Blooms of Darkness

29

Spring is at its fullest. Through the cracks, the smells of mown grass and flowers filter into the closet. Outside a great sun shines. The cows are brought out to pasture, and the pure tranquility heightens Hugo’s longing for Mariana. Only now does he sense how close he was to her. At ten o’clock Nasha stands at the doorway to the closet with a cup of milk in her hand. “How did you sleep?” she asks in an impartial tone of voice.

“I slept well. It wasn’t cold.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought.”

“What did you think about?”

“I thought about Mariana’s fate.”

“Her fate?” Nasha is surprised.

“I don’t have any other word for it.”

“You miss her?”

“Indeed.”

“In that case, why not say, I miss her.”

This is the first personal comment Hugo has heard from her.

Nasha shuts the closet door and begins tidying the room. Hugo can hear her movements, measured and restrained. Mariana hated mopping the floor and changing sheets. She usually neglected cleanliness, and people commented on that more than once.

Hugo soon notices that at night Nasha’s guests don’t make comments to her or get angry at her. Her voice is hardly heard. The visits conclude in a businesslike way, without ceremonies, and without the shouting that he was used to hearing with Mariana.

Since Mariana left, it has been hard for Hugo to write in the notebook. It seems to him that he doesn’t have enough words, that he’s concealing the truth. He wants very much to write everything that is happening in his soul, especially his longings for Mariana, but he’s afraid his mother won’t like that.

Hugo hasn’t been in Mariana’s room since she left. Now the domains are separate: Nasha is in the bedroom, and he is in the closet. Her way of speaking is moderate, and sometimes indifferent. Every once in a while a slight laugh breaks out, but there is no raising of the voice. Nevertheless, Hugo finds something that Mariana and Nasha have in common: at times Nasha also talks about herself in the third person.

“Today Nasha’s going to inspect the room and her body,” she announces. Hugo wants to ask what that means, but he withstands the temptation and doesn’t ask. This time, in any event, she goes out of her way and reveals a bit to him, perhaps more than a bit. Unlike Mariana, she tidies the room thoroughly and washes for a long time.

Toward evening she brings him soup and meatballs and asks, “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Hugo says, and that’s the truth. Since Mariana left him, he has been assailed by fear. It’s hard for him to sink into thoughts or imaginings. All his thoughts are cut off. And the images in his memory aren’t as clear as they had been. In the morning, Frieda appears before his eyes, trapped in the transport, waving her broad-brimmed hat as though parting from the world with a sarcastic laugh. Hugo wants to go back and examine that image more closely, but fear snatches the picture from before his eyes, and he can see only the transport now, and the people crammed into it. They have no faces, as though they are about to be swallowed in thick fog.

“Why don’t you read?” Nasha stabs him without intending to.

“It’s hard for me to concentrate.” Hugo doesn’t hide the truth from her.

“Have you tried?”

“I haven’t even tried.”

“Jews like to read, isn’t that so?”

“Papa and Mama loved to immerse themselves in reading.”

“My grandfather was a priest. He used to say, ‘Learn from the Jews, they are the people of the book. There isn’t a Jewish house without a library.’ ”

“In our house there’s a big library.” For a moment the pride of past days returns to him.

“And what happened to the books?”

“There’s no one in the house.”

Nasha speaks slowly, listens cautiously, and chooses her words carefully. Her gaze is concentrated, so as not to lose a movement or syllable. Sometimes it seems to Hugo that she is spreading traps around her so that he will be caught or fall.

He tries to learn her gestures, the rhythm of her words, but his efforts achieve nothing. Nasha is a strange creature, he concludes. Who knows what secret she keeps in her soul?

“Isn’t it hard for you to live in the closet?” Nasha surprises him again.

“I’ve gotten used to it.”

“You’re a strong kid.”

“I haven’t done anything to justify that description.”

“You have.”

Every day she leaves him with a loaded word or an incomprehensible sentence. Hugo catches them, and for a long time he turns them over and over, until he becomes weary.