Suddenly, Love

14

WHEN ERNST TURNED TWENTY-THREE, THE PARTY APPOINTED him Commissar for Jewish Affairs in his district. By then he had read what every devoted Communist was required to read, secretly visited the Soviet Union, taken part in advanced courses on organizing, and was involved in everything that was being done locally within the Party.

The committee that appointed Ernst knew that no one was better qualified than he. His loyalty to the Party and hostility to the members of his tribe were intertwined. They also knew he never stayed in one place for more than a day. He was systematic, his initiatives were innovative, and he did what he promised.

Within a month of his appointment, Ernst already had a file on the wealthy Jews, on the religious elite, and on everyone who should be recruited for the Party — especially young people in the high school and technical schools.

At that time his hatred for his fellow Jews was at its peak. He was certain that because of their distorted lives, they were damaged beyond repair. If he could, he would have burned down all the synagogues and yeshivas and all the factories and workshops where workers were exploited. He would also have condemned the arts-and-letters clubs to the flames. His closest friends were Ukrainians, half Jews who were disgusted by their Jewishness, and Polish exiles who brought with them from their homes a hatred of Jews.

At night Ernst would walk about in Czernowitz’s Jewish neighborhood. The jumble of grocery stores, dry goods stores, stalls, and synagogues seemed to him the embodiment of sickness and filth. These lairs have to be rooted out, he hissed to himself.

Every few months he would visit his parents. The liquidation of their store took a while. In the end, they sold it very cheaply to a real estate agent in the city. Ernst heard about it and raged. Strangely, he wasn’t angry with the agent who had exploited his parents’ situation but with his parents, who didn’t struggle to keep their bit of property. They remained the same. Actually, they became more confused, more immobile. Ernst would sit with them, pile up fatuous sentences, and then leave. After he left, his parents would sit frozen in their places, as though after a violent robbery.

In his youth Ernst had been sensitive to the landscape, to animals, to people in distress. But he now drove out all those feelings. He adopted an abstract, sociological way of speaking, using statistics and blunt statements. Personal talk felt like a luxury to him. Identification with an individual weakens one. One has to see the general picture, the goal, and at this time the goal was Birobidzhan, the province in Siberia that the Soviets had established for the Jews. That was his soul’s desire. When he spoke to young people, he promised them a healthy, normal life, a life filled with joy and usefulness to society. Quite a few of them, intoxicated by his speeches, left their elderly parents and wandered off into the unknown.

Later in life Ernst would say to himself, What did I do? What demon directed me then? Hatred that enthralled one’s youth cannot easily be uprooted. Years would pass before he could picture his parents, and even more time would pass before he could envision his grandparents. Now he is approaching the end of his journey, and night after night he expects them to reveal themselves to him. When a crack appears toward morning and a bit of landscape rises up from the depths, his body relaxes slightly. But on some nights he sees only his parents’ silence, which has been distilled even further so that there is no longer any separation between them and their silence, and he knows that it is in their marrow. He sees it in their faces: There is nothing to say. We won’t change. This is how we were, and this is how we will always be. When Ernst hears their silence, he shrivels up and trembles.