Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [28]
The old people gathered around her and asked whether there was any news. Blanca told them she was considering going to the police and asking them to deploy as many men as possible in the area. The nights were cold, and her father wasn’t dressed properly. The old people agreed with her.
Meanwhile, lunch was being served, and Blanca was offered a bowl of soup. She sipped the hot liquid and told everyone about the mailman who had awakened her that morning. She recounted this dispassionately, as though what had happened to her was only a nightmare. Now that it had passed, she could tell others about it.
The old people stared at her. “What can we do?” they asked.
“I won’t give the police any respite.” Blanca spoke in a voice not her own.
The kitchen worker brought her a second course as well. Now most of the old people were sitting in the dining room, eating and drinking from ornate ceramic mugs that didn’t look as though they belonged to the place. Blanca repeated that she intended to go to the police, ask for an interview with the chief inspector, and explain the urgency of the matter to him. The nights were cold and dark, and a person who had lost his way was liable to fall into a pit. One of the old men made a dismissive gesture with his hand and looked at her skeptically, as if to say, They won’t do a thing, I know.
Suddenly these strangers surrounding her had become the only close relatives Blanca had in the world, and for a moment she thought about telling them everything that had happened to her since she had married Adolf.
“Why did he go back to Heimland?” one of the old men asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“He missed his home,” she said, and was appalled by the words that had left her mouth.
“He shouldn’t have gone back. If you are doomed to be in an old age home, you should just stay there, without moving. No one will have mercy on you.”
Blanca was about to reply that her father had in fact gone to ask for shelter in her home, but that she was afraid of Adolf. Adolf couldn’t stand her father. He used to call him a weakling, subject to moods, someone who didn’t know how to work. She wanted to tell them that she was afraid to bring her father into her home, fearing that Adolf would beat her for it, for he would beat her mercilessly. She intended to say all that, but she didn’t have the courage to do so. She just repeated that she was going to go to the police and ask them to send out more men that night, because the nights were very cold and dark.
21
AT THE POLICE STATION Blanca learned that the two patrolmen who had been summoned to the Jewish old age home that morning went out right away, gathered testimony, and submitted a report.
“Didn’t they search anymore?” Blanca asked.
“Where are we to look for him, madam?” the officer in charge said. A sharp laugh, like that of someone who had seen reversals in his life, burst from his thick lips.
“I’m sorry,” said Blanca.
“If we knew where he was, we would go out and get him. We have a total of three policemen in this town. Two of them patrol, and one sits here. We relieve one another every few hours. In this town, for our sins, there are quite a few thefts.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Blanca said, and she really didn’t. Her head felt like a void, as though all the thoughts in it had been uprooted, leaving only the walls.
Seeing her helplessness, the policeman looked at the report that lay before him and said, “I see that your father was in Heimland yesterday. What was he doing in Heimland?”
“He came to visit me. He missed the town,” Blanca answered hurriedly, glad that the words left her mouth in that order.
“And when did he return to Himmelburg?”
“On the last train,” she said, hoping that would be an end to the questions.
“And who accompanied him to the train?”
“I did,” Blanca said with a feeling of relief.
“Old people usually don’t like to go back at night,” the policeman remarked