Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [52]
“Who hung up that icon?” Blanca asked, feeling as though it were no longer her house.
“I did,” Kirtzl said. “A house without icons is liable to meet disaster.” Kirtzl spoke like a peasant.
Now Blanca noticed that Kirtzl wasn’t as ugly as she had seemed to be at first. Her broad shoulders suited her face and her full, solid body. For a moment Blanca was about to ask her how one grows such a sturdy body, whether the sun did it or thick corn porridge, but then she realized that it would be a stupid question, and she kept her silence.
“Did Otto ask about me?”
“No.”
“And did you change his diapers at night, too?”
“You don’t change children’s diapers at night.”
“Why not?”
“They have to get strong.”
Kirtzl had the confidence of a peasant who had received the lessons of life as an inheritance from her ancestors.
“And how was your work?” Kirtzl surprised her by asking.
“The old people are sweet.”
“And they didn’t make passes at you?”
“They’re old people.”
“There are old men with very young urges. In our village, there’s an old codger who sleeps with his niece every night.”
Blanca looked at her broad face again. A kind of satisfaction filled it. It was clear to Blanca that a head like that, stuck onto a sturdy neck and planted on cushioned shoulders, never got dizzy. She never vomited and she didn’t have insomnia, and when she got up in the morning, guilt feelings didn’t gnaw at her. Her limbs were fastened on well. She had no backaches and no weak knees.
“And are you pleased?” Blanca asked for some reason.
Kirtzl smiled a narrow, secret smile, which immediately revealed what had happened in the house during the week that Blanca wasn’t there. After eating his dinner, Adolf had made clear how it was going to be and then left for the tavern. When he came back, he had gotten right into Kirtzl’s bed, peeled off her nightgown, and, without any niceties, mounted her. Later, after nodding off for a while, he had mounted her again. Then she had become heated up and planted her teeth in his neck. Adolf had kneaded her and eaten her flesh with a greedy mouth. Toward morning, before leaving for work and while she was still groggy, he had mounted her again, gotten dressed, and gone out.
Blanca looked at Kirtzl and knew with certainty that this was what had happened. A secret jealousy flooded through her, as though she understood for the first time that there were healthy, coarse people for whom life was intended, and the rest were thrown to the side.
40
WHEN ADOLF CAME home from work, he pierced her with a look and asked, “How was it?”
“Fine,” Blanca answered, matching his tone.
Adolf’s face was flushed, and it was clear he had downed quite a few drinks, but he wasn’t drunk. Repressed rage filled his face and traveled down the nape of his neck. Blanca rushed to serve him his meal—whatever was in the pantry and what she had managed to prepare. Adolf didn’t complain. He sank into his plate and made no comment.
Blanca sat at some distance from him and observed him—the way he cut the steak, then sliced the bread and broke it into cubes. He dipped the cubes in the gravy and put them in his mouth. That was how his father ate, and so did he. But this time, for some reason, it seemed to her that with those movements he was imitating an unusually large dog that she had seen the night before in a dream and that she had been frightened of.
“How was it?” she asked after a prolonged silence.
“I worked.” He dismissed her with brevity.
“And how was Kirtzl?” she had an urge to ask.
“Fine.”
Blanca knew every detail of that abrupt way of speaking. Adolf had never had a real vocabulary, but the little that did emerge from his mouth was sufficient for him to express himself. Among his friends in the church and the tavern he spoke a lot, but in fact he used the same words