Until the Dawn's Light_ A Novel - Aharon Appelfeld [83]
And so Blanca continued to wander on that high plateau. The population was sparse, and only rarely would an abandoned horse or a lost cow emerge from the underbrush. Every time the desire to burn down a church arose in her, she would go and look for one. If she saw a church by daylight, she would say to herself, Tonight I’ll burn it down. Now she did it without resentment or pleasure, but like a person obsessed.
Blanca met a Jewish peddler on the road, and in return for a gold ring she received from him a pair of galoshes and a long winter coat. The peddler was pleased, and so was Blanca. To his question about what a young Jewish woman was doing in these empty places, she hurriedly explained to him that she intended to get to Vizhnitz.
“If that’s the case,” he said, “you should take the King’s Highway. The King’s Highway is less dangerous.”
He was wasting his words. Blanca was no longer frightened. Every church that she burned down boosted her courage. She stood up to the peasants, calling them wild men and worthless, and she looked at them with venom. If her expressions weren’t effective, she would threaten them: If you come near me, I’ll choke you. To herself she said: If I overcome my fear of people, I won’t fear death. I did what I did and had to do. From now on let God do His will. Otto won’t judge his mother harshly.
In her sleep, Blanca would see her mother and father; they were young, and their faces were full of youthful wonder. Their closeness to each other always seemed marvelous to her, and now she felt this even more strongly. Blanca believed that she would be reunited with them soon and that then the darkness would vanish. This brightened her spirits even more than the churches she burned down.
Between one rainstorm and the next Blanca would go down to the river, wash her feet, and wrap them in rags. Since she had bought the galoshes from the peddler, her sores had healed somewhat. If she came upon a church on her way, she would burn it down at night. She did it with diligence and attention, as though she were lighting the lanterns of Heimland.
Many sights were effaced from her memory, but not that of the church on Sundays: her father-in-law, her mother-in-law, and Adolf, and the kneeling and the pain that it caused her. On those crowded Sundays in the church and at the gatherings after it, parts of her soul would freeze. Now she felt that everything that had been paralyzed within her was throbbing with life again. I did succeed at one thing, she would console herself. I excised Adolf from Otto’s soul. If God helps me, his memory will be wiped out of the child’s mind forever.
Sometimes Blanca would enter a tavern, have a few drinks, and be thankful that the light of her eyes had not dimmed, that she could still walk on her two feet and make her way to Vizhnitz. It pained her that her father, whom she loved so much, had cut himself off from the tradition of his fathers and had no faith at all. Her life now, in these green hills where the houses were few and far between, seemed like just a link in a chain of events, each existing on its own but still joined together. Dr. Nussbaum and Celia, Theresa and Sonia—I’ll take them with me everywhere, she kept repeating to herself. Death isn’t darkness if you take your dear ones with you. It’s just a change in place. Innocence, simplicity, and devotion are great principles. So it is written in Buber’s book, The Hidden Light. I will behave according to these principles until I reach the gates of light.
Then the snowstorms began. Hunger and cold tormented her, but Blanca was cautious. Now she avoided entering taverns or the little railway stations that were scattered along her way. Posters about the murderess were pasted on every public building—even on abandoned public buildings. Sometimes from a distance she would see a squad of gendarmes searching the