Suddenly, Love

32

ERNST’S SCHEDULE HAS CHANGED. HE SPENDS MOST OF the day at home and goes out to the café in the afternoon. He no longer issues his commands upon leaving the house. Irena is frightened by this restraint and worries that he might destroy his manuscripts himself. When Ernst returns from the café, supper is ready. After the meal Irena offers him a glass of grapefruit juice, or tea and cake. If Ernst accepts, she stays for a few minutes and then goes home.

Since Ernst’s injury, Irena has neglected her own house. Still, once a week she vacuums the carpets and washes the floor. When she’s finished with her errands, she sits at the table and reads a book. Sometimes she feels that her parents’ presence in the house has diminished in the past months, as if they have realized that she is now given over entirely to Ernst. It pains Irena that her parents have distanced themselves. Don’t worry, she heard her mother say one night, we’ve withdrawn because we don’t want to disturb your thoughts. We’re as close to you as ever. You don’t disturb me, she wanted to answer, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth.

It’s pleasant for Irena to think about her parents. Her parents aren’t a memory for her, but a warm closeness. She tells them everything that her heart tells her. She doesn’t conceal feelings or thoughts from them, but since she started working for Ernst, her parents have been closing themselves off from her, as if they were embarrassed by their limited education. Now Irena tries to bring them back, to seat them in their usual places in the living room or the kitchen.

It is actually easy to bring them back. They now sit where they always sat. They don’t ask what or how, as they sometimes used to when they were still alive. They are intensely attentive. Everything that Irena tells them interests them, and it’s evident that they are content with the way she keeps the house.

She tells them what happened to Ernst, about the burglary and his injury. She wants to relate it all in an orderly way, and for a moment it seems to her that she can do it in an uninterrupted flood of words, but the words are able to form only a few sentences. She concludes by saying, Ernst told me about his time in the Communist youth movement.

The Communist youth movement was the worst, her parents say. They would burn holy books and synagogues. Didn’t we tell you that they tried twice to burn down the two synagogues of Zalachov? The synagogues were saved by Ukrainian peasants, who drove off the Communists.

And didn’t Hashomer Hatsa’ir burn holy books? Irena asks.

In Hashomer Hatsa’ir they held bonfires on Yom Kippur and wild parties, but they didn’t burn holy books.

Ernst regrets it now, Irena says, defending him.

And rightly so, her father says, rising from his seat. Irena knows that her father is unwilling to forgive those sins of Ernst’s youth. She had heard Ernst say more than once: We distressed our parents, who had done nothing wrong. They were honest people, hardworking, loyal to the faith of their fathers. Both in the ghetto and in the camps, they observed even the minor commandments.

While Irena was still a child, her parents used to compare the Communist youth to Hashomer Hatsa’ir in Zalachov, and their conclusion was that both movements had treated the faith of their fathers brutally. But the Communists went too far.

Ernst is an author, not a Communist. Irena tries to appease them.

What does he write about?

About his life.

Let’s hope he’s not writing against the Jews.

Irena clearly recalls Holocaust Remembrance Day in their home. Twenty-seven memorial candles burned in the kitchen. Her parents fasted and took on a vow of silence for the day. Her mother would lie on the sofa and groan now and then. In her last year of life Irena’s father begged her to break her fast and drink a glass of water. Irena’s mother responded without opening her eyes and with a strange movement of her head. “Nothing will happen to me,” she said.

Usually her parents depart after an hour or two. They leave suddenly, without warning, which momentarily frightens Irena. In the past she believed that by doing this they were expressing dissatisfaction with her way of keeping the house. Of course that fear was groundless. They had never once uttered even a word of criticism. They always apologized for not bringing flowers.

After her parents depart, Ernst appears in front of Irena again. One time she saw him drifting on the river, trying to stop the boat he was on. It was obvious that he was expending great effort, but the boat didn’t stop. In vain he steered it toward the bank, but the current was stronger than he was. Finally, he raised one oar in a gesture of protest and shouted. But the next day, when Irena told Ernst what she had dreamed, he just smiled and said, “In my youth we used to row on the river.”

Since Ernst returned from the hospital, another matter has been troubling Irena: his medicine. Every four hours she hands him his pills. But she forgot several times, and this torments her. Ernst swallows the pills and explains to Irena that his writing was flawed because spite and didactic thinking distorted it, and now it’s hard to correct. “Every night I try to uproot the poisonous weeds, but there’s still a lot of work to do. The Russian authors knew how to love their people, together with their pain and their wounds. Why does that effort cost me blood?”

Irena has heard these arguments before. But since Ernst’s return from the hospital, they have become more strident. Irena wants to tell him, You mustn’t be angry at yourself, but she doesn’t say it. She feels his intense closeness now, and every time she touches his hand or he touches her neck, her nights are stormy. One evening he grabbed her and, without any warning, kissed her leg.