Suddenly, Love

15

ABOUT A YEAR BEFORE THE WAR CAME TO HIS CITY, ERNST married Tina, an orphaned Jewish girl whom the Party had recruited. She had worked with Ernst for some time, and he was impressed by her modest, straightforward conduct. One time he sat with her in the canteen, and they discussed the works of Gorky. She said things he didn’t expect to hear. Evidently her reading wasn’t mechanical, and she was highly sensitive to details. She wasn’t impressed by Gorky’s ideas about society but by his ability to observe the minutiae of human suffering — especially in children and, even more, in old people.

That conversation in the canteen opened his heart, and something of his old self returned to him. Ernst and Tina used to meet and talk about books and writing, about what was important in life and what was external to it. Tina didn’t doubt communism, but her true interest wasn’t in reforming society but in improving the life of the individual. At first Ernst tried to remind her that this wasn’t the opinion of the Party. Tina was alarmed and apologized. Later he stopped reproving her. Her insights and charm captivated his heart.

The wedding ceremony was held in the Party’s offices, in the cellar. The Party secretary himself conducted it. Ernst and Tina swore allegiance to the Party and to Stalin. Afterward they drank a toast and recited the familiar slogans, and the activists recited the poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Those were times of unexpected happiness. Every day Ernst discovered a new side of Tina, and every day he knew that only Tina could restore the essence he had lost. How this would happen, he didn’t know. He would remember the days with her as a time of bright sunlight, and what came afterward as prolonged darkness.

When their daughter, Helga, was born, Ernst’s happiness was boundless. The Party held a small celebration in the cellar. Again they sang, mocked the old world, got drunk, and cursed the police and collaborators.

After that they were hardly ever together. War was raging in Europe, and Ernst was sent on secret missions. In the spring, when the Romanian Army arrived in Czernowitz, the heads of the Party were ordered to flee across the border to the Soviet Union. Ernst parted from Tina hastily. He was sure that he would return in a matter of days. Tina felt differently. She wept and kissed his hands. Then came the days of the trains and the bombings. He transferred from train to train. If one didn’t arrive on time or was canceled, he marched on foot, joining the refugees. Every day took him farther from Tina, and every day he saw new suffering. But Ernst was confident in the victory of the Red Army and in his rapid return to her. In a village near Moscow he was conscripted and immediately sent to an officers’ course. The courses were short and accelerated, meant mainly for the Party faithful.

After Czernowitz was occupied by the Romanians and Germans, the Jews were imprisoned in a ghetto. Then the transports to Transnistria began. Ernst eventually learned that Tina and Helga had been among the first to be deported.

Although it had been many years since he had last seen them, when Ernst began writing about the war, he sometimes saw Tina and little Helga clearly, as if they weren’t mother and child but two girls holding each other’s hands. The big girl says to the little one, Soon we’ll get to the water, and you’ll be able to drink as much as you want. It was hard for him to uproot that picture from his mind. It appeared to him from various perspectives by day and by night.

Ernst also saw his parents in a long convoy of deportees. His father holds his mother’s hand and says, as he used to, There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is behind us.

And what about the debts? his mother asks.

In wartime, debts are forgiven, says his father wearily.

I don’t understand, says his mother, and her face is suddenly concealed.

From then on they don’t talk. They walk hand in hand with the rest.

Winter is at its height, but suddenly patches of earth peek out from the snow, as in the spring. That’s an illusion, of course. But the snowstorms have stopped, the ice on the river has broken up, and the water rushes. The soldiers hurry the deportees with blows and shots, so they will get to the raging river. The deportees know what is in store for them. They don’t try to escape. When they are close to the river, they remove their backpacks. With their loads lightened, they are shoved into the water by the soldiers and by the collaborators. When they are deep in the river, Ernst’s father stretches his neck, the way he did every morning when he shaved.