Long Summer Nights

by Aharon Appelfeld

  The old priest sighed, as though he had done his duty. From now on everything was in the hands of heaven.

  It was silent. Yanek was hungry and tired and could barely stand up.

  Suddenly the priest spoke to Vera and said, “Get a bowl of soup for the boy. What’s your name?”

  “Yanek.”

  In a few minutes Vera served him a bowl of soup and some vegetables.

  “Give him a slice of bread, too,” said the priest. After doing what the priests had asked of her, Vera closed the door and blew out the lantern.

  Yanek finished the soup and the bread. With his mind emptied of thought, he got into the cart, curled up in Grandpa Sergei’s military winter coat and fell asleep right away.

  49

  At midnight the cold woke him up. The house was shut, and searing cold already prevailed in the large courtyard. Yanek hopped and rubbed his hands. Finally, when the efforts to warm up were fruitless, he lit a campfire. Luckily for him, nobody woke up. He stood and warmed himself, and he had some tea.

  Early in the morning some people gathered in the courtyard. They were dressed in work clothes and were apparently on the way to work. After waiting for a while, a man went and knocked on the door.

  “Who’s there?” a woman’s voice was heard.

  “We came for Sergei’s funeral.”

  “Funerals aren’t held at dawn,” the same voice answered. Afterward the family gathered. Two brothers were somewhat similar to Sergei, but their children looked different.

  “How many years has it been since you saw Sergei?” An old man approached them and asked.

  “Many years,” answered one of the brothers.

  “When did he die?”

  “The day before yesterday.”

  Those simple, straightforward words sounded clear in the cold air of the morning. They kept repeating: “We came from darkness and we’ll go into darkness. There’s no point in asking.”

  Then the priest appeared, wearing his ceremonial robes. He raised his two white hands and called out loud, “Welcome.”

  The two young novices approached him, and the priest whispered something in their ears.

  People kept gathering, and the courtyard filled up. Then the two novices brought the coffin and set it on a platform. At the sight of the coffin, there was movement among the people. Grandpa Sergei lay there with makeup on his face, dressed in a black jacket and a white shirt, and wearing a green necktie. His formal appearance and the perfume they had sprayed on him did away with all the signs of his recent life. It was clear — he no longer belonged to here.

  One of his brothers, seeing the well-dressed body, was moved and said, “Just the way he was.”

  The second brother didn’t stop crying.

  Suddenly one of the villagers raised his voice and said, “Sergei, you were our hero. Our children spoke about you before they went to sleep. We missed you. We expected you would return one day. But we didn’t want you to return this way,” he said and burst into tears.

  Meanwhile many other people gathered and stood next to the fence. All of them wanted to see his face in the coffin, but there was no pushing.

  Suddenly a woman’s voice was heard. All the women had been in love with him. Every time he came back home from the army, there was a celebration. All the girls envied Tanya, his girlfriend.

  An old man pointed at Yanek and said, “This boy brought him. Look at him.”

  No one approached him, as if he were a detail without value in Sergei’s journey.

  Now everyone was waiting for the priest’s words. The priest straightened his clothes and his hair, took a few steps forward, and began: “Since your childhood, Sergei, since I baptized you into the faith, you have been with us. We saw you grow up, study in school, with in the fields with your parents. You were devoted to your parents and to the church. You never missed a service. When the day came for you to enlist, you joined the army, and there, too, you met with praise. You rose higher and higher, and in time you became the commander of a unit for special missions. Your heart didn’t swell, and your eyes weren’t haughty. On leaves, when you returned home, you would put on work clothes and go to work in the fields and the dairy. Your parents weren’t the only ones who were proud of you. The whole village looked up to you. When you finished your long tour of duty, decorated with medals for excellence, everyone expected you to come home. Your girlfriend expected you to marry her, but you put off returning. People saw you in bars, in gambling houses, in coffee houses, and at the movies. I heard, and I was sorry for your soul. I loved you. I knew how much goodness was in you. I gathered my strength and wrote you a letter. I hate to write sermonizing letters. It’s better for someone to come back to himself from within himself, without reminding him of his sins. You didn’t answer me. In time I learned that you found a decent woman and married her. I was glad. I hoped that one day you would come back to us. Then your young wife died, and you became a widower. The Jews who had taken you under their wing went bankrupt, and you began to wander. From time to time I received a brief greeting from you. They told me that you had adopted the ways of the wanderers, who seek their way to God. Several times I wanted to go and visit you, but I didn’t manage. There were understandable delays and incomprehensible ones. You didn’t wait for me to come. You went to your final rest in the place where God chose to take you to Him. It appears that the young Sergei and the grown man, Sergei, were loyal servants of God.

  “Now your journey is done. Now we are accompanying you to your final rest. In the name of your ancestors, who have been buried here for generations, and in all of our names, we ask your pardon if we haven’t acted properly toward you. You are dear to us and will remain dear,” the priest finished his eulogy, and there was a lot of weeping.

  The two novices covered the coffin and bore it to the cemetery. From then on there were no more speeches, just prayers. Even after the coffin was buried in the earth, the people didn’t disperse. The weeping and fragments of talk continued. The priest removed his sacred robes, and all the splendor that had enveloped him departed. He looked like one of the old peasants: short, bent over, leaning on his staff, and cautious in his old age.

  50

  Once the people departed, Yanek dared to approach the priest and introduce himself again. “My name is Yanek. I brought Grandpa Sergei here.”

  “How long were you with Sergei?” the priest asked with dry objectivity.

  “About a year and a half, your holiness. My father brought me to him and asked him to watch over me.”

  “Are you a Jew?”

  “Yes I am, your holiness.”

  “How did he watch over you?”

  “He taught me to be a Ukrainian. I knew how to talk a little Ukrainian, but Grandpa Sergei taught me to speak correctly, to pronounce all the words right, and to act like a Ukrainian.”

  “Did you go to church?”

  “They don’t allow lepers, people with mental illnesses, and wanderers into the church. Among other things, Grandpa Sergei taught me to speak sparingly and to be satisfied with little.”

  Upon hearing Yanek’s words, the priest bowed his head. After a pause he roused himself and asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going out on the road to look for my parents and grandparents.”

  “Where were you born, and where did you live before the war?”

  Yanek told him the name of his small city.

  Suddenly, with no warning, the priest turned his head to the back door of the church and called out with a thin voice, “Vera, come to me.” Vera arrived, and the priests instructed her: “This lad is going out on the road. Make him a basket with bread, cheese, hardboiled eggs, and pickled cucumbers.”

  “I’ll do it right away.”

  “Go in peace. By virtue of the mercy you showed to Sergei, may God preserve you and return you to your dear ones.”

  Again he was by himself. It occurred to him that if it rained, he could go into one of the huts used to store fire
wood, and he would see again everything that was shown to him at Grandpa Sergei’s funeral. Rain didn’t fall, and he stopped next to a tall plane tree and said to himself, “This is how we used to stop after a period of wandering.”

  Grandpa Sergei often said, “A wanderer who doesn’t exert his legs isn’t worthy of being called a wanderer, just an idle passerby.”

  In their long journey, they had met quite a few wanderers. Most of them had forgotten their destination. They were lazy, drowsing by the side of the road and in the entrances to bars, dragging along trails to peasant houses to ask for charity. To tell the truth they were beggars, not wanderers. A true wanderer is poor, but his poverty doesn’t degrade him.

  Now Yanek remembered the wanderers who had tried to flee to the monastery of Saint Mary. They had been close to the monastery, and with some effort they could have gotten there. But the will to struggle had died out in them. The young peasants robbed them of their packs and bundles, and they also kicked them.

  Grandpa Sergei called out in encouragement, but, as always, most of the wanderers faltered and lay down on the ground.

  Memory of being together with Grandpa Sergei filled him with longing. Grandpa Sergei had strength that he never expressed by using high words or raising his voice. Injustices and coarseness made him angry, but he never allowed anger to take control over him. All his movements were restrained, and he himself inspired silence.

  Only now did understanding begin to seep into Ya-nek, that he remained to preserve Grandpa Sergei’s treasures. Neither the priest nor his brothers understood him. But Yanek would have to work hard to collect his clear words, the implicit sentences, those that were spoken in melody or silence.

  Once, when they were sitting at the entrance to a church, they heard the priest’s sermon. Grandpa Sergei listened hard and finally said, “Spread with honey.”

  Yanek already knew that this insight was the essence of Grandpa Sergei’s conception: speak simply, clearly, in a few chosen words. Anyone who speaks at length and piles up words is suspect of deceit.

  51

  It was evening again, and Yanek lit a fire. The supplies that the priest’s housekeeper had given him were fresh, and he quickly prepared them, as he had done while Grandpa Sergei was alive.

  Since Grandpa Sergei’s departure, he makes a point of doing everything exactly the same as before. Sometimes he feels that he’s more attentive.

  Sometimes it seems to Yanek that Grandpa Sergei had a doctrine that could be taught, but how does one learn a doctrine that is mainly silence?

  Once when Yanek brought him a small package of apples, he took an apple in his hand, and, after touching it and smelling it, he said: “God, I love your apples.”

  On cold nights, when the campfire didn’t warm him, he would get up, rub his hands together, add wood to the fire, put a potato in it, and whisper: “God, what would we do without you? We are so narrow-minded that we take most of your gifts as self-evident.”

  When melancholy gripped him, he would ask Yanek for the brandy bottle and say, “God sometimes allows us to sin so we can recover the lost image of God.”

  Once Yanek asked him whether God dwelled in the church. He didn’t answer with words, but he raised his hands and made a sign – no, and he immediately pointed at his chest as the dwelling place of God. Yanek loved his movements, the way he rose and sat, the way he curled his body before falling asleep. Every movement of his had power, but also humility.

  Without noticing, Yanek closed his eyes and fell asleep. In his dream he saw his beloved uncle Joseph sitting on the ground. His hair had turned gray, and his two large, burning eyes were dulled, but he kept looking. Yanek recognized him, knelt, and called out, “Uncle Joseph.” Uncle Joseph opened his large eyes and, with a weak voice, he said, “I’m tired.”

  “I’ll make you a cup of tea,” Yanek offered.

  “No need. I’m tired.”

  Yanek didn’t give up. He brought him a cup of tea and put a spoonful to his lips. His uncle sipped, raised his eyes, and he seemed to recognize Yanek, who kept spooning tea.

  “Where were you, Uncle Joseph?”

  “In a place it’s impossible to talk about,” he said and leaned his head against a tree trunk.

  Yanek woke from the dream. It was morning.

  52

  After that there was silence, as after every war. Cows and horses were scattered on the fields. Here and there a farmer was estimating the damage of the war. Far off on the horizon a man was walking on crutches.

  At this season the family used to gather on Grandpa Jacob’s farm. At the last gathering, Yanek was nine. Grandma Sara was no longer among the living, but her two daughters continued to run the household and take care of Grandpa.

  Among those who came to these gatherings was his beloved Uncle Joseph, dressed well and smiling to everyone. Uncle Joseph was the beacon of the family. His talents were already evident when he was in high school. He was accepted in the university at sixteen, and there, too, he never ceased surprising people, but women were his undoing. He married twice and divorced twice. The family also stood by him when he stumbled. After a while he recovered, and his research once again produced marvelous results.

  At the last gathering Uncle Joseph had sat next to his sister, Yanek’s mother. His sister looked like him, but her temperament was different. She married a prosperous merchant and led an ordinary life. Uncle Joseph loved her, and every time he got into trouble, or his spirits fell, he would come to be with her and hear her advice.

  A few days before the gathering, bad dreams had disturbed Yanek. He wanted to talk to his mother, but for some reason he didn’t dare. In the end, when he did dare, her mind wasn’t open to him. She said, over and over, “Not now.”

  Though there were no inauspicious signs, the people spoke about the imminent war as if it were an established fact: the trains weren’t on time in arrivals or departures, people returned to their parents in the villages, the streets were full of abandoned animals. But aside from those bad signs, that it was also possible to interpret differently, there were no visible signs. Business went on as usual, the streets were swept and washed in the morning, and the shop windows were lit at night. The coffee houses were crowded with people, and couples walked arm in arm on the promenade.

  Yanek was still in school. Surprise quizzes and examinations oppressed him, but the grades he brought home were excellent. His parents were content.

  At last the gloom left his mother’s face, and she said, not without an apology, “Come, dear, let’s sit and talk. The time is available.”

  Yanek wanted to tell her about the dreams that frightened him, but the words, or rather the clear pictures that scared him, passed from his eyes in daylight, and he didn’t know why he had been so panicked.

  “Tell me, my dear,” his mother asked him again, but the more she asked, the more the words shrank and went silent.

  Yanek was pained by that block. He promised his mother that soon he would tell her everything.

  But meanwhile the preparations for the gathering at his grandfather’s farm were over.

  Early in the morning a carriage came and gathered them. Yanek was excited. He hadn’t shut his eyes all night long, and now, when he was sitting next to his mother in the carriage, he only wanted to sleep in her lap.

  He slept for half the trip, and the remnants of his dreams drifted off as if they had never existed.

  The road up to the Carpathians, which Yanek knew very well, was lit up. Hardly had two hours passed before they were at the gates of the farm.

  Two Labrador retrievers greeted them with barks of joy. The yard man, who knew them well, came out to greet them.

  “Here we are,” his father called out. He helped his wife out of the carriage.

  Grandpa Jacob had changed since his wife’s death. His back bent. His gaze softened. The presence of that tall, broad-shouldered man was diminished in the courtyard. Yanek’s mother, who loved her father dearly, fell into his arms and we
pt. Her father stroked her head as in her childhood.

  Jennie, his mother’s sister, who was also tall, came, dressed in pleasant autumn clothes. She had taken a degree in pharmacy and was about to open a pharmacy. She had gone to the big city to study on her own, and she had graduated with honors. She hugged and kissed the arrivals, and when they praised her achievements she said, “You can’t imagine how stupid the other students were, especially the women. You should know that wisdom does not dwell in the pharmacy school.”

  “Would you choose a different profession?”

  “Certainly. But the medical school doesn’t let Jews in. The Jews are forced to study — if they insist on studying — just pharmacy and dentistry, and even that with restrictions. The thought that every day I’d have to hurt people, just that thought, deterred me from studying dentistry.”

  Hardly had she spoken when her face went pale, and her heart felt faint. His two younger sisters quickly brought her some pear conserves and a cup of water. Jen-nie sipped, tasted the conserves, and her face recovered. “The passage from the flat city to the mountains made me dizzy,” she said, and added, “Nothing can be done.”

  “What’s the matter, Jennie?” they surrounded her.

  “Nothing, just some dizziness,” she said, and everyone laughed.

  The return to the farm was always exciting. Some people turned pale, some shed a tear, and some broke into a flood of speech. Even in ordinary times the return to the farm was exciting. No one arrived there indifferent.

  True, since Grandma Sara’s death, the look of the farm, and especially Grandpa Jacob himself, had changed. Life here was full of non-speech. His children knew about Grandpa’s distress, and everyone came to the gathering.

  During the gathering the conversations and meals calmed everyone’s mind slightly. Grandpa repeatedly told about times past, about the farm’s days of greatness, about Grandma Sara’s doings, about the sorrow and joys. They celebrated the holidays here in full splendor. Especially Passover and Shavuot. Hanukkah and Purim also raised their spirits. Grandpa Sara had made every holiday into a celebration.