Blooms of Darkness

30

Hugo has already noticed that Nasha doesn’t speak about her parents or about her sisters. Sometimes she mentions her grandfather, and it’s clear that her connection with him was long-standing and close. Every time she mentions his name, she adds, “May he forgive me.”

Hugo listens to Nasha so closely and observes her so intently that Mariana’s face is erased, but not her scent. At night he sees her in the middle of a field of flowers, and she’s drunk and happy, raising her hands to heaven and giving thanks out loud: “Thank you, God, for freeing me from prison. Now Mariana is on her own, just on her own, and no one can tell her what to do.” She immediately kneels down, places her hands together, closes her eyes, crosses herself, and prays.

While she’s praying, Hugo’s mother appears, wearing a long coat that makes her look shorter, her face white and wrung out. For a moment she observes Mariana’s prayers, kneels beside her, and waits for her to finish. When she has finished, his mother asks her, “Mariana, what are you doing here?” Hearing that question, Mariana shrinks down and says, “It wasn’t my fault that they fired me.”

“And where is Hugo?”

“Don’t worry, he’s in good hands, better hands than mine.”

“Are they still searching for Jews?”

“Now the informers are digging in every hole. They are paid for every Jew.”

“The Jews are a desirable commodity, I see. How is Hugo?”

“He’s developed a lot since you left him. He’s a young man in every sense. It’s easy to fall in love with him.”

“Good God.” A shout bursts from his mother’s breast.

“Why are you worried? The school of life is an institution that shouldn’t be underestimated.”

The dream breaks off, and Hugo awakens. Unlike Mariana, Nasha knows how to run her life with strict order. After a night of guests she sleeps until late afternoon. Then she tidies the room, showers, rubs her body with fragrant lotions, and when she appears toward evening she looks calm. She makes no complaints. Sometimes Hugo notices a few wrinkles of dissatisfaction on her face, or a smile mixed with repressed pain, but usually she’s quiet or indifferent. Unlike Mariana, she doesn’t hug or kiss him, doesn’t praise him to the skies or use exaggerated endearments.

Sometimes she asks Hugo to mop the floor and clean the bathroom. The room that he continues to call “Mariana’s room” has changed beyond recognition. It is without pictures, without the little decorative bottles on the dresser, and without the small marks of carelessness that indicate poor housekeeping.

The short time Hugo spends in Mariana’s room, no longer free and on his own but as a servant, reminds him of Mariana’s open face and of the nights he lay close to her. Sharp longings fill him. The day before, Nasha told him, “You have to tidy up the closet. You mustn’t live in such disorder.” Most of the objects in the closet are Mariana’s clothes: robes, dresses, blouses, shoes, corsets, brassieres, and silk stockings. Mariana’s clothes are also her. They continue to breathe without her in the thin darkness of the closet.

Every piece of clothing gives her a different form. The colorful garments brighten her face and arouse the joy that was in her. The gray and black clothes add gloom to her gloom. More than once she complained about the corsets and brassieres that constricted her. She used to stretch her leg forward while putting on her silk stockings, a gesture he loved from the first time he saw it. There are clothes she hadn’t worn for a long time, and the odors have faded from them. But most of the clothes retain the smells of her body. Hugo brings them up to his nostrils, and Mariana’s full being comes to life.

For a long time he sits and sorts. If there were a cupboard, he could arrange the clothes on shelves, but since there isn’t one, he places them folded on the bench.

Hugo shows the arrangement to Nasha, and she’s pleased. But her satisfaction isn’t enthusiastic. When she’s pleased, she says, “Acceptable” or “Fine.” Unlike Mariana, she guards her emotions and doesn’t reveal them. When Hugo compliments her clothes or her hairdo, she isn’t moved but says, “Nice of you to notice.”

One evening she turns to Hugo and says, “I have a request of you. Help me cut my toenails. It’s hard for me to cut them and hard for me to put polish on them.”

Hugo is surprised. He didn’t imagine she would address such a request to him. “With pleasure,” he says.

Nasha’s feet and ankles are pretty and delicate, and he cuts her toenails carefully and gently, as she instructs him.

“In our profession, our feet are the front,” she says with a guarded smile. Hugo doesn’t understand the exact meaning of that sentence. The contact with her, in any event, gives him no pleasure, maybe because she doesn’t thank him but says, “Very good,” and immediately adds, “Beyond the demands of the profession, it’s a good idea to look presentable. Did your parents insist on looking well?”

“My parents are pharmacists.”

“Untidiness drives me crazy, and here no one insists on order and cleanliness.”

“Why?” Hugo asks carelessly.

“Because everybody is only concerned with himself.”

That night he hears one of the guests say, “Now there are no more Jews here. They’ve all reached their destination, and we’ll pull out those who are in hiding one by one. We managed to cleanse the region of Jews. Now it’s possible to breathe.”

“Have they all gone away?” asks Nasha.

“Without an exception.”

“And now there won’t be any more Jews?”

“We did our duty, once and for all.”

Hugo understands most of what the man says, and what he doesn’t understand, he guesses. But he consoles himself with the thought that his mother is hiding in a distant, unknown village. There her childhood friend is watching over her, the way Mariana and Nasha are watching over him.