Aharon Appelfeld - Until the Dawn's Light

Now the days proceeded heavily, as though stuck in heavy batter. Week after week Blanca would take the train home, sometimes two or three times a week. The nights became a journey of longing for freedom, but with no way out. Kirtzl entrenched herself in the house. Her limbs broadened, and an animal-like satisfaction filled her face. When Blanca asked her why Otto’s skin was so chapped, she answered, “You worry too much. I raised three children, and they’re alive and healthy. Your worries won’t bring him health.”

Adolf would grab Blanca’s wages from her hands and ignore her. She noticed that he also ignored Otto, as though he were a bastard and not his son. Otto grew taller, but his body didn’t fill out. His scrawniness was evident in his exposed ribs and in his face, which became long and thin.

“He has no appetite,” said Kirtzl.

Sometimes in church Adolf would remember Blanca’s presence and stand next to her. In the flat shoes she wore now, she came to just below his shoulder. If he wanted to crush her, he could do it with one shove.

Why am I so frightened? she kept asking herself. She drank more and more. Drinking filled her with waves of warmth, but not with words. How strange, she thought as she spoke to Sonia in her mind. There are no words in my mouth. Once I knew how to talk, how to express things in detail and with precision, but now, when I stand next to Adolf, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth and I can’t think of a single sentence with which to answer him .

A change was also taking place in her body. She had already observed that now, when she picked up heavy things, the burden didn’t hurt her. And during that imaginary conversation with Sonia she noticed something else: an arm motion, a reaching upward that didn’t seem to come from within her own body, a gesture that Grandma Carole used to make while she stood at the entrance to the synagogue.

Blanca said to Otto, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll watch over you with all my soul and all my might.” Hearing her voice, Otto opened his eyes wide and laughed, but Blanca was dejected, and in her dejection she began to sob.

On the train one Monday morning Blanca had a few drinks, and she returned to the old age home in a blur. Elsa smelled it on her right away.

“What you do outside isn’t my business,” she said, “but you can’t come here reeking of alcohol. I don’t intend to reprimand you again.”

“I’ll try,” Blanca replied in the tones of a maidservant.

“I’m not talking about trying,” said Elsa.

Now, too, Blanca felt the muteness that blocked her mouth. She rushed to her room, changed clothes, and without delay went to clean the stairs.

The alcohol that Blanca had drunk in the buffet car seeped into her and strengthened her. After cleaning the stairs, she made the beds and mopped the floor. She did all the chores without thinking, and at the end of the day she reported to the dining room and brought trays to those who were eating. The strength of youth, such as she had not even felt in high school, flowed in her arms. One of the old people observed her and said, “What’s happened to you, Blanca?”

“Nothing. Why are you asking, sir?”

“You look different today.”

She soon learned how right the man was. On laundry day she found a diamond ring in one of the smocks. In the past, whenever she had found anything valuable, she quickly returned it to its owner. This time she looked at the ring for a moment and then slipped it into her pocket. After finishing the laundry she thrust the ring into a cleft in the wall.

The theft seemed to have passed unnoticed. But then two weeks later, Mrs. Hubermann discovered that her ring had disappeared, and she burst into tears. All the old people demanded that a worker named Paulina be fired, because stolen jewelry had already been found in her possession. Paulina was summoned to Elsa’s office, and she swore by everything dear to her that she hadn’t stolen a thing. But her oath didn’t help her this time, and she was dismissed. Before leaving, she cursed the residence and the Jews who had plotted against her. The two janitors took hold of her the way they had gripped Sonia and threw her out.

From then on Blanca stole money and jewels, quickly slipping them into her hiding place. Sometimes at night she would go downstairs and fondle them. “I’m not stealing for myself, but for Otto,” she murmured like a slave woman. Contact with the stolen jewels restored to her a moment of joy.

BLANCA’S LIFE WAS now submerged in a rigid, impermeable schedule. Shadows clung to all her steps. Once she saw two gendarmes at the entrance of the old age home, and she was sure they had come to arrest her. She was also afraid of the janitors, and of bringing compote to the old people at night. Since Sonia’s departure, Blanca was apprehensive about breaking any of Elsa’s rules. In the past she had sat with the old people, helped them, and stolen food for them. Now she did her duty and departed. A feeling of uncleanliness, similar to what she had felt after her marriage to Adolf, stained her again. She bathed immediately upon finishing a shift, but the feeling didn’t fade away.

Elsa grumbled and threatened to bring the police to make a search and interrogate the staff. Aside from Paulina, who had been fired, there was another worker who had once been caught stealing cheese, and suspicion was now directed at her. No one knew what Elsa would do. After her shift, Blanca would flee to her room and curl up under the blanket.

On the weekends Blanca would return home and surrender her wages to Adolf. Then she would rush to bathe Otto and dress him. Blanca tried to do in one day what a mother does in a week: she washed his clothes, took care of him, and amused him, and on Monday morning she bathed him again and hurried to the railway station. Because of a change in the schedule, there were no more night trains, and so Blanca was no longer able to return home for a few hours during the week. On Saturdays they let her leave at eleven, and she saw Otto by the late afternoon.

So the summer passed. In the autumn Otto began to cough a lot, and Blanca brought syrup for him from Blumenthal, but the cough didn’t go away. When she wanted to take him to Dr. Nussbaum, Adolf commented, “You’re going to doctors again.”

“Otto’s coughing a lot.”

“We all cough, and nobody dies.”

Blanca spirited Otto out to Dr. Nussbaum. He examined Otto and determined that the cough was serious and that if it wasn’t treated, he was liable to catch pneumonia. Blanca raced straight to the church from the doctor’s office. After the service, a lot of guests came to the house, and she served them sandwiches and drinks. Eventually they all dispersed, and Blanca remained with Otto.

“Mama,” Otto called out clearly.

“What, dear?”

“Sit next to me.”

“I’m sitting.”

“Don’t go away.”

“I’m not going away.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what, dear?”

“Do you have anything nice to give me?”

“I have pudding.”

“Don’t go away.”

“I’m not going.”

Blanca sat and looked at him. A golden light poured onto his face, and he looked like the baby Jesus in the long painting above the altar in church. His face was pure, and his lips were closed tightly in concentration.

“Otto.” The word slipped out of her mouth.

“What, Mama?”

“Nothing.”

Just then the sun went down, and shadows were cast on the walls. Blanca hid her face in her hands, as she had done in her childhood when the fear of death assailed her.

A WINTER WITHOUT snow blew over the vacant lots near the old age home. The janitors were busy chopping wood most of the day, and their tight faces grew darker. Aside from their work in the courtyard, they did Elsa’s other bidding: they informed on the other workers and on the residents. But Elsa still didn’t trust them fully, either, and she punished them more than once. The janitors took it in stride. “Life isn’t worth a penny,” they would declare.