Aharon Appelfeld - Until the Dawn's Light

OTTO AWOKE IN the middle of the night.

“What are you doing, Mama?” he asked.

“I’m writing.”

“What are you writing?”

“My memoirs.”

For a moment he was perplexed, as though he realized he had already asked that question and had been answered.

Over the past week they had spent many hours together. The days grew longer, and now the twilight lasted until midnight. Otto was awake for a long time, and Blanca didn’t start writing until he collapsed on the mat. At first the sentences flowed, but now she found it hard to write a complete sentence. Fatigue and fear of coming events blocked the flow, and her sentences were fragmentary and scattered. To correct the flaws, she rewrote again and again.

Otto did not make things easier for her. He demanded attention and kept bringing up memories he had of their house. These few memories were not without meaning for him, but he knew that his mother didn’t like it when he asked about the toys they had left behind. While he seldom asked questions, when they passed by the chapel and he saw the image of the crucified Christ, he didn’t hold back. “Why did the Jews crucify Jesus?” he asked.

“Didn’t I tell you that the Jews didn’t crucify Jesus?” she replied impatiently.

“So who did crucify him?”

“The Romans.”

“I didn’t know.”

“So get that fact into your head. The Romans crucified Jesus and not the Jews.”

The years Blanca had spent with Adolf left more than physical scars on her. When she got angry, she noticed, she imitated his voice. More than once she had sworn to herself that she would uproot that violent voice from her throat, but, as though in spite, every time she got angry, it returned.

“When are we going?” Otto suddenly asked before falling asleep.

“Why are you asking, dear?”

“It looked to me like we were about to leave.”

“Perhaps. Do you want to?”

“Where will we go?”

“I guess we’ll go farther north.”

Otto was sensitive to every movement. Two days earlier, two men who were looking for a woman named Anna Tramweill aroused Blanca’s suspicion. They went from house to house, and finally they stood in the street and questioned passersby. They looked like two peasants who were searching for a debtor or a witness in a trial. In any case, she didn’t like the looks of the men, and she said to Otto, “Maybe we’ll have to leave soon.” He usually reacted to her fears belatedly.

The landlady was very friendly to them. She told Blanca scraps of her life and praised her daughter. Her daughter not only lengthened her mother’s days, but she also broadened her world. God had mercy on all His creatures, and upon her He showed particular mercy. Blanca didn’t usually like that way of speaking, but from the old woman’s mouth it sounded truthful.

That morning the landlady brought them a loaf of bread she had just baked, and a jar of prune jam.

“I’m sorry,” Blanca said. “We might have to leave soon.”

“Why so fast?”

“What can I do?” Blanca said, without going into detail.

Since encountering the two men in the street, Blanca hadn’t felt tranquil. She locked the door and didn’t walk as far as before. When the sun set, which was very late now, they walked up from the riverbank and Blanca made dinner. First Otto observed her handiwork, then he sat with his toys.

The day before he had asked, “When are we going to see a soccer game?”

Otto used to go to the soccer field with Adolf. After the game, Adolf would take him to his friends in the tavern. When they returned home, Otto’s face would be red from the sun, and his movements would be wild. When he shouted, Adolf would slap his face the way he slapped Blanca’s face, with no warning.

“A boy must behave properly. He must listen, and not get fresh,” he would say. Every time a slap landed on Otto’s face, Blanca would cringe, but she never said anything to Adolf. She would hug Otto and kiss the place where he was hurt, and for that she was scolded, of course.

Meanwhile, Blanca’s writings piled up on the wooden table. She hadn’t written since the end of high school, and the letters had become alien to her. She tried to stick to some order and to the facts, and of course to block the anger that sometimes welled up in her. She repeatedly told herself that the facts came before anything else. Without facts, there could be no reliable testimony.

TWO DAYS WITHOUT Adolf, and Blanca’s body began to thaw out a little. Though her movements were still constricted, she was no longer afraid to go into town. A week earlier, in great despair, she had put on her mother’s wristwatch. For a whole day she felt the burning touch of the strap. Now she felt that the watch was protecting her.

Blanca rose early the next morning and rushed to catch the train to Himmelburg. She had packed a bag full of vegetables and fruit, and a cheesecake she bought in a bakery, and she knew that as soon as he walked through the door Adolf would ask her about the extra expenses. But the full bag made her so happy that Adolf’s return didn’t concern her at all. She walked to the railway station energetically and with a self-esteem she had forgotten she had. Within a few minutes she was there.

The train arrived on time, and Blanca found a comfortable seat next to a window. Since Adolf had left the house, some visions of her distant childhood had returned to her. When her mother had taken her to school for the first time, and she had seen how rowdy the school yard was, Blanca had heard her mother say to herself, Good God, what will my daughter do in this mob? She’ll be lost . Then, when the principal, with her sturdy appearance, called Blanca’s name and told her to part from her mother and go into the classroom, her mother had taken her with both hands and said, “May God watch over you, my good little girl!” Thus, with trembling hands, she had let go of her mother. Now Blanca clearly remembered the long, high-ceilinged corridor through which she had walked every day. She also saw the frightening principal, whom she hadn’t seen for years.

Blanca went to the buffet car and had two drinks, one right after the other. The thought that in less than an hour she would be with her beloved father filled her with happiness. For a moment it seemed to her that she wasn’t going to the old age home in Himmelburg but to their enchanted vacation home in the Winterweiss Mountains, where they had imbibed the pleasures of the summer, reading or just sitting in silence. If there was a piano, Blanca’s mother would play Mozart sonatas. In the mountains, what was hidden inside each of them — a desire to withdraw from the noisy world, a yearning for solitude — found expression. They would walk through the valleys, far from the main roads, immersed in silence.

Blanca found her father in a good mood. He told her at length, and not without humor, about the routines of the place and the ridiculous arrangements, but his cheerful behavior, which reminded her of better times and other places, filled her with sudden melancholy. She understood then that her father didn’t grasp what fate had ordained for him, and where he had ended up. He was sitting on his bed in his old striped pajamas, his big impish eyes wide open. The sight of her father in his new incarnation brought a catch to her throat, and she had to stifle her tears.

When she showed him what she had brought, he kissed her forehead and said, “I have one daughter and Blanca is her name, and she is better to me than two brothers.” It was no coincidence that he said “two brothers.” He really did have two brothers in South America; they had sailed there when they were young. At first they had sent postcards. Then they disappeared, and not a word was heard from them.