Aharon Appelfeld - Until the Dawn's Light

IT WAS FIVE MONTHS after her marriage, and Blanca, in the city where she was born, had no one close to her. Everyone appeared to have conspired to ignore her. Grandma Carole stood at the entrance to the synagogue every day and cursed the converts. Her closed face, withered from the sun, was now even more threatening. Blanca would make her purchases in the market hurriedly and then escape. Adolf would return from the dairy late, irritable, demanding his meal right away. If the meal didn’t suit him, he would say, “It’s tasteless. You have to learn how to cook a meal.”

After he slapped her face, she seldom left the house, taking care only to purchase what was needed and to heat the bathwater. Every week a postcard came from the mountains, reminding her that she had a father and a sick mother. In the morning, when she was alone, she would remember that less than a year ago, she was studying in high school. She had been an outstanding student, and her parents were proud of her. Now it all seemed so distant, as if it had never happened. In the afternoon, fear would possess her, and she wouldn’t leave her room. Her hands trembled, and every movement cost her great effort.

More than once she said to herself, I mustn’t be afraid. Fear is humiliating, and one must overcome it . But it didn’t help. Ever since Adolf had slapped her, she was afraid of every shadow and wanted only to do his will, like a maidservant. Strangely, just at those moments of dread, she remembered Grandma Carole. If a blind old woman can stand in front of the synagogue and curse and not be afraid, she said to herself, I, too, mustn’t fear .

Once, she mustered courage and said to Adolf, “I’m afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” he said with a coldness that sent chills down her spine.

“I don’t know.”

“Jews are always afraid. A Christian woman doesn’t fear.”

Once a week, usually on Sunday, Adolf’s parents would visit. They were tall and broad, and their faces reflected a strange mixture of piety, obtuseness, and anger. Their clothes reeked of alcohol. At their side, Adolf was obedient and submissive.

“Yes, I didn’t think of that,” he would say.

The three of them together would suck all the air out of the living room.

Once Adolf’s mother said to her, “Blanca, you have to change your name. That name isn’t common among us.”

Blanca was frightened. “That’s true,” she said.

“You don’t have to choose. The priest will pick a name for you.”

Blanca rushed to the kitchen to bring out some sauerkraut, and the conversation went elsewhere. Meanwhile, Blanca’s parents had come back from the mountains. Her mother had made up her mind to die in her own bed and not in a strange place. Her father ignored the doctors’ advice and submitted to his wife’s wishes.

“Forgive me,” Blanca’s mother said to her astonished daughter. “My days in this world will not be many. I won’t disturb you too much.”

A doctor came one morning and examined her, gave her an injection of morphine, and left no doubt in the hearts of those who loved her that her illness was mortal, that they must prepare for the inevitable.

“What can I do?” asked her father in a broken voice.

“Nothing,” said the doctor.

But the next day a miracle happened. Blanca’s mother rose from her bed and sat down at the table. Her father, stunned, looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

“Why did you get out of bed?” he asked.

“I feel better.”

“The doctor said that you mustn’t get out of bed,” he murmured with a trembling voice.

When he realized that she did indeed feel better, he made her a cup of tea and sat by her side.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I saw my sister Tina in a dream, the way I haven’t seen her for years, and she told me to get out of bed. I didn’t believe I could, and I said to her, ‘Excuse me, Tina, I’m ill.’ ‘Now you’re not ill,’ Tina said to me.”

“And what happened after that?”

“She sat by my side the way you’re sitting by my side.”

“And what else did she say to you?”

“I don’t remember.”

When Blanca saw her mother sitting at the table, she went down on her knees.

“Mother, what am I seeing?” she said.

Blanca was glad that her parents had come back, but to tell them what had happened to her, how she was enslaved — she didn’t dare.

She sat at her mother’s bedside without saying a word. Her mother saw, with a feeling of helplessness, that Blanca’s way of moving had changed. She was thinner. Her eyes were puffy, and her lips formed a thin, tight line. It was hard for her to talk, because it was hard for her to say what was oppressing her.

Blanca’s father was entangled in debts. His elder brother, Theodor, did send them a small sum from Hungary every month, but it wasn’t enough. In vain he sought other sources of income. Finally, he sold some of his wife’s jewels.

Blanca’s mother parted from her jewels with a heavy heart. “I intended to give them to Blanca,” she said.

“Mama,” said Blanca, “I don’t need jewels.”

“I’m just a guest here for the moment, dear. These hours were given to me as a gift.”

“What gift are you talking about, Mama?”

“These hours, dear.”

The house seemed to change in appearance. Blanca’s mother’s breathing was weak, and the shadows cast by her arms were longer than her arms themselves, but her eyes were wide open. Blanca momentarily forgot the misery of life in her own home. The light of her mother’s life surrounded her with a circle of warmth, and words like none she had ever heard, words like the sounds of prayer, trembled on her lips.

TWO MONTHS AFTER her return from the mountains, in mid-July, Blanca’s mother passed away.

“Ida, what has happened to you?” her stunned father cried out.

“Ida will suffer no longer,” said the doctor, in the solemn tones of a priest.

“And what can I do?” her father asked in a subdued voice.

“There’s nothing more to be done,” answered the doctor, sounding pleased that he had an occasion to say that. Blanca’s father ran to Blanca’s house.

Adolf noticed him coming.

“Your father’s running like a madman.”

“Who’s running?” Blanca didn’t catch what he said.

“I already told you.”

“Blanca!” her father called out, and stumbled.

Toward evening a quorum of ten Jewish men came from Himmelburg with a woman to wash the body in ritual preparation for burial and to say prayers. Grandma Carole, who deafened the city with her shouts, now stood as silent as a mountain. The burial society organized the funeral. Its head, a tall, dignified man, sat next to Blanca’s father as though he were his elder brother and spoke to him in a somber manner. Blanca’s father did not weep. But his unshaven face and swollen eyes displayed rigid shock.

“When will the funeral begin?” he roused himself to ask.

“Soon,” said the man.

“And who will say kaddish?”

“You will, sir.”

“Not I!” Blanca’s father said in anguish. “I don’t know it. I’ve forgotten it.”

“I’ll say it in your place,” said the man.

Hearing his answer, her father hung his head, as though relieved.

Not many people came to the cemetery. Three of Ida’s friends came, high school classmates, two neighbors who had converted, and a few people who had known Blanca’s father in his youth. Blanca’s father grasped the arm of the head of the burial society.

“I forgot the kaddish,” he murmured. “I don’t remember anything of it.”

“Not to worry, I’ll say it,” the stranger promised him again.