Ernst returns from the café with an ironic smile on his face. An Israeli publisher has agreed to publish a selection of his writings, but of course not for free. Ernst is required to put up three thousand dollars toward the expense of producing the book. For years his manuscripts bounced around from one publisher to another, and now, when an opportunity to publish them has finally arrived, Ernst isn’t satisfied with his writing. For many years—actually, since his youth—he has striven to tell the story of humanity itself. Ethnic details seemed restrictive and provincial to him. But now he knows that literature begins at the well you leaned over as a child and with the black fear that looked up at you from its depths. From the puppy you patted that turned out to be rabid. From racing to the clinic crowded with panic-stricken adults and screaming children, the doctor, holding a huge needle, baring your trembling belly and sticking the needle into it, your mother no less frightened than her child. This is where he should have begun, with the little details that have been soaked in the autumn rain, with his mother and father. If he had begun at that point, his life would have been different.
For a moment Ernst wonders what to say to Irena. Sometimes he thinks that Irena understands the torments of his writing no less than the pains of his body, and he wants to sit down and tell her about them in detail. But some days he is overcome by doubt, and he prefers not to share his insecurity with her.
“What’s the matter?” Irena asks when she sees that Ernst is upset.
“They decided to publish a few of my novellas.” He doesn’t keep it from her.
“That’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” He doesn’t explain.
Irena doesn’t like to press him. When Ernst shuts off his words, she retreats to the kitchen and leaves him sitting in the armchair. It’s hard for her to see him in his daily struggles. It isn’t enough that he has to swallow nine pills every day; he compounds his trials by straining to write. But she has to admit that Ernst withstands them. He dresses carefully, goes out on his walks every day, and his expression doesn’t betray his pain.
Ernst is aware of everything around him—the local culture, the economy. The local culture doesn’t capture his heart. This is a country of refugees, and Ernst doesn’t believe that someone who has fled from his birthplace can create a new literature or new art forms in his adopted home. Even if they have become successful tillers of the soil, industrialists, or university lecturers, refugees will always remain part of the culture from which they came. This is why Ernst feels that the culture here is deracinated, that it’s just politics dressed up as literature.
One time, when Ernst expressed this opinion to one of the managers of the investment firm where he worked, the manager attempted to correct him.
“A new nation is growing up here,” the manager said.
“In what way is it new?” replied Ernst.
“Does this need an explanation?”
Irena listens and tries to understand Ernst’s opinion. She sees that he struggles day and night, pouring his soul into the long pages that lie on his desk. Why not rest a little from writing? she wants to cry out every time she sees his drained face.
That night Ernst writes a letter to the publisher. “I won’t conceal from you,” he says, “that I don’t regard my novellas as any good. I’m grateful to God that you delayed their publication. I would be very sorry if they were published.” He wants to read the letter to Irena, but in the end he decides not to bother her. He puts it into an envelope and immediately feels relieved.
23
ON PURIM IRENA PREPARES A PLATTER OF HAMANTASCHEN and dried fruit.
“In honor of what?” Ernst asks in surprise.
“In honor of Purim.”
“It’s nice that you remind me of the holiday.”
“My mother used to prepare mishlo’ach manot platters for the holiday, and I would bring them to the neighbors.”
“Didn’t you have any relatives?”
“We had a cousin in Bnei Brak. He died.”
After the meal, Irena serves Ernst a cup of tea. He samples one of the hamantaschen and says, “Very tasty. It reminds me of the hamantaschen my mother used to make for Purim.”
It is hard for Irena to imagine Ernst’s parents. They sound like people who were plucked out of one place but not planted in another and that sadness accompanied them into every corner. Once she saw his father in a dream, sprawled on the sofa, muttering, as though listing his sins. His mother approached the sofa, knelt, and said to him, It never was and never came to be; it was only a parable. Those words made an impression on his father, and he stopped muttering.
One time, curiosity overcoming her shyness, Irena asked Ernst, “Did your mother observe our traditions?”
“My mother was attached to the tradition of her fathers,” Ernst replied, “and she had a connection with some of the secrets of faith, but I had no understanding of her life. She was shackled to herself. I remember her face and her eyes but not her hands. When I left home, and she knew that I had gone over to the Party, she didn’t say a word to me. Once, when I was a boy, I asked her, ‘Mother, why don’t you talk?’ When she heard my question, sorrow creased her face. I didn’t understand my parents, neither their lives nor their struggle with themselves and with God. I was in a world of bombastic phrases then, of black and white, of reforming humanity, but I didn’t see my parents’ sorrow.”
Before Irena leaves the house, Ernst asks her for a glass of cognac and invites her to join him. Irena pours the two glasses, and they drink a l’chayim. Now she notices that the wastebasket is full of torn paper. In the morning he ripped up everything he had written during the night.
Ernst’s struggle seeps into Irena. Sometimes she feels that his battle is with despair. He talks about the years he wasted and about the scandalous results, but she senses that there is strength in his despair. At night he struggles with an essence that is much stronger than he is, and sometimes he prevails. The sharpness in his eyes in the morning is not a sign of frailty but of a strong will. Once he said to her, “Life is so full of contradictions. I’ll never understand it. But I want to describe it.”
“Do you believe in God?” she dared to ask.
“Yes, in the God of my fathers. It took me years. In my youth just the word ‘God’ repelled me.”
It’s hard for Irena to take in all of Ernst’s ideas. They are too elevated and inaccessible. She understands the God of her childhood. “God dwells everywhere,” her mother said. Since her mother told her that, she has imagined God dwelling in the peach trees that bloom in the spring or in the fig trees that drop their leaves along the road. But she especially feels God’s presence on Sabbaths and holidays. She puts a lot into getting her house ready to greet them. When she sits at her table on Friday night, she feels a great light enveloping her, and she prays in her heart that God will shine His face on Ernst and show him how to struggle with that dark monster that is trying to undermine him.
A week ago Ernst felt ill, and the doctor ordered him to lie in bed for several days. He obeyed, and one evening he said to Irena, “You have no idea how good it is to lie in bed and not to do a thing. To close my eyes and not think about anything.” Irena was alarmed by his words. It seemed to her that they were spoken in fatigue and an unwillingness to struggle. She was wrong. It was a moment of relief, of escape from depression. Working at night exhausts Ernst. After a night of looking for words and for their proper rhythm, his body weakens. The correct sound of the words sometimes evokes a melody. But usually the words are like gravel, and as hard as he labors, they don’t change their shape. Suddenly Ernst felt liberated from that burden. His body existed for itself, and his soul, too.
Over time Irena has developed strategies to draw Ernst out of his gloom. One of them is blintzes filled with cheese and raisins. She immediately announced, “I’m making blintzes.”
“Now?”
“Right away.”
Irena likes the way Ernst relaxes after a me
al. Light shines from his face, and she feels a great closeness to him. At such times he may relate a story from his life. One time Ernst told her about his service in the Red Army. About the horses that bore him across the steppes of the Ukraine, about the brotherhood of soldiers, and about the powerful desire to live that pulsated throughout his unit. He walked over to the cupboard and took out a small box. In it were the medals of valor he had been awarded. “I loved the soldiers, and they loved me,” he said, and that distant memory filled his face.
24
HEAVY SNOW FELL IN EARLY MARCH, AND ERNST DIDN’T leave the house. He wanted to go out several times, but Irena persuaded him not to: the sidewalks were slippery and the winds were fierce, and he could trip.
“Sitting in the house without interruption blunts my thoughts.”
“What can I do?”
“Allow me to go out.”
When she heard that, she burst into tears.
“Irena, what’s the matter? I was just joking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to say you’re sorry. I’m the one who has to apologize. You’re only thinking about what’s good for me, and instead of thanking you, I’m annoying you.”
Ernst is constantly struck by Irena’s simplicity. On March sixteenth she turned thirty-six, and in honor of the event Ernst wanted to take her out to dinner in a restaurant. But it was cloudy outside, so they celebrated at home.
Ernst lit two wax candles that he had prepared and handed her a present: a pendant studded with precious stones.
“You spend too much on me.” Irena allowed herself to use the familiar German “du” for “you” instead of the more formal “Sie.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s very expensive.”
Irena grilled fish and garnished it with vegetables. When she sits alongside him, Ernst wants to ask her about her life, about the lives of her parents, about the village they came from.
Sometimes he thinks that she preserves in her soul not only the events of her own life but also those of her parents’ lives.
On that festive evening in honor of Irena’s birthday, Ernst dared tell her, “Irena, you’re restoring my parents to me. I left them in a sinful haste.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve preserved your own parents within yourself.”
“I don’t feel anything special.”
“You have the ways of someone who grew up close to her parents.”
“I don’t go to synagogue,” she said.
“But you have the tranquility of someone who prays.”
Irena was glad that Ernst was pleased with the meal and praised the work of her hands. But his insistence that, if something were to happen to him, she burn his manuscripts and inherit his house and his library frightened her. Nightmares don’t leave her alone. I can’t burn them, she wants to cry out. Order me to clean floors or polish sinks, but don’t order me to burn anything.
When a nightmare assails her, Irena gets out of bed, makes herself a cup of coffee, and reads the memorial albums her parents left her. As she reads them, it seems to her that she, too, was in their village, that she also greeted the Sabbaths and holidays, sat on the wooden bench alongside the door of the country house, and on Rosh Hashanah went to the river with everyone to perform the tashlikh ritual.
God, keep me from fear, she sometimes prays. The night before her birthday Ernst had appeared in her dream, dressed in his best suit, and demanded that she burn his manuscripts. She was so alarmed that she said, Your wish is my command, sir. And she knelt down.
But then the dream changed. Ernst was standing near the door, embracing her and pressing her to him. Irena loved his large body and its scent. This time she didn’t restrain herself. I want to be with you forever, she said.
Without a doubt, Ernst replied with kindness, but at some point we’ll have to part, just for a short time.
I refuse, she said, with an insistence that stunned Ernst.
In that case, your wish is my command, he said and lifted her in his arms.
25
ERNST WRITES AT NIGHT AND DOESN’T RIP UP THE PAPER. When a stack of paper is piled on his desk and he is content, Irena feels that soon he will lift her up again, and she will soar with him to other worlds. Sometimes it’s a tangled forest, and sometimes it’s one of the big cities where he lived in his youth. He speaks very little about the war. Irena knows that his parents, his first wife, Tina, and their daughter, Helga, perished on the banks of the Bug River during the war. Sometimes Irena feels that she knows them well and that she has played with Helga on a carpet.
Ernst always speaks with restrained fury about his second wife, but one time he lost his self-control. “Two monsters stood in my way in Israel,” he said, “the investment company and Sylvia. I don’t know which of the two was more damaging to me.”
Ernst is expressive. Even his silence is sharp. A few days ago he said to Irena, “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m repulsed by degeneration. A person should disappear modestly, without disturbing anyone. Slow death is a curse. If I knew how to pray, I would pray for a quick death.” Ernst sometimes says, “If I knew how to pray.” Why does he say, “If I knew”? Irena wonders. How hard is it to pray?
Two days ago Irena had a long, clear dream. She saw Ernst from a distance, holding his knee, trying to soothe a pain. But as she approached him, her error became apparent. Ernst wasn’t in pain. He was wearing a splendid uniform, walking with quick steps toward the entrance of a palace.
Irena, he said to her when he noticed her standing on the sidewalk, why are you standing on the side? Why don’t you join the ceremony?
I’d rather stand here. I can see from here, too.
But you won’t be able to see the ceremony in the palace.
I’ll hear it on the loudspeaker.
But you have to sit next to me. I want to pass all the documents on to you.
Irena was frightened and said, I don’t want to receive anything. I’ve received far too much. I don’t need anything.
Ernst lowered his head and said softly, It’s a simple transfer, much simpler than you imagine. The orchestra immediately started playing.
Irena awoke from her dream and wanted to go to Ernst right away. But it was early, so she made herself a cup of coffee. Since Ernst spoke to her about his papers, the nightmares return regularly, a mixture of celebration and dread.
Irena wanted to arrive early that morning, but in the end she was half an hour late.
“I’d begun to worry about you,” Ernst greeted her. “You’re always early.”
“Forgive me.”
“Why are you asking to be forgiven?”
That morning Ernst was in a good mood, and after breakfast he put some papers in the pocket of his three-quarter coat and went out to the café. Irena knew that this time he would sit in the café and write down some of his thoughts. “My thoughts run away from me,” he sometimes complains. When he’s in a good mood, he speaks about himself in the third person, saying, “Ernst is a fool. He’s sure that if he wears the three-quarter coat, the coat will make him walk. He thinks it’s possible to make the years go away. The years are visible in every step and wrinkle.” And sometimes, to tease Irena, who when speaking to him uses the formal German “Sie,” which means “they,” he says, “Who are those people you’re talking to? There’s just one person here, and you have to talk to me directly.” Irena understands him, but it’s hard for her to use the informal “du.”
The day was bright and pleasant. Ernst went out in a good mood and returned happy. Irena prepared lunch, and at four o’clock she served him mint tea and went home.
All the way home she said to herself, Ernst is pleased with his writing, and that’s why he’s in a good mood. When she reached her apartment, she immediately lit two colored candles as a sign of gratitude that her efforts didn’t disappoint him. For a long time she sat and watched the candles. She saw Ernst leaning over his papers, and s
he was filled with gratitude and joy. That night she washed and went to bed early, and her sleep was untroubled.
But for Ernst the night didn’t go well. After midnight thieves broke into his house, tied him up, and covered his mouth with a bandage. Ernst resisted and paid a heavy price. The robbers beat him. When Irena arrived in the morning, and she came early, her eyes darkened in distress. The front door was smashed in, the cupboards were open, papers were scattered. Irena found Ernst lying tied up in the back room, his face as white as a sheet. She peeled the bandage off his mouth, untied the ropes on his hands and feet, and with a voice that wasn’t her own, she cried, “Ernst!”
Ernst opened his eyes, but his voice failed him. Irena immediately rinsed his face and called a doctor. The doctor arrived, and the police came after him. The house, which had until then known only silence and suppressed struggles, was now laid open. Detectives poked around in every corner, and a police officer tried in vain to get Ernst to say something.
The doctor sent for an ambulance to bring Ernst to the hospital without delay. Irena went with him. By noon the X-rays revealed his injuries: a fractured right leg and two cracked ribs.
Later Ernst was asked again, “What do you remember?”
“Nothing,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
Irena didn’t move from his bedside. He now looked to her like a wounded soldier who had returned from the front. She knew that because of his Communist past, when war was declared he had been assigned to an accelerated officers’ course and then sent into battle. For a year and a half he had been on active duty and had apparently been an outstanding soldier. Once he said to her, “Too bad I didn’t continue in the army. That was a healthy struggle. Any other struggle is against yourself.”
Suddenly, Love Page 7