walk with his eyes closed. The familiar sight of Ivan next to the stairs instills in him the feeling that the city hasn’t changed. If Mr. Ivan is standing next to the stairs, that means that school will open soon.
The sight of the pharmacy changes everything. The elegant building, which had always been well maintained, has become a grocery store. Inside, the tall and gleaming cabinets, the marble counter, the vases of flowers—all have been uprooted. At the entrance stand crates of potatoes, red cabbage, garlic, and onions. The smell of smoked fish and rotten cabbage hangs in the air.
The pharmacy was one of Hugo’s favorite places. His parents felt complete fulfillment there. Their love flourished. Some customers would say, “Hugo is like his mother,” and others would put their hands on their hearts and say, “Hugo is a perfect copy of his father.” Only now, standing before the ruins, does he absorb what has happened: what was will never return.
Now his step is heavier, more like a shuffle. Hugo remembers that sometimes his mother would return home early to prepare parcels for the needy. Hugo, already home from school, would see her approaching from a distance, dressed in a flowered dress, more like a girl than like his mother.
Suddenly, enchanted pieces of his childhood come back to him, as vividly as when he first experienced them. Whenever his mother saw him from a distance, she would call out his name in excitement, as though he had been revealed to her in a vision.
Hugo’s mother also knew how to be affected by things that didn’t immediately strike the eye. His father used to say, “You can learn how to be moved by Julia.” His mother’s response came promptly. “Make no mistake,” she would say, “in Hans’s eyes, being moved isn’t regarded as a praiseworthy trait.”
“You’re wrong, my dear.”
Hugo’s feet bring him home.
The house stands where it always was. On the pleasant, broad balcony that looked out onto the city hangs blue laundry. The windows on the side are bare, and people can be seen inside. The big chandelier in the living room still hangs from the ceiling. For a long time Hugo stands there and looks, and what he had felt upon arriving at the city center now hits him with full force: the soul has fled from this precious place.
Evening falls and darkens the sights. Hugo wants to go back to the town square that he left that morning. He takes a shortcut through a Ukrainian neighborhood. There’s no electricity, and the houses are lit by big kerosene lamps. People sit at tables and eat. The tranquility of nightfall descends upon the street and the houses. That’s how it always was there, Hugo recalls. And it’s still the same.
As he’s about to leave the neighborhood, an old man calls out to him, “Who are you?”
“My name is Hugo Mansfeld,” he answers.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see our house.”
“Get out of here. I don’t want to see you again,” says the old man, waving his cane. Hugo quickens his steps, and before long he is back in the square, among the refugees.
67
When Hugo reaches the square, it is already night. Near the soup kettle and the food stands that have been set up, pots of coffee steam, and the murmur of people withdrawn into themselves is heard. A tall man wearing old army clothes hands Hugo a sandwich and a cup full of coffee. He does it cautiously and attentively, as though he knows that for hours no liquid has passed Hugo’s lips. Hugo sits at some distance from the bonfire. The sandwich is tasty, and the hot coffee warms him. The sorrow he experienced during the day fades slightly. He’s glad he came back to this place.
A woman approaches. “What’s your name, young man?” she asks.
Hugo looks into her eyes and answers.
“You’re Hans and Julia’s son, right?”
“Right.”
“They were wonderful people. There wasn’t a poor person in the city whom they didn’t give something to in their generosity.” She wants to add something, but her voice is choked. Hugo wants to ask her where they are and when they will be coming here, but seeing that her face has suddenly closed up, he doesn’t.
“Do you have warm clothing?” She changes her tone. “I’ll bring you a coat. It’s cold at night here.” She goes over to the pile of clothes that lie off to the side, fishes out a coat, and hands it to Hugo. “Put it on,” she says. “It’s cold here at night.” Hugo puts on the coat, and to his surprise he immediately feels comfortable.
“Thank you. What’s your name, if I may ask?” The words escape from his mouth.
“My name is Dora. I used to go into the pharmacy sometimes. It was a model pharmacy. Everybody was welcomed with a smile.”
The commotion in the square increases, but it doesn’t become an uproar. It’s evident that people here are careful of one another. The quiet talk reminds Hugo of a house of mourning. When his grandfather Jacob died, many people came to their house and surrounded them with loving silence. Hugo was then five years old. The quiet mourning seeped into him, and for many nights he dreamed about the people who had sat in his home without uttering a word.
“Why are the people so quiet?” he asked his mother then.
“What is there to say?” she replied, and said nothing more.
Hugo looks around him and becomes aware that some of the refugees are keeping a secret. People turn to them and ask them to reveal the secret to them, but for some reason they stubbornly refuse. A sturdy, overwrought woman with wild hair falls on one of the secret-keepers and vehemently demands that he tell her what happened at Camp Thirty-three.
“I don’t know. I was outside of that camp.” The secret-keeper defends himself.
“Your face says that you know exactly what happened, but you’ve decided not to reveal that knowledge.”
“Nobody knows.”
“But you were there, and you know. Why are you denying me and the people like me clear knowledge of what happened?”
“I can’t,” he says, and his voice chokes.
“So you do know.” The woman doesn’t relent. “I felt that you knew. You can’t leave us in a fog forever. Just tell us.”
“I can’t,” says the man, and bursts into tears.
“Why are you torturing him?” A man standing to the side mixes in.
“Because I have to know. My father and my mother, my two brothers, my husband, and my two children were there. Don’t I deserve to know? I have to know.”
“But he already told you that he can’t.” He continues defending the weeping man.
“That’s no answer, it’s concealment. Let him tell me what he knows. I deserve to have him tell me.”
The man’s weeping grows stronger, but the woman doesn’t relent. She seems to believe that the weeping man could bring her dear ones back to life, and for some hidden reason he is refusing to do it.
Finally people separate them.
That night many secrets are revealed, but there is no weeping. The silence grows. The refugees sip mugs of coffee and glasses of brandy and numb the sorrow within them. Hugo feels fear. He’s afraid that Mariana will come and fail to find him near the gate, so he decides to go back and sit there. But at that hour the gate is surrounded by many soldiers. From time to time the gate opens, and an officer announces something. The soldiers are quiet, expressing no resentment.
Later one of the refugees, an unpleasant-looking man, tells Hugo that the field court has been sitting for days, judging collaborators and informers. As for the whores, there’s no doubt, they were condemned and executed that very day.
Hugo hears, curled up in the long coat, and closes his eyes. Before his eyes Mariana rises to her full height, wearing a flowered dress and standing in the doorway of the closet. “Why don’t you read me some poems from the Bible?” she asks. And when she appr
oaches him, Hugo immediately notices a gaping hole in her neck, a hole with no signs of blood. The flesh around it is burned, and it is gray.
Hugo awakens. The bonfire is blazing in full force. The refugees sleep, wrapped in their coats. Potatoes and chunks of meat they laid on the coals have become charred.
68
Hugo remains awake. I’ll remember this night, too, he says to himself. The passing hours fill him till there’s no more room, but at the same time he feels hollow, as if he were being plundered from within.
He opens the suitcase and there before his eyes are Mariana’s two flowered dresses—one mostly dark red and the other mostly sky blue. Both of them suited her. Both of them enhanced the light that filled her face and complemented her long neck and arms. There are also two pairs of shoes, both high-heeled. They made her taller and emphasized the beautiful outlines of her breasts. Sometimes she would say, “There’s nothing like high-heeled shoes. They were created for Mariana.” There are also two folded corsets. Mariana had a complex attitude toward corsets. Sometimes she complained that they made it hard for her to breathe, but when she was in a good mood, she would admit that the corset molded her figure. She spoke about her breasts with pity. “My poor breasts,” she used to say, “what hasn’t been done to them.” There are also silk stockings, a few slips, bottles of perfume, lipsticks, powder, and a bottle and a half of brandy. From those few objects, Mariana is sculpted. “I don’t need much,” she would say. “I just want people to leave me alone.”
Hugo doesn’t forget even now how self-involved Mariana was. There were days when she forgot him, and he almost collapsed from hunger. But the light that glowed in her face would erase all the little injustices.
Years will pass, and Hugo will continue to wonder what libation she poured into his soul, and under what circumstances she was taken from him. If she has been within me until now, he would say, that means that one day we’ll meet again.
Hugo closes the suitcase carefully and looks around. The bonfire now burns quietly. The refugees sleep, but some of them lie there with their eyes open. The woman with the wild hair who demanded immediate information has also sunk into deep sleep.
Flames leap out of the bonfire, and a man rises to his knees and begins to whisper. At first it sounds like a prayer, but soon it becomes clear that the man has come to the conclusion that those who haven’t yet returned are not going to. In vain he has deluded himself and the others.
No one responds to his whispering. The people lie huddled under their coats like children. It occurs to Hugo that the man didn’t intend to speak to the people’s wakefulness, but to pour his secret discoveries into their sleep.
A short woman emerges from the darkness with a carton of sandwiches, a pot of coffee, and some mugs. She approaches one of the refugees and offers him a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” the man asks in surprise.
“I don’t need sleep,” she says apologetically.
“You won’t be able to keep it up. A person has to rest.”
“I may be a short, thin woman, but I am very strong. You can’t imagine how strong I am. Another woman in my place would have collapsed. I don’t feel any weakness. I have the strength to undergo more.”
“You’re going to work like this all the time?”
“That’s what I’ve been doing since I left the hiding place and learned what I learned.”
“Have you no other plans for the future?”
“I do this willingly. If only I could do more. Take, please.”
The man takes a sandwich in one hand and a mug in the other and promptly starts drinking.
Before long the woman stops next to Hugo and offers him a sandwich and coffee. Hugo takes the gift without saying anything. “You look familiar to me, son,” she says.
“My name is Hugo Mansfeld.”
“Good God,” she says, and kneels. “You’re Julia and Hans’s son. How did you end up here?”
“I’m waiting for my parents.”
“You mustn’t wait for them,” she whispers a bit louder. “We have to leave here. Whoever hasn’t come by now probably won’t come soon. We have to leave here, together, so that we can all watch over one another.”
“Won’t my parents come?”
“Not now. Now we have to leave.”
“For where?” Hugo asks hesitantly.
“We have to leave together and watch over one another. Brothers don’t say, I’ve already given. Brothers give more, and we have, thank God, a lot to give. One gives a cup of coffee and the other helps a woman bandage her wounds. One gives a blanket, and the other raises the pillow of a person who’s having trouble breathing. We have a lot to give. We don’t know yet how much we have.”
She speaks in a flood of words. Hugo doesn’t understand everything she plucks from her heart, but her words seep into him with the hot coffee. In time he will say to himself, This was like a field hospital——people and blankets and burning pain. The small woman goes from place to place, bandaging wounds, driving away bad thoughts, and serving coffee and sandwiches.
A man shows her the stump of his hand and asks, “Better?”
“Much better,” she says, and kisses his forehead.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Translation copyright © 2010 by Schocken Books,
a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Schocken Books and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Israel as Pirkhei Ha’afeilah by
Keter Publishing House Ltd., Jerusalem, in 2006. Copyright © 2006 by
Aharon Appelfeld and Keter Publishing House Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Appelfeld, Aron.
[Pirhe ha-afelah. English]
Blooms of darkness / Aharon Appelfeld ; translated from the Hebrew by
Jeffrey M. Green
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-8052-4285-0
I. Green, Yaacov Jeffrey. II. Title.
PJ5054.A755P5713 2010 892.4′36—dc22 2009033532
www.schocken.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Cha
pter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Copyright
Blooms of Darkness Page 22