After the shiva, the uncles and aunts went back to their homes in the city, and Grandmother Raisl remained alone on the farm. My parents also returned home. It seemed to me that they were glad to leave their only son with his grandmother. I, in any case, didn’t ask to go back. The house in the city always oppressed me. Here the silence of the tall trees gave me a feeling of spaciousness and pleasure. I went for walks, and the shadows of the trees accompanied me everywhere; the deeper I went in the forest, the more wonders I saw: here a raspberry bush, and not far away a twisted branch full of currants. One could even find a low cherry tree that bore fruit as black as coal. Suddenly a huge crow would pop out of the thick foliage and fill the woods with its screeches.
If I walked deeper into the forest, I would come to a lake in the heart of the mountains. I had been there a few times with Grandfather, who would stand by the lake and look out at the gray water. Sometimes we took off our shoes and dipped our feet in. Grandfather probably knew how to swim, but he wouldn’t go further in. Swimming and everything associated with it wasn’t proper for a Jew. A Jew had to stand and observe. Observation illuminated one’s thoughts with images that were not visible to the eyes. New visions were a sign of faith.
After Grandfather’s departure, his presence only intensified. Every time I went out for a walk, I felt that Grandfather was with me. I would go out with him to see if the wheat had ripened, to observe the blush of the fruit in the orchards, and, of course, to look at the hay. Grandfather’s pace was slow. “Walking fast isn’t proper for a Jew,” he used to say, and as he spoke a smile would spread across his bearded face. Grandfather smiled often, and his smile would light up his face. But he never laughed out loud.
I wandered about all day, and when I came back I found Grandmother Raisl cooking. At meals Grandmother acted as though Grandfather was still sitting at the head of the table. After his death she adopted his way of moving. Whatever Grandfather did, she did in exactly the same way. Once on a hot Friday afternoon she fell asleep, and when she woke, night was already falling. She couldn’t forgive herself for neglecting the approach of the Sabbath. After that she fasted every Monday. Despite her loss, Grandmother didn’t let despair gain a foothold. She rose early, prayed, drank a cup of coffee, and went out to work in the fields. Like Grandfather, she knew the fields well: what had ripened in the vegetable garden and had to be picked, which field had to be plowed, and what to let rest until autumn. The Ruthenian peasants obeyed her and said, “We’ll do as you wish.”
In the evening, upon returning from the fields, Grandmother would sit with her eyes closed next to the chair where Grandfather used to sit. It was hard to say whether she was praying or gathering her thoughts. She was strict with me about two things: reciting the Modeh Ani prayer of thankfulness in the morning and the Shema Yisrael at night. My mother also used to remind me to pray from time to time. But Grandmother Raisl was more determined. She didn’t treat me like an only son.
Even after the thirty-day mourning period, Grandfather’s presence was still felt in the house. He would appear in unexpected places. In the Carpathians a person doesn’t depart from the world without leaving behind a bit of his essence. Grandmother didn’t speak about Grandfather in the past tense.
I noticed that the sealed eastern window looked different. When Grandfather prayed, Grandmother would open the shutters and sit at his side for the length of the prayer. When he was finished praying, she would close the shutters. After Grandfather’s death the window took on a new importance. Grandmother was careful not to stand near it except during the regular hours for prayer. She recited her own prayers in a separate alcove near the bedroom.
On Sabbath eve Grandmother would go out to the garden, pick flowers, arrange them in two vases, and place them on the windowsill. Suddenly the shuttered window took on the form of a gate.
On Sabbath morning I would go to the synagogue with Grandmother. We took the paths I used to take with Grandfather. Grandmother didn’t speak either. In the Carpathian Mountains people learned from the trees and from the basalt rocks how to be silent. When Grandfather was alive, Grandmother didn’t go to synagogue every Sabbath, but now that he was gone, she took care to go. She walked slowly and thoughtfully, not like the way she walked at home.
The synagogue was a small wooden building. People entered it with bent backs. No one sat in Grandfather’s seat. His absence only made people feel his presence even more. In the synagogue they remembered not only Grandfather but also his father and his grandfather. In the name of Grandfather’s father, they recalled the proverb: “Don’t think that after the tree has been chopped down its shadow disappears.” They interpreted that proverb literally, although some said it referred to people.
After the Sabbath, Grandmother would go down to the cellar and prepare dairy products. The dark cellar, which was lit by two lamps, was also one of the wonders of the place. Grandmother churned butter in the cellar, made cheese, and stored apples for the winter.
Raising the trapdoor to the cellar, going down the stairs, lighting the lamps, and driving out the darkness—all of these things that she used to do together with Grandfather she now did alone. She didn’t complain. She did everything quickly and with great concentration. Sometimes a word or half a sentence, which I didn’t understand, would escape from her mouth. I didn’t ask what they meant. Here one learned not to ask questions unless it was absolutely necessary.
After one Sabbath, a Ruthenian woman, a neighbor, came carrying a bunch of flowers. Grandmother greeted her warmly and told her what she had done during the previous week and what she was planning to do. With suppressed pain, the Ruthenian woman told Grandmother everything that her daughter from her first marriage was doing to her. Grandmother listened with her head down, and when the woman had finished speaking, she advised her to pray. “Nothing changes things like prayer. Prayer works miracles,” she said in Grandfather’s tone of voice.
Every evening Ernst reads Irena a passage or chapter before she leaves. The short chapters stand on their own. Ernst would very much like to hear her opinion or a comment, but Irena doesn’t know what to say. Only on her way home or when she sits in the dining alcove does she feel the visions that Ernst’s writing evokes grow stronger within her.
A few days ago Irena had a long dream. In it she is walking with Ernst on a network of paths in the Carpathians. Both she and Ernst are nine years old. She is wearing a lace dress that her mother sewed for her and Ernst is in shorts and a blue shirt like the ones they used to wear in Hashomer Hatsa’ir. They are walking hand in hand. She feels his hand very strongly and wants to kiss it, but she doesn’t dare. Ernst is bolder. He put his hand on her shoulder and embraces her. She is so happy that the few words she possesses are snatched from her mouth.
“It’s all because of you,” Ernst tells her one evening.
The compliments that Ernst showers on Irena embarrass her. She doesn’t think her ideas and actions are important, but she is glad that Ernst is writing diligently and that every day another page or two appear on his desk.
37
ONE EVENING ERNST SAYS TO IRENA, “IT SEEMS TO ME I’M on the way.”
Irena rises to her feet, approaches the bed, and says, “I don’t understand.”
“I’m returning to the place from which I set out.”
“Thank God.” The old-fashioned expression pops out of her mouth.
“Irena, dear, if something happens to me, burn everything except this notebook.”
Every time Ernst directly asks or just hints to Irena regarding what to do with his writing, she looks at him as if to say, You haven’t finished your work in this world. I’m not an educated woman, but my heart tells me that now that you are in the middle of your work, nothing bad will happen to you. Ernst studies the expression on her face and is stunned by its power.
Indeed, Ernst is now writing with great diligence. Sometimes he’s surprised by what he remembers and by what emerges from his pen. There are things that were buried wi
thin him for many years, like the long walk he took one night with his grandfather. During their nighttime hike, they didn’t speak; they just took in their surroundings. In the Carpathians bright stars fill the vast night sky. During those years, Ernst felt a great closeness to God, but he didn’t know how to express his feelings. Grandfather spoke little and never said anything about God, but his whole being proclaimed that the earth we tread on is holy, that it is forbidden to treat it with disrespect or to abuse it, and that animals, too, have within them something of the divine image. In Grandfather’s house they didn’t eat meat, only what the earth brought forth. Grandmother was very knowledgeable about soups, casseroles, and puddings of every kind. At the end of the summer she would spread plums, apples, and pears on a mat outdoors. The fruit would shrivel in the sun.
The weeks Ernst stayed with his grandmother were well preserved in his memory, but not because of unusual words or actions. Grandmother was busy from morning to night, never avoiding any chore. When she was in the vegetable garden, she hoed with the Ruthenian peasants, and when she was in the orchard, she shouldered a sack and picked the fruit. The abundant harvest wasn’t all for her. She tithed for the needy, sold about half the crop, and sent the rest to her children, who lived far away in crowded cities.
The grandchildren didn’t always remember her, but she remembered them all by name. In the evenings she would sit and write them letters, and the next day she would ride to the center of the village, to the post office, and hand over the packages and letters. Riding with her to the post office and back was also magical. Ruthenian women would stop her wagon, ask how she was, or request a blessing from her. Grandmother wouldn’t hesitate. She would place her hands on the peasant woman’s head and bless her.
Ernst also remembers that Grandmother insisted on performing the ritual hand washing every morning because, she said, the night leaves its pollution on your hands.
“Why does the night pollute?” Ernst wondered.
“Because of the evil spirits,” Grandmother replied seriously, as though she had been asked about the harvest or about the price of a crate of cucumbers.
“Can you see the evil spirits?” Ernst’s curiosity increased.
“Usually you can’t see them,” Grandmother said reluctantly. There were things one didn’t talk about. Ernst knew this but he still pressed her with another question: “Are they small?”
“So people say.”
“Have you seen them?”
“Once,” she said, with a small wrinkled smile.
One didn’t speak about evil spirits, but one didn’t doubt their existence. Verses from the Bible attached to the doorposts guarded each entranceway, and holy books protected the whole house. Evil spirits didn’t dare enter a house with holy books.
The objects in his grandparents’ house didn’t seem like inanimate things to him but like living, breathing beings that concealed hidden life, like the wooden barrels behind the kitchen that were full of rainwater, or the big wooden mallet that Grandfather used to pound in fence posts.
In Grandfather’s house no one sharpened knives to slaughter calves or chickens. They picked vegetables and fruit instead and stored them carefully in the cellar. As autumn approached, the cellar would begin to fill up, and every time Grandmother opened the trapdoor, a damp fragrance drifted up from the darkness. There were also earthenware pots in the cellar, wrapped in white kerchiefs, where milk curdled. After every Sabbath Grandmother would remove the white kerchiefs from those silent pots and separate the whey from the curds. Then she would pour the curds into white sacks, and soon they would congeal into fragrant cheese.
Grandmother Raisl didn’t complain. She bore her lot in life by suppressing her emotions. If bad news came from her children or grandchildren, she would bury her face in a kerchief or just sit silently.
Death has many messengers, but one slowly learns to recognize them. “Death is an illusion and a deception,” people said in Grandfather’s name. “Only stupid and ignorant people think that death is the end.”
Ernst reads the Bible and is amazed by the patriarchs. They were connected to the earth and to their animals, but at the same time they conversed with God, addressing Him like sons addressing their father. And He, in turn, answered them in ordinary language. Clouds of doubt didn’t darken their deeds. That was also how his ancestors lived in the Carpathian Mountains, many centuries later.
For many years Ernst had forgotten this. But Irena didn’t forget. Her parents transmitted the faith of their fathers to her in a veiled way. When Irena says, “I’m praying in my heart,” Ernst believes that she knows what she’s talking about. For him faith is just a glimmer, twinkling lights that shine and then vanish. Irena, he wants to ask her, how did you manage to preserve that buried knowledge? But he doesn’t ask. He keeps noticing gestures that he hasn’t seen before. When she opens the window in the morning and places a vase of flowers on the windowsill, her expression is filled with wonder.
It’s now clear to him: Irena’s beliefs aren’t abstract. They extend even to inanimate objects, and every time she touches a garment or a flower it appears as though she is about to kneel in prayer. Sometimes he thinks that she has come to him from the ancient world, where earthly and heavenly love were intermingled. Once he was so overcome by that feeling that he suddenly embraced her and kissed her. Irena didn’t move; it was as if he had put a spell on her.
38
ERNST WRITES AND THEN TEARS UP THE PAPER. THE WAY he tears it, Irena notices, is different from the way he tore it in the past. He isn’t angry; he’s just dissatisfied with himself. The words that emerge don’t fit what he intended to say. He spends all day searching for other words. On occasion he has to wait a few days before they come. Depression tries to conquer him, but he is firm in his resolve to move forward.
Sometimes Ernst feels like someone who was exiled from his home, wandered for years, and finally, in a dream, the way home is revealed to him. Now he is afraid of losing his way. He writes feverishly, as though battling against time. Occasionally he turns back to see how far he has come and whether he has strayed from the path.
Yesterday Ernst told Irena that on his grandparents’ farm there were a few horses in the stable and three cows in the dairy. When one of the cows got sick and the others were in danger of being infected, two strong peasants came to take the sick cow to her fate. It was a question of whether to slaughter her with a knife or shoot her. Grandmother, who was fond of the cow, was in a quandary. Finally she asked them to bring the veterinarian to give the cow an injection and ease her death. The peasants were astonished. “It’s just a cow,” one of them said. “People slaughter cows in the village every day.”
“We’re commanded not to hurt animals,” Grandmother insisted.
“We’ll do what you say,” they said and retreated.
The veterinarian did come. He was a short, half-Jewish man, and he did the deed. The peasants took the cow out of the barn and led her away. Grandmother followed her with her eyes. When the cow disappeared from view, she hung her head, went into the house, and sat there without saying a word. Writing jogs Ernst’s memory, and each time it takes him to another place.
The farmhouse was planted in the very heart of the forest, as though it belonged to the trees. But from the distance of years it seems more like a wooden temple upon whose threshold one’s shoes are removed. The objects in the house were few, and all were made of wood. Flowers of every color, fresh and dried, decorated the tables, the cupboards, and the windowsills. When a guest entered, he would stand motionless, stunned by their fragrance.
Silence hovered over the dim space and brought visions to the soul. When Grandmother asked a question, Grandfather would not rush to answer. It wasn’t polite to answer right away. He would sit quietly or go outside, and only upon returning would he reply.
He spoke very little outdoors, and in the house he was silent. The day was divided into long stretches of silence and longing, as though it had been agreed tha
t words were more precious than gold and weren’t to be treated wastefully.
On some days they took vows of complete silence. A bad dream or a gloomy feeling or a presentiment of bad news would immediately cut off all speech. They would keep on working, taking care of the animals, listening to the requests of the peasants who worked for them, but not a word would leave their mouths. Usually the vow of silence would last for a whole day, but sometimes it would go on longer. The peasants knew that they had vowed to keep silent and would rarely disturb them.
On the silent days the meals were meager, hurried, the necessary minimum. The silence was evident in the way they moved, in how they picked up an object or a tool. But more than anything, the silence was visible on their darkened foreheads.
Irena listens, and her heart is lifted. Ernst’s revelations affect her deeply because her grandparents’ village, about which she had heard so much from her mother, has become part of her. But now, because of Ernst’s descriptions of his grandparents’ village, she feels even closer to it and understands it even better. It was as if it had removed its earthly attire and was dressed in garments of eternity.
What a marvelous place you describe, Irena wants to say, but she doesn’t say it. She knows that Ernst doesn’t like it when people say “marvelous,”
“splendid,” or use other expressions of enthusiasm.
Irena is happy about Ernst’s interesting discoveries, but her anxieties won’t go away. She’s afraid of a relapse. Every night she lights a candle and prays that Ernst’s depression won’t return, that his heart will withstand the effort, and that the impulse to destroy won’t overtake him.
Ernst’s depression doesn’t return, but he shows signs of weakness. It’s hard for him to sit up in a chair. The doctor believes he would be better off in hospital, where they can run some tests.
Suddenly, Love Page 11