Aharon Appelfeld - Suddenly, Love

As long as the literary circle continued according to form and he was immersed in his writing, reading a chapter or passage at meetings every month, hearing comments and compliments, Ernst’s life had meaning. But when the circle disintegrated and the participants scattered in every direction, Ernst felt that his life in this world had shortened considerably.

SO THE WEEKS PASS, WITH DAYS OF ASCENT AND DAYS OF collapse. Irena does everything she can to make things pleasant for Ernst: she wears makeup; she makes sure that her clothes will catch his eye each morning. Ernst’s vision is sharp, and he notices details. Every time he sees her wearing a new outfit he says, “That becomes you.” Irena knows that Ernst’s compliments are not just so many words, and she lays them away in her heart.

Ernst has been struggling with his health on two fronts of late, with his long-standing heart disease and with a malignant growth that was removed two years ago. His condition has stabilized, but he nevertheless feels constantly threatened by death. The threat takes many shapes: pains and the images and visions they bring up. When the pains intensify, Ernst returns to the years before the war, when he was the commissar of Jewish Affairs and he would attack religious institutions, rabbis, and religious judges. A few days ago he dreamed that one of the old rabbis fell upon him, knocked him down, tied his hands and feet, and called him “doomed to death.” Nightmares have been his greatest enemies in recent years. After a night of bad dreams, the depression returns as though by itself. Ernst knows that these attacks are the doing of the Angel of Death and that he has to prepare himself for the final battle.

And there is another matter, one that he keeps trying to repress: the dread that his illness might worsen and he might be taken from his home and transferred to one of the hospices in the city. He once discussed this with Irena, and she immediately promised she would be with him always, no matter what. Ernst doesn’t doubt her, but there’s really nothing he can do about this. The unknown gives him no rest. When his spirit is feverish, he repeatedly requests: “Don’t give me over to a hospice. I want to die next to my books.”

“Why don’t you believe me?” Irena’s voice trembles.

“I apologize. A thousand pardons.”

Noon comes again, and with it vegetable soup. The way Irena prepares it, it is a masterwork: a burst of colors and flavors, and served at just the right temperature. Irena never studied cooking. Her mother’s dishes were traditional, but her desire to improve the taste of the low-fat meals that Ernst must eat has made her an excellent cook. Ernst likes her dishes and often proclaims, “You serve me royal delicacies. Who taught you how to work miracles?” It isn’t only her meals that he likes. Her presence instills in him the feeling that he is connected to life. Once he tried to thank her and failed. Her simplicity is so sturdy that he sometimes feels inferior to her. Shame overcomes him when he remembers what he told her about his writing plans, how he had tripped over his own tongue, spoken in clichés, and piled on flowery expressions.

Irena offers him dessert. “There’s baked apple,” she says.

“Of course I want some.”

When Ernst says, “Of course I want some,” it means that the cloud that darkened the morning has scattered, that he’s feeling better, and that soon he will tell her about something that happened to him. Indeed, he started speaking right away.

“Today I saw Professor Stauber being led by a tall, strong man. I went over to him and introduced myself. He stared at me without any sign of recognition. You should know that Professor Stauber was the leading authority on German romanticism. I introduced myself again, but he ignored me, raised his eyes toward the man who was escorting him, and asked permission to speak with me. This man, who not long ago had been the prince of scholars, on the level of Gershom Scholem, was now walking down the same street where he had walked for the past thirty years, and he didn’t know what world he was living in. For years he tried to learn Hebrew, but that intelligent, hardworking man, who mastered Greek and Latin and spoke fluent German, French, Italian, and Spanish, was unable to do so. Every sentence that came out of his mouth was faulty and clumsy. Just two years ago he used to walk down Ramban Street, healthy and optimistic. ‘Don’t laugh at me!’ he would say. ‘In a few years I’ll speak Hebrew like the children of the old-time settlers in Petah Tikva.’ Now a man escorts him as if he were a shadow. In a little while I’ll be like him.”

Irena responds immediately. “You are quite mistaken,” she says.

Ernst smiles. Irena likes that smile very much. It’s not a smile of weakness or of arrogance but one of inner acceptance. When Ernst feels in harmony with his senses, he is full of inner joy. One can see it on his lips. A few days ago he took Irena’s hand and kissed it; since then she has felt that she has an even better sense of him.

THE WINTER DEEPENS. IRENA BOUGHT AN ELECTRIC heater for Ernst’s study, for the times when the central heating is turned off. Ernst’s financial situation is apparently satisfactory. Every few months he gives Irena a raise, and on holidays he buys her a silk scarf or some jewelry. For Hanukkah he bought her a pendant and earrings.

“Why do you spend so much money?” she complains.

“You deserve it,” Ernst answers briefly.

Irena keeps the gifts in a drawer, and on special occasions she wears them. She is secretly very proud of these ornaments, and at night, when she can’t sleep, she takes them out of the drawer, places them on the table, and stares at them.

Ernst has returned to his nightly work. How strange, I live in Jerusalem and I write in German . Sometimes he is puzzled by this. Years ago a coarse-minded editor had written to him, “Why don’t you write in Hebrew?” Ernst, who was then forty-five and in the midst of a desperate struggle with his writing, replied with a long and detailed letter in which he explained his ambivalent attitude toward the German language and the way it scratched at him every day. “But nevertheless,” he added, “it’s my mother tongue, the language in which I spoke to my parents, and I read my first books in that language. It’s the only language in which I have the power to write.”

Ernst secretly envies all those whom fate had endowed with the ancient Jewish language. He feels that the primal Jewish essence is rooted in it. For him, as it was for the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, Hebrew is a promised land he will never reach. Still, Ernst does not let a day pass without reading a chapter from the Bible or from one of his books on Hasidism. There are days when he wanders about drunk from the heady scent those books give off. And sometimes after reading from the Bible, he sits and weeps like a child.

One evening, before Irena left for the day, Ernst turned to her and said, “I want to say something to you.”

“What?” she asked nervously.

“Don’t be alarmed. I want to make you my heir.”

Irena was startled. “Me?” she exclaimed.

“You’re the closest person to me.”

“I don’t understand. Why think about death?” She was mixing the two matters up.

“There’s no reason to think about death. But I … well, you know.”

“You’ll live for many years.”

“That’s true, but still.”

“I can’t.” She made the gesture of an obstinate child.

“We’ll talk about it later. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s simpler than you imagine.”

Irena hid her face in her hands, and Ernst retreated.