Suddenly, Love

41

ERNST DOESN’T TALK ABOUT HIS ILLNESS. HE SITS FOR hours in the armchair and writes. His intention is to join together all the segments of his life. He feels that his army service is an important link in the chain, but the chapters of his youth come first. It’s a journey that will take many days. He has to persevere and not grow weary. Irena understands his mood and tries not to disturb him. She varies his meals, arranges his pills, and if he wants to read her a chapter, she sits at his side and listens. She has noticed that his writing is simpler. She understands almost every word. Sometimes she thinks that he’s doing this for her, and she wants to say, Don’t take me into consideration. My education is limited. You have to write for knowledgeable people.

The Carpathians keep revealing themselves to him, each time in a new vision. When Ernst was eight, his parents sent him to spend the High Holidays with his grandparents. He stayed with them for a whole month, for some weeks before the holidays and after.

Why did they send him there? he has often wondered. True, he was outstanding in school, but to take him out of the classroom and send him far from home — what for? First he attributed it to simple arbitrariness. Later he thought that they were trying to bring him closer to their ancestors. But all these explanations seemed flimsy.

Two days after I arrived, I saw the fruit harvest. Grandfather stood next to one of the fruit-laden trees with Grandmother at his side, and both of them had bags at their hips. Grandfather reached up toward the leafy branches with his long arms, picking apples and placing them in his bag. Grandmother picked from the bent boughs. After the bags were full, they poured the fruit into giant wicker baskets. The apples in the baskets lost none of their glow. And their colors appeared to grow more intense, as though a more powerful existence had replaced their old one.

When I arrived at my grandparents’ home, the days still went by at their usual pace. But then things gradually slowed down. This was evident in Grandfather’s bearing. He would return from the fields with small steps, as though time was about to stop and he was going to stop along with it. When he got home, Grandmother would prepare a basin full of rainwater, and he would dip his feet in it. The little that he said decreased even more. After lunch he would read a book or doze off. The book would remain in his hands, even while he dozed. After the nap, he would resume reading as he hummed a melody. Grandfather had two voices: one that whispered so that you could barely hear it, and the other, when he prayed, that was full of entreaty.

While he read, Grandfather would occasionally close his eyes. His reading would continue in this way for a long time. At first glance it looked like studying, but that, of course, was a misapprehension. It was actually a continued effort to approach what is hidden within the letters and touch it. This didn’t come easily to him. Finally, in a last effort, he would grab the large book and press it to his chest, rise to his feet, raise his head, and close his eyes.

Grandmother wouldn’t take part in this. She would be busy with her own chores, making the special foods for Rosh Hashanah. The sweet, fragrant food and the gleaming, painted china would be displayed as gifts for the holiday angels who would come to visit.

During the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Grandfather didn’t work in the field in the afternoons, didn’t transact business, and didn’t repair anything in the house. Most of the time between noon and afternoon prayers he would sit and read his book. When the time for prayers came, he would rise to his feet, walk over to the window, open the shutters, and stand before the open sky.

Between afternoon and evening prayers, peasants would come and ask Grandfather for a blessing. He would place his hands on the gentile’s head, close his eyes, and bless him. Kneeling was forbidden. A peasant who knelt was asked to rise. Peasant women also came. Grandfather wouldn’t touch them. Instead, he called them by name and blessed them from a distance. When Grandfather blessed the peasant women, he looked like a priest, and indeed he was a cohen, a descendant of Aharon Ha’cohen. On several occasions, I saw Grandfather in the synagogue wrapped in his yellowed prayer shawl, getting ready to bless the congregation. I didn’t dare to look at him when he actually performed the blessing.

Every day Grandfather would sit with me for an hour, sometimes a bit more, and read the prayer book with me. Grandfather knew that in the city I didn’t attend religious school, didn’t pray, and didn’t learn the weekly Bible portion. Grandfather wanted to do the impossible in the short time at his disposal. Along with the prayer book, Grandfather would read the weekly Bible portion with me and tell me about the patriarchs, the judges, and the prophets. When I joined Grandfather on his walks, he showed me that God dwelt in every single plant; only the blind could fail to see this, he said. Grandfather spoke seriously but not with severity. Sometimes he would joke about all those who had forgotten that God was in heaven and worshipped alien gods instead.

We would take the evening meal on the veranda. It was always the same: potatoes cooked in their skins and borscht with sour cream. During the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Grandmother would serve plum compote about an hour after the meal — a custom she didn’t know the reason for.

There were many secret things in the house; some passed me by but some touched me. Once Grandfather said to me, “Not everything has a reason. God keeps the reasons for some things from us. But what we see and feel is enough. Lots of talk won’t explain. It’s better just to observe what we have been commanded to observe. Good thoughts don’t grow out of words but come from proper observation. A person must be attentive to hear what God asks of him.” Grandfather didn’t usually speak in long, connected sentences. I pieced the sentences together and said to myself, I don’t understand his words now, but the day will come when God will reveal to me what Grandfather is saying.

One afternoon Grandfather and Grandmother disappeared. I tried to drive the evil thoughts out of my mind. I went from room to room, and finally I went outside. Full of fear, I asked one of the peasants where my grandparents were. “Before the New Year,” the man replied, “the Jews go and lie down on their parents’ graves.”

“What do they do there?” I asked, ignorant of this custom.

“They pray,” said the peasant, and a smile spread across his broad face.

I had noticed that the gentiles living in the areas around Grandfather’s small property and the ones who worked for him knew a lot about the Jews and their way of life, more than I myself knew. What Grandfather didn’t tell me, they told me. For example, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we didn’t use tallow candles, only wax candles. They didn’t buy them in the grocery store; instead, Grandmother made them with her own hands, behind the closed door of her pantry. The gentiles also told me that on Rosh Hashanah the Jews go to the river and throw all their accumulated sins into the water.

These gentiles seemed to me like distant relatives who wished to draw nearer to Grandfather and Grandmother but weren’t allowed to. So they secretly watched, putting the details together and telling the whole story to their children in confidence.

There were secrets everywhere, like in the giant basalt cliffs that protruded from the mountains. Every cliff had a name, and every name had a story behind it. Grandfather knew the names and the stories. To me they looked like prehistoric creatures that had been tied up and immobilized in the middle of a walk. It was not surprising that restrained anger was visible in their faces.

A few days before Rosh Hashanah, Grandmother would prepare Grandfather’s clothes. She would wash them in a large wooden tub. From the way she hung them on the lines in the yard, it was evident that she had special reverence for those clothes. The fragrance of laundry soap and starch and charcoal for the iron would spread throughout the yard and perfume the air.

Beginning two days before Rosh Hashanah, Grandfather would not leave the house. The peasants who worked for him would come to receive instructions. He would give them brief directions and immediately return to his room. Those two days were devoted to preparations. Now three books lay on his table. Grandfather would read them over and over. During those two days, he was like a soldier who had been called to the front and was taking his leave of his birthplace and loved ones. He spoke to Grandmother like someone giving instructions about what to do if he should die in the war. Grandmother, a solid woman with customs of her own, would do his bidding without question. I knew that on Rosh Hashanah the wicked were condemned to beatings and hard labor. That knowledge filled me with gloom.

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Grandfather and Grandmother went to the synagogue together. Grandfather was dressed all in white, and Grandmother wore a blue lace dress. In the low-ceilinged synagogue the worshippers were dressed in white, and only the guests from the city stood out in their dark suits. Grandfather led the prayers, wrapped in his prayer shawl; when he lifted it off his head, a bright light glowed on his brow.

After two or three hours of writing, Ernst usually feels weak. He falls onto his bed and doesn’t even have enough strength to cover himself with the blanket. Irena doesn’t hesitate to remove his shoes, to lift his head up onto the pillow, to kiss his forehead and his chest. She takes his hand in hers and sits next to him until he is able to open his eyes.

Over the past few days the belief has taken root within Irena that if she stays close to Ernst, she will remove the illness from him — or at least part of it, the way her mother did when she was a girl and ran a high fever.