Katerina

by Aharon Appelfeld

  One evening, while I was still sitting and reciting psalms, I saw a young man sneaking into my door. I didn’t hesitate, and with a sweep of my hand I caught him and told him, “What’s the matter with you, you wicked thing.” His face was small, like a shepherd’s. Innocence was spread on his lips.

  “I’m not guilty.” He fluttered in my hands.

  “Why did you shout ‘monster?’ ”

  “Everybody was shouting.”

  “From now on I’d better not hear that word,” I said, and I threw him out. He stood for a moment, surprised he had escaped with such a light punishment. That week the fierce autumn winds came.

  32

  I FOUND SOME PAPER and a pencil, and I’m sitting and writing words to brighten my darkness. I write shabbis and again I write shabbis, and, marvelously, that single word has the power to evoke not only silence but also a melody. Since there are no longer any Jews left in the world, I make the Sabbath for myself every week. I drive away all evil thoughts within me and proclaim a Sabbath for the Lord, and for a whole day I wrap myself in it as in a cloak.

  At the close of the Sabbath, to my surprise, I feel a thin sadness rise within me, and I know that the Sabbath queen, under whose wings I have hidden for a moment, is about to leave. The parting is hard for me, and I go out and watch the skies as they change, and the tender light is gradually swallowed up by the darkness.

  Now I write down shvues, and immediately the scent of green plants and dairy products rises in my nose. On Shavuot, the house doors are open and warm air flows in. On Shavuot, the Torah was given from heaven, and Rosa wears a flowered dress, which she wears only on Shavuot.

  Now I write tishebov. That was the gloomiest day of all. People fled from each other as though the angel of death were pursuing them. Benjamin wouldn’t speak with anyone, his face was sealed, and Rosa curled up on the floor and read the dirges out loud. This is a destruction without end, a fault that cannot be mended; only the Messiah will come and repair it. And now I write down: rosheshone and yonkiper and sukes and khanike and purim and tubishvas and peysekh and on and on. I write and I compress the many lights together into words, so that the words will slow in my memory. I am afraid of the darkness. Now there are no more Jews left in the world, but a little of them is buried in my memory, and I am afraid that that little bit will be lost. My memory is weakening, and so I continue to write: treyf tume, orel, Sabbath candles, Yom Kippur candles, nile, kharoyses, tkinkhatsos, slikhes, shabesnakhmu, sudehamafsekes. I’m writing the words down in big letters, compressing a great deal of life into this envelope of words, because I am afraid of my memory. Here in this green desert a person can easily lose his memory. All the years I fought against oblivion, and now I feel I can no longer overcome it, and so I keep on writing.

  At night the boys would come back from the school they called hayder. They carried little lanterns in their hands, and on the white snow they looked like two angels. Presently, I would take off their coats, and away they flew. Their father used to ask them a question about the Bible, and I couldn’t understand a word. “What does Rashi say?” asked the father, and Abraham would give a long and apparently clear answer, and the father was pleased, but he didn’t reveal his contentment easily.

  Later I would hear the boys reciting the Shema before bedtime. That prayer brought a kind of new light to the house. In those years, may God forgive me, I didn’t see the light around me. My body was in a turmoil, and I was immersed within myself with no way out. Now everything is far away and forgotten. The green lushness here is hard and thick, and so as not to slide into the abyss of emptiness, I write down: simhistoyre, hakafis little flags, with red apples on the end of the poles. Around me tall dogs bark, but the children wave their flags and proclaim: “There are no dogs, no wolves.”

  “Come, children, the time has come to return home.” I hear Rosa’s voice. It’s hard to take the children away from the celebration, but Rosa draws them away, scolding them, and cuffing Abraham in the face. Now I’m not sure whether it really happened that way and if the dogs really barked or whether that was Simhat Torah or the day before Rosa was murdered. Rosa had strong hands, and she would hit the children hard. I am very sorry that she hit the children on the night before she was killed. One doesn’t forget blows; they are sealed in our flesh.

  After Benjamin’s murder, I felt the trembling in my fingers for the first time. There had always been a kind of tremor in my fingers, but then I understood for the first time it was a tremor that had strength. After Benjamin was murdered, I told Rosa, “We ought to kill the murderer.” Rosa heard my words but didn’t respond, and I too was afraid to speak. When Rosa was murdered, I considered going out to the villages and looking for the killer. Now there are no more victims in the world, only murderers. Now I close my eyes and rest my head against the wall.

  I envision the candles for Yom Kippur. Rosa used to make the candles for Yom Kippur with her own hands. She used to buy the beeswax from the mountain Jews. She would prepare everything with great care and quictly. What a simple life, what a full life. Only innocent people are not afraid of killers. Anyone born in a village knows that killers lurk in every den. More than once I wanted to shout, flee this evil place. But in my heart I knew that the people wouldn’t listen to me. I had the senses of a peasant, and I knew that a killer would spare neither women nor children. I should have said it, I should have shouted, I should have taken them to a village and shown them how the killers act. I, may God forgive me, didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Indeed my hands trembled, but I didn’t know what they were telling me.

  33

  AFTER EASTER, as I mentioned, I returned to my native village and to my father’s farm, small and dilapidated, with no building left intact except this hut where I’m living. But it has one single window, open wide, and it allows in the breadth of the world. My eyes, in truth, have grown weaker, but the desire to see still throbs within them. At noon, when the light is most powerful, open space expands before me as far as the banks of the Prut, whose water is blue this season, vibrant with splendor.

  I left this place behind more than sixty years ago—to be precise, sixty-three years ago—but it hasn’t changed much. The vegetation, that green eternity which envelops these hills, stands tall. If my eyes do not deceive me, it’s even greener. A few trees from my distant childhood still stand straight and sprout leaves, not to mention that enchanting, wavelike movement of these hills. Everything is in its place, except for the people. They’ve all left and gone away.

  In the early morning hours, I must remove the heavy veils that obscure the many years and examine them, with silent observation, face to face, as they say in Scripture.

  The summer nights in this season are long and splendid, and not only are the oaks reflected in the lake, but the simple reeds also draw vigor from that clear water. I always loved that modest lake, but I especially loved it during the brilliant summer nights, when the line between heaven and earth is erased and the whole cosmos is suffused with heavenly light. The years in a foreign land distanced me from these marvels, and they were obliterated from my memory, but not, apparently, from my heart. Now I know that light is what drew me back. Such purity, oh Lord! Sometimes I wish to stretch out my hand and touch the breezes that meet me on my way, because in this season they are soft as silk.

  It’s hard to sleep on these brilliant summer nights. Sometimes it seems to me that it’s a sin to sleep in this brilliance. I understand now what it says in the Holy Scriptures: “He who stretches out the heaven like a thin curtain.” The word curtain always sounded strange and distant. Now I can see the thin curtain.

  Walking is very hard for me. Without the broad window, which is open wide, without it taking me out and bringing me in, I would be locked up here like in prison, but this opening, by its grace, brings me out easily, and I wander over the meadows as in my youth. Late at night, when the light dims on the horizon, I return to my cage, my hunger sated and my thirst slaked, and I shut my eyes
. When I close my eyes I encounter other faces, faces I haven’t seen before.

  On Sundays I pull myself together and go down to the chapel. The distance from my hut to the chapel isn’t great, a quarter of an hour’s walk. In my youth I used to cover the distance in a single bound. Then all my life was a single puff of breeze, but today, though every step is painful, that walk is still very important to me. These stones awaken my memory, especially the memory from before memory, and I see not only my departed mother but everyone who ever passed over these paths, knelt, wept, and prayed. For some reason it now seems they all used to wear fur coats. Maybe because of a nameless peasant, who came here secretly, prayed, and afterward took his life with his own hand. His shouts pierced my temples.

  The chapel building is old and rickety yet lovely in its simplicity. The wooden buttresses that my father installed still protect it. My father wasn’t scrupulous about keeping our religion, but he saw it as his duty not to neglect this small sanctuary. I remember, as though in a twilight, the beams he carried on his shoulders, thick staves, and the way he pounded them into the earth with a huge wooden mallet. My father seemed like a giant to me then, and his work was the work of giants. Those beams, though they’ve rotted, are still rooted in their place. Inanimate objects live a long life, only man is snatched away untimely.

  Whoever thought I would come back here? I had erased this first bosom from my memory like an animal, but a person’s memory is stronger than he is. What the will doesn’t do is done by necessity, and necessity ultimately becomes will. I’m not sorry I returned. Apparently, it was ordained.

  I sit on the low bench in the chapel for an hour or two. The silence here is massive, perhaps because of the valley that surrounds the place. As a girl I used to run after cows and goats on these trails. How blind and marvelous my life was then. I was like one of the animals I drove, strong like them and just as mute. Of those years no outward trace remains, just me, the years crammed into me, and my old age. Old age brings a person closer to himself and to the dead. The beloved dead bring us close to God.

  In this valley I heard a voice from on high for the first time—actually, it was in the lowest slopes of this valley, where it opens up and flows into a broad plain. I remember the voice with great clarity. I was seven, and suddenly I heard a voice, not my mother’s or father’s, and the voice said to me, “Don’t be afraid, my daughter. You shall find the lost cow.” It was an assured voice, and so calm that it instantly removed the fear from my heart. I sat frozen and watched. The darkness grew thicker. There was no sound, and suddenly the cow emerged from the darkness and came up to me. Ever since then, when I hear the word salvation, I see that brown cow I had lost and who came back. That voice addressed me only once, never again. I never told anyone about it. I kept that secret hidden in my heart, and I rejoiced in it. In those years I was afraid of every shadow. In truth, I was prey to fear for many years and only free of it when I reached an advanced age. If I had prayed, prayer would have taught me not to be afraid. But my fate decreed otherwise, if I may say. The lesson came to me many years too late, immersed in many bitter experiences.

  In my youth, I had no desire either for prayer or for the Holy Scriptures. The words of prayers that I intoned were not my own. I went to church because my mother forced me. At the age of twelve, I had visions of obscenities in the middle of prayers, which greatly darkened my spirit. Every Sunday I used to pretend to be sick, and as much as my mother hit me, nothing did any good. I was as afraid of church as I was of the village doctor.

  Nevertheless, thank God, I didn’t cut myself off from the wellsprings of faith. There were moments in my life when I forgot myself, when I sank into filth, when I lost the image of God, but even then I would fall to my knees and pray. Remember, God, those few moments, because my sins were many, and only Thou, with Thy great mercy, know the soul of Thy handmaiden.

  Now, as the proverb says, the water has flowed back into the river, the circle is closed, and I have returned here. Too bad the dead are forbidden to speak. They’d have something to say, I’m sure. But the days are full and splendid, and I wander at great length. As long as the window is open and my eyes are awake, loneliness doesn’t grieve my soul.

  A Note About the Author

  Aharon Appelfeld is the author of more than twenty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including Badenheim 1939, Tzili, The Iron Tracks, The Conversion, and The Story of a Life. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has won the Israel Prize in Literature, the National Jewish Book Award, and the MLA Commonwealth Award for Literature in America. Born in Czernowitz, Ukraine, in 1932, he lives in Israel.