Ernst is aware of everything around him — the local culture, the economy. The local culture doesn’t capture his heart. This is a country of refugees, and Ernst doesn’t believe that someone who has fled from his birthplace can create a new literature or new art forms in his adopted home. Even if they have become successful tillers of the soil, industrialists, or university lecturers, refugees will always remain part of the culture from which they came. This is why Ernst feels that the culture here is deracinated, that it’s just politics dressed up as literature.
One time, when Ernst expressed this opinion to one of the managers of the investment firm where he worked, the manager attempted to correct him.
“A new nation is growing up here,” the manager said.
“In what way is it new?” replied Ernst.
“Does this need an explanation?”
Irena listens and tries to understand Ernst’s opinion. She sees that he struggles day and night, pouring his soul into the long pages that lie on his desk. Why not rest a little from writing? she wants to cry out every time she sees his drained face.
That night Ernst writes a letter to the publisher. “I won’t conceal from you,” he says, “that I don’t regard my novellas as any good. I’m grateful to God that you delayed their publication. I would be very sorry if they were published.” He wants to read the letter to Irena, but in the end he decides not to bother her. He puts it into an envelope and immediately feels relieved.
23
ON PURIM IRENA PREPARES A PLATTER OF HAMANTASCHEN and dried fruit.
“In honor of what?” Ernst asks in surprise.
“In honor of Purim.”
“It’s nice that you remind me of the holiday.”
“My mother used to prepare mishlo’ach manot platters for the holiday, and I would bring them to the neighbors.”
“Didn’t you have any relatives?”
“We had a cousin in Bnei Brak. He died.”
After the meal, Irena serves Ernst a cup of tea. He samples one of the hamantaschen and says, “Very tasty. It reminds me of the hamantaschen my mother used to make for Purim.”
It is hard for Irena to imagine Ernst’s parents. They sound like people who were plucked out of one place but not planted in another and that sadness accompanied them into every corner. Once she saw his father in a dream, sprawled on the sofa, muttering, as though listing his sins. His mother approached the sofa, knelt, and said to him, It never was and never came to be; it was only a parable. Those words made an impression on his father, and he stopped muttering.
One time, curiosity overcoming her shyness, Irena asked Ernst, “Did your mother observe our traditions?”
“My mother was attached to the tradition of her fathers,” Ernst replied, “and she had a connection with some of the secrets of faith, but I had no understanding of her life. She was shackled to herself. I remember her face and her eyes but not her hands. When I left home, and she knew that I had gone over to the Party, she didn’t say a word to me. Once, when I was a boy, I asked her, ‘Mother, why don’t you talk?’ When she heard my question, sorrow creased her face. I didn’t understand my parents, neither their lives nor their struggle with themselves and with God. I was in a world of bombastic phrases then, of black and white, of reforming humanity, but I didn’t see my parents’ sorrow.”
Before Irena leaves the house, Ernst asks her for a glass of cognac and invites her to join him. Irena pours the two glasses, and they drink a l’chayim. Now she notices that the wastebasket is full of torn paper. In the morning he ripped up everything he had written during the night.
Ernst’s struggle seeps into Irena. Sometimes she feels that his battle is with despair. He talks about the years he wasted and about the scandalous results, but she senses that there is strength in his despair. At night he struggles with an essence that is much stronger than he is, and sometimes he prevails. The sharpness in his eyes in the morning is not a sign of frailty but of a strong will. Once he said to her, “Life is so full of contradictions. I’ll never understand it. But I want to describe it.”
“Do you believe in God?” she dared to ask.
“Yes, in the God of my fathers. It took me years. In my youth just the word ‘God’ repelled me.”
It’s hard for Irena to take in all of Ernst’s ideas. They are too elevated and inaccessible. She understands the God of her childhood. “God dwells everywhere,” her mother said. Since her mother told her that, she has imagined God dwelling in the peach trees that bloom in the spring or in the fig trees that drop their leaves along the road. But she especially feels God’s presence on Sabbaths and holidays. She puts a lot into getting her house ready to greet them. When she sits at her table on Friday night, she feels a great light enveloping her, and she prays in her heart that God will shine His face on Ernst and show him how to struggle with that dark monster that is trying to undermine him.
A week ago Ernst felt ill, and the doctor ordered him to lie in bed for several days. He obeyed, and one evening he said to Irena, “You have no idea how good it is to lie in bed and not to do a thing. To close my eyes and not think about anything.” Irena was alarmed by his words. It seemed to her that they were spoken in fatigue and an unwillingness to struggle. She was wrong. It was a moment of relief, of escape from depression. Working at night exhausts Ernst. After a night of looking for words and for their proper rhythm, his body weakens. The correct sound of the words sometimes evokes a melody. But usually the words are like gravel, and as hard as he labors, they don’t change their shape. Suddenly Ernst felt liberated from that burden. His body existed for itself, and his soul, too.
Over time Irena has developed strategies to draw Ernst out of his gloom. One of them is blintzes filled with cheese and raisins. She immediately announced, “I’m making blintzes.”
“Now?”
“Right away.”
Irena likes the way Ernst relaxes after a meal. Light shines from his face, and she feels a great closeness to him. At such times he may relate a story from his life. One time Ernst told her about his service in the Red Army. About the horses that bore him across the steppes of the Ukraine, about the brotherhood of soldiers, and about the powerful desire to live that pulsated throughout his unit. He walked over to the cupboard and took out a small box. In it were the medals of valor he had been awarded. “I loved the soldiers, and they loved me,” he said, and that distant memory filled his face.
24
HEAVY SNOW FELL IN EARLY MARCH, AND ERNST DIDN’T leave the house. He wanted to go out several times, but Irena persuaded him not to: the sidewalks were slippery and the winds were fierce, and he could trip.
“Sitting in the house without interruption blunts my thoughts.”
“What can I do?”
“Allow me to go out.”
When she heard that, she burst into tears.
“Irena, what’s the matter? I was just joking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to say you’re sorry. I’m the one who has to apologize. You’re only thinking about what’s good for me, and instead of thanking you, I’m annoying you.”
Ernst is constantly struck by Irena’s simplicity. On March sixteenth she turned thirty-six, and in honor of the event Ernst wanted to take her out to dinner in a restaurant. But it was cloudy outside, so they celebrated at home.