Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [2]
Blanca had met Adolf in high school. He was a solid, handsome lad, but not an outstanding student. The teachers liked him because of his strength and childlike appearance. Blanca married him in haste, after she graduated. Her parents weren’t pleased, but they didn’t meddle. Only Carole, her mother’s mother, hearing about her marriage to a gentile, didn’t restrain herself. Grandma Carole was a simple woman, hardy and irritable. If she didn’t like something, she condemned it, and if people annoyed her, she cursed them. She made allowances for no one. Confident in her beliefs, she would sometimes say things that shocked the family. Years earlier, when another of her granddaughters married a gentile, she had said, “A daughter of Israel who shows contempt for the Torah won’t live long. The Torah was given to us to observe, not to hold in contempt. God in heaven sees everything and knows everything and won’t forgive.” That was before she went blind. After that, she became even more zealous. All the family’s ups and downs reached her ears; she missed nothing. And when something seemed wrong to her, she would repeat, “The Torah was given to the Jews so they could observe it, not so they’d hold it in contempt.” Everybody expected her to die, but for some reason death didn’t claim her. After she went blind, her other senses grew keener and her reactions were sharper. She would make her pronouncements with fierce vehemence, sometimes coarsely, and rather than shaming, her words caused pain.
“Slut,” she hissed, when she learned of Blanca’s marriage.
2
DAY BY DAY the light grew stronger, and red poppies covered the riverbank. The sight of the flowers reminded Blanca of summer vacations when she was Otto’s age and her parents were young. Even then the fear of death would assail her in the middle of the day. She kept this a secret and told no one. Sometimes, before going to sleep, she would ask her mother not to put out the light. Her mother, a thin and fragile woman, used to whisper, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, dear; darkness isn’t anything, just a color. At your age it’s not fitting to sleep with the light on.”
In time Blanca confessed: “I’m afraid.”
“These are just momentary fears, dear. They’ll pass very quickly.”
Later, the fear of death left her, but another fear came to dwell in its place, a fear of people. Blanca would hide in the closet or under her bed, and Johanna, the housekeeper, would get down on her knees and whisper, “Where’s my squirrel, where’s my sweet child?” Hearing her whisper, Blanca would chuckle and emerge from her hiding place.
Then Blanca’s mother fell ill. She was just thirty-five, and Blanca was still a young girl. For years they dragged her from sanitarium to sanitarium, from doctor to doctor. She would return from those trips wan and pale, her eyes sunken into their sockets, an involuntary smile trembling on her lips. Blanca wasn’t allowed to go into her room. She would stand in the doorway and stare at her.
“How are you feeling, dear?” Her mother would address her as though she were no longer in this world.
“Fine, Mama.”
“And how’s school?”
“I got ‘Excellent’ on my arithmetic homework.”
Upon hearing those words, her mother would close her eyes and spread her hands on the white sheet.
After a while Blanca’s mother no longer returned home, except for short intervals. During vacations, Blanca and her father used to go to the mountains to visit her. Those hasty visits, once in the winter and once in the summer, were seared in