Aharon Appelfeld - Katerina

“Why are you so quiet, Katerina? What are you thinking about?” The chief guard spoke to me in a motherly tone.

“I’m not thinking.”

“But something seems to be disturbing you. You can tell me. We no longer punish people for thoughts.”

“I have no complaints.”

They were afraid of me. One of the prisoners refused to sleep next to me, and when they forced her, she wept like a child who had been spanked. The chief guard’s scoldings were no use. In the end, she sat next to her and spoke softly: “You have nothing to fear. Katerina won’t do you any harm. Murderers only murder once, and after that they’re quiet and pleasant. I have lots of experience. Quite a few murderesses have been jailed here.” Strangely, those words calmed her, and she brought in her belongings and made the bed beside me.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

At the sound of my question her shoulders tensed, and she stepped back, saying, “Sophia.”

“Why are you scared?”

“I’m not afraid, I’m just shivering.”

You have nothing to fear, I wanted to tell her, but I knew my words would make her tremble even more.

“It’s hard for me to stop shivering. My body shivers by itself.”

“We mustn’t be afraid of each other,” I said for some reason.

“I’m not afraid anymore, but it’s hard for me to stop shivering. What can I do?”

Her face was disheveled and wrinkled. You could see that she had been afraid all her life. First, she had been scared of her mother and father, later, of her husband. In her great fear, she had tried to murder her husband. Now she was in jail and afraid of her cellmates. The chief guard didn’t spare her. She beat her, but not hard. She tortured her, not for her sins but for her fears. “You mustn’t be afraid of people, you understand?”

“I’m not afraid anymore,” she assured me.

“Don’t tell me you’re not afraid. You’re all fear.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she finally admitted.

“You have to say to yourself, There is God in heaven and He is the king of kings. He knows every secret and only Him do I fear. All the rest is illusion. Do you understand me?”

Sophia’s behavior was exceptional. The women prisoners usually accepted blows in silence, sat in solitary confinement without screaming, but there were days when the chief guard went out of her mind, casting dread on everyone, and then screams rose up to heaven.

YEARS PASSED, and a woman with the same name as mine arrived here. She was younger than I, from my village, and glad to see me. She told me at length about a quarrel over property, about the living, and about the dead. My murder had apparently made a big impression in the village. As after every horrible act, the village split into two camps. Some people thought I was justified and they blamed the Jews for whom I had worked, while others blamed me and my wanton character. She herself had been sentenced to life in prison for injuring her husband. Her husband had jabbed her with a pitchfork in the barn. She had snatched the tool from his hands and, with the very same tool, struck and wounded him.

I remembered her but not clearly. Our houses in the village were far apart, but sometimes we would meet in the pasture, at weddings, or in church. Even then she carried the anxious look of a hunted animal. I had not seen my village for years and it had even been erased from my dreams, but suddenly it rose again to life, a painful rebirth, with all its odors and colors.

“You haven’t changed,” she told me.

“How is that?”

“I would have known you right away.”

I remembered her. She had been about five, dressed in a long linen gown and standing next to the large animals and staring at them with a look of amazement. Something of that look remained in her eyes.

“What do people do here?” she asked me in a homey voice, the way you ask people in the village.

“They work.” I tried to make the moment milder.

She cried, and I didn’t know what to say to her. In the end I told her, “Don’t cry, dear. Lots of people have entered and left this place. A life sentence isn’t the final word. There are early releases and pardons.”

“Everybody hates me, even my children.”

“You have nothing to worry about. God knows the whole truth. Only He can judge you.” Barely had I pronounced the name of God when the anguish was wiped from her face, her eyes opened wide, and she looked at me with that gaze from her childhood.

“I thought about you a lot,” she said.

“There’s nothing to worry about, we’re not all alone.”

“Who could have imagined we’d meet here?”

“It’s not such a dreadful place,” I went on, to distract her.

“Does anyone visit here?” the poor thing kept on asking.

“There’s no need for visits. Here a person minds his own business.”

“A Jewish lawyer defended me. I don’t believe in the Jews. They always talk a lot, but their mouths and hearts are not the same. A life sentence is better than being defended by Jews. They run around everywhere.”

I let her hatred seethe and sensed that the seething eased her pain. Afterward, I offered her an illicit sip of liquor. The drink calmed her, and her face returned to her. She said, “Thanks, Katerina. May God watch over you. Without you, what would I do here?”

“What did they say about me in the village?” I tried to amuse her.

“That the Jews put a spell on you.”

“Do you believe that?”

We both laughed.

The days passed, and no one came to visit her. In the winter there were hardly any visits. The prison is remote and access difficult. Only my lawyer showed up, appearing as regularly as clockwork.

“Why take the trouble?” I reprimanded him.

“I’m your lawyer, aren’t I? Doesn’t a lawyer have to find out how his clients are?”

“True, but you have to watch your health. Health comes before everything.”

During the past two years he had aged. His clothing had become ragged, his lower lip, which had been a bit swollen and blue, seemed to have become bluer still. A cigarette was always stuck to it. On that cold day his face expressed neither goodheartedness nor wisdom; a kind of iciness suffused it. The whole time, he rubbed his hands together and said, “It’s cold, cold out.” Why did you come then? I wanted to scold him, but instead I said, “In your office, there’s a heater.”

“What office are you talking about? It’s been a long time since I’ve had an office.”

“You need an office, don’t you?” I said, and I didn’t know what I was talking about.

“I have no need for an office anymore,” he said, waving his right hand.

The winds blew in, hurling their drafts into the exposed anteroom. I remembered my first meeting with him in the midst of the angry crowd of gendarmes, wardens, and attorneys. He had seemed shorter than all of them to me, thin and embarrassed.

“I’m your lawyer,” he’d introduced himself. “I’ll try to defend you with all my might. Your case is a complicated one, but we’ll prevail.”

“What can I give you?” I had asked him then, very stupidly.

“There’s no need for anything.”

Now the same man was standing before me, only more impoverished. The cigarette on his blue lip seemed to be stuck there from the time I’d first seen him.

“Where do you live?”

“I have a room in town. My parents live in a village. I sometimes visit them. They aren’t pleased with me.”

“Why aren’t they pleased with you?”