Aharon Appelfeld - Katerina

“Why don’t you come over to us? What harm have we done?” they called again.

“I have to go back to work.”

“You don’t have to go back. By no means. The Jews are cursed. They’ve already enslaved you.”

“They’ve done me no harm.”

“If that’s what you think, you’re stupid.”

When I drew close to them, the sight struck me in the face. The drunks were lolling in rags, bottles, and scraps of food like beasts. The thought that soon I would be among them froze me. “Leave me alone,” I screamed, shackled as if in a nightmare.

“Stupid girl,” one of them called, and threw a bottle at me. “Those cursed ones have already enslaved you. You’re trapped in their net, you stupid thing. You had something, not much, and that’s just what they took from you. You don’t know, stupid, but we know already. You’ll end up regretting your life.”

I went out into the streets and wandered all night long. My heart screamed: Jesus, Jesus, save me the way You have always saved all sinful women. Gather me up together with them, and don’t let me die in my sin. The night was cold, and I tramped through the streets, from alley to alley, from square to square. If the angel of death had come and taken me, I would have thanked him, but the redeemer didn’t come, only darkness, all shades of darkness, and all kinds of cold.

If no one wants me, I’ll go back to the Jews. Jesus would also have returned to them, I said to myself, but the fear was fiercer than I was.

Finally, the rain made the decision for me. Rain mingled with hail fell toward the morning and forced me inside. I opened the door. The house was sunk in deep sleep, and everything was in its place. On all fours, I crept to my bed.

“YOUR EYES ARE RED,” said the mistress of the house.

“Dreams tormented me,” I lied.

Meanwhile, life resumed its open course: rising, tidying the house, washing, and ironing. During pauses or at night, I used to tell the boys about my home, about the meadows and the rivers, all the beloved things preserved within me from my childhood. But so they wouldn’t think that everything was quiet and pleasant, I rolled up my sleeves and showed them the scars on my arms.

More than once I observed them in their sleep and said to myself: Dear Lord, they’re so frail. Who will defend them in a time of trouble? Everybody hates them, and everybody wants to harm them. More than once I spoke about it to them. Boys of their age in the village ride on horseback, go out to the pasture, sharpen scythes. Ten-year-olds are like twenty-year-olds, with their hands in everything. They swim in the river and drift on rafts, and when they need to, they join in fights. When I told them about all those wonders, they looked at me very attentively and wonderingly but without fear. They, apparently, knew what to expect in the future. They were prepared for it. Talking with them, in any event, always amused me: They learn to ask at an early age. I didn’t mind if they asked. I told them about everything. My stories made them laugh and amazed them. They asked about details, sometimes about the tiniest details.

For amusement, I too began asking. They were miserly in their answers. Don’t talk too much. That’s a general rule that the Jews are very strict about. I had also learned how to be quiet, for a different reason. My mother beat me several times for shooting off my mouth. Since then, it’s been hard for me to talk.

Meanwhile, I received greetings from my village. My cousin Karil looked for and found me. The winter rains were bad, the harvests were meager, illness had spread among the cattle. My old father needed a little money now. Karil spoke in a temperate and serious voice. I undid my kerchief and gave him everything I had. “Have you any more?” he asked.

“That’s what I have.”

“When will you have more?”

“In a month or two, when they give me.”

“Honor thy father and thy mother.” My old cousin found the proper occasion to preach a moral lesson to me. He also added, “Honor not only with speech but also with money.” The way the peasants use verses from the Bible makes me laugh.

In that short time, my cousin managed to tell me that my father’s wife wasn’t as good as my mother. She was lazy, pretended to be sick, and last summer they hadn’t seen her in the field. The details recounted in his stories brought my native village before my eyes, my father and my mother. Now I felt the strangeness that had been suspended between myself and them, as though a yawning abyss and a black river separated us. Almighty God, what happened? I wanted to scream. All that beloved green was once mine. What had seized it from me? I didn’t know then that my few years in town had molded me, changed me, and all the possessions I had brought from my ancestors’ house were lost. But never mind. I had received far more, more than I was worthy of. The Jews didn’t abandon me. I was with them all along the way.

The next day the cold sun shone and the mistress of the house announced to me: Passover is coming. Who still remembers a Jewish Passover here? I’m the last one, it seems to me. Those weren’t easy days for me: I worked hard; I scoured pots with sand. Afterward, I used to dip them in a barrel of boiling water, to scorch them. Those smells are still encased within me like hidden secrets. Years in the service of the Jews are no laughing matter. The Jewish odor is a complex affair. In my childhood, I heard people say that the Jews smell of soap. That’s a lie. Every one of their days and every one of their holidays has its own smell, but particularly pungent are the aromas of Passover. For many years I lived in the midst of those fragrances.

Passover has many odors, but for me the flowers of spring became flowers of mourning. On the second day of Passover, in the middle of the street, the master of my house was murdered. A thug attacked him and stabbed him to death. Every Passover they kill a Jew, sometimes two. I heard afterward in the tavern how he was killed. One of the toughs decided the master of my house would be the victim that year, because he had refused to sell to a peasant on credit. That was only an excuse, of course. Every Passover they make a sacrifice. This time the lot fell upon Benjamin.

Thus, in broad daylight, my beloved was murdered. Forgive me, Jesus, if I say something that won’t please You, for if there was one man whom I loved in my lifetime, it was the Jew Benjamin. I have loved many Jews in my life, rich Jews and poor Jews, Jews who remembered they were Jews and those who tried to forget. Years passed before I learned to love them properly. Many hindrances prevented me from drawing close to them, but you, Benjamin, if I may address you personally, laid the foundation for my great love, you, in whose eyes I did not even dare look, whose prayers I heard from a distance, and it’s doubtful whether I ever entered your thoughts even once. You taught me to love.

In their burial arrangements, as in other ritual matters, the Jews are frightfully practical. All their pain and mourning are without a melody, without a flag, and without a flower. They lay the body in the grave and rapidly cover it, without delay.

The next day, after the funeral, I was sure all the Jews would gather up their belongings and flee. I too felt a fear of death, but to my surprise, no one left the city. The lady of the house sat on the floor with her two children, and the house filled with people. The weeping was scant, no one cursed, and no one raised his hand against his fellow man. God has given and God has taken away; that’s the verse, and that’s the moral. The common opinion that the Jews are cowards is baseless. People who lay their dead in an open pit, without decoration and without glory, are not cowards.