Blooms of Darkness

34

But over the next few days, there is no light. Mariana keeps saying that without brandy she’ll go out of her mind. The guests don’t complain about her, but some of them say, “What’s the matter with you? Where has the fire in you gone?”

Mariana is suffering, and Hugo can feel it in everything she does. She scrubs the room every day, and shakes out the mattress and the blankets. Hugo notices that her movements are fierce, and that when she lights a cigarette, her fingers tremble.

Mariana’s guests are soldiers and officers, and Hugo soon learns that the war is going badly for them now. Many soldiers are being sent to the front. Once he hears one of them tell her, “Tomorrow they’re sending me to the East. Take this ring with my name engraved on it. I passed the nicest hours of this cursed war with you.”

Hearing his words, Mariana bursts into tears.

“Why are you crying?”

“I feel sorry for you,” she says, and cries some more.

One evening she brings Hugo a bottle of brandy and says, “You’ll watch over it. You won’t let me drink too much. I’ll sip a little before my morning sleep, and a little at night, when I don’t have clients. You’ll be on watch and say to me, Mariana, now you’re not allowed to drink. You’re smart and know exactly when I’m allowed to drink and when it’s forbidden. I lose track. You’ll be my bookkeeper.”

Hugo knows in his heart that the job is a thankless one, and the day is not far when Mariana will say, Don’t mix in, don’t tell me what to do. But he does what she wants and says, “I’ll watch over the bottle, and if it’s necessary, I’ll remind you.”

That night Hugo dreams he’s in a field full of flowers and trees, and his parents are sitting by his side. They used to take day trips to the Carpathians every season. Their favorites were the spring and the summer. They would explore and would wonder at the landscapes. Then they would sit on the ground and eat a light meal, speaking little. The wagon driver would wait for them next to one of the tall trees. He usually drank a drop too much and became merry.

On the way back, he would joke about the Jews, who don’t drink and always retain their sanity. “Sanity, you should know, Doctor,” he said to Hugo’s father, “does not always help in life. Too much sanity spoils the flavor of life. You take three or four drinks, and you’re immediately in a world where everything is good.”

“Excessive drinking is harmful to your health,” Hugo’s father would respond.

“Even somebody who takes care of his health will get sick in the end.”

“Lying in hospital isn’t a pleasure I’d wish on myself.”

“Sooner or later everybody ends up there,” the wagon driver would crow victoriously.

Hugo’s father liked the wagon drivers. He would listen to their wishes and their confessions, and sometimes he tried to deflate somewhat their baseless self-assurance. But of course nothing worked, and they stuck to their guns. They were planted like boulders in their way of thinking. At the end of the argument, they would say, “The Jews are stubborn, a stiff-necked people. You can’t change their minds.”

Hearing that, Hugo’s father would burst out laughing and say, “You’re right.”

“What good does it do me to be right?” the driver would say, and then join in the laughter.

This time, in his dream, it’s different. Hugo’s mother looks at him in wonderment, as if to say, Why won’t you tell me what happened to you?

Hugo recovers and says, “What is there to tell? I was in Mariana’s closet.”

“I know that. After all, I’m the one who brought you to her. But what did you see there, and what did you hear, and how did the days pass for you?”

“That’s a long story,” he replies ambiguously.

“Will we ever hear the whole story from you?”

“What is there to tell?” He tries again to evade her.

“Everything interests us,” his mother says in a tone familiar to him.

“There were days as long as the underworld and days as short as a breeze,” says Hugo, glad that he found the words.

“I didn’t imagine I would be able to come here again,” his mother says.

“It’s impossible to forget summers in the Carpathians.” Language returns to Hugo.

“Thank God we’re together.”

“Do you believe in God?” Hugo is glad he can ask questions, and not only be the one asked. “Why do you ask?”

“In our earlier life, I never heard you say, ‘Thank God.’ ”

“My mother, your grandmother, would sometimes say, ‘Thank God.’ Now I allow myself to speak in her words. Is that a sin?”

Here Hugo’s father intervenes. He is dressed in his white suit, which gives a simple elegance to his height.

“One doesn’t easily acquire beliefs or change them,” he says. “I’ve remained as I was.”

“I can’t believe my ears,” says Hugo’s mother, and she raises her head.

“Did you change?” his father asks in a tone intended to relieve the tension in the air.

“It seems to me that we’ve all changed. You were in a labor camp for about two years, and you built the bridges over the Bug River. Hugo was with Mariana, and I worked like a slave in the fields. Could it be that all of this didn’t change us?”

“I feel that I’ve grown older, but not that I’ve changed,” replies Hugo’s father.

“As for me,” says Hugo, touching the cross on his chest, “this cross saved me.”

That statement makes his parents fall silent, and they stand in astonishment at their son’s words. It’s clear they won’t go on to ask what or why.