Aharon Appelfeld - Suddenly, Love

In his youth Ernst had been sensitive to the landscape, to animals, to people in distress. But he now drove out all those feelings. He adopted an abstract, sociological way of speaking, using statistics and blunt statements. Personal talk felt like a luxury to him. Identification with an individual weakens one. One has to see the general picture, the goal, and at this time the goal was Birobidzhan, the province in Siberia that the Soviets had established for the Jews. That was his soul’s desire. When he spoke to young people, he promised them a healthy, normal life, a life filled with joy and usefulness to society. Quite a few of them, intoxicated by his speeches, left their elderly parents and wandered off into the unknown.

Later in life Ernst would say to himself, What did I do? What demon directed me then? Hatred that enthralled one’s youth cannot easily be uprooted. Years would pass before he could picture his parents, and even more time would pass before he could envision his grandparents. Now he is approaching the end of his journey, and night after night he expects them to reveal themselves to him. When a crack appears toward morning and a bit of landscape rises up from the depths, his body relaxes slightly. But on some nights he sees only his parents’ silence, which has been distilled even further so that there is no longer any separation between them and their silence, and he knows that it is in their marrow. He sees it in their faces: There is nothing to say. We won’t change. This is how we were, and this is how we will always be . When Ernst hears their silence, he shrivels up and trembles.

ABOUT A YEAR BEFORE THE WAR CAME TO HIS CITY, ERNST married Tina, an orphaned Jewish girl whom the Party had recruited. She had worked with Ernst for some time, and he was impressed by her modest, straightforward conduct. One time he sat with her in the canteen, and they discussed the works of Gorky. She said things he didn’t expect to hear. Evidently her reading wasn’t mechanical, and she was highly sensitive to details. She wasn’t impressed by Gorky’s ideas about society but by his ability to observe the minutiae of human suffering — especially in children and, even more, in old people.

That conversation in the canteen opened his heart, and something of his old self returned to him. Ernst and Tina used to meet and talk about books and writing, about what was important in life and what was external to it. Tina didn’t doubt communism, but her true interest wasn’t in reforming society but in improving the life of the individual. At first Ernst tried to remind her that this wasn’t the opinion of the Party. Tina was alarmed and apologized. Later he stopped reproving her. Her insights and charm captivated his heart.

The wedding ceremony was held in the Party’s offices, in the cellar. The Party secretary himself conducted it. Ernst and Tina swore allegiance to the Party and to Stalin. Afterward they drank a toast and recited the familiar slogans, and the activists recited the poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Those were times of unexpected happiness. Every day Ernst discovered a new side of Tina, and every day he knew that only Tina could restore the essence he had lost. How this would happen, he didn’t know. He would remember the days with her as a time of bright sunlight, and what came afterward as prolonged darkness.

When their daughter, Helga, was born, Ernst’s happiness was boundless. The Party held a small celebration in the cellar. Again they sang, mocked the old world, got drunk, and cursed the police and collaborators.

After that they were hardly ever together. War was raging in Europe, and Ernst was sent on secret missions. In the spring, when the Romanian Army arrived in Czernowitz, the heads of the Party were ordered to flee across the border to the Soviet Union. Ernst parted from Tina hastily. He was sure that he would return in a matter of days. Tina felt differently. She wept and kissed his hands. Then came the days of the trains and the bombings. He transferred from train to train. If one didn’t arrive on time or was canceled, he marched on foot, joining the refugees. Every day took him farther from Tina, and every day he saw new suffering. But Ernst was confident in the victory of the Red Army and in his rapid return to her. In a village near Moscow he was conscripted and immediately sent to an officers’ course. The courses were short and accelerated, meant mainly for the Party faithful.

After Czernowitz was occupied by the Romanians and Germans, the Jews were imprisoned in a ghetto. Then the transports to Transnistria began. Ernst eventually learned that Tina and Helga had been among the first to be deported.

Although it had been many years since he had last seen them, when Ernst began writing about the war, he sometimes saw Tina and little Helga clearly, as if they weren’t mother and child but two girls holding each other’s hands. The big girl says to the little one, Soon we’ll get to the water, and you’ll be able to drink as much as you want . It was hard for him to uproot that picture from his mind. It appeared to him from various perspectives by day and by night.

Ernst also saw his parents in a long convoy of deportees. His father holds his mother’s hand and says, as he used to, There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is behind us .

And what about the debts? his mother asks.

In wartime, debts are forgiven , says his father wearily.

I don’t understand , says his mother, and her face is suddenly concealed.

From then on they don’t talk. They walk hand in hand with the rest.

Winter is at its height, but suddenly patches of earth peek out from the snow, as in the spring. That’s an illusion, of course. But the snowstorms have stopped, the ice on the river has broken up, and the water rushes. The soldiers hurry the deportees with blows and shots, so they will get to the raging river. The deportees know what is in store for them. They don’t try to escape. When they are close to the river, they remove their backpacks. With their loads lightened, they are shoved into the water by the soldiers and by the collaborators. When they are deep in the river, Ernst’s father stretches his neck, the way he did every morning when he shaved.

THE WINTER HAS BECOME HARSHER, AND IRENA’S EFFORTS to lift Ernst from the depression into which he has sunk all fail. She stands before him and lists all the dishes she has prepared. If he doesn’t respond, she recites the list again, and if he doesn’t respond to that, she knows she mustn’t disturb him further.

Ernst writes until late at night and sleeps no more than four hours. “At my age, there’s no need for too much sleep.” His opinion is firm. Irena feels that four hours of sleep are not enough. True, Ernst dozes off in the afternoon, but he doesn’t sleep. “Don’t pay attention to me,” he says when depression assails him. Irena complies with his request and doesn’t enter his room unless he calls her. In her heart she knows that Ernst’s depression arrives as a stubborn and intransigent wave and that until it passes he will lie curled up in bed.

Last fall Ernst took some bundles of manuscripts out of a drawer and said to Irena, “These are the books I wrote and never finished.”

“One day you’ll sit down and finish them,” Irena said, and hoped he would not contradict her.

“I’ll never finish them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re unworthy.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, frightened at his words.

Ernst struggles with life and with writing. He cannot change his life, but he is trying to give a new form to his writing. It is no longer descriptions of experiences and a mass of details, but only what is most necessary. For years he tried to write about human beings without any ethnic traits. He called his heroes Eldorado, Homer, and other names taken from ancient myths. They fought for justice, loyalty, and purity. But since Irena’s arrival in his home, many things in his life have changed. For years he tried to avoid contemplating his life, to ignore it, to build floating towers on it. Now his life is coming back to him like a spirit returning from the dead, and he knows that it seeks correction.