Tzili: The Story of a Life

17

EVERY WEEK she went down to the plains to renew their supplies. She was quiet, like a person doing what had to be done without unnecessary words. She would bathe in the river, and when she returned her body gave off a smell of cool water.

She would tell him about her adventures on the plains: a drunken peasant woman had tried to hit her, a peasant had set his dog on her, a passerby had tried to rob her of the clothes she had taken to barter. She spoke simply, as if she were recounting everyday experiences.

And because the weather was fine, and the rains scattered, they would sit for hours by the fire eating, drinking herb tea, listening to the forest and hardly speaking. Mark stopped speaking of the camp and its horrors. He spoke now about the advantages of this high, remote place. And once he said: “The air here is very fresh. Can you feel how fresh it is?” He pronounced the word fresh very distinctly, with a secret happiness. Sometimes he used words that Tzili did not understand.

Once Tzili asked what the words out of this world meant.

“Don’t you understand?”

“No.”

“It’s very simple: out of this world — out of the ordinary, very nice.”

“From God?” she puzzled.

“Not necessarily.”

But it wasn’t always like this. Sometimes a suppressed rage welled up in him. “What happened to you? Why are you so late?” When he saw the supplies, he recovered his spirits. In the end he would ask her pardon. She, for her part, was no longer afraid of him.

Day by day he changed. He would sit for hours looking at the wild flowers growing in all the colors of the rainbow. Sometimes he would pluck a flower and whisper: “How lovely, how modest.” Even the weeds moved him. And once he said, as if talking to himself: “In Jewish families there’s never any time. Everyone’s in a hurry, everyone’s in a panic. What for?” There was a kind of music in his voice, a melancholy music.

The days went by one after the other and nothing happened to arouse their suspicions. On the contrary, the silence deepened. The corn was cut in one field after the other and the fruit was gathered in the orchards, and Mark, for some reason, decided to dig a bunker, in case of trouble. This thought came to him suddenly one afternoon, and he immediately set out to survey the terrain. Straightaway he found a suitable place, next to a little mound covered with a tangle of thorns. In his haversack he had a simple kitchen knife. This domestic article, dull with use, fired the desire for activity in him. He set to work to make a spade. The hard, concentrated work changed his face; he stopped talking, as if he had found a purpose for his transitory life, a purpose in which he drowned himself completely.

Every week Tzili went down to the plains and brought back not only bread and sausages but also vodka, in exchange for the clothes which Mark gave her with an abstracted expression on his face. His outbursts did not cease, but they were only momentary flare-ups, few and far between. Activity, on the whole, made him agreeable.

Once he said to her: “My late father’s love for the German language knew no bounds. He had a special fondness for irregular verbs. He knew them all. And with me he was very strict about the correct pronunciation. The German lessons with my father were like a nightmare. I always got mixed up and in his fanaticism he never overlooked my mistakes. He made me write them down over and over again. My mother knew German well but not perfectly, and my father would lose his temper and correct her in front of other people. A mistake in grammar would drive him out of his mind. In the provinces people are more fanatical about the German language than in the city.”

“What are the provinces?” asked Tzili.

“Don’t you know? Places without gymnasiums, without theaters.” Suddenly he burst out laughing. “If my father knew what the products of his culture were up to now he would say, ‘Impossible, impossible.’ ”

“Why impossible?” said Tzili.

“Because it’s a word he used a lot.”

After many days of slow, stubborn carving, Mark had a spade, a strong spade. The carved instrument brightened his eyes, and he couldn’t stop touching it. He was in good spirits and he told her stories about all the peculiar tutors his father hired to teach him mathematics and Latin. Young Jewish vagabonds, for the most part, who had not completed their university degrees, who ended up by getting some girl, usually not Jewish, into trouble, and had to be sent packing in a hurry. Mark told these stories slowly, imitating his teachers’ gestures and describing their various weaknesses, their fondness for alcohol, and so on. This language was easier for Tzili to understand. Sometimes she would ask him questions and he would reply in detail.

And then he started digging. He worked for hours at a stretch. Every now and then it started raining and the digging was disrupted. Mark would grow angry, but his anger did not last long. The backbreaking work gave him the look of a simple laborer. Tzili stopped asking questions and Mark stopped telling stories.

After a week of work the bunker was ready, dug firmly into the earth. And it was just what was needed for the cold autumn season, a shelter for the cold nights. Mark was sure that the Germans would never reach them, but it was better to be careful, just in case. Tzili noticed that Mark often used the word careful now. It was a word he had hardly ever used before.

He put the finishing touches to the bunker without excitement. A quiet happiness spread over his face and hands. Now she saw that his cheeks were tanned and his arms, which had seemed so weak and flabby, were full and firm. He looked like a laboring man who knew how to enjoy his labors.

What will happen when we’ve sold all the clothes? the thought crossed Tzili’s mind. This thought did not appear to trouble Mark. He was so pleased with the bunker, he kept repeating: “It’s a good bunker, a comfortable bunker. It will stand up well to the rain.”