All Whom I Have Loved

60

Early in the morning the bells of the monastery began to ring, and Father made me get dressed in a hurry. The path to the monastery was mired in mud. We slushed through and arrived there soaked. The monk at the entrance greeted us differently — with a deeply bowed head.

“What's happened?” asked Father.

The monk bowed even lower and did not utter a word. The other monks immediately gathered to his side and surrounded us.

“What's happened?” Father raised his head.

“Henia passed away early this morning,” the monk said quietly.

“What?” said Father, his jaw dropping, as if he did not understand.

We all turned to go down the corridor and from there to the infirmary. Mother lay in the bed, propped up by a pillow, her white face suffused with an eerie calm. Father seemed to crumble all at once, and the monk grasped his forearm and held him. Suddenly the bells sprang to life again and began to toll; the sharp peals made me dizzy.

“What?” Father repeated.

“Henia is no longer suffering,” whispered the monk.

In the next chamber the choir burst into song. It was a soft song and it washed over me with a kind of painful pleasantness. Father shrugged, as if refusing to accept the gift that had been offered him.

“Henia is suffering no more.” Now the monk spoke out clearly.

Father grasped my hand and turned toward the corridor. The monks did not stir. We walked down the corridor into the entrance hall. The monk who had recognized Father's name bowed. Father did not thank him. We left immediately to go for a walk around the monastery.

The sun stood full and round in the sky and poured its light upon us. The ground was muddy, and it was hard to walk. Father went ahead; when he had gone some way, he noticed that I'd fallen behind and came back for me. I had become tired and asked him to stop. He did, and lit a cigarette. When we had completed the circuit, we stood at the entrance but did not go inside.

“We've arrived,” said Father, as if we had carried out a mission.

We returned to the inn, and Father downed a few drinks and chatted with one of the drunks. The innkeeper, who knew everything, came up to Father and said, “God gives and God takes away.”

Father didn't agree. “What's this giving and taking?” he said. “That's just haggling. If you give, you give; you don't take back. Victor, for instance, gave and did not take. He always gave.”

“Which Victor are you talking about?”

“Victor from Bucharest — good, loyal Victor.”

“I have no idea which Victor you're talking about,” said the innkeeper, returning to his counter. Father was drunk and was now confusing scenes from the past with the present, even mentioning little Tina. Yet he wasn't angry and he didn't threaten. At noon he announced, “I'm off to sleep,” and he took a long nap.

Toward evening he woke up and we returned to the monastery. Father was not drunk, but he was hazy and spoke about distant things that were apparently troubling him. In the waiting room, he took the abbot by surprise, asking him if it wouldn't be proper to give Henia a Jewish funeral, as she'd been born Jewish and had grown up in the Jewish orphanage in Czernowitz.

“But she did convert,” said the abbot weakly.

“But she divorced her husband.”

“But not Christianity.”

“Isn't it proper to return a person's lost honor to them?”

“What honor is sir referring to?” The elderly monk smiled.

In the meantime, more monks had gathered and Father's self-confidence ebbed. “If you think otherwise,” he said, “I won't interfere. Death rules us all, and it makes no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. In the end, we'll all die. And yet, it seems to me that it's preferable for a person to be gathered to his forefathers. As the Bible says, Born a Jew and died a Jew and returned to his resting place, even if it's an imperfect resting place,” he said with a grimace.

“Henia converted. It was her wish,” said the elderly monk in a soft voice.

“Correct, sir. I spoke of matters of leniency.”

“Henia converted. It was a full, religious conversion. I performed it myself.”

“That's right. Perhaps that's how it has to be.”

“She was Christian to the depths of her soul.”

“I do not doubt it, sir.”

I was astounded by Father's conciliatory tone. I had never seen him throw his arms about in such a sloppy way. And the entire time we stood there, Father was pleasant to his hosts, praised the medical care and the way we had been treated. Finally, in a voice not his own, he said, “Henia is in faithful hands,” and burst into tears.