Afterwards he only once went in there: that was a few weeks after the funeral. In any case, we locked up the room and I had the key, and that’s how it stayed for three years, until our divorce came through, nor did we ever open it; everything stayed just as it was the moment we took the child to the clinic. I did sometimes sneak in to clean … without anyone knowing, of course.
I was half-crazy in those weeks after the funeral. But I pulled myself together and dragged myself about, if only because I didn’t want to collapse altogether. I was drawing superhuman strength from somewhere. I knew it was perfectly possible that he was feeling even worse than I did, that he might be close to a serious breakdown, and that even if he denied it, he needed me.
But something happened between us in those weeks, or rather between him and the world … I can’t quite find the words for it. Something in him did break. All this, of course, happened without anything being said. Isn’t that always the case with serious, even life-threatening, events generally? When a person begins to cry or scream, the crisis is past.
He was calm during the entire funeral too. He said nothing. His calm was infectious. We followed the little white-and-gold coffin in silence, with straight backs and dry eyes. But do you know — he never once came to the cemetery with me to visit the grave? … He might have gone there by himself, I don’t know.
“When someone starts crying, you know it’s a cheat. Everything is over by then,” he said to me once. “I don’t believe in tears. Pain is silent and sheds no tears.”
What was happening to me in those weeks? Looking back now I would say I was working my way up to revenge. Revenge? Against whom? Against fate? Against those who treated him? That would have been stupid. Believe me when I say the child had been treated by the best doctors in town.
People say all kinds of things about times like this. “It was as much as they could bear,” they say. That’s how it was. It was as much as I could bear. But it happened in stages. Everyone was busy with all kinds of things in those few days when the little one was dying. Their smallest cares seemed to exercise them more than the saving of my child’s life. I can’t forgive them for this, of course, not even now. I wanted to be revenged on them. But I felt the desire for another kind of revenge too, a revenge not in my mind but in my heart. It was the revenge of indifference. A strange indifference and contempt burned within me then. It was a fierce cold flame. Because it’s not true that suffering purifies people; that we become better, wiser, more understanding in the process. We become cold and indifferent. When, for the first time in our lives, we properly understand our fate, we become almost calm. Calm and extraordinarily, terrifyingly lonely.
During those weeks I didn’t go to confession as I used to. What would I have had to confess? What was my sin and how had I committed it? I felt I was the most innocent creature that ever lived. I don’t feel that way now … Sin is not just what the catechism says it is. Sin is not simply that which we commit. Sin is also what we desire but are too weak to do. When my husband — for the first and last time in his life — barked at me in that peculiar hoarse voice in the nursery, I understood my sin. I had sinned, in his eyes, because I was unable to save the child.
You’re staring into space. I can see you’re confused. You feel that only deeply wounded feelings or acute despair can lead a man to such an unjust accusation. Not for one moment did I feel his accusation to be unjust. “Yes, but think of all you did do,” you say. Well, yes, it wasn’t something I could be arrested for, whatever anyone thought. I sat at that child’s bedside for eight days. I slept there and nursed him. I was the one who went against usual practice and called other doctors when the first, and then the second, failed to help. Yes, I did all I could. But I did it all so my husband should find strength to live, so that he should remain mine, so he should love me — because there was no other way but through the child. You understand? … It was for my husband I prayed when I was praying for the child. My husband’s life was the life that mattered. That was the only reason the child’s life was of importance. That’s a sin, you say! … What is sin? I didn’t know then. I do know now. People who are part of us need to be loved and supported: those closest to our hearts, the love of whom lies deepest in us, they need all our power. It all collapsed when the child died. I knew I had lost my husband because, even though he said nothing, he blamed me. Ridiculous and unfair to blame me, you say. I don’t know. I find it impossible to talk about.
After the child died, I felt utterly exhausted, and of course I immediately fell ill with pleurisy. For months I lay in bed, got better, then relapsed again. I was in hospital. My husband brought me flowers and visited me every day, at lunchtime and in the evening when he came home from the factory. I had a nurse. I was so weak I had to be fed. And all the time I knew that none of this would help, that my husband would not forgive me; that being ill would not relieve me of my guilt. He continued as tender and courteous as ever … I wept each time he left me.
My mother-in-law visited me a lot at this time. Once, just before spring, when I had recovered some of my strength, she was sitting at my bedside, quietly knitting as usual. She gave me a friendly smile and murmured confidentially:
“What do you want revenge for, Ilonka?”
“What?” I asked, startled, and felt myself flushing. “What’s this talk about revenge?”
“It’s something you kept repeating when you were in a fever. ‘Revenge, revenge!’ you cried. There’s no revenge to be had, my dear, only patience.”
I listened. I was excited. It was the first time since the child’s death that I’d really listened to anything. Then I started speaking.
“I can’t bear it, Mama. What did I do wrong? I know I am not innocent, but I simply can’t understand where I went wrong, what sin I committed. Am I not part of his life? Should we divorce? If you think it would be better for us to separate, Mama, I’ll divorce him. You must know I think of nothing else, that all my feelings are directed at him. But if I can’t help him, I’d sooner be divorced. Please advise me, Mama.”
She looked at me with a serious, wise, sad expression.
“Don’t upset yourself, child. You know very well there’s no advice I can give. It’s just life: we have to live and put up with it.”
“Live?! Live?!” I shouted. “I’m not a tree! I can’t live life like some tree. We need something to live for. I met him and I grew to love him: suddenly life had meaning. Then everything changed in a strange way … It’s not that he has changed. It’s not that he loves me any less now than he did in the first year of our marriage. He loves me, even now. But he is angry with me.”
My mother-in-law said nothing. She didn’t seem to approve of what I’d just said, but she didn’t seek to contradict me.
“Am I right?” I anxiously asked.
“Not in the way you put it,” she said, picking her words carefully. “I don’t think he is exactly angry with you. Or, to put it more precisely, I don’t think it is with you that he is angry.”
“With who, then?” I asked in a temper. “Who has hurt him?”
“That’s a difficult question.” The old woman frowned. “It’s hard to answer.”
She sighed and put her knitting down.
“Has he never spoken to you about his childhood?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Occasionally. In his own way. With the same odd, nervous laugh he gives whenever he talks of something personal. People, friends … But he has never said that anyone had harmed him.”