All Whom I Have Loved

19

It rained incessantly, and we sat on the broad bed playing cards. For an instant it seemed that it would be like this forever, and I wasn't sorry. Halina was amazed by my victo-ries — when she was amazed at me she hugged me and kissed me and called me her sweetie. She was wild and her embraces could hurt, but mostly they were pleasant.

Mother was so distracted and confused that sometimes she called me Arthur, my father's name — last night she did it again. Not only were her thoughts scattered, but her movements, too. From time to time, a saucepan or a glass would slip from her hands. Yesterday she dropped a stack of plates. Seeing the pieces, she knelt down, covered her face, and said, “What's happening to me? Everything's slipping through my fingers.”

When I was just about to fall asleep, Mother asked, “How is Father?”

“He's all right.” I didn't mean what I said.

“What did you do?”

“We sat in a tavern.” I let her in on something I need not have told her.

Mother came over to me and, with a catch in her throat, said, “You mustn't go into a tavern. A tavern is a dan gerous place.”

“Why?” An impish devil egged me on.

“People get drunk in taverns,” she said, and burst into tears. She sat on the bed and cried for a long time, but I felt no pity for her. I was sure that she was not crying for Father or even for me, but for herself.

Since she had started coming back late, only to disappear at night, I have been repulsed by her. Even her clothes, which I used to love to smell, put me off — they were now saturated with a suffocating perfume, and I was glad that Halina crammed them into the chest of drawers in the morning.

“What's the matter?” Mother sometimes asked.

“Nothing,” I said without meeting her gaze.

Once I loved hearing her read aloud from a book. Even now she forced me to listen to her reading. But I didn't listen to her, I only looked at her lips and told myself, “These lips that kiss André in the dark are not clean lips. I'd far rather have Halina's kisses, because she hates her fiancé and she loves me.”

On my last outing with Halina we got as far as the Jewish orphanage, on the outskirts of the city. We stood next to the high fence for a while. Everything there looked rundown, peeling, and neglected, and the children's faces were sickly and jaundiced. Halina told me that if a child had no father or mother, he was sent there.

“But I have parents,” I hastened to say.

“True,” Halina said.

Yet I couldn't shake off the feeling that soon I would also be sent to the orphanage. I did not tell her about that feeling. I had begun to be haunted by a different fear. I dreamed that André was punishing me the way the Ruthenians punish their children. First they make them bend over, and then they strip off their pants. The children scream and try to escape, but it's useless — the belt comes down on them time after time, and the father won't stop thrashing until he draws blood.

Mother abandoned me every night so she could go to André. The darkness frightened me, but I swore to myself that I was not going to cry. I sat on the bed or stood by the window. Sometimes I armed myself with two kitchen knives, so that if the darkness invaded, I could thrust into it, wounding it on the spot. Halina had told me something else: that Jews do not marry non-Jews. When I asked her if André was Jewish, she laughed and said, “He's a goy — you know what a goy is?”

“No.”

“Whoever isn't a Jew is a goy. Not a nice word — don't use it.”

Mother, it seemed, had no idea that I was awake during the nights, that I heard her dressing and leaving stealthily and returning toward morning. She thought that I didn't know what she did at night, but I knew everything. Halina had already told me and made me swear that I wouldn't tell a soul. After they kiss, they would undress and stick to each other when they were naked. I had complete faith in what Halina said. Halina didn't lie to me like Mother did. Since she had told me this secret, it had been hard for me to speak to Mother. I had nothing but scorn for her, and I swore to myself that as soon as I grew up I would not see her face anymore.