Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [69]
They sat in the kitchen, and Theresa served her lunch. She told Blanca that her husband was ill again and had been hospitalized. She spent whatever she made on doctors and medicines. There was never any word from their absent children. Except for her sister, whom she saw occasionally, she had no close relatives. But one mustn’t complain, she said; anyone who was walking on their own two feet and not confined to a wheelchair should bless their good fortune.
Blanca raised her voice. “I felt that I had to come back here.”
“When did you have that feeling?”
“Yesterday I saw my father passing before me.”
“The dead go to their own world, dear, and we’ll see them only at the great resurrection.”
“Sometimes I feel that my father is angry at me.”
“You are mistaken. In the world of truth, our parents speak only on our behalf. They know what we’re going through.”
It was hard to know whether that was an expression of faith or a habit of speech that Theresa had inherited from her mother. She spoke to Blanca the way one speaks to an injured person, to soothe the pain. Blanca took in the words that Theresa showered on her but wanted to say, My guilt feelings can’t be healed by folk wisdom. I’ll wallow in them all my life.
Theresa didn’t say any more. Blanca remembered when she first arrived here with Adolf—how he had surveyed the old people with wordless contempt, and how he had threatened the director so that she, in her fear, had agreed to take in Blanca’s poor father.
“I have to rescue Otto,” Blanca said, rousing herself.
“You have to be patient, to wait and see.”
“To wait, you say?”
“They’re punished in the end, whether by people or by heaven.”
“How many years did you wait?”
“The years pass quickly, and in the end freedom will come. You mustn’t rush things.” In her voice Blanca heard a cruel simplicity, a kind of women’s spell that was passed down from generation to generation, that said again and again, Wait, wait, until the bastard croaks, and then you, too, can go free and enjoy a new life.
Before leaving, Blanca asked, “Do you know a goldsmith or a jeweler?”
“Yes,” Theresa said, and smiled as though she were sharing another secret. “There’s a Jew in this city who has a jewelry store, an honest man. He’ll appraise the jewel and pay you its price. He won’t cheat you.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“What did I do for you?”
“Once again, you pulled me up out of the underworld.”
51
BLANCA LEFT THE old age home and walked directly to the jeweler’s shop. She was sure he would stare at her and say, This is a stolen ring and you’re a thief. But she didn’t stop. She walked on, as though in the grip of a force stronger than her fears. To her surprise, the jeweler didn’t suspect her. He looked at her with sympathy and asked, “Where are you from, young lady?”
“From Heimland.”
“A nice town. What’s your name, if I may ask?”
“Blanca Guttmann.”
“You’re Erwin Guttmann’s daughter. What an educated and pleasant man.”
“He’s no longer with us, I regret to say.”
“He used to come here: a man of refinement in the full sense of the word.” The jeweler examined the ring from every angle and declared, “It’s old and worth four thousand.” He paid her with new banknotes, and Blanca made a reckoning: that was a year’s salary for work in the old age home. But her joy was marred. The thought that she had used her father’s good name to deceive the jeweler stung her. She began walking to the railway station with rapid steps.
On the train, she sat in the buffet car and drank a few brandies. Her head was spinning, and she knew that she would pay for her deed one day, both for the theft and for the deception. Then the dizziness passed, and she fell asleep in her seat.
She returned home at one thirty and told Kirtzl she