While Blanca was wondering in her heart where to go and what to do, Adolf came and made the decision for her. He did it the way he did everything, directly and bluntly.
It was in the evening, and they were sitting in the tavern and joking about how short Klein was, how he saw the world through a dwarf’s eyes. Blanca was the one who raised the idea of dwarfs, and Adolf, because of his hatred for Klein, added a few humorous outlines. Now it seemed that a strong emotion bound them together: Klein’s dwarflike appearance and the hatred he aroused in both of them.
For a long while they laughed, and Blanca was pleased that she had managed to make a mockery of the man who had expelled Adolf from high school. As Adolf was walking her home and they were laughing about Klein and Weiss, he said to her, almost casually, “How would you like to be my wife?”
“Me?” Blanca said.
“You.”
“You’re joking.”
“I don’t joke about such things.”
“It’s only that it’s a surprise for me.”
“I’m a Christian, and Christians don’t joke about such things.”
It was a simple trap, and she was caught in it. Later she would say to herself, How was I trapped? How did I fail to see? What blinded me so? After all, I was a person who stood on her own two feet, someone with an awareness of the world. But that evening she was drunk with happiness, so drunk that she didn’t dare tell her secret even to her beloved mother. It was not until the next morning that she revealed her engagement to her mother, who caught her breath, hugged Blanca, and burst into tears.
10
BLANCA WANTED TO TELL Otto everything, to describe in detail the insults she had borne over the years, what she had done to herself and to others, and how blind she had been. It was important to her now for no detail to get lost, so that when the time came, Otto would know the course of events in full. Every night she sat down and wrote. First she was particular about the order of events, but time made a fool of her, and everything got mixed up together. No matter, she said to herself, Otto will understand by himself what came first and what came afterward. The main thing is that no detail should be unknown to him.
Sometimes a bad dream would disturb Otto’s sleep, and he would awaken in a panic.
“It’s nothing, dear, dreams speak hollow words.” She hugged him tightly.
“I dreamed about Papa,” he told her.
“And what happened?”
“It was very frightening.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, dear. Would you like something hot?”
“What are you doing, Mama?”
“I’m writing.”
“What are you writing?”
“Memories.”
“What are memories?”
“Everything that was and will never be again.”
“I’ll write someday, too.”
“Certainly.”
Otto grew and changed. The memory of the house was gradually erased from his mind, and he sank into daydreams and into his games. Blanca didn’t interfere. The thought that time was short, and that she had to leave Otto a detailed account, drove her to the writing table night after night. But the order of their days remained unaffected. Until sunset they would tarry by the water, and in the evening they would go out for a walk along the riverbank. After the walk, Otto would sink down on the mat and fall asleep, and Blanca would fall upon her notebook and write until after midnight.
Sometimes an image from distant childhood would intrude, and it was crystal clear. At first she would ignore it, saying to herself, I have to be faithful to order, to write only what touches upon this affair. In time she ceased that, realizing that distant memories also belonged in her account. Memories of Grandpa and Grandma and her uncle Salo.
She concluded a long chapter with the words “I did what I did, and I am prepared to submit to justice for it.”
11
IT WAS FIVE MONTHS after her marriage, and Blanca, in the city where she was born, had no one close to her. Everyone appeared to have conspired to ignore her. Grandma Carole stood at the entrance to the synagogue every day and cursed the converts. Her closed face, withered from the sun, was now even more threatening. Blanca would make her purchases in the market hurriedly and then escape. Adolf would return from the dairy late, irritable, demanding his meal right away. If the meal didn’t suit him, he would say, “It’s tasteless. You have to learn how to cook a meal.”
After he slapped her face, she seldom left the house, taking care only to purchase what was needed and to heat the bathwater. Every week a postcard came from the mountains, reminding her that she had a father and a sick mother. In the morning, when she was alone, she would remember that less than a year ago, she was studying in high school. She had been an outstanding student, and her parents were proud of her. Now it all seemed so distant, as if it had never happened. In the afternoon, fear would possess her, and she wouldn’t leave her room. Her hands trembled, and every movement cost her great effort.
More than once she said to herself, I mustn’t be afraid. Fear is humiliating, and one must overcome it. But it didn’t help. Ever since Adolf had slapped her, she was afraid of every shadow and wanted only to do his will, like a maidservant. Strangely, just at those moments of dread, she remembered Grandma Carole. If a blind old woman can stand in front of the synagogue and curse and not be afraid, she said to herself, I, too, mustn’t fear.
Once, she mustered courage and said to Adolf, “I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?” he said with a coldness that sent chills down her spine.
“I don’t know.”
“Jews are always afraid. A Christian woman doesn’t fear.”
Once a week, usually on Sunday, Adolf’s parents would visit. They were tall and broad, and their faces reflected a strange mixture of piety, obtuseness, and anger. Their clothes reeked of alcohol. At their side, Adolf was obedient and submissive.
“Yes, I didn’t think of that,” he would say.
The three of them together would suck all the air out of the living room.
Once Adolf’s mother said to her, “Blanca, you have to change your name. That name isn’t common among us.”
Blanca was frightened. “That’s true,” she said.
“You don’t have to choose. The priest will pick a name for you.”
Blanca rushed to the kitchen to bring out some sauerkraut, and the conversation went elsewhere. Meanwhile, Blanca’s parents had come back from the mountains. Her mother had made up her mind to die in her own bed and not in a strange place. Her father ignored the doctors’ advice and submitted to his wife’s wishes.
“Forgive me,” Blanca’s mother said to her astonished daughter. “My days in this world will not be many. I won’t disturb you too much.”
A doctor came one morning and examined her, gave her an injection of morphine, and left no doubt in the hearts of those who loved her that her illness was mortal, that they must prepare for the inevitable.
“What can I do?” asked her father in a broken voice.
“Nothing,” said the doctor.
But the next day a miracle happened. Blanca’s mother rose from her bed and sat down at the table. Her father, stunned, looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“Why did you get out of bed?” he asked.
“I feel better.”
“The doctor said that you mustn’t get out of bed,” he murmured with a trembling voice.
When he realized that she did indeed feel better, he made her a cup of tea and sat by her side.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I saw my sister Tina in a dream, the way I haven’t seen her for years, and she told me to get out of bed. I didn’t believe I could, and I said to her, ‘Excuse me, Tina, I’m ill.’ ‘Now you’re not ill,’ Tina said to me.”
“And what happened after that?”
“She sat by my side the way you’re sitting by my
side.”
“And what else did she say to you?”
“I don’t remember.”
When Blanca saw her mother sitting at the table, she went down on her knees.
“Mother, what am I seeing?” she said.
Blanca was glad that her parents had come back, but to tell them what had happened to her, how she was enslaved—she didn’t dare.
She sat at her mother’s bedside without saying a word. Her mother saw, with a feeling of helplessness, that Blanca’s way of moving had changed. She was thinner. Her eyes were puffy, and her lips formed a thin, tight line. It was hard for her to talk, because it was hard for her to say what was oppressing her.
Blanca’s father was entangled in debts. His elder brother, Theodor, did send them a small sum from Hungary every month, but it wasn’t enough. In vain he sought other sources of income. Finally, he sold some of his wife’s jewels.
Blanca’s mother parted from her jewels with a heavy heart. “I intended to give them to Blanca,” she said.
“Mama,” said Blanca, “I don’t need jewels.”
“I’m just a guest here for the moment, dear. These hours were given to me as a gift.”
“What gift are you talking about, Mama?”
“These hours, dear.”
The house seemed to change in appearance. Blanca’s mother’s breathing was weak, and the shadows cast by her arms were longer than her arms themselves, but her eyes were wide open. Blanca momentarily forgot the misery of life in her own home. The light of her mother’s life surrounded her with a circle of warmth, and words like none she had ever heard, words like the sounds of prayer, trembled on her lips.
12
TWO MONTHS AFTER her return from the mountains, in mid-July, Blanca’s mother passed away.
“Ida, what has happened to you?” her stunned father cried out.
“Ida will suffer no longer,” said the doctor, in the solemn tones of a priest.
“And what can I do?” her father asked in a subdued voice.
“There’s nothing more to be done,” answered the doctor, sounding pleased that he had an occasion to say that. Blanca’s father ran to Blanca’s house.
Adolf noticed him coming.
“Your father’s running like a madman.”
“Who’s running?” Blanca didn’t catch what he said.
“I already told you.”
“Blanca!” her father called out, and stumbled.
Toward evening a quorum of ten Jewish men came from Himmelburg with a woman to wash the body in ritual preparation for burial and to say prayers. Grandma Carole, who deafened the city with her shouts, now stood as silent as a mountain. The burial society organized the funeral. Its head, a tall, dignified man, sat next to Blanca’s father as though he were his elder brother and spoke to him in a somber manner. Blanca’s father did not weep. But his unshaven face and swollen eyes displayed rigid shock.
“When will the funeral begin?” he roused himself to ask.
“Soon,” said the man.
“And who will say kaddish?”
“You will, sir.”
“Not I!” Blanca’s father said in anguish. “I don’t know it. I’ve forgotten it.”
“I’ll say it in your place,” said the man.
Hearing his answer, her father hung his head, as though relieved.
Not many people came to the cemetery. Three of Ida’s friends came, high school classmates, two neighbors who had converted, and a few people who had known Blanca’s father in his youth. Blanca’s father grasped the arm of the head of the burial society.
“I forgot the kaddish,” he murmured. “I don’t remember anything of it.”
“Not to worry, I’ll say it,” the stranger promised him again.
“I thank you from the depths of my heart,” Blanca’s father mumbled.
Blanca did not approach Grandma Carole. She was afraid her grandmother would slap her. But to everyone’s surprise, her grandmother didn’t grumble, question anything, or interfere. When they lowered the casket into the grave, Blanca hugged her father and sank her face into his chest.
After the service, Grandma Carole rushed away, heading for the open field. Everyone stood still for a moment and watched her go. A few yards away lay the Christian cemetery. Its tall marble monuments gleamed in the sunlight, making the unmistakable point that sometimes death has a finer dwelling than a Jewish graveyard.
Blanca’s father, who had been holding on to the arm of the head of the burial society, finally let it go.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called out clearly, “we mustn’t scatter and leave Ida alone here.” He meant to add something but, seeing that everyone had stopped walking and was standing in amazement, he fell silent.
“I will stay here,” he added a moment later. “I’m not afraid.”
“Papa,” Blanca called out, “I won’t let you stay here alone.”
The head of the burial society approached him, hugged him in front of everyone, and said, “We Jews stand by one another.”
The word “Jews,” as it left the tall man’s mouth, startled those in attendance with its simple clarity. Most of them were converts. “Ida couldn’t bear it any longer,” Blanca’s father said, removing his hat.
The tall man, whose heart was touched by Blanca’s father’s distress, said, “You mustn’t fear. Death redeemed her from her sufferings, and we must accept the judgment.”
“True,” said her father, although he was put off by the man’s confident tone.
“Life after death is a life with no suffering. All our sources speak of that explicitly and simply.”
“I didn’t know,” said her father in the voice of a man who has been beaten.
“There is no reason to worry,” the man said in a different tone of voice. “The condition of the Jews in this region isn’t splendid, but we stand by one another. We shall support you. We won’t let you fall.”
13
DURING THE SEVEN-DAY mourning period, Blanca’s father sat in the living room with a skullcap on his head, distractedly receiving the few visitors. That quiet man, who had said little over the years, now spoke at length, mainly about his late wife, whose many talents were never properly expressed. He spoke about her musical ear, about her talent for writing, and he showed the visitors the landscapes in the living room, which she had painted when she was in high school. Blanca sat with him all morning, prepared his meals, and at noon she returned to her home. The hours in the company of her grieving father brought her surprising consolation. More than once she was on the verge of telling him about the harsh insults that were her lot at home, but seeing that he was completely immersed in his grief, she didn’t dare. Mourning cut off his ordinary life, a life of sorrow and worry about the coming day, and brought him to a world that was all mercy. Blanca, having no alternative, was forced to take care of all the practical matters: preparing to sell the house, paying his debts. Blanca’s father didn’t realize what distress his daughter was in, and he would say, “You’re still young, and your life lies before you.”
Adolf would return late at night and whip her with his belt. Now he didn’t hit her in anger, but with the intention of hurting her. “We have to uproot all your weaknesses from you and all the bad qualities you inherited from your parents. A woman has to be a woman and not a weakling.” In bed he behaved like an animal, turning her over like a mattress, and afterward he would get out of bed, drink some brandy, and say, “What kind of woman are you? You don’t know how to be a woman.”
“What should I do?” she asked, trembling. All her efforts to please Adolf were in vain. He hit her and cursed her.
“What do you want from me?”
“To be a woman and not a Jewess.”
“I’m not a Jewess anymore.”
“One baptism’s not enough, apparently.”
She would cry, and her weeping drove him crazy. He would throw a tantrum and curse her and her ancesto
rs, who didn’t know how to live right, bound up with money and flawed in character.
On Sundays his brothers and friends would fill the house; they would guzzle and gobble and finally sing and dance in the yard until late at night. The next day she would get up early to make Adolf his morning coffee. After he left the house, dizziness would assail her, and she would sink to the floor, ravaged.
When she could no longer keep it all in, she told something of it to her father.
“Everything isn’t going so well at home.”
“Why not?” her father asked, with a kind of obtuse surprise.
“Adolf isn’t the way he was.”
“Everything will work out. You mustn’t worry,” her father replied superficially.
Blanca’s father’s debts proved to be many. The head of the Himmelburg burial society did keep his promise, and every week he brought some food and a bit of money, but where would her father live after the house was sold? That was now Blanca’s concern. True, there was an old age home in nearby Himmelburg, but it was small and fully occupied, and old people were on a waiting list to be accepted there.
Her father didn’t seem concerned. Day after day he was inundated with fantasies, and they bore him from place to place. Once, he said, “I have to get to Vienna and try to get a scholarship. All the grades in my matriculation certificate were excellent.”
“And what will you study?”
“What do you mean? Mathematics!”
Hearing those words, Blanca would freeze. Now she was no longer in doubt: her father had departed along with her mother, and what remained of him was just embers. More and more he talked about his high school days, when he had studied with Ida. He had been regarded as a genius, and everyone expected great things of him. More and more he blamed his parents for not helping him study in Vienna. He even mentioned Grandma Carole several times, always with harsh anger. Ida was the only one of whom he spoke gently, as though she were still with him.
Until the Dawn's Light Page 4