Until the Dawn's Light

30

ON FEBRUARY 16, 1908, after a long and difficult labor, a son was born to Blanca. At first she wanted to call him Erwin, after her missing father, but Adolf refused. He agreed to the name Otto, after her mother’s brother, who had died young, in the middle of his university studies. Dr. Nussbaum extended her stay in the hospital, and Blanca nursed the infant morning, noon, and night, until she became weak from lack of sleep and, under doctor’s orders, stopped nursing. Adolf heard about it and was angry, but he made no comment. She had noticed: in the hospital he controlled himself and didn’t raise his voice. Dr. Nussbaum’s efforts to restore the hospital to full capacity had failed. Just two wards were occupied. The others were deserted. Day and night, patients pounded on the doors, but he was unable to help them. The maintenance staff refused to work, and, lacking help, Dr. Nussbaum put on overalls and went to clean the toilets and add coal to the boilers to heat water for the laundry. The patients, most of them aged, complained a lot about their pains, about their children who had abandoned them, and about their old age. Dr. Nussbaum loved those old people. He went from bed to bed to examine them, and to tell a joke and make them laugh. Some of the old people spoke Yiddish, and Dr. Nussbaum, to make them happy, told them that he was born in the provinces, in a small town called Zhadova. His family had spoken Yiddish at home, and he was still fond of the language. The old folks forgot their age and their pains for the moment, and they told him what weighed on their hearts. Dr. Nussbaum listened and said, “May God have mercy,” and that of course made them laugh heartily.

Blanca slept most of the day, but when she opened her eyes and saw Christina, the will to live returned to her, and she wanted to get to her feet and approach the window. Christina was devoted to her patients, never leaving them day or night. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when a patient burst into tears, Christina would immediately rush to his bed, give him something to drink, and calm him down. Now that the staff numbered only two, she never took off her uniform. If I possessed a love of humanity like Christina’s, Blanca thought, I wouldn’t have married; I would, instead, have worked in the public hospital. But I was weak, given over to myself and my own happiness.

Adolf and his two sisters visited her. After that noisy visit, it was hard for Blanca to keep her eyes open. Drowsiness enveloped her like a blanket, and as she felt herself succumbing to it, she remembered exactly what Adolf’s sisters had said to her and how they had looked at her. A great scream, like the sound of a falling tree, rose up out of her throat.

Christina held her hand.

“Now you look better,” she said.

My life is shattered to splinters, Blanca wanted to say, and it can be repaired only by labor and devotion. Otto will belong to his father, and I’ll go to work in a hospital or an old age home.

Later Dr. Nussbaum came and sat beside her. Now he was not only a physician. He was the hospital, in the figure of a single person. The pharmacist refused to provide medicines on credit, so Dr. Nussbaum paid him out of his own pocket. He took the trash down to the inner courtyard. When Blanca saw Dr. Nussbaum at work, she overcame her drowsiness and opened her eyes, marveling at every step he took.

“How do you feel, my dear?” he asked, leaning over her.

Blanca wanted to tell him that she felt a strong dizziness that pulled her down, that her legs were cold, and that she was afraid of the abyss yawning beneath her. She wanted to tell him, but didn’t dare. She knew that Dr. Nussbaum’s responsibilities were even greater now and that everyone was pressuring him. Dr. Nussbaum looked at her face and knew that Blanca lay in darkness, that she had to be watched over lest she do something desperate.

Sometimes, in the afternoon, when the heaviest drowsiness loosened its hold on her, Blanca felt a strong connection to her father and mother and to the country from which they had emigrated. It seemed to her that the Prut — in whose clear waters her mother and father and their forebears had bathed — was a purifying river, and if she ever managed to get to it, she would be saved from this stifling melancholy.

Thus the days passed. From time to time Adolf or one of his sisters would appear like a thick shadow. Blanca barely recognized them. One evening Adolf’s elder sister came to visit her and asked, “When are you coming home?” Blanca tried to open her eyes. When they were open, to her joy she saw Dr. Nussbaum. “You don’t have to answer,” he said. She was immediately relieved and felt as though he had hidden her under the hem of his clothing.