One morning Ernst tells her, “I have returned to the Carpathians.”
“How is it there?” she asks.
“As it was, with no change.”
“When were you last there?”
“At the age of eight.”
That’s very moving, she almost says, but she immediately remembers that Ernst doesn’t like words such as “moving.”
“Irena, what’s your earliest memory?” He asks her directly.
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“My parents told me a lot about the DP camp in Frankfurt. Sometimes I think that I remember things from the age of two, but that can’t be.”
“For me the Carpathians have been wiped out of my memory. I’m amazed at how that happened to me.”
“Are you pleased?”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
Ernst usually expresses his opinions clearly, but on some days surprise grips him, or weakness, and he openly admits, “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Irena wants to help him, but she doesn’t know how. At times she has the feeling that it would be better not to mix in. Too much talk could disturb the direction of his thoughts.
Sometimes Irena thinks that if she read more, she could understand Ernst’s efforts. Her parents left her shelves filled with books: memorial volumes, survivor testimony, and diaries. Since they passed away, she has bought a few more books, and in the evening she looks through them. Some of them — the diary of Anne Frank and the diary of Moshe Flinker*—she reads over and over again.
As she reads, Irena pictures the cities and villages where the Jews were trapped and envisions herself trying to escape with her parents. When she reads Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, she sees her parents trudging through the heavy snow in Auschwitz, their legs swollen. From books she learns what her parents didn’t tell her. They actually told her very little. Had she known what they went through, she would have loved them more. You have to hold the people who were in Auschwitz in your arms and love them morning, noon, and night, she once said to herself with great feeling.
* Moshe Flinker was a Jewish teenager from the Netherlands who kept a diary during World War II. He and his parents were killed in Auschwitz in 1944. (Ed.)
34
ERNST HAS WRITTEN ALL NIGHT. WHEN IRENA ARRIVES IN the morning, she finds him sitting at his desk. His face is open, and his forehead glows. For a moment she wants to say, You mustn’t work all night. Working without a break will weaken you. But seeing his enthusiasm, she keeps her mouth shut.
Irena is frightened by Ernst’s enthusiasm. And, indeed, after days of increased effort come days of depression and darkness. Sometimes she thinks it’s her fault: she doesn’t have welcoming words. What comes out of her mouth barely forms a coherent sentence, and sometimes it’s only broken syllables.
Irena rushes to serve Ernst breakfast. He doesn’t ask how she is or what happened to her on her way there. He mutters a few words, eats hurriedly, and goes back to his desk. When Ernst is immersed in his writing, it seems to Irena that he is swimming in deep water. She can tell this by the way his head tilts, as though he were plunging and rising. When he’s done, he wraps his arms around himself.
About an hour after breakfast Ernst surprises Irena and reads aloud to her from what he had written:
Early in the morning Grandfather would open the eastern window, wrap himself in his tallis, and speak directly to God. I would lie in bed and see God approach the window. Grandfather’s face was hirsute, and his eyes were scarcely visible under thick eyebrows. He would pray in a whisper, but sometimes he would shout, too. While he prayed, Grandmother would stop her housework and sit at the table with her eyes shut. The mighty Lord was a constant guest in their house. After praying, Grandfather would slowly remove his tefillin. All that time Grandmother would sit attentively, and not until he closed the window would she rise to her feet.
After prayers, they would sit together at the table and eat breakfast. Grandmother would have baked a loaf of peasant bread and prepared dairy dishes, vegetables, and fried eggs. Grandfather would break off a piece of the bread and whisper the blessing. They used to eat from the same plate, without speaking. Sometimes Grandmother would ask Grandfather something, and he would reply briefly. Silence hovered over their meal. When he was finished eating, Grandfather would lower his head and recite the Grace After Meals.
One morning I lay on the broad wooden bed and saw the sun flood the kitchen and the dining alcove. I feared the arrival of angels, because the night before Grandfather had told me about the angels who came to visit Abraham.
I spent all my summer vacations with my grandparents. They were short vacations, but each hour was full and each had its own light. In the Carpathians, there is more shade than light, but during the summer, daylight extends until deep into the evening.
Grandmother would be busy cooking prune jam. Two copper pots were placed on an iron stand, and a wood fire licked them until they turned dark gray. Grandfather would sit and smoke a pipe as the sun set. He looked like a giant to me. If he rose to his feet, he would shake the tall trees that surrounded the house.
During one vacation, when I was nine, Grandfather died. When he was late for lunch, Grandmother went out to the field and found him lying on the ground. I saw her fall to her knees, slap his face, and cry out, “Mordechai, Mordechai!” I was standing at a distance and didn’t dare approach. When her efforts failed, she rose to her feet and asked one of the peasants to call the neighbors.
Within a short time people began to arrive, coming from every direction. They were Jews like Grandfather: tall and sturdy, with the fragrance of the earth and sap coming from their clothing. They surrounded the dead man, and some of them fell to their knees. The people of the Carpathians don’t die in their beds but in the field, in the vegetable patches, among rows of trees in the orchard, or sometimes next to a tree they were about to chop down. Both Grandfather’s father and his grandfather departed from the world in the field.
Everyone in the room was mourning, but there was no panic. The men did what they had to do, moving quietly and deliberately. Haste is not proper when performing a commandment. They drew water from the well and washed Grandfather according to the Jewish custom. Grandmother sat at the door of the house, withdrawn and not uttering a word. God gave and God took away. One doesn’t reproach the Creator of the world. Unfortunately the sons and daughters would not be able to escort their father to the World of Truth. They lived in distant cities, and one had sailed to America. There is nothing to fear: Grandfather is going to a place far from here, but he would not rest in heaven. The merit of his good deeds would assist his descendants whenever they were in distress.
The sun, whose light had filled the morning sky, suddenly departed, and low, dark clouds descended in its place. That was when I noticed Grandfather’s large hands, which delicately held his prayer book as though it was a fragile treasure. His height and strength only accentuated his gentle ways with people, but when he chopped wood in the yard, his power was thunderous.
By now people had come from all over and surrounded the house. Only the elderly heads of households were permitted to enter. The rest stood outside, close together. Some Ruthenian peasants gathered near the fence. For years they had worked on Grandfather’s small farm. They knew that Reb Mordechai was a God-fearing Jew who observed all the commandments and did not mind other people’s business. Only acts of violence would upset him. When he saw a Ruthenian peasant threaten his neighbor or his wife with an ax, he would intervene. “God dwells within us, and we mustn’t act with brute force,” he would say softly, and, amazingly, the peasant would put down his murderous tool.