Aharon Appelfeld - Suddenly, Love

“Thank God.” The old-fashioned expression pops out of her mouth.

“Irena, dear, if something happens to me, burn everything except this notebook.”

Every time Ernst directly asks or just hints to Irena regarding what to do with his writing, she looks at him as if to say, You haven’t finished your work in this world. I’m not an educated woman, but my heart tells me that now that you are in the middle of your work, nothing bad will happen to you . Ernst studies the expression on her face and is stunned by its power.

Indeed, Ernst is now writing with great diligence. Sometimes he’s surprised by what he remembers and by what emerges from his pen. There are things that were buried within him for many years, like the long walk he took one night with his grandfather. During their nighttime hike, they didn’t speak; they just took in their surroundings. In the Carpathians bright stars fill the vast night sky. During those years, Ernst felt a great closeness to God, but he didn’t know how to express his feelings. Grandfather spoke little and never said anything about God, but his whole being proclaimed that the earth we tread on is holy, that it is forbidden to treat it with disrespect or to abuse it, and that animals, too, have within them something of the divine image. In Grandfather’s house they didn’t eat meat, only what the earth brought forth. Grandmother was very knowledgeable about soups, casseroles, and puddings of every kind. At the end of the summer she would spread plums, apples, and pears on a mat outdoors. The fruit would shrivel in the sun.

The weeks Ernst stayed with his grandmother were well preserved in his memory, but not because of unusual words or actions. Grandmother was busy from morning to night, never avoiding any chore. When she was in the vegetable garden, she hoed with the Ruthenian peasants, and when she was in the orchard, she shouldered a sack and picked the fruit. The abundant harvest wasn’t all for her. She tithed for the needy, sold about half the crop, and sent the rest to her children, who lived far away in crowded cities.

The grandchildren didn’t always remember her, but she remembered them all by name. In the evenings she would sit and write them letters, and the next day she would ride to the center of the village, to the post office, and hand over the packages and letters. Riding with her to the post office and back was also magical. Ruthenian women would stop her wagon, ask how she was, or request a blessing from her. Grandmother wouldn’t hesitate. She would place her hands on the peasant woman’s head and bless her.

Ernst also remembers that Grandmother insisted on performing the ritual hand washing every morning because, she said, the night leaves its pollution on your hands.

“Why does the night pollute?” Ernst wondered.

“Because of the evil spirits,” Grandmother replied seriously, as though she had been asked about the harvest or about the price of a crate of cucumbers.

“Can you see the evil spirits?” Ernst’s curiosity increased.

“Usually you can’t see them,” Grandmother said reluctantly. There were things one didn’t talk about. Ernst knew this but he still pressed her with another question: “Are they small?”

“So people say.”

“Have you seen them?”

“Once,” she said, with a small wrinkled smile.

One didn’t speak about evil spirits, but one didn’t doubt their existence. Verses from the Bible attached to the doorposts guarded each entranceway, and holy books protected the whole house. Evil spirits didn’t dare enter a house with holy books.

The objects in his grandparents’ house didn’t seem like inanimate things to him but like living, breathing beings that concealed hidden life, like the wooden barrels behind the kitchen that were full of rainwater, or the big wooden mallet that Grandfather used to pound in fence posts.

In Grandfather’s house no one sharpened knives to slaughter calves or chickens. They picked vegetables and fruit instead and stored them carefully in the cellar. As autumn approached, the cellar would begin to fill up, and every time Grandmother opened the trapdoor, a damp fragrance drifted up from the darkness. There were also earthenware pots in the cellar, wrapped in white kerchiefs, where milk curdled. After every Sabbath Grandmother would remove the white kerchiefs from those silent pots and separate the whey from the curds. Then she would pour the curds into white sacks, and soon they would congeal into fragrant cheese.

Grandmother Raisl didn’t complain. She bore her lot in life by suppressing her emotions. If bad news came from her children or grandchildren, she would bury her face in a kerchief or just sit silently.

Death has many messengers, but one slowly learns to recognize them. “Death is an illusion and a deception,” people said in Grandfather’s name. “Only stupid and ignorant people think that death is the end.”

Ernst reads the Bible and is amazed by the patriarchs. They were connected to the earth and to their animals, but at the same time they conversed with God, addressing Him like sons addressing their father. And He, in turn, answered them in ordinary language. Clouds of doubt didn’t darken their deeds. That was also how his ancestors lived in the Carpathian Mountains, many centuries later.

For many years Ernst had forgotten this. But Irena didn’t forget. Her parents transmitted the faith of their fathers to her in a veiled way. When Irena says, “I’m praying in my heart,” Ernst believes that she knows what she’s talking about. For him faith is just a glimmer, twinkling lights that shine and then vanish. Irena , he wants to ask her, how did you manage to preserve that buried knowledge? But he doesn’t ask. He keeps noticing gestures that he hasn’t seen before. When she opens the window in the morning and places a vase of flowers on the windowsill, her expression is filled with wonder.

It’s now clear to him: Irena’s beliefs aren’t abstract. They extend even to inanimate objects, and every time she touches a garment or a flower it appears as though she is about to kneel in prayer. Sometimes he thinks that she has come to him from the ancient world, where earthly and heavenly love were intermingled. Once he was so overcome by that feeling that he suddenly embraced her and kissed her. Irena didn’t move; it was as if he had put a spell on her.

ERNST WRITES AND THEN TEARS UP THE PAPER. THE WAY he tears it, Irena notices, is different from the way he tore it in the past. He isn’t angry; he’s just dissatisfied with himself. The words that emerge don’t fit what he intended to say. He spends all day searching for other words. On occasion he has to wait a few days before they come. Depression tries to conquer him, but he is firm in his resolve to move forward.

Sometimes Ernst feels like someone who was exiled from his home, wandered for years, and finally, in a dream, the way home is revealed to him. Now he is afraid of losing his way. He writes feverishly, as though battling against time. Occasionally he turns back to see how far he has come and whether he has strayed from the path.

Yesterday Ernst told Irena that on his grandparents’ farm there were a few horses in the stable and three cows in the dairy. When one of the cows got sick and the others were in danger of being infected, two strong peasants came to take the sick cow to her fate. It was a question of whether to slaughter her with a knife or shoot her. Grandmother, who was fond of the cow, was in a quandary. Finally she asked them to bring the veterinarian to give the cow an injection and ease her death. The peasants were astonished. “It’s just a cow,” one of them said. “People slaughter cows in the village every day.”