Until the Dawn's Light

by Aharon Appelfeld

  32

  BLANCA GREW STRONGER, and she would give the baby to the large woman who came to nurse him every day. First it seemed that the baby was gaining strength, but after a week of steady nursing, he began to vomit severely. There was no choice but to go back to the porridge that Christina had been carefully making for him. Blanca’s mother-in-law wasn’t pleased by the sudden change, and she kept saying that if the mother was weak, then the baby would also show signs of weakness. “In our family, thank God, everyone is healthy and strong.”

  Celia came to visit Blanca, who was so happy to see her that she started crying. Ever since Celia had brought her Buber’s anthology, the book never left her hands. Even in her days of severe illness, she read it.

  All of Celia’s movements were familiar to Blanca, even the tilt of her neck, but she still wasn’t the Celia she had once been. The Stillstein Mountains had changed her through and through. Celia spoke about her distant ancestors like someone who knew what she was talking about. She pronounced the names of their villages in Galicia and Bukovina as if she had just come back from visiting them the day before.

  “You haven’t shown Otto to me,” said Celia. “How is he doing?”

  Christina brought him in, and Celia said, “He looks like a darling baby.”

  “My husband and mother-in-law aren’t pleased by his development.”

  “Blanca, my dear, we mustn’t consider other people’s opinions. You have to go your own way.”

  “If only I knew the way,” replied Blanca.

  The hospital’s situation deteriorated. Dr. Nussbaum was working day and night. He grew so tired that he would collapse on a couch in his office in the middle of the day and fall asleep. The rich people who had promised to support the institution reneged on their promises. Dr. Nussbaum had already sent seven memorandums to the Ministry of Health, and what the municipality sent wasn’t enough even for medicines. In his soul, Dr. Nussbaum knew that he would have no alternative but to send his patients home and close the gates of the institution, but he kept postponing the closure. His voice had changed over the past few days. He walked through the corridor with vigorous steps, shouting, “The rich have luxurious and roomy hospitals, and a well-trained medical staff. But what will become of the public hospitals? What will the poor and oppressed people do? Where will they go?” His speech was frightening, because he spoke to the bare walls.

  The thought that one day Blanca would journey to the famous Carpathian Mountains and bathe in the Prut River took shape within her while she was ill, and now it was very clear. She imagined her life in the Carpathians as a simple life, a country life, with hours of prayer that would divide the day into three sections. On holidays everyone would put on white clothes and go to pray in small wooden synagogues. The disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s disciples still prayed in those small synagogues. They had reached a ripe old age and dozed during most of the day. But in the summer, in the drowsy hours of the afternoon, they sat in the doorways of the houses of study and greeted those who arrived with a blessing.

  Blanca was sorry that her mother had told her so little about her childhood in the Carpathians. Her family had left the mountains when she was five, but she had retained some images of it in her heart. Blanca’s father, on the other hand, had harbored resentment against his parents because of their poverty and because they had made it impossible for him to study at the university, and so for him everything there had sunk into an abyss.

  “Thank you, Celia.”

  “What are you thanking me for?”

  “For the anthology by Martin Buber.”

  Upon hearing Martin Buber’s name, Celia inclined her head, as she undoubtedly did in the convent in Stillstein.

  33

  AT THE END of that week the gates of the hospital were closed, and Blanca started for home. She knew that strewn in every corner would be beer bottles and butcher’s waxed paper in which sausages had been wrapped, and that the kitchen sink would be full of dishes. She knew, but even so, she didn’t feel miserable that morning. The sun shone warmly, and Otto made her happy with every one of his gestures. In My Corner she was greeted with cheers. They served her coffee and poppy seed cake, and everyone made a fuss over Otto and agreed that he looked like Blanca.

  When she got home, Blanca found the house as she had imagined it. She began at once to wash the dishes, pick up the papers, and empty the ashtrays. Otto fell asleep, and Blanca kept going to his bed to watch him as he slept.

  After cleaning the house, she took Otto to her breast and then they went back to town to buy food for dinner. It was eleven o’clock, and Blanca hurried to return home. Near the butcher’s shop, she looked up and to her surprise saw Grandma Carole. This time her grandmother wasn’t standing and shouting; she was just sitting on the steps of the closed synagogue, curled up in a corner. Without thinking, Blanca rushed to the gate.

  “Hello, Grandma Carole,” she said. “I’m Blanca. Do you remember me?”

  “Who?” she said, startled.

  “Your granddaughter, Blanca.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I wanted to tell you that I had a son, and his name is Otto.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Blanca.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Grandma.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  Her sightless eyes began to blink nervously.

  “What do you want from me?” she said.

  “I wanted to beg your pardon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m Blanca, your daughter Ida’s girl.”

  “Don’t bother me,” Grandma Carole said, and she made a gesture of rejection with her right hand. Blanca recognized that gesture and recoiled.

  Blanca knew that Grandma Carole wasn’t rebuffing her in anger. Her memory had faded, and she simply didn’t remember Blanca any longer, just as she had probably forgotten her two other granddaughters who now lived in faraway Leipzig. But she was still angry.

  When Adolf came home, he said, “You’ve come back, I see.” It was evident that he wanted to say more, but the essence was conveyed in that sentence.

  “I feel better,” Blanca said. For a moment they both looked at Otto while he slept. He was relaxed, and his face, lit by the sun, seemed content.

  Blanca rushed to serve Adolf his dinner, and while doing so she told him that Dr. Nussbaum was in despair. The wealthy people who had said they would provide assistance hadn’t kept their promise.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked without raising his head.

  “What will the poor people do who need help? Whom will they go to? To whom will they turn?”

  “Who told them to be poor?”

  Blanca fell silent. She was familiar with those coarse pronouncements of his, but now they scraped her flesh with an iron brush.

  After dinner, Adolf went to the tavern and Blanca remained where she was. The long day had left her hollow. It took her a while to find the words within her. Adolf hates me, she said to herself, because I’m thin and weak, and because my parents were Jews. Apparently my conversion to Christianity changed nothing. And now I’m even thinner. I weigh less than one hundred and ten pounds. What must I do in order to change? I have to eat more and work in the garden, but I’m very weak, and it’s hard for me to stand on my feet.

  Adolf returned from the tavern very late.

  “Where are you?” he shouted from the doorway. Blanca, awakened by his loud voice, hurried over to him and helped him over to the bed. He immediately fell down onto it, and Blanca took off his shoes and covered him with a blanket.

  That Sunday Otto’s baptism ceremony was held, and everyone wore festive clothes. After the baptism, the priest spoke about love and compassion, and to Blanca it seemed that he was talking to Adolf, asking him to behave like a Christian toward her. The little church was full of people and
the fragrance of incense. Blanca made a great effort to remain on her feet, but toward the end of the ceremony she stumbled. Adolf picked her up and reprimanded her for not being careful.

  “I’m sorry,” Blanca said, standing up again. Then her mother-in-law passed Otto back to her, and Blanca looked at him and hugged him to her breast.

  After the ceremony they served strong drinks and honey cake to the guests. Some girls from school, whom Blanca barely remembered, approached her and hugged her. Adolf looked content in the company of his friends, who surrounded him and congratulated him. He was especially happy with his cronies from work, who looked like him, suntanned and strong.

  Now Blanca remembered the bar mitzvah celebrations in the synagogue. Her mother used to take her to them now and then. It was crowded there, too, but most of the people were short, and their presence wasn’t crushing. She and her mother would stand together and watch everyone celebrating. At the end, they would go up to the bar mitzvah boy, congratulate him, and depart. Public places and crowds of people had made Blanca sad since her childhood. Her mother knew that and would bring her to these ceremonies only occasionally. Now she had to learn how to cope with that, too.

  “How do you feel?” Adolf’s eldest sister asked her.

  “Fine,” said Blanca, glad she had said so.

  34

  THEN CAME LONG, hot days, and Blanca worked in the garden early every morning. The neglected garden bloomed again. On rainy days she tidied the house, did laundry, and decorated Otto’s cradle. When Otto woke up at night, she got out of bed, fed him, and sang to him. Adolf wasn’t pleased by these nightly attentions.

  “Let him cry,” he said. “The devil won’t take him.” But Blanca wasn’t at ease with this approach. She would go over to Otto’s cradle and rock it. Once Adolf commented, “He’ll turn into a slug.” Blanca noticed that his sentences, like his movements, were abrupt; he explained little, and what he said cut like a razor blade.

  The good thoughts that had made her throb with life in the hospital died out on their own, and again she became what she had been: a maidservant, working from dawn till dark and crushed under Adolf’s heavy body at night.

  Dr. Nussbaum tried with all his power to raise money to reopen the hospital, but his efforts were in vain. Having no choice, he turned his home into a hospital. Dozens of people crowded the gate of his courtyard and sought his aid. Whatever he could, he gave.

  One day, the doctor met Blanca downtown and invited her to join him for a cup of coffee in My Corner. Blanca was embarrassed to admit to him that Adolf treated her the way he did and, also, that he kept grumbling, “Jewish doctors won’t tell me how to behave.” Dr. Nussbaum looked into her eyes and knew what was on her mind.

  “You have to come to see me every month,” he said. “And if your husband abuses you—tell me immediately.”

  After that she thought of going to Himmelburg, but she put off the trip. She was afraid to travel with Otto. Adolf would have said, “He’s weak. He’s pale. With us, children aren’t like that.” Blanca used to bring the cradle out into the garden so he’d get some sun. To her dismay, this only brought out his delicate features, and she stopped. One night in a dream she saw her father standing in the courtyard of the old age home, as though he were trapped. His face was gaunt, and an unfamiliar expression of irony, not his, flickered in his eyes.

  “Papa!” she called out, and awoke.

  The next day she gathered her strength, diapered Otto, prepared food, and set out. At the old age home, Theresa hurried over to her and cried, “Here’s Blanca!” and everyone was excited.

  “The child looks a lot like you,” Theresa said. “What’s his name? Otto? A nice name. His features are very delicate. Let’s pray that fortune favors him.” They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee, and Blanca knew that her life had no attachment to any place now. Theresa wasn’t a delicate woman; she was straightforward and understanding. You didn’t have to explain to her what harm a cruel husband did. She had felt it on her own flesh.

  “The situation here couldn’t be worse,” Theresa told Blanca. “The treasury is empty, and the Jews of Himmelburg are no longer as generous as before. Conversions are many, and the children deny their parents. They do send us some money from Vienna, but it isn’t enough for regular maintenance.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Blanca asked anxiously.

  “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t the church help?”

  “Have you forgotten, dear, that this is a Jewish home?”

  Theresa mentioned the old age home in Blumenthal again, and all the advantages Blanca would have if she worked there.

  “You have to be far out of his reach,” she said. “Every hour that a woman saves herself from a beating is a pure benefit.”

  “What should I say to him?”

  “Tell him that you want to work and contribute to the livelihood of the house.”

  “And who will watch over Otto?”

  “A housekeeper. I raised three children that way.”

  “I’m so afraid of the beatings, and now I’m afraid he’ll hit Otto.”

  “You mustn’t be fearful, my dear.”

  “I tremble all the time.”

  One of the old people approached her and said, “We sometimes remember your father here. He was a very special man. We all liked him. Since he abandoned us, we’ve missed his great soul. You know that Jewish saying, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a marvelous expression. It’s more than an expression.”

  Blanca didn’t know how to respond, so she said, “This is my son, Otto. He’s growing and developing nicely.”

  Theresa continued to speak about children who neglected their parents, and about old age, with its diseases and torments. If it weren’t for God, whom we believe in and cleave to, she said, were it not for the strong feeling that He is close to us, our lives would be a horror.

  “Blanca, my dear, it seems to me that the Jews have lost their connection with God, and that makes their lives so much harder.”

  “Do you stay in touch with your children?” Blanca asked.

  “If they need money, they write to me.”

  “And who comes to visit you?”

  “Only my sister. She lives very far from here, but she always comes, and she brings me things. She knit this sweater with her own hands.”

  “Strange,” said Blanca.

  “Why do you say that it’s strange? That’s how it always was, and that’s how it always will be.” Her face displayed a frightening honesty, as though the years had engraved every injustice and distortion on it. Anyone who looked at her knew that life was flooded with sorrow and filled with clouds.

  35

  THE MONTHS PASSED. Otto was already crawling, and Blanca reconciled herself to her painful body and clouded life. Sometimes she would remember earlier times, and they seemed hidden to her, as though they were part of the life of another woman. Even the town, where she knew every corner, now seemed to belong to the church.

  Every Sunday she went to mass. The family made a point of attending on Sundays and holidays. There Adolf was also surrounded by friends, embracing them, chatting with them, laughing. Blanca never missed confession. She would kneel and say, “I didn’t want to see my mother’s death, and I fled from the house. Afterward I abandoned my father in the cemetery. I’m a sinner and worthy of death.” The priest listened and asked no questions.

  Once, however, he commented, “Our Lord Jesus has already atoned.”

  “But my sin is unbearable.”

  “Pray. Prayer will drive away your bad thoughts.”

  “It’s hard for me to pray, Father.”

  Sundays were the hardest day of the week: in the morning in church and afterward, the gathering in her house. Those parties brought together many of Adolf’s friends as well as his relatives, and they became merrier and dizzier from week to week. Bl
anca would serve the guests and chat with her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law had suffered a lot in her life, but she didn’t complain.

  “Man is born to labor,” she would repeat, “and let him make no reproaches to his fellow.” It was clear that this saying wasn’t hers. Still, it sounded as if it was.

  Adolf knew no mercy now, either. For every mistake or forgetfulness she would pay, but sometimes he would also hit her for no reason, the way you beat an animal.

  “You’re not a woman,” he would say. “You’re a monster. You’re like your father, like your grandma.”

  “Don’t hit me,” she would beg, but that only increased his anger. In the end she would lie on the floor, absorbing the blows without reacting.

  If it weren’t for Otto, for the look in his round eyes, she would have gone to the river and leaped into the water. But Otto would rescue her and draw her out of despair. He would wake up, open his eyes, and call out, “Mama,” and immediately all the clouds scattered and fled.

  More than once, after a night of searing pain, Blanca was about to say, I want to go out to work and help support the household. All the women work, and I want to work, too. But she was afraid to say it, lest Adolf agree. Otto was now her life and her support. She took him everywhere with her. When she worked in the kitchen, she placed the cradle next to her, and when she worked in the garden, she would take the cradle outside. Blanca spoke to him and told him stories, and when he laughed, she laughed with him.

  Adolf was completely given over to his comrades. Over the past few months his face had grown fleshier and had become flushed, like the face of a drunkard. He resembled his father more and more: the same drunken look, the same arrogance. He spent most of his wages in the tavern, and he gave Blanca only a few coins, over which he also got angry. Blanca was frugal, and she made their meals with everything that the garden produced. Sometimes she couldn’t afford milk. Her body bled and hurt, but she was afraid to say, I’m going out to work. Once, the pain was so great that she said, “You’re driving me out of this world.”