Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [23]
“I’m not so young, sir. I’m fifty-three already,” her father answered.
“You’re a child, sir. Entry here is restricted to people over seventy. People live here for a year or two and die off.”
“Isn’t my presence welcome?” her father asked mischievously.
“Most welcome, and very pleasant. But you mustn’t be in this stable. The old horses are brought to this stable so that no one will see the torments of their demise.”
“Silence!” an old man called out from a corner of the corridor.
“I’m just telling him the truth. I’m neither adding nor detracting.”
“Why don’t we go out and take a little walk?” Blanca was surprised to find that her voice had returned to her.
“What for, dear?”
“To see Himmelburg, an ancient and beautiful city.”
“I don’t feel like getting dressed.”
“Not even in honor of me?”
That sentence did what only a magic word can do. Her father put on his fine winter suit, he placed his hat on his head, and they left the corridor as though they were visitors. Her father, she found, was familiar with Himmelburg from past years. At one time he had wanted to buy a bookstore there, and the deal almost went through, but Grandma Carole had interfered. She claimed that the store wasn’t profitable and that he would do better to buy a store in Heimland, where people knew one another.
For a moment it seemed to Blanca that her father had returned to his old self and in a little while he would come home. But then she remembered that the house had been sold, and if Adolf knew that he had slept in their house, he would beat her.
“Papa,” she said.
“What, dear?”
“Himmelburg is a very pretty city, prettier than Heimland.”
“In my youth I used to come here often.”
“What for, Papa?”
“I had a girlfriend here.”
“And what happened?”
“I liked your mother better.”
They sat in a café, and Blanca’s father told her that although he had all the qualifications to be accepted as a student in the mathematics department at the university in Vienna, his parents, who had the means to support him, wouldn’t let him go. Blanca knew very well how things had turned out. But this time her father added new details, and it was clear that he had never forgiven his parents for that injustice. And that was also why he had distanced himself from everything Jewish. Blanca’s father spoke in an orderly, logical way. He mentioned his partner Dachs and Grandma Carole, and Blanca was glad to see that he was once again the father she knew so well, that what had happened to him was just a temporary condition.
But later, as he continued to speak, he began to talk about another injustice, much graver and unknown to her, that had caused him great sorrow and blocked his way in life. He declared that when the time came he would bring a lawsuit against that good-for-nothing. Blanca tried to find out more about that injustice, and who the man was who had committed it. But as he plunged deeper and deeper into the details, Blanca realized that her beloved father had lost his way in dark labyrinths and was trying with all his strength to extricate himself.
On their way back to the old age home, he continued to speak angrily against everyone who had stood in his way. His face grew taut, and his words burned. When they parted, he said, “Go in peace, my daughter. It’s good that you at least are happy in life.” All the way home, Blanca tried to hold back her tears.
18
BLANCA HAD PLANNED to go to Himmelburg the next day but didn’t. Bad dreams tormented her during the night, and when she woke up it seemed to her that she must stay at home. She made a cup of coffee, heard the train leave, and with every sip of the beverage she knew that a part of her body had stopped pulsing, that from now on she would have to live an amputated life. That feeling traveled down into her legs, and she curled up in the armchair. She sat there, without moving, for a long time.
Later she recovered and went outside. The sky was bright, and the thought that she was still left with a few days to be by