“I’m not used to it,” said Blanca.
“You have to get used to it,” her mother-in-law said, as though they were talking about a type of housework. “Jews spoil their girls. That kind of spoiling is despicable, and one mustn’t become addicted to it.”
Blanca knew now that salvation would not come from her mother-in-law. Nevertheless, she bared her thigh and showed her the wound.
“You shouldn’t show things like that,” her mother-in-law said, shocked. “A husband who beats is a loving husband. That’s what we say. A woman without a beating becomes wanton. A husband not only supports her, he also watches over her.”
“I’m not used to it,” Blanca repeated helplessly.
“You have to get used to our way of life. Among us, husbands beat their wives. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how to love a wife, too.”
Blanca hung her head, and tears welled up in her eyes.
For a month she vomited. The vomiting weakened her, but she still rose early to clean the house and prepare breakfast for Adolf. Adolf kept saying, “When my sisters were pregnant, they didn’t vomit. You should have a stiff drink, not tea. Among us, only sick people and old people drink tea.”
Before long the bleeding began. Adolf brought the medic. He examined her and said, “A doctor must see her.”
The next day, Dr. Nussbaum came. Dr. Nussbaum was one of the town’s best-known doctors. After finishing his studies, he converted and began to work in the public hospital. Blanca knew him well. She had studied with his daughter, a thin and sensitive girl named Celia. Any excessive movement, not to mention any harsh sight, would overwhelm her with emotion and make her cry. Once, on a class trip, they had ended up on a farm where pigs were snorting. The squealing of the pigs, which were trying to escape the slaughterers’ axes, amused the class. Celia, seeing the slaughterers, fainted, falling into what seemed to be a coma; for a long time they tried to rouse her from it. In the end they had to summon her father from the hospital, and he resuscitated her himself.
“Blanca,” the doctor called out with fatherly fondness.
Hearing that familiar voice, Blanca burst into tears.
“Don’t cry. Nobody’s done anything to you,” Adolf commented.
“I’d like to ask everyone present to leave the room,” Dr. Nussbaum ordered.
When he asked her what had caused all the wounds on her body, Blanca answered, “I fell down. I wasn’t careful.”
Dr. Nussbaum was an experienced physician, and he knew what some men did to their wives. He didn’t hold his tongue. “Animals,” he said.
“We’re going to put you in the hospital,” he continued, and took her under his protection.
Adolf had come back into the room and was about to say something, but seeing the doctor’s anger, he didn’t dare.
Thus Blanca left her prison. Her pains were sharp and her weakness was great, but the people who surrounded her were kind and pleasant. Every morning she would wake up as if she were in her parents’ home. “Mama,” she said, “you sent me these good angels.”
Dr. Nussbaum visited her twice a day, and when he was off duty, he would sit and converse with her. He had known her parents well and had just heard about her father’s disappearance. “We were friends from youth,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “How is it I knew nothing? How is it I didn’t sense anything? Are they still looking for him?”
“Not anymore.”
25
IN THE HOSPITAL, Blanca was cared for with great concern. Christina, the nurse, sat at her side and told her about her life. Her parents had died when she was a child, and she had been forced to go out and work at a young age. First she had worked as a practical nurse. The medical staff had valued her work and sent her to Vienna to study at the nursing school. That was her profession, and this was her home. Blanca noticed: her steps were quick, but her upper limbs were somewhat stiff. A pallor covered her face, and she looked like someone who had not seen sunlight for many days.
Adolf visited her once and didn’t return. Her mother-in-law would visit her after church on Sunday. She brought Blanca apples that had grown in her garden and urged her to taste them. Here she seemed softer, maybe because of the green scarf she wore on her head, but she still preached a little, even here.
“A woman must learn to suffer,” she said. “Suffering purifies her. In the end, the children grow up and submit to her discipline.” It was evident she was speaking from her own experience, but her words sounded as if they were the priest’s.
“How is Adolf?” Blanca asked.
“He’s working. He works hard.” She protected her son.
“Send him my greetings,” she said, as though he were not her husband but a distant relative.
“He’s working hard,” his mother repeated.
Every time Dr. Nussbaum came to see her, he brought her a chocolate or some fruit. With the death of the senior physician, he had become the chief doctor. The public hospital was on the brink of the abyss. During the past two years it had been running on a deficit. There were many debts, the creditors threatened to bring a lawsuit, and the maintenance staff went on strike from time to time. Dr. Nussbaum struggled on every front, and his back was bent from the great burden.
“How is Celia?” Blanca asked, because she was certain she was studying at the university.
“She’s been in a convent, my dear, for more than a year. My daughter is a mystery to me. I see her once a month, talk with her, and I don’t understand a thing.”
“Did it happen suddenly?”
“She was engaged and about to be married. A date was even set, and then she suddenly decided she wanted to be among the servants of God, and the engagement was canceled.”
“Good God!” Blanca said. “We neglect the ones closest to us. I was so involved with myself during the past two years, I didn’t see anything around me.”
The next day, Celia came to visit her. Seeing her friend in a nun’s habit, Blanca burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” Celia asked softly.
“I don’t know,” said Blanca, wiping her eyes.
Blanca told Celia that since her mother’s death, her life hadn’t gone well. Her father had disappeared mysteriously, and Adolf didn’t allow her to go to Himmelburg to keep searching for him.
“I actually do sneak out and go there,” she said, “but I’m too afraid of what I might discover to ask anything. And now the pregnancy’s not going well, either. And you?”
“I live in the convent in Stillstein, and I’m preparing to become a nun. What happened to your father?”
“I don’t know; I can’t tell you anything,” said Blanca emotionally. “Papa was my handhold on this world, and I, in my great stupidity, in my great fear, lost him. He slipped out of my hands. Fear is our undoing. Fear makes me a person with no substance. I never learned to have courage, and without courage a person is dust and ashes. Do you understand?”
“Certainly I understand you.”
“Life was bitter for my father, and I didn’t know how to help him. Since my marriage, I’ve been afraid of every shadow. How is it in the convent? Are people frightened there as well?”
“I have only been there for a year,” said Celia, bowing her head.
“Sometimes it seems to me that prayer would help me, but I don’t know how to pray. My mother used to pray sometimes. When I was a little girl I used to watch her lips. I would say to myself, If only I knew how to pray like Mama.”
“I remember your mother, and sometimes I see her before my eyes.”
“My mother went to her final rest without any complaint,” Blanca said.
“I found a lot of books about Judaism in the convent library, and I read them constantly. That’s strange, isn’t it? Did you ever happen to hear of Martin Buber?”
“No. Never.”
“In my room I have books about the Ba’al Shem Tov, including a very precious anthology.
I’m sure you’d find it interesting.”
“What is it about?”
“About faith, if I may make a generalization.”
“I feel empty, like an abandoned vessel.”
“Martin Buber’s anthology gave me a lot of light.”
“I’m so distracted, as if I were born without a nest.”
“I’ll bring you the anthology. You’ll find value in it. Isn’t that what we once used to say?”
“Thank you,” said Blanca. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
26
LATER BLANCA’S PAIN grew more intense, and Dr. Nussbaum gave her something for it. The pain did indeed die down a little, but the medicine made her woozy. Then Christina sat by her side and said something. Blanca didn’t absorb what she said, but it seemed to her that Christina’s lips were moving in prayer. For a moment she wondered about that prayer, and this made her faintly recall small scraps of her childhood. When she was sick, her mother used to sit next to her bed and observe her. Blanca would feel her hovering gaze, and she would sigh in relief. Then, surprisingly, a marvelous sort of contact would take place between her mother and her. Blanca’s hidden fears would fade all at once, and she knew that her mother would always be with her. But the full joy would come afterward, when she was recovering, a time that lasted many days and was full of glowing little things, like games of dominoes or cards, or books by Jules Verne. Her mother would read a chapter and say, “Now we’ll take a little break and nibble something. What shall it be? Maybe we’ll peel a pear.”
The weakness would pass, and Blanca’s appetite would return. She even found a slice of bread and butter tasty. Later the quiet hours would come, when nothing happened, just a feeling of pleasure and the happiness of light. While she was recovering, her father would try to entertain her with mathematical puzzles. She couldn’t solve them, but her father would do so effortlessly, like a magician. During those marvelous, brightly lit days, sharp, sudden fears would sometimes strike her, and she knew that her pleasure would not last long, that parting was inevitable. She would cry bitterly, and her mother would try in vain to console her.
These bright scraps of memory, which had been hidden within Blanca for many years, now appeared before her with new clarity. She opened her eyes, and Christina was sitting next to her. For some reason she thought Christina was Celia, and she said, “Celia?”
“How are you, Blanca? How do you feel?” Christina asked.
“I dreamed about my mother,” said Blanca.
Blanca felt better, but Dr. Nussbaum didn’t release her. Adolf came and stood at the door. In his work clothes, alongside the white iron bedsteads, he looked like one of the sturdy maintenance men who carried beds and chests of drawers to the upper floor.
“When are you coming back home?” He spoke in his mother’s voice.
She had noticed: Adolf resembled his mother and was full of superstitions. Once she had been sure that only weak people were subject to moods, daydreams, and superstitions. Later she learned that Adolf was careful to avoid the number thirteen. He had nailed a horseshoe above the door of their house, and sometimes he would say, “My mother says that a gate that doesn’t have a cross on it doesn’t protect the house.” At first she didn’t believe her ears, but in time she conceded to herself that superstitions were held by strong people, too, and in fact they enhanced their strength.
Without a doubt, Adolf was his mother’s son. His mother always protected him and spoke about his work in the dairy with admiration. His father loved him less, but through him Adolf belonged to the Hammer clan, which was known for its industry, religiosity, and devotion to family. All of these were, of course, merely fictions and wishful thinking. The family was full of drunkards, adulterers, cheaters, and idiots. But she had to learn all this painfully, over the years. Now she knew nothing but aches. Don’t release me, she was about to say to Dr. Nussbaum, I’m afraid to go back home. But Dr. Nussbaum spoke first, telling Adolf, “Blanca will be with us until she regains her strength and her wounds are completely healed.”
“I don’t understand,” said Adolf.
“What don’t you understand?”
“My sisters gave birth at home, not in a hospital.”
“So you’re an expert in medicine, too, I see,” he said and dismissed him.
27
OTTO AWOKE FROM a bad dream and shouted, “Mama, Mama!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Somebody wanted to catch me.”
“Who, dear?”
“A tall, strong man.”
“It was just a bad dream.”
“Why did he scare me so much?”
“Dreams are frightening.”
“If dreams are nonsense, why are they frightening?”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m with you, dear.”
Blanca wrote without letup. She spent most of the night at the desk, struggling with the order of events, the words, and the clarity of the sentences. The fear that soon they would have to leave this protected place gave her no rest. To overcome her fear, she remained wakeful, watching over Otto’s slumber and writing.
They had been here for six weeks now. The garden produced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and radishes, and there were also beds of lettuce and squash. In addition, the landlady brought them apples and pears from the orchard at her house. Her old age was passing quietly and her face glowed, leaving a pleasant feeling that stayed in the house for hours.
I’m very much afraid that quite soon we’ll lose this hidden Garden of Eden, Blanca wrote in her notebook, and we’ll have to set out for a lengthy exile. When did I hear the word “exile” for the first time? The religion teacher, Dr. Kaltbrunner, used to put out his long arm and say, “Were it not for Adam, we would have remained in the Garden of Eden. Because of his sin, we were exiled.” Why did I remember Dr. Kaltbrunner? He used to intimidate the class. Blanca finished that sentence and lay the pen down on the notebook. She immediately sensed that Otto’s eyes were wide open and that he was observing her.
“Why aren’t you asleep, dear?”
“I’m waiting for the morning.”
“The morning is still far off. Meanwhile you can close your eyes.”
Otto didn’t answer right away. He would absorb a sentence and take it in. That secret internalization usually took long minutes, and sometimes an hour or two. But the response would finally come. He had stopped asking about his father. Every day Blanca supplied his soul with new sights and words to erase his home from his memory. It generally worked. Nevertheless, sometimes someone’s name or a place emerged. Blanca didn’t flinch, but cut off his question and hurried to distract him. Fortunately, Otto didn’t insist. He heard her voice and clung to it. Now, as she looked at him, it seemed to her that he had changed. His face had darkened and his gaze was concentrated. He could count to twenty without making a mistake. At the start of the trip, he had still shouted with Adolf’s frightening voice, but on the train he had already calmed down, his voice was softer, and he stopped throwing things. On the train he learned to touch things gently, to move them carefully, and to observe them.
“When will we go?”
“In a little while, dear.”
Otto noticed that his mother’s behavior had changed; her expression was tense, and she stood at the window for a long time, listening.
“Are you afraid, Mama?”
“No, dear. Why would I be afraid?”
“It seemed to me you were.”
Blanca felt that the place was no longer as quiet as it had been before. Two days earlier, a serious fight had broken out in the neighboring house. People gathered from all around, and there had been a commotion. The following day, gendarmes came and questioned the neighbors. Blanca woke Otto, and while it was still dark they went out to the riverbank.
Blanca felt that she had to leave, but it was hard for her to uproot herself. This bright place had restored so much life to her. In f
act, it brought back everything that had died within her. Now the desire burned within her to sit and write extensively. But first she would cling to her mother and father. Those two marvelous souls had ended their short lives in this world as strangers. They didn’t know how to soar up high, but the ground was also hard for them. They circled low, painfully hovering until they ascended to the heights. Now it seemed to her that her mother had disappeared like her father, because the funeral hadn’t left from their home but from the building in the Jewish cemetery where her body had been ritually washed. When they returned home the bed lay unmade, as if her mother were about to come back to it. At the time, death had seemed to Blanca like a yawning abyss, and she had escaped to Adolf, sure that Adolf was the fortified castle over which death had no dominion. One day, even before converting, she had spoken to him about her fear of death. He had listened and said, “Strange what thoughts run around in your brain.”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of whom?”
Adolf was the castle. But he didn’t know he was the castle, Blanca said to herself, sure that she would be saved in his presence.
She was sorry that just now, when she had found a tunnel to her old life and the secret things that were being deciphered for her, she had to leave this place and resume her wandering. Who knew what awaited her and whether she would again be able to see what she saw now. Over the past days she had been tense, leaping from topic to topic, trying to manage. But one idea led to another, and things got mixed up. For that reason, she decided that first she had to finish writing the episode of Adolf, for Otto’s sake. So that when the time came, he would know exactly what had happened and how. Until now she had ignored what was expected of her, but yesterday Otto had asked her about death again, and it was clear that the shadow was oppressing him.
“There is no death,” Blanca said, surprising him.
“Really?”
“I’ll always be with you, even if I’m not here. You can talk to me the way you’re talking to me now.”
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