Long Summer Nights

by Aharon Appelfeld

  53

  Everyone loved to return to the farm. While Grandma Sara was alive, it was, of course, different. On Friday evening she would light candles and bless them, and Grandpa would say the kiddush blessing on the wine, and childhood days would once again light the house.

  Now the members of the household sit and converse, recall memories. As though on their own, resentments and insults from long ago rise to the surface.

  Surprisingly, Uncle Joseph announces that he has great love for the farm. Every time he returns, his life is renewed. Separation from the farm caused him quite a bit of depression. It was too bad he hadn’t understood that earlier — life was more important than the scientific research he was engaged in. It sucked up your marrow and dried your bones.

  Everyone listened to him. Grandpa sat in the wicker chair and didn’t utter a word. Once he used to be an active participant in these discussions. Now he just sat, as though to say, we’ve already discussed that. I’ve seen too many contradictions in my life. To my regret, they can’t be resolved.

  The two sisters, who had never been away from the farm for long, prepared lunch as in times past. Grandpa recovered. He sat at the head of the table next to his eldest daughter, Yanek’s mother.

  Vegetable soup was served, and it gave off a thick vapor, and after it there came a great awakening.

  Yanek’s mother sank into conversation with her brother Joseph. Yanek suddenly felt alone. At first it seemed to him that the gathering would be happy, because his birthday was approaching. The family used to give presents early. But this time no one offered him a present, and that darkened his mood.

  It was good that Aunt Jennie approached him, hugged him, gave him a kiss, and asked, “How are you, my dear? Why is your face sad?”

  “I have bad dreams at night,” Yanek told her.

  “Did you tell about them to Mother?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mother has been busy recently, and I didn’t want to bother her. When I decided to tell her, she said, ‘Not now.’”

  “When it’s a matter of dreams, of this sensitive and painful expression, you mustn’t be polite. You say: ‘Mother, I want to tell you my dream. It’s urgent.’”

  “I told her in my own words.”

  “I’m ready to listen,” said Aunt Jenny in a decisive way. Yanek was surprised. He hadn’t expected to be understood so easily.

  “Aunt Jennie, at this moment, I can’t find the words to tell you. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you,” Yanek spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own.

  “Strange,” said Aunt Jenny. This time she was also surprised. But, to her credit, she didn’t press him.

  Yanek went outside to look at the farm. At this season, early spring, most of the trees were still bare. Here and there an almond tree bloomed. Grandpa loved his orchards. With his own hands he pruned them and took care of diseases and the fallen branches. He didn’t manage to convey his love for the fields and orchards or his love for the tradition to all his children, though most of his children were drawn to the holidays. On the holidays they went up to the farm and stayed there for two or three days.

  When he met Aunt Jennie in the living room, she hugged him and asked, “Now do you have the words to tell me your dreams? I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be a secret between us.”

  Yanek smiled and said, “Why should I make you sad?”

  “It’s not right to leave you with dreams like that.”

  “This evening, before I go to sleep, I’ll tell you.”

  Meanwhile Grandpa woke from his doze and everyone surrounded him. He spoke about his longings for Grandma. They had been together for most of their lives. She had been sixteen when they married. They had improved the farm and raised their children with their own hands.

  Uncle Joseph took the floor again. “Father, we’re always with you. We love you. The farm is precious to us. You dwell in every one of your children. You gave each of your children a portion of yourself. Mother was no different from you. Her generous heart is planted in all of us. It was easy to love her. She always had some food or drink with her, not to mention a comforting word. The folk songs she used to sing to us before we went to sleep are still stored up within us like a sweet secret, and on the long summer nights she used to tell us folk tales. True, each of us has gone in a different direction, but we have remained close to you and Mother.”

  After Uncle Joseph spoke, it seemed that a lot of people in the living wanted to add something, but that was wrong. His emotional words stunned them. For some time the living room remained wordless.

  After that Yanek’s mother dressed him for the night and kissed his forehead. Hardly had she left his bedroom when Aunt Jennie appeared, “May I sit next to you? Do you want to tell me about a dream or two?”

  “In a little while.”

  “I promise I won’t tell anyone about them.”

  Yanek began to speak, “Father, Mother, and I were standing in a field and looking at the sunset. Suddenly big horses came out of the horizon, horses such as I’ve never seen. There was fierce desire in their whinnying, and it was clear that we wouldn’t escape alive from their galloping. ‘Lie down,’ Father called out in a horrible voice. Mother and I did lie down.”

  “And what happened?” asked Jennie.

  “Apparently the horses jumped over us, but the fear remained.

  “The next day I had another dream. This time we were on a lawn. The big horses were grazing quietly. I wondered how the anger and desire had disappeared from their eyes. I looked at them. Their eyes said, ‘You’re wrong: the anger and desire are within us. We are nourishing them in secret, and when the time comes, you’ll see them.’

  “Every night the horses come back. I have no doubt that they want to gobble us up. But for some reason they haven’t done so yet. Will they gobble us up?”

  “Horses don’t gobble people up,” Aunt Jennie replied.

  “But these are wild horses.”

  “They’re not wild horses. Just big ones.”

  That last sentence remained in Yanek’s mind before he sank into a deep sleep.

  54

  Early the next morning Uncle Joseph and Aunt Jennie left the farm. Yanek’s grandfather and his mother sat in the dining room and drank coffee. They spoke slowly and with pauses, and they were clearly close to one another. Yanek’s father sat outdoors, sunk in thought. Ya-nek usually didn’t disturb him, but this time he violated that principle and approached him.

  “Father, good morning.”

  “Good morning, dear.”

  A year had passed since his business had collapsed. True, every month Grandpa sent him some money to live on, but that assistance didn’t make him happy. The thought that he was needy darkened his spirit.

  “Why did you get up early, dear?” his father wondered.

  “The light here woke me up.”

  “Too bad. Morning sleep is the best sleep.”

  “Father, why didn’t you go in to drink coffee?”

  “In a little while.”

  Suddenly Yanek realized something he hadn’t grasped before. His father’s big lumberyard had been seized. Now the doors were locked with chains and sealed with wax. No one entered or left. His father spent most of the day at home, pacing about from room to room, and when his mother asked him something, he stood there in silence. He didn’t speak with anyone. Uncle Joseph, whom he loved dearly, also failed to get a word out of his mouth.

  “There’s no reason to blame yourself. The conditions changed. Logic has been lost. Everything is chaotic. Once the storm has passed, life will get back to normal,” Uncle Joseph kept whispering.

  His father didn’t answer. His gaze showed clearly that he didn’t agree. His father usually didn’t argue with his brother-in-law. Uncle Joseph was a master of language, and he always won arguments, but Yanek’s father had the power of silence, which he got from his life experience. He had worked for years in forests and sawmills. The various workers,
the porters, were men without words. The sounds they emitted from their mouths were like the sounds of tall trees and the voices of animals. His father understood them, and they obeyed him. Now not only was the lumberyard closed. His father’s whole being was trapped. No one, except the family, dared to approach him.

  For lunch the sisters made borscht with sour cream, blintzes, and a fruit salad for dessert. Without Uncle Joseph and Aunt Jennie, the house was silent. Yanek’s father sat and drank the red borscht with the haste of an unfortunate man. The simple, pretty house, that the sisters kept tidy with devotion, the house where generations have lived, suddenly seemed exposed to danger.

  Grandpa approached Yanek and asked, “What are you doing these days?”

  Yanek was alarmed by the question and said, “I’m attending school.”

  “Are you a good student?” he asked with a smile.

  “I do the best I can,” Yanek answered, knowing that his grandfather would be pleased by his answer.

  Then one of the younger sisters burst into bitter tears. Grandpa knelt, hugged her, and spoke softly to her, saying, “No disaster happened. The world is open before you. You can go wherever you want. You’re only twenty-three.”

  Yanek’s mother also came to console her, but the younger sister wasn’t consoled. She sobbed with the voice of a persecuted person who refuses to be consoled. “Everything is closing up. Where will I go? I’ll never be able to get to Herbert.”

  When all the words of consolation were in vain, Ya-nek’s mother hugged her and took her out to the gardens, to the soft light of the afternoon, and she said, “Come to me, my dear. It’s quieter in our house. Here threatening ghosts roam. There’s no point in sitting and listening to them. Here everything is laden with the past. It’s stifling. You have to live in the city, to walk on sidewalks, to dawdle and look in shop windows. To sit in coffee houses. Herbert was an episode. He happened to cross your path and went back to where he came from. Who knows who he was and what he carries within him. How many times did you meet him?”

  “Twice.”

  “We must say, as they did in past generations: it’s all for the best.”

  Her words fell on deaf ears. She was stubborn. “Everything is closing up. There’s no opening. I’m choking,” she spoke and fainted, and only when the old Ukrainian housekeeper spoke to her in Ukrainian did she open her eyes and ask, “Who’s here? Why have you all gathered together?”

  The housekeeper answered, “You had a bad dream and thought it was reality. We came to take you out of the dream, and we’re all here to greet you.”

  The gentile housekeeper, who had served in that house for generations, hugged her like a hurt child and gathered her to her breast.

  In the evening a carriage came to collect them. Grandpa, the two young sisters, and the Ukrainian housekeeper stood at the gate. Grandpa hugged and kissed those who were departing. The housekeeper hugged Yanek’s mother and said, “May God preserve you. He is the only one you can depend on. Come back to us as soon as you can.”

  His mother hugged her sisters and tears flowed on her face.

  That was the last gathering at the farm. No one imagined that it would be the last.

  Yanek was tired. The short time at the farm filled him with sights. It was hard for him to think about them. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  55

  When Yanek awoke from a long sleep, it was morning. Rain had fallen at night, but Yanek wasn’t wet. He had slept in Grandpa Sergei’s army coat, and he had wrapped his head in a tarpaulin.

  The long dream was still within him, but it wasn’t clear to him. He knew it was a dream of many places and much talking, some of them in the farmhouse, and some in the gardens. He had met many people, but the morning erased them from his mind. Before his eyes stood the tree and the cart.

  Just then he felt remorse, because he hadn’t left Grandpa Sergei’s clothes with the priest, so they could be buried next to his grave.

  Without his noticing it, the remorse raised up sights from Grandpa Sergei’s funeral: the priest, the two novices who had taken care of all the preparations before the burial.

  Grandpa Sergei had a low opinion of the churches that didn’t allow the mentally ill, lepers, and wanderers to enter their gates. But when he was lying in the coffin, wearing a black jacket and a green necktie, he seemed peaceful, so as to say: we all die. We all will be lain in a coffin. All the ceremonies are false, but, what can be done? People need this child’s game.

  Yanek was thirsty and lit a campfire. He placed the kettle on the burning branches. Before long, he was holding a cup of tea. While drinking it he realized that the long dream that twisted in his mind was still a tangle and couldn’t be unsnarled.

  Meanwhile, in the grove before him, wounded soldiers gathered, men who had been demobilized and were making their way back home. They were lost refugees, wanderers missing arms and legs. The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the grove and the men, and for a moment it seemed to Yanek that in a little while a village holy man would appear before them, would speak to them with soft words, and instruct them to go to a place where there was hot water for showers.

  No holy man appeared, but a truck full of food arrived. Two soldiers from the Red Army stood in the door and handed out bread and tins of sardines. The men crowded the sides of the truck, but there wasn’t a riot. Yanek approached and received a loaf of bread and a can of sardines.

  A man who was sitting under a plane tree stared at Yanek. Finally he approached him and asked, “Do you speak Yiddish?”

  Yanek hesitated and in the end said, “My mother tongue is German, but I understand Yiddish.”

  “The war is over. You can take the wooden cross off your neck,” the man spoke clearly.

  “Soon,” Yanek said.

  “Why not now? It will remove you from fear and loosen the shackles you put around your neck.”

  “I still have some obligations before I do that,” said Yanek, feeling that he was speaking the truth.

  “Obligations to whom?” the man jumped up.

  “Don’t worry. I am faithful to our God,” said Yanek.

  “Do you come from an orthodox Jewish home?”

  “No,” Yanek answered promptly.

  “Sorry. I have just one more thing to tell you: not far from here they’re giving out used clothing.”

  Yanek didn’t know what to say. Finally he just said “thank you,” harnessed himself to the cart, and set out. He walked for a long time. At least he stopped beneath a broad oak tree.

  It was on a hill from which he could see the fields and orchards, and they were entirely green. Here, too, soldiers who had just been demobilized were walking in long lines. Refugees and cripples, though they were walking together, each one looked lost.

  Hardly had he set the shafts down on the ground when thirst assailed him again. He went to gather firewood, and with every movement that he made until he lit the campfire, he saw Grandpa Sergei before his eyes. His features hadn’t changed. The cry, “Grandpa Sergei,” escaped his lips.

  Flames rose from the twigs, and in a few minutes a cup of tea was in his hands.

  After the funeral it had seemed to him that Grandpa Sergei had sailed off into the expanses of heaven, and he would never see him again. But there were hours when Grandpa Sergei appeared to be tangible, and every part of his body was full of vitality. It occurred to him that now he should bring Grandpa’s clothing to their final rest.

  Once a week they used to stop next to a river, bathe, and wash their clothes. Grandpa Sergei would say, “You have to honor clothes. They’re close to our skin and they gather up everything that the body conveys to them.”

  56

  Meanwhile Yanek changed his mind: maybe it would be better to go down and observe the people who were swarming on the dirt roads. Maybe he would find someone he knew.

  The time he had spent with Grandpa Sergei had cut him off from his home and his parents. But not completely. There were days wh
en he saw them in waking dreams or met them in dreams at night. All the meetings were like in a lake of fog. Nevertheless that distant closeness would move him and in the depth of his heart he looked forward to it.

  If he met his parents, where would they go? To their house or to Grandpa Jacob’s farm? His mother often said, “Let’s go to Grandpa Jacob’s. I need rest like air to breathe.”

  The short vacations at Grandpa Jacob’s were stored up in him very well. At the farm his mother would return to herself and talk to Grandpa in Yiddish.

  While he was wrapped in sights from home he saw a woman walking on the road who was very similar to his mother. The more he looked at her, the more the lines of similarity came together. “Mother,” he called out. As soon as the sound came from his mouth, it was clear to him beyond any doubt that she wasn’t his mother. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. Disappointment filled him, and he stood where he was for a long time, and when he was roused from the void that surrounded him, he harnessed himself to the cart and set out.

  The cart was light, and he pulled it without feeling it.

  For a long time he pulled the cart. Finally he realized: it was light because it was without Grandpa Sergei.

  Then he camped under an oak tree with broad branches. Grandpa Sergei always asked about the thickness of the trunk and about the boughs of the tree, and whether its roots were exposed. When a tree was to his satisfaction, they would lay down their bundles and sit under it.

  He was tired and about to curl up in the cart and go to sleep, but he remembered Grandpa Sergei’s command: you shouldn’t go to sleep without eating.

  There were plenty of dry branches here. He lit a campfire, and in a short time the water was boiling in the kettle. He liked this hour. In fact, he loved every hour with Grandpa Sergei. Grandpa Sergei would grasp the cup and sip the tea. The skin of his fingers was cracked like that of tillers of the soil, but at the same time as delicate as a city-dweller.