At night, when Ernst closes his eyes, Irena is happy just to be at his side and watch over him. From his face she can tell whether his sleep is tranquil or he is being frightened by bad dreams. Once she heard him talking in his sleep in Russian, and it sounded like the recitation of a poem.
Ernst is actually dreaming about Irena. She is wearing an embroidered peasant blouse and a wide skirt that resembles the skirts that the Ruthenian women in the Carpathians wore. He tries to free himself from the bonds of the dream, but his body feels heavy and the bonds are tight. In great despair he tears the ropes with his teeth and runs toward Irena.
“We were together in the Carpathians,” he tells her when he wakes up.
44
THE PAINS ATTACK ERNST AGAIN, BUT HE PERSISTS AND writes every day. After supper he invites Irena to the table and reads to her what he has written. Several times she is about to ask how a little boy grasped so much and in such great detail. Ernst divines her thoughts and says, “I loved my grandparents. It was a hidden love, and I wasn’t aware of it until I started writing.”
“So the purpose of writing is to rescue things from oblivion?” Irena wonders.
“So it appears.”
“What else do we have within us that we don’t know about?”
“Who knows?”
Irena rereads Leyb Rochman’s The Pit and the Trap. Rochman, his wife, Esther, his sister-in-law, Zippora, and his brother-in-law, Ephraim, spent the war together in hiding. They were subjected to every fear that one can experience. Rochman wrote in detail about all of it.
Once a week the tall doctor comes, examines Ernst, and adds one or two prescriptions. Ernst usually doesn’t ask how much time he has left to live. This time he asks. The doctor loses himself in thought for a moment and then says, “Why are you asking?”
“I’m in the middle of important work,” Ernst replies.
Uncharacteristically, Ernst reveals to the doctor that for years he had tried to write, but the writing didn’t come out well. During the past year, he finally found a tunnel to the spiritual treasures that had been buried within him.
“Thank God,” says the doctor, in a way that doesn’t seem appropriate for a doctor.
“I’m in the midst of mining,” says Ernst. “I need more time.”
Ernst’s voice has taken on a strange quality, as though he were asking the doctor for a reprieve. The doctor, a bit embarrassed by his request, says, “You’ll surely manage. ‘If you will it, it is no dream.’ Who said that?” The doctor tries to remember.
The doctor’s equivocal words fill Ernst with new strength, and he writes all morning without taking a break.
Tranquility does not always reign in the Carpathians. Sometimes sudden storms arise from the heart of the forest. In their great rush, they uproot groves of trees, tear the roofs off houses, trample fields of grain and orchards, and kill peaceful animals. Worse than these are the tempests of the soul. A peasant returns from his work, certain for some reason that his wife has betrayed him. Without asking or investigating, he brandishes an ax and kills her. The news travels like lightning. Women and children freeze in fear, but not the murderer. He sits on a bench in the middle of his yard, the red ax in his hand, like a satiated beast of prey.
The priest, the medic, and two policemen are immediately summoned. The killer is asked if he committed the murder, and he nods. The policemen handcuff him, he gets up and begins walking, and they follow him. I did not witness the murder, but I saw the killer, his yard, and the people who stood at the fence of his house and watched with amazement what was happening.
I am shaken, but Grandfather and Grandmother don’t talk about that horror. They are immersed in preparations for Yom Kippur. Grandfather is getting ready to go from house to house and ask forgiveness, and I am to accompany him. Grandfather also intends to ask forgiveness of a non-Jew named Nikolai, who had worked for him for many years. A year ago a horse kicked him, and since then his health has been poor. Grandfather compensated him for the injury and continues to pay him half his salary. The peasant acknowledges this generosity and greets Grandfather warmly. Grandfather tells him that in two days it will be Yom Kippur and that it is important for people to accept the yoke of God without reservation. The peasant agrees with him and says, “Without God, life isn’t life.” They speak and are silent by turns. Grandfather eventually says, “If I’ve harmed you, Nikolai, pardon me.” The peasant bows his head and says, “You haven’t injured me, sir, not in word and not in deed, and may God judge us all for the best.”
Grandfather goes from house to house. His fellow Jews are standing in their doorways, tall and sturdy, and dressed in long smocks. Grandfather approaches each of them and asks for forgiveness. They invoke the name of God and forgive one another, asking for redemption for all the Jewish people.
Grandfather skips one of the houses, the one belonging to Gumborovitz. Gumborovitz’s great-grandfather had been taken in by the deceptions of the apostate Jakob Frank. He converted to Christianity and spread slander against the Jews. Since then the Jews have been careful not to be in the presence of his descendants. I saw Gumborovitz once and was very impressed: he was a tall old man with hair that hung down his shoulders and back. He was walking along the path in silence and with measured steps. Suddenly he stopped and turned his head. I felt his sharp gaze fix upon me and froze.
On the day before Yom Kippur Grandfather doesn’t leave the house. He sits in his chair, either lost in thought or reading a book. Three times a day he opens the shutter and stands in prayer, facing heaven. The sky is clear. From time to time a white cloud passes by. Not only do people prepare for the Day of Judgment; the animals do, too, and the trees.
A few hours before the beginning of Yom Kippur, a drunken peasant enters the yard and begins to sing and curse. Grandfather goes out to him and says something. The peasant is stunned by what Grandfather has said and asks some confused questions. Grandfather takes the trouble to explain things to him, and in the end he sends him on his way.
On the eve of Yom Kippur we are commanded to eat. Grandmother prepares dishes of vegetables and fruit. In Grandfather’s house they don’t eat a lot, nor do they rush, but the walk to the synagogue is quick. “We’re walking along the same path that my grandfather and my great-grandfather walked on,” Grandfather says. On Yom Kippur eve Grandfather mentions them and speaks in their names.
45
ERNST’S PAINS HAVE GROWN STRONGER, BUT HE TRIES TO ignore them. Irena brings fruit, vegetables, and flowers from the market. She believes that fresh juice and a devoted heart are necessary for his health.
Not long ago Ernst would get dressed and go out to the café. Going to the café and returning would stimulate his thoughts, but his writing hadn’t progressed. It remained caught in a thicket with no escape. Now the pains are leading him to places where he had been wanting to go for years. Now he is in the Carpathians at his grandparents’ home. But the day is not too far off when he will return to his parents and from there to Tina and Helga, all of whom live in the womb of the Bug River. They all perished on the forced march to that cursed river. Grandmother, too, at the end of her days, was uprooted from her sanctuary and marched with them all, until she collapsed and never rose again.
“Irena,” Ernst says, “last night I dreamed we were both in the Carpathian Mountains. You asked me why everything in the Carpathians is made of wood. I had a long and detailed answer ready, but the words were blocked for some reason. Then you suddenly spoke up and asked for forgiveness for the question, and you said to me, in a clear voice, ‘All the proper sanctuaries are made of wood, because man is like a tree in the field.’ ”
“I said that? Impossible.”
“You did. I heard it with my own ears.”
Once a week Irena returns to her house. She cleans, tidies, and lights a candle. Since she started sleeping in Ernst’s apartment, gloom has settled in her house. Irena tries to sweeten the sadness that has accumulated there. She brings a bunch of flowers
and scatters them on the kitchen counters and on the table. Her faith tells her that she must enlist her parents’ help at this time.
But to her regret, her parents don’t take the trouble to come anymore. Irena feels that their failure to return is bound up with an old desire to separate themselves from her. For years they used to say, You have to go out. You have to build a life for yourself. She wants to tell them, You’re wrong. Now I have a companion for life, and I’m bound to him heart and soul. She has often said to herself, What a shame that my parents never knew Ernst. I’m sure they would have loved him.
Sometimes Irena cooks in her house and brings the food to Ernst. There’s no logic in doing this, but it seems to her that the food she cooks there is healthier. When she returns, Ernst asks her, “How’s the house?” Each time she brings word of something new or affecting. This time she told him that the flowers she had put on the table a week ago had dried nicely, and the house was full of their fragrance.
But the pain doesn’t let up. At two in the morning, and sometimes before that, the pain pulls Ernst from his sleep. Since the illness has gotten worse, the pains have increased and become varied. There are stabbing pains, pinching pains, and pains that throb with intense pressure. Irena has many strategies for easing the pain. She doesn’t always succeed, but some nights Ernst falls asleep in her arms, and he is completely hers.
One night Ernst dreamed that Irena was wearing the uniform of the Red Army and they were speeding somewhere together in a jeep. Suddenly the car stops, Irena gets out, removes her boots, and reveals perfect little feet. Ernst is thunderstruck, sinks to his knees, and says, “Captain Ernst Blumenfeld requests permission to kiss your foot.” Without waiting for an answer, he lowers his head and does it.
46
“IRENA!” ERNST CALLS OUT.
“How can I help you?”
“Nothing special. I want to read you a chapter.”
“I’m glad.”
Irena has noticed that Ernst’s preparations before writing involve a hunching over of his body, to focus his attention. When his attention is well directed, Ernst sees things that he saw in his childhood but also things that he never actually saw with his own eyes, like his great-grandparents. The family had lived in the Carpathians for generations. All the paths around the house, all the fields and orchards, were part of their sanctuary, which consisted of their huts, their storehouses, and the barns that surrounded it all. The woods were also part of the sanctuary, as well as the large black rocks that jutted out of the earth. There were also high, soaring mountains in the Carpathians; if you raised your head to look at them, you would get dizzy.
A neighbor, a frequent visitor, enters the yard, and his appearance is different than it usually is.
“What’s the matter?” Grandfather approaches him.
“The Jews crucified Jesus, and the crucifixion pains me. It’s been paining me for years,” the peasant says, nearly in tears.
“You also believe that the Jews crucified Jesus?” Grandfather asks quietly.
“Everybody says so.”
“And so I say to you that they didn’t crucify him. It’s a lie that people are spreading. Not everything that people say is the truth. You’re a smart man, and you know that not everything people say is true.”
“The priest says so, too.”
“Sometimes even a priest can be mistaken. A priest is a man, not God. You’ve known me ever since you came into the world and opened your eyes. Did you ever see me raise a hand against anyone? Did you ever see my wife, Raisl, shout or curse?”
“No,” the peasant says in embarrassment.
“So why do you say, ‘Everybody says so’? ‘Everybody says so’ isn’t proof.”
Grandfather’s restraint makes an impression on the peasant. He keeps on mumbling, but his mumbling no longer has any force. Grandfather’s words apparently influence him. Grandfather approaches him and says, “You’ve forgotten that we used to work in the fields together. How many years have passed since then? How old were you?”
“Young.” The peasant rouses himself from his distress.
“We hoed the cornfield together.”
“Right. So why did the Jews crucify Jesus?” The peasant goes back to his original question, as if he’d forgotten what Grandfather told him.
“We already talked this over back then, don’t you remember?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’ll remind you. We all have one God. You go to church, and we go to the synagogue, but we pray to the same God. One God created us all and gave us the Ten Commandments.”
“True,” says the peasant.
Grandfather walks over to the window, and as a sign of reconciliation he takes the bottle of slivovitz from the cupboard and pours two drinks. Both men call out “L’chayim,” and down their drinks. As is the custom here, Grandfather pours each of them another drink. He takes the peasant by the arm and tells him that this year the wheat harvest wasn’t as it had been in prior years, apparently because there was too much rain. Sometimes an excess of blessings can become a curse. The peasant agrees with Grandfather. His fields haven’t done well, either.
The peasant’s house is nearby, and Grandfather escorts him home. Before opening his gate, the peasant tells Grandfather that his daughter has left home and has gone astray and that he plans to kill her at the first opportunity.
“Don’t kill her. She’ll repent,” Grandfather speaks in a soft voice.
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’ll see. Sometimes a person loses his mind, and you have to forgive him. Someone who confesses and leaves his evil ways will be forgiven. That’s what the Bible teaches us.”
The peasant loses himself in thought for a moment and then says, “Who knows?” And he goes inside his house.
After the High Holidays, the mountains are filled with a different silence. Grandfather rises early, prays, and goes out to the fields. Grandmother stays at home and prepares the house for the rainy season. God’s presence is diminished, perhaps because of the low clouds that are always visible in the windows. It’s hard to visualize God in the image of darkness or of melancholy. Grandfather doesn’t come home at noon, and Grandmother brings his meals to him in the orchards in three clay pots.
When Grandfather returns in the evening, there is no joy in his eyes. He opens the shutter and prays fervently, but the prayer doesn’t draw him out of his gloom.
Grandmother serves him a drink and immediately brings another. Two glasses of vodka do their work: Grandfather’s forehead becomes flushed, and a fixed smile appears on his face, as though he was smiling at himself. Grandmother doesn’t ask him how he feels or what he wants to eat. She just serves red borscht in a wooden bowl, a saucer of sour cream, and a pot of potatoes in their peels.
47
THE PAIN IS INTENSE, BUT ERNST DOESN’T SURRENDER TO it easily. He gets up every morning and struggles with his weakness and with the visions that emerge from within him. It’s important to him for his writing to be orderly and the details well chosen. A faulty sentence drives him mad. Years earlier he used to embellish the paragraphs with metaphors. Now he is striving for short sentences, factual, without adjectives. He has declared war against adjectives. Every time he encounters one, he uproots it.
Once a day a nurse comes to gives him an injection to ease his pain. Ernst no longer asks how long he has to live or other questions that there is no point in asking. The nurse, a quiet, devoted woman, reminds him of his daughter. Ernst is certain that if his daughter were alive, she would be like her. During the past month, he has seen Tina and Helga rising up to the surface from the voracious waves of the Bug River. They have become so blended in with the current, it is as if they have become human fish. Ernst is distressed that they have changed their form so that he can no longer approach them. He tries to nevertheless but is blinded by the sparkling water.
One night Ernst woke up, turned to Irena, and said, “Why aren’t we able to love our people the wa
y the Russian authors love theirs? Nothing is simpler than to love. Nothing is more natural than to love. But Jewish artists seem to be handicapped. First they hated those who preserved the tradition and accused them of being primitive and drugged. Then they hated the Jewish shopkeeper and said he was a greedy exploiter who deceived people. And when the Holocaust survivors came, they said they were human dust. Why did Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Turgenev love their people, and why aren’t we aren’t able to love as they do?” That thought had clearly raged within Ernst during the night. When he finished speaking, his head sank back onto the pillow and he fell asleep. During the past few nights, Ernst has uttered sentences or sentence fragments in his sleep. Irena understands some of his words, but most of them are garbled and unclear.
Writing has become a struggle against his weakness. Ernst doesn’t give in to it. Every morning he gathers the remnants of his strength, rises, shaves, eats breakfast with Irena, and immediately sits at his desk. Irena is impressed by his determination. A secret belief whispers to her that the struggles are strengthening him and that the time will come when he will stand up, dress, put on his coat, and say, I’m going for a walk. Meanwhile, she is making an effort to stay close to him in every way. She sits at his side and watches his head on the pillow. She holds his hand and places a damp washcloth on his forehead.
A few days ago Ernst turned to her and said, “Irena, dear, even if I’m in coma, don’t send me to a hospice.”
Irena was shocked. She took his hand in hers, kissed it, and said, “What are you thinking of? You’ll always be with me.”
Now Death is a guest in the house. Sometimes he assumes the guise of the tall doctor, who resembles a Christian priest who comes to dying people to hear their confessions. And sometimes death enters as Leiman, the retired man who comes to do physiotherapy with Ernst. More than once Irena wants to say to the tall doctor, We expect the proper medicine from a doctor, not the consolations of a rabbi. Leiman is cynical. One can hear his cynicism in every word he says. Once Irena heard him tell Ernst, “Man is a strange creature, hungry for life. What’s in this life that makes him cling to it so much?” That time she didn’t restrain herself. She went up to him and said, “You don’t have to tell your thoughts to your patients.”
Suddenly, Love Page 14