Aharon Appelfeld - Until the Dawn's Light

“How do you feel, my dear?” he asked, leaning over her.

Blanca wanted to tell him that she felt a strong dizziness that pulled her down, that her legs were cold, and that she was afraid of the abyss yawning beneath her. She wanted to tell him, but didn’t dare. She knew that Dr. Nussbaum’s responsibilities were even greater now and that everyone was pressuring him. Dr. Nussbaum looked at her face and knew that Blanca lay in darkness, that she had to be watched over lest she do something desperate.

Sometimes, in the afternoon, when the heaviest drowsiness loosened its hold on her, Blanca felt a strong connection to her father and mother and to the country from which they had emigrated. It seemed to her that the Prut — in whose clear waters her mother and father and their forebears had bathed — was a purifying river, and if she ever managed to get to it, she would be saved from this stifling melancholy.

Thus the days passed. From time to time Adolf or one of his sisters would appear like a thick shadow. Blanca barely recognized them. One evening Adolf’s elder sister came to visit her and asked, “When are you coming home?” Blanca tried to open her eyes. When they were open, to her joy she saw Dr. Nussbaum. “You don’t have to answer,” he said. She was immediately relieved and felt as though he had hidden her under the hem of his clothing.

BLANCA BEGAN TO feel better; she saw Otto and took pleasure in him. The other patients gathered around her, and they all said the baby was amazingly beautiful, that it had been a long time since they’d seen such a lovely baby. Dr. Nussbaum knew about Blanca’s situation and said, “You’ll stay here for the time being.”

March was warm, and Blanca felt the closeness of her mother and father, and remembered the row of walnut trees that led to the high school. Sometimes she had met her teachers Klein and Weiss there, and they would talk on the steps of the building. The image was bright, as though time had transparently embalmed it.

Now her heart told her that she must go to Grandma Carole and reconcile with her. The last time Blanca had seen her, Grandma Carole was standing silently, her neck stretched upward, the sun’s rays covering her dark face. She had looked like a statue that had been mummified for years, frozen in time. In her dream, Blanca had wanted to approach her and say, Grandma Carole, don’t you remember me? But her legs wouldn’t carry her.

When she awakened, Blanca heard a voice in the treatment room. First it had sounded like Theresa from the old age home, but it turned out that her ears had deceived her. It was her mother-in-law. She had come to take the baby to church so the priest would bless him.

“The weather is still chilly, and the child is weak,” Christina explained to her.

“That’s exactly why I came to take him. He needs a blessing to grow strong.”

“But he’s very weak.”

“The cold won’t hurt him. I raised five children, and all of them, thank God, are healthy and strong. The cold just strengthens them. And the blessing before baptism is a good charm for weak children.”

“I can’t give you the baby, only the doctor can.”

“I’m the baby’s grandmother, and I knew exactly what he needs.”

Dr. Nussbaum arrived at a run and declared on the spot that the child was weak and must not be removed from the hospital.

The mother-in-law’s jaw dropped. “Why?” she asked.

“Because he’s weak.”

“I’m taking him to the church. The priest’s blessing will strengthen him.”

“All of that must wait until he’s healthy.”

“I don’t understand a thing,” she said, and headed for the exit.

As she was leaving, Blanca’s mother-in-law met one of her friends, and she complained to her that Jewish doctors had taken over the public hospitals, and they had neither loving-kindness nor mercy in their hearts. They took no account of the priests’ opinions.

“Cursed be the Jews and their behavior.” She didn’t restrain herself now and slammed the door.

The next day, Adolf’s sisters arrived and gathered in the corridor. They asked Christina whether the baby was still weak, why he was so weak, and whether there was any danger that he might be handicapped. They then asked permission to take him to the church. Christina explained once again what she had already explained. Hearing her words, the eldest sister said, “If he lies here all the time, he’ll turn into a slug instead of a man.”

Later, the sisters returned with a big, strong woman from a nearby village. They sat her on a chair and gave her the baby to nurse. Blanca saw the woman, her huge, dark breast, and the nipple that she stuffed into the baby’s mouth. The baby suckled greedily until he choked. Everyone rushed to turn him over and pat him on the back.

When the baby was finished nursing, Adolf’s eldest sister gave a banknote to the wet nurse. She took the bill in her dark hand, stuffed it into her coat pocket, and without saying a word headed for the exit.

BLANCA GREW STRONGER, and she would give the baby to the large woman who came to nurse him every day. First it seemed that the baby was gaining strength, but after a week of steady nursing, he began to vomit severely. There was no choice but to go back to the porridge that Christina had been carefully making for him. Blanca’s mother-in-law wasn’t pleased by the sudden change, and she kept saying that if the mother was weak, then the baby would also show signs of weakness. “In our family, thank God, everyone is healthy and strong.”

Celia came to visit Blanca, who was so happy to see her that she started crying. Ever since Celia had brought her Buber’s anthology, the book never left her hands. Even in her days of severe illness, she read it.

All of Celia’s movements were familiar to Blanca, even the tilt of her neck, but she still wasn’t the Celia she had once been. The Stillstein Mountains had changed her through and through. Celia spoke about her distant ancestors like someone who knew what she was talking about. She pronounced the names of their villages in Galicia and Bukovina as if she had just come back from visiting them the day before.

“You haven’t shown Otto to me,” said Celia. “How is he doing?”

Christina brought him in, and Celia said, “He looks like a darling baby.”

“My husband and mother-in-law aren’t pleased by his development.”

“Blanca, my dear, we mustn’t consider other people’s opinions. You have to go your own way.”

“If only I knew the way,” replied Blanca.

The hospital’s situation deteriorated. Dr. Nussbaum was working day and night. He grew so tired that he would collapse on a couch in his office in the middle of the day and fall asleep. The rich people who had promised to support the institution reneged on their promises. Dr. Nussbaum had already sent seven memorandums to the Ministry of Health, and what the municipality sent wasn’t enough even for medicines. In his soul, Dr. Nussbaum knew that he would have no alternative but to send his patients home and close the gates of the institution, but he kept postponing the closure. His voice had changed over the past few days. He walked through the corridor with vigorous steps, shouting, “The rich have luxurious and roomy hospitals, and a well-trained medical staff. But what will become of the public hospitals? What will the poor and oppressed people do? Where will they go?” His speech was frightening, because he spoke to the bare walls.

The thought that one day Blanca would journey to the famous Carpathian Mountains and bathe in the Prut River took shape within her while she was ill, and now it was very clear. She imagined her life in the Carpathians as a simple life, a country life, with hours of prayer that would divide the day into three sections. On holidays everyone would put on white clothes and go to pray in small wooden synagogues. The disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s disciples still prayed in those small synagogues. They had reached a ripe old age and dozed during most of the day. But in the summer, in the drowsy hours of the afternoon, they sat in the doorways of the houses of study and greeted those who arrived with a blessing.