Until the Dawn's Light

27

OTTO AWOKE FROM a bad dream and shouted, “Mama, Mama!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Somebody wanted to catch me.”

“Who, dear?”

“A tall, strong man.”

“It was just a bad dream.”

“Why did he scare me so much?”

“Dreams are frightening.”

“If dreams are nonsense, why are they frightening?”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m with you, dear.”

Blanca wrote without letup. She spent most of the night at the desk, struggling with the order of events, the words, and the clarity of the sentences. The fear that soon they would have to leave this protected place gave her no rest. To overcome her fear, she remained wakeful, watching over Otto’s slumber and writing.

They had been here for six weeks now. The garden produced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and radishes, and there were also beds of lettuce and squash. In addition, the landlady brought them apples and pears from the orchard at her house. Her old age was passing quietly and her face glowed, leaving a pleasant feeling that stayed in the house for hours.

I’m very much afraid that quite soon we’ll lose this hidden Garden of Eden, Blanca wrote in her notebook, and we’ll have to set out for a lengthy exile. When did I hear the word “exile” for the first time? The religion teacher, Dr. Kaltbrunner, used to put out his long arm and say, “Were it not for Adam, we would have remained in the Garden of Eden. Because of his sin, we were exiled.” Why did I remember Dr. Kaltbrunner? He used to intimidate the class. Blanca finished that sentence and lay the pen down on the notebook. She immediately sensed that Otto’s eyes were wide open and that he was observing her.

“Why aren’t you asleep, dear?”

“I’m waiting for the morning.”

“The morning is still far off. Meanwhile you can close your eyes.”

Otto didn’t answer right away. He would absorb a sentence and take it in. That secret internalization usually took long minutes, and sometimes an hour or two. But the response would finally come. He had stopped asking about his father. Every day Blanca supplied his soul with new sights and words to erase his home from his memory. It generally worked. Nevertheless, sometimes someone’s name or a place emerged. Blanca didn’t flinch, but cut off his question and hurried to distract him. Fortunately, Otto didn’t insist. He heard her voice and clung to it. Now, as she looked at him, it seemed to her that he had changed. His face had darkened and his gaze was concentrated. He could count to twenty without making a mistake. At the start of the trip, he had still shouted with Adolf’s frightening voice, but on the train he had already calmed down, his voice was softer, and he stopped throwing things. On the train he learned to touch things gently, to move them carefully, and to observe them.

“When will we go?”

“In a little while, dear.”

Otto noticed that his mother’s behavior had changed; her expression was tense, and she stood at the window for a long time, listening.

“Are you afraid, Mama?”

“No, dear. Why would I be afraid?”

“It seemed to me you were.”

Blanca felt that the place was no longer as quiet as it had been before. Two days earlier, a serious fight had broken out in the neighboring house. People gathered from all around, and there had been a commotion. The following day, gendarmes came and questioned the neighbors. Blanca woke Otto, and while it was still dark they went out to the riverbank.

Blanca felt that she had to leave, but it was hard for her to uproot herself. This bright place had restored so much life to her. In fact, it brought back everything that had died within her. Now the desire burned within her to sit and write extensively. But first she would cling to her mother and father. Those two marvelous souls had ended their short lives in this world as strangers. They didn’t know how to soar up high, but the ground was also hard for them. They circled low, painfully hovering until they ascended to the heights. Now it seemed to her that her mother had disappeared like her father, because the funeral hadn’t left from their home but from the building in the Jewish cemetery where her body had been ritually washed. When they returned home the bed lay unmade, as if her mother were about to come back to it. At the time, death had seemed to Blanca like a yawning abyss, and she had escaped to Adolf, sure that Adolf was the fortified castle over which death had no dominion. One day, even before converting, she had spoken to him about her fear of death. He had listened and said, “Strange what thoughts run around in your brain.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of whom?”

Adolf was the castle. But he didn’t know he was the castle, Blanca said to herself, sure that she would be saved in his presence.

She was sorry that just now, when she had found a tunnel to her old life and the secret things that were being deciphered for her, she had to leave this place and resume her wandering. Who knew what awaited her and whether she would again be able to see what she saw now. Over the past days she had been tense, leaping from topic to topic, trying to manage. But one idea led to another, and things got mixed up. For that reason, she decided that first she had to finish writing the episode of Adolf, for Otto’s sake. So that when the time came, he would know exactly what had happened and how. Until now she had ignored what was expected of her, but yesterday Otto had asked her about death again, and it was clear that the shadow was oppressing him.

“There is no death,” Blanca said, surprising him.

“Really?”

“I’ll always be with you, even if I’m not here. You can talk to me the way you’re talking to me now.”

“And is that how you talk to your mama?”

“Yes, exactly that way, my dear.”