Until the Dawn's Light

9

FROM THEN ON, Blanca would see Adolf everywhere, in her dreams and while awake. She wanted so much to see him that she walked as far as the dairy where he worked. Adolf was surprised and embarrassed by her sudden appearance. But he recovered immediately and introduced her to his fellow workers. This was the first time Blanca heard the German peasant dialect, and she didn’t understand a word of it. The workers were tall and clumsy, and the odors in the dairy were pungent and stifling.

“Why did you come here?” Adolf asked.

To see you, she was about to say, but then she thought better of it and said simply, “I was taking a walk.”

“Isn’t there any school today?”

“There is, but I took a little vacation.”

“I understand,” he said, but showed no sign of excitement at her presence. But that very lack of emotion enchanted her. She interpreted it as inner quietness, as natural behavior, as masculinity of the proper kind.

Blanca’s thoughts were now filled with fantasies of Adolf. When will I see him again? she wondered. Her grades were no longer as brilliant as they used to be.

“What’s the matter with you, Blanca?” Dr. Klein wondered.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t reveal even the slightest thing.

Dr. Weiss was more merciful and spoke to her like a father. “Blanca,” he said, “you have all the talent and potential of a mathematician. Please, do yourself a favor, concentrate, and make an effort so we can give you a scholarship to study in Vienna. The mathematics department in Berlin may be better, but they’re no slouches in Vienna, either. I don’t have many students like you.”

“I’ll try,” she said to mollify him.

“For the sake of your future, my dear.”

Blanca didn’t want to reveal her deepest thoughts to them. Ever since Adolf had been expelled, she hated the high school, and the mathematics and Latin classes in particular. It seemed to her that the continued existence of that arrogant institution was for nothing but the persecution of Adolf’s soul. She remembered how Adolf had carried desks on his broad shoulders from classroom to classroom, and she felt a stabbing in her heart. That was the gratitude they showed him. Anyone who lacked an analytical brain was banished to the dairy.

“I won’t lend a hand to it,” she said to her father one evening, but her father was so preoccupied with the business of his store that he didn’t notice her anger. “That’s right,” he replied distractedly.

Blanca used to meet Adolf from time to time in the street or near the tavern. He was well liked everywhere, and people gathered around him. Sometimes she would pass him without his noticing her. One evening, on her way home, he approached her and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way home.”

“How’d you like to have a beer?”

“Gladly.”

Blanca had never been in a tavern, although she had read a lot about them. Dim lights illuminated the corners of the room, the gramophone blared, and the smells of beer and smoke billowed up to the ceiling. On a low stage couples danced, kissed, and cuddled.

“Do you plan to study at the university?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“All the young Jews are sent to the university, right?”

First, not all the young Jews, she was about to say, and, second, they aren’t sent. People have free will and the ability to choose, and they go of their own accord, not because they’re sent. But she controlled herself and said simply, “I don’t know.”

Adolf didn’t realize that her answer was evasive.

“All the young Jews are sent to the university,” he insisted. “I know.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but it certainly isn’t good.”

Logic wasn’t Adolf’s strong suit, and whenever he got stuck, he became obstinate. But Blanca found charm in that stammering as well, and, rather than criticizing his response, she was enchanted, as if she had been shown a wild spot where rare flowers grew.

“I met Adolf,” she told her mother. “He’s working in a dairy.”

“Poor fellow.”

“I prefer the dairy to high school. In the dairy there’s no distinction between one person and another. There people aren’t tested on their knowledge of mathematics and Latin every week.”

“You’re right, dear.” Her mother knew in her heart that Blanca’s argument was flawed, but once her daughter had entered high school, she no longer commented on anything she said. She would say to herself that a girl who excels in mathematics and Latin, who is admired by her teachers, and who is a candidate for the prestigious Salzburg Prize certainly knows what she’s talking about. That was also how she felt about her husband. She was certain that one day his talents would come to light, and he would even do wonders in business.

While Blanca was wondering in her heart where to go and what to do, Adolf came and made the decision for her. He did it the way he did everything, directly and bluntly.

It was in the evening, and they were sitting in the tavern and joking about how short Klein was, how he saw the world through a dwarf’s eyes. Blanca was the one who raised the idea of dwarfs, and Adolf, because of his hatred for Klein, added a few humorous outlines. Now it seemed that a strong emotion bound them together: Klein’s dwarflike appearance and the hatred he aroused in both of them.

For a long while they laughed, and Blanca was pleased that she had managed to make a mockery of the man who had expelled Adolf from high school. As Adolf was walking her home and they were laughing about Klein and Weiss, he said to her, almost casually, “How would you like to be my wife?”

“Me?” Blanca said.

“You.”

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about such things.”

“It’s only that it’s a surprise for me.”

“I’m a Christian, and Christians don’t joke about such things.”

It was a simple trap, and she was caught in it. Later she would say to herself, How was I trapped? How did I fail to see? What blinded me so? After all, I was a person who stood on her own two feet, someone with an awareness of the world. But that evening she was drunk with happiness, so drunk that she didn’t dare tell her secret even to her beloved mother. It was not until the next morning that she revealed her engagement to her mother, who caught her breath, hugged Blanca, and burst into tears.