Blooms of Darkness

4

The night finally came. It was preceded by a day of house-to-house searches, kidnappings, and cries of dread. The noose was getting tighter, and his mother decided that after midnight they would set out. All the days in the cellar, Hugo didn’t feel afraid. Now, as he is on his knees and stuffing the books back into the knapsack, his hands tremble.

“Did we forget anything?” asks his mother, the way she used to ask before they went on vacation.

It’s one in the morning, and they walk up the steps in the dark house. Through the darkness Hugo can see his room — the desk, the dresser, and the bookcase. His schoolbag lies at the foot of the desk. I won’t be going to school anymore—the thought passes through his head.

Hugo’s mother hastily puts a few small things in a handbag, and they go out the back door into the street. The street is dark and silent, and they cling to the walls as they walk, to avoid discovery. Near what was once the bakery is the manhole. Hugo’s mother pulls up the cover and goes down. Hugo throws her the suitcase and the knapsack. He immediately dangles his legs down, and his mother takes him in her arms. Luckily for them, the sewage isn’t deep at that hour, but the stench and the stifling air slow them down. Hugo knows that quite a few people have been caught coming out of the sewers. His mother assumed that on a Sunday night the guards would be drunk, and they wouldn’t leave the ghetto to lie in wait for people running away. From time to time the level of the sewage rises, and the air grows more stifling. While they are trudging along, Hugo collapses. His mother doesn’t lose her wits. She drags him, and in the end she pulls him out. When he opens his eyes, he is lying on grass.

“What happened, Mama?” he asks.

“It was suffocating, and you felt ill.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“There’s nothing to remember.” His mother tries to distract him.

Hugo will think a great deal about that dark night, trying to tie the details together, and he will wonder again and again how his mother had managed to pull him out of the sewer and restore him to life.

But meanwhile, it’s dangerous to linger in the open field. They make their way, hunched over, to a nearby grove of trees. Every few minutes they stop, kneel, and listen.

“Mariana works at night, and you have to get used to being alone.” His mother reveals another detail to him.

“I’ll read, and I’ll do arithmetic problems.”

“I hope that Mariana has a light in the closet,” she says in a trembling voice.

“When will you come and see me?”

“That doesn’t depend on me,” she says without emphasizing any word in the sentence.

Then they take a break and sit without talking, and it seems to Hugo as if many hours have passed since they left the cellar, were in the sewer, and clambered out of it.

“Will Papa also come and visit me?” he asks, hurting his mother without knowing it.

“It’s very dangerous to wander around outdoors, don’t you see?”

“And after the war, will you come and visit me?”

“We’ll come right away. We won’t delay even a minute,” she says, and she’s glad that this time she’s found the correct words.

Then she tells him that she doesn’t intend to go back home. She will go to the nearby village. She has a friend there, someone with whom she’d gone to school, and maybe this friend will agree to hide her until the troubles are over. If that friend doesn’t agree, she will go to the village of Khlinitsia, where a woman who was a servant in Hugo’s grandparents’ house lives, an old woman with a good temperament.

“Why can’t you stay with me?”

“There isn’t room for me.”

Then she speaks in a torrent, as though she were reading out loud or reciting. Hugo doesn’t understand anything she is talking about. He only senses that she wants to tell him something that’s hard to reveal. It’s her voice, but not her usual voice.

“Mama.”

“What?”

“And you’ll come to visit me?” The words burst from his mouth.

“Certainly I’ll come. Do you have any doubt?”

The silence mingles with the darkness, and the smell of the damp grass rises from the soft ground. “Autumn,” says his mother, and her voice wipes away the memory of the stifling sewer and the fears of the night. Other sights, silent and enchanting, rise from oblivion.

In the autumn they used to go for a week in the Carpathians, to see the fallen leaves. The autumn lay on the earth in a myriad of hues, and they would step slowly, so as not to destroy the big leaves that floated in bright colors, detached from the trees. Hugo’s father would bend over, pick up a leaf, and say, “A waste.”

“A waste of what?” His mother’s question came promptly. “Of this beauty.”

Other marvelous things were said then, but Hugo didn’t take them in, or maybe he didn’t retain them. His contacts with his parents at those times were delicate and soft, and what was said sank into him.

For a moment it seems to Hugo that his mother is about to say, It’s late, let’s go home. We were wrong, but we can correct the error. His mother sometimes used sentences like that, expressions of her optimism. His father liked that sentence and would try to adopt it in his own way.

“How do you feel?” she asks, looking at Hugo with her eyes wide open.

“Excellent.”

“Thank God. In half an hour we’ll be at Mariana’s.” Hugo, flooded by memories of the Carpathians, tries to delay the parting and says, “Why rush?”

“Mariana is waiting for us. I wouldn’t want to delay her. It’s late.”

“Just a little.”

“We can’t, dear. The way was long, beyond what I had thought.” Hugo knows that phrase, “beyond what I had thought,” but this time it seems as if it has been plucked out of another place and another time.

“What time is it?” Hugo asks.

“It’s two-thirty, after midnight.”

Strange, the thought flits through his mind, why did his mother say “after midnight”? There was no light in the whole area. Everything was night. Why say “after midnight”? Wasn’t that self-evident?

“It’s very late. I wouldn’t want to bother Mariana too much. But if we make an effort, we’ll be there in half an hour,” his mother says softly.