Aharon Appelfeld - Blooms of Darkness

“You should be ashamed of yourself. He’s just a child,” Masha scolds her in a motherly voice.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, just to pet him. Come, boy, come to me.”

Hugo freezes in his place and says nothing.

Mariana responds with repressed anger. “Leave him alone.”

“You’re horribly selfish,” says the woman with venom.

“Selfish?” Mariana’s face grows tense.

“To keep him just to yourself. What is that, if not selfishness?”

“I ran a risk and protected him. Is that what you call selfishness?”

“Don’t play the innocent. We know each other too well.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“I’m not mistaken.”

Masha intervenes. “Why fight?” she says. “He belongs to us all.”

“I don’t agree,” says Mariana. “Hugo’s mother was my childhood friend. I promised her that I would protect him until my last breath.”

“Every woman needs a child. Every woman longs for her own child. Why keep us from a little stroke and a kiss? It’s very natural,” says Masha in her motherly voice.

“I know her well,” says Mariana, without looking at the woman who asked to caress him.

“There’s no need to fight. In a little while the blizzard will die down, and everybody will go her own way. Who knows when we’ll meet again. Why not part in friendship? Life is short. Who knows what’s in store for us?” says Masha, sounding like a woman worried about her family.

Masha was prophesying without knowing it. Suddenly the whirling of the blizzard stops, and everyone stands at the windows and looks out. They can’t believe their eyes. Silent snow covers the houses and the fields. There is neither man nor beast, just whiteness on top of whiteness, and a silence you can feel through the windows.

“This period has come to an end,” says one of the women, pleased with how the sentence has struck her mouth.

“What period are you talking about?” the question soon comes.

“My ten years in this place: the room, the hall, Madam, the guard, the guests, the vacations, all the good and the bad. In a little while the Russians will come, and everything will be destroyed. Now do you understand?”

“For me there’s no difference. How does that change things?”

“There is a difference. The Russians will come and flog us. The guard said it clearly, ‘Everyone who slept with the Germans will be sentenced to death.’ They’ll hang us in the city square, and the whole city will come and see our execution.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not exaggerating. I’m saying just what they said and just what my heart says: the Russians are already preparing the scaffolds. They know no mercy.”

Victoria stands like a bastion. “You mustn’t fear,” she repeats. “Fear degrades us. God is our father. He loves us and He will have mercy on us. You mustn’t give in to imaginings and false wishes. From now on, every woman must say to herself: As I sinned, so I sinned. Now I deliver myself to the hands of God. May heaven guide me. I’m willing to do just what they tell me to do from on high. People are evil, only God is pure.”

Victoria speaks with religious devotion, but the women don’t listen to her. They stand at the windows, wondering and trembling. Even after darkness falls and it is night, they don’t move from the windows.

To her credit, Victoria doesn’t let them wallow in their fears. “It doesn’t matter what those in power do,” she keeps saying. “What matters is what God does. Fear of people is a sin. Overcome fear, stand straight, and walk toward God. Our Lord Jesus did not fear when they nailed Him to the cross, because He and God were one. Whoever clings to His virtues wins the kingdom of heaven. Remember what I’m telling you.”

They all look at her in astonishment. No one comments, and no one asks a question.

Suddenly one of the drunken women puts out her hand and says to Hugo, “Darling, come to me. I want to hug you.”

“Leave him alone,” Mariana says dismissively.

Immediately they all scatter, each to her own room.

Toward morning there was a great panic, and all the women fled. Mariana and Hugo slept through it all, and when they wake up, no one is left in the house except for Victoria and Sylvia, and they are dressed in their coats and about to set out.

“What’s the matter with you?” asks Victoria.

“I was asleep and didn’t hear a thing,” says Mariana.

“There’s no one in the house. The girls left most of their belongings. They didn’t want to drag anything along. Too bad.”

“Have the Russians come?” Mariana wonders. “They are spread out through the whole city.”

“Frightening.”

“There’s nothing to fear.” Victoria doesn’t forget her principles, even at this early hour.

“I’ll take a suitcase. I can’t live without brandy or cigarettes. Then I’ll leave, too,” says Mariana, as if it were a minor transition.

Mariana stuffs a few garments into the little suitcase, along with some shoes and the brandy and cigarettes. Hugo’s knapsack is ready. “I don’t need anything else. This is exactly what I need.” Mariana speaks in her ordinary tone of voice.

The Residence suddenly seems like a big body whose soul has been removed. Victoria hurries Sylvia along. “The house is full of ghosts,” she says. “Come, let’s get out of here quickly.”

The sky is high and blue, and the sun is bright and dazzling. While he was in the closet, Hugo imagined his liberation as a winged run that couldn’t be stopped. Now he staggers after Mariana with heavy steps. “Too bad we didn’t get up earlier,” says Mariana. She makes a sharp turn toward a grove of trees.

The grove is sparse, and the short, bare trees leave them even more exposed. Mariana doesn’t feel comfortable in the open air. She changes direction and finally sits down under a tree and says, “We have to find a protected place. Here everything is wide open.” Hugo knows that she will soon take a bottle out of the suitcase, have a swallow, and her mood will improve.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asks, shivering.

“No.”

Hugo loves the tilt of her head and the question that comes in its wake. Her body still radiates warmth and the smell of perfume. He takes her hand and kisses it. Mariana smiles, takes a bottle out of the suitcase, drinks, and says, “The sky is beautiful, isn’t it?”

He sees her in daylight for the first time now and is astonished at her beauty.

“We have to find a house. We can’t live without a house. I won’t go to the convent. In the convent they slave away and pray all the time. I love God, but I don’t feel like praying all the time.” Hugo listens attentively to her mutterings. In them she always expresses her true heart’s desires, and they are usually fantasies that have no basis in reality. Now he can follow them, because she’s speaking slowly, sad and happy by turns, and in the end she sums it up for herself. “I’ve suffered enough, and now I’ll live in the country, just me and Hugo. You understand me, don’t you?” She turns to him.

“It seems to me that I do,” Hugo answers cautiously.

“Don’t hesitate, honey.”

Hugo doesn’t expect that response and laughs.

“You should know that hesitation is our undoing.”

They are outside the city, in the heart of the snow-covered fields. From here Hugo can see the white church, the water tower, and some buildings that he can’t identify. The months in the closet have distanced him from the city that he loved. Now, when he sees its edges, he remembers the long walks he took with his father along the river, in the alleys alongside the park, and in secret places that only his father knew.