Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [51]
“I’m a Jew,” he proclaimed, “and I’ll never hide it. It’s not a special virtue, but it’s also not a shame. At Hanukkah we’ll light candles and sing ‘Rock of Ages,’ and we’ll remember the times when Jews were Jews and their Judaism was dear to them, when they were prepared to rise up against a mighty empire.”
Sometimes Durchfall spoke in a different tone of voice.
“There’s no doubt,” he would say, “the Jews are a changeable and frivolous nation. It’s hard for them to be Jewish, it oppresses them, and at every opportunity they throw a few old books into the Danube. They’re sure that if they convert to Christianity, their neighbors will embrace them and take them to their hearts. They’re wrong. They’re simply wrong.”
39
WHEN BLANCA RETURNED home on Saturday, she noticed from a distance that the front door was ajar and that the garbage pail kept it from closing. A faded November light shone on the empty lots around the house. She had come at a run from the station, but when she approached the house, she halted. The anxiety that had shackled her body for a week wrapped itself around her legs, and she felt her knees weaken.
At a distance from the door she called out loud, “Kirtzl!” No one answered.
“Kirtzl!” she called again, and for a moment she stood frozen, trying to absorb what was happening. She opened the door and went inside.
Kirtzl was sitting outside in the garden, wearing a loose cloak. Her stolid face conveyed a kind of indifference, the relaxed expression of an idle person.
“How are you?” Blanca addressed Kirtzl as though she weren’t a woman sitting across from her but, rather, a large animal. Because you couldn’t know how it would react, you quickly appeased it.
“What?” Kirtzl said, her mouth falling open.
“Where is Otto?”
“He’s in his room,” she replied, without moving.
Otto was standing in his cradle, wide-eyed. Blanca sank to her knees, extended her arms, and started to pick him up. Otto burst into tears, frightened by her sudden return.
“It’s Mama,” Blanca said, putting him down. “Don’t you remember me?”
Kirtzl got up and stood very close behind her. Blanca felt her fullness and moved aside. Otto cried, and Blanca tried in vain to calm him. Kirtzl observed her desperate efforts without interfering, but eventually she said, “Give him to me.” Blanca passed Otto to her, and, to her astonishment, he stopped crying.
“How did you do that?” Blanca asked distractedly.
“You have to lift him up high,” Kirtzl said tonelessly.
It was two o’clock, and it seemed to Blanca that she had done her duty, that now she had to return to the old age home. A week of separation had distanced her from those oppressive rooms. Even Otto seemed different to her, perhaps because of the blue shirt he was wearing. He had received that shirt some time ago from Adolf’s elder sister. The sister had said at the time, “That’s a boatman’s shirt. Anyone who wears a shirt like that will be as strong as a lion.” Because of what she’d said, or maybe for another reason, Blanca had never touched the shirt, and it lay in the bottom drawer of the dresser. She had hoped that Otto would outgrow it and never wear it.
“Mama,” Otto suddenly called out, as if he had just realized she was his mother, and reached out toward her. Blanca took him and held him to her heart. She immediately forgot she was working in the old age home in Blumenthal and far away from Otto. It seemed to her that she had been sunk in a long sleep and now she had awakened.
“How is Adolf?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” Kirtzl answered briefly.
Only a week had gone by since Blanca had departed for Blumenthal, and Kirtzl’s fingerprints were in every corner. It wasn