Suddenly, Love

25

ERNST WRITES AT NIGHT AND DOESN’T RIP UP THE PAPER. When a stack of paper is piled on his desk and he is content, Irena feels that soon he will lift her up again, and she will soar with him to other worlds. Sometimes it’s a tangled forest, and sometimes it’s one of the big cities where he lived in his youth. He speaks very little about the war. Irena knows that his parents, his first wife, Tina, and their daughter, Helga, perished on the banks of the Bug River during the war. Sometimes Irena feels that she knows them well and that she has played with Helga on a carpet.

Ernst always speaks with restrained fury about his second wife, but one time he lost his self-control. “Two monsters stood in my way in Israel,” he said, “the investment company and Sylvia. I don’t know which of the two was more damaging to me.”

Ernst is expressive. Even his silence is sharp. A few days ago he said to Irena, “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m repulsed by degeneration. A person should disappear modestly, without disturbing anyone. Slow death is a curse. If I knew how to pray, I would pray for a quick death.” Ernst sometimes says, “If I knew how to pray.” Why does he say, “If I knew”? Irena wonders. How hard is it to pray?

Two days ago Irena had a long, clear dream. She saw Ernst from a distance, holding his knee, trying to soothe a pain. But as she approached him, her error became apparent. Ernst wasn’t in pain. He was wearing a splendid uniform, walking with quick steps toward the entrance of a palace.

Irena, he said to her when he noticed her standing on the sidewalk, why are you standing on the side? Why don’t you join the ceremony?

I’d rather stand here. I can see from here, too.

But you won’t be able to see the ceremony in the palace.

I’ll hear it on the loudspeaker.

But you have to sit next to me. I want to pass all the documents on to you.

Irena was frightened and said, I don’t want to receive anything. I’ve received far too much. I don’t need anything.

Ernst lowered his head and said softly, It’s a simple transfer, much simpler than you imagine. The orchestra immediately started playing.

Irena awoke from her dream and wanted to go to Ernst right away. But it was early, so she made herself a cup of coffee. Since Ernst spoke to her about his papers, the nightmares return regularly, a mixture of celebration and dread.

Irena wanted to arrive early that morning, but in the end she was half an hour late.

“I’d begun to worry about you,” Ernst greeted her. “You’re always early.”

“Forgive me.”

“Why are you asking to be forgiven?”

That morning Ernst was in a good mood, and after breakfast he put some papers in the pocket of his three-quarter coat and went out to the café. Irena knew that this time he would sit in the café and write down some of his thoughts. “My thoughts run away from me,” he sometimes complains. When he’s in a good mood, he speaks about himself in the third person, saying, “Ernst is a fool. He’s sure that if he wears the three-quarter coat, the coat will make him walk. He thinks it’s possible to make the years go away. The years are visible in every step and wrinkle.” And sometimes, to tease Irena, who when speaking to him uses the formal German “Sie,” which means “they,” he says, “Who are those people you’re talking to? There’s just one person here, and you have to talk to me directly.” Irena understands him, but it’s hard for her to use the informal “du.”

The day was bright and pleasant. Ernst went out in a good mood and returned happy. Irena prepared lunch, and at four o’clock she served him mint tea and went home.

All the way home she said to herself, Ernst is pleased with his writing, and that’s why he’s in a good mood. When she reached her apartment, she immediately lit two colored candles as a sign of gratitude that her efforts didn’t disappoint him. For a long time she sat and watched the candles. She saw Ernst leaning over his papers, and she was filled with gratitude and joy. That night she washed and went to bed early, and her sleep was untroubled.

But for Ernst the night didn’t go well. After midnight thieves broke into his house, tied him up, and covered his mouth with a bandage. Ernst resisted and paid a heavy price. The robbers beat him. When Irena arrived in the morning, and she came early, her eyes darkened in distress. The front door was smashed in, the cupboards were open, papers were scattered. Irena found Ernst lying tied up in the back room, his face as white as a sheet. She peeled the bandage off his mouth, untied the ropes on his hands and feet, and with a voice that wasn’t her own, she cried, “Ernst!”

Ernst opened his eyes, but his voice failed him. Irena immediately rinsed his face and called a doctor. The doctor arrived, and the police came after him. The house, which had until then known only silence and suppressed struggles, was now laid open. Detectives poked around in every corner, and a police officer tried in vain to get Ernst to say something.

The doctor sent for an ambulance to bring Ernst to the hospital without delay. Irena went with him. By noon the X-rays revealed his injuries: a fractured right leg and two cracked ribs.

Later Ernst was asked again, “What do you remember?”

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Irena didn’t move from his bedside. He now looked to her like a wounded soldier who had returned from the front. She knew that because of his Communist past, when war was declared he had been assigned to an accelerated officers’ course and then sent into battle. For a year and a half he had been on active duty and had apparently been an outstanding soldier. Once he said to her, “Too bad I didn’t continue in the army. That was a healthy struggle. Any other struggle is against yourself.”

Ernst was in pain and asked for a sedative. After receiving it, he sank into a deep slumber. If he would only awaken, Irena thinks, he would tell her about the war: about the front and about the artillery that shelled the German headquarters without letup.