In the evening her grandmother arrives, sits down on the floor beside her, takes her stocking feet in her lap and warms them with her hands, only then is the granddaughter able to cry for the first time since the death of her child. On the third day this, that, and the other visitor comes. As if approaching an altar, friends and former neighbors from the ghetto come to stand before the footstool with its mourner, bringing her food and words of comfort, they themselves know what it means to lose a child, or else they don’t know, and no doubt quite a few of them are pleased that it happened to be the one who married the goy, etc., but that’s not what they say, instead they say, for example: But of course the main thing is that you yourself are still alive. As for her, she is incapable of crying when visitors are there, and by the third day she is very weary of being the recipient of all the comfort and support it is the sacred duty of these visitors to bestow on her, she doesn’t know how she can bear it that her child’s death still persists, that from now on it will persist for all eternity and never diminish, but she doesn’t speak of this to anyone. On the evening of the third day she knows that if her husband has not yet returned, he is not going to. She asks her mother what it is like to live without a husband. Her mother says: Hard. One of her friends says: You’ll see, tomorrow at the latest he’ll be back, he’s probably just drowning his sorrows. Her grandmother sits down beside her and sings her a lullaby. Has the time in which she was a grown woman now come to an end? If she has missed the road leading forward, will time simply reverse itself and go back again? On the fourth day, her own mourning seems alien to her and she thinks that perhaps it doesn’t really matter whether a being is on one side of the border or the other. On the fifth day, her mother says, we have to think about what comes next. On the sixth day, the clock strikes all the hours contained in a day, with its bright, tinny chime. Might it be time now to go looking for her father, if he happens not to have hanged himself? On the morning of the seventh day, her mother helps her to get up and leads her to the table in the kitchen. Only after the daughter has sat down does her mother say to her: We have to start economizing. On this seventh day the daughter realizes for the first time that she herself is also a daughter, one who has been alive all this time and whose life is only now, with a short delay of seventeen years, breaking down. No one can predict when it will be revealed that a wish is going to be left unfulfilled. Her mother sits down beside her, takes her hands, and says: Your father was beaten to death by the Poles.
6
Now he knows where to find the agency, the bald-headed man gave him the address. When he goes out onto the street, it suddenly occurs to him that the first child of one of his colleagues also died young. One day, shortly after the baby’s death, his colleague asked him if he wanted to see the grave. Yes, he said, although he didn’t really want to, and so the two of them walked across the cemetery during their lunch break. His colleague showed him the child’s name on an iron plaque on a wall to the left, the mound of earth in front of it, and the stone border with the little railing. Not even a year and a half later, this same colleague became a father again, and the newborn was given the name of the deceased child as its middle name when it was baptized. He goes into the bank to withdraw the sum his journey will cost. At the exchange office next door, he obtains the twenty dollars in American currency he’ll need to enter the country, as the bald-headed man instructed him. He remembers how his wife laughed when he would imitate for her what she looked like when she was sleeping. They laughed at the same jokes over and over, laughing again and again at next to nothing; when his mother-in-law was with them, she rarely understood what they were going on about and would just shrug. Soon his train will pass over the very rails he looked after until now, one hour and twenty minutes is what this leg of the journey will take, that’s all — the stretch of track for which he used to be responsible is tiny compared to the length of the entire journey he now intends to embark on. When he embraced his wife, her bosom fit perfectly below the curve of his ribs. Sometimes they would just stand there like that, happy; sometimes they would make faces together in the mirror; once he had stuck the tip of his mustache in her ear; another time, rubbed his nose against hers. The journey will take him by land to Bremen, and there, the bald-headed man explained to him, he will board a ship; the ship is called Speranza. Then they asked themselves whether other people also did things like that when they were alone.
On his way to the station he sees his apartment building on the other side of the street and briefly stops. Something is taking place there that used to be called his life, all he has to do is cross the street and go upstairs, and he will be back where he belongs: beside his wife. Even from where he is standing he can hear the shrieks and wails coming from inside. Not his wife’s voice — that much is certain — and if he’s not mistaken, not the voice of his mother-in-law either. Who is shedding tears over his child? The door opens, and a woman he doesn’t know comes out of the house in low-heeled shoes, her coat buttoned all the way up, her scarf covering her hair; as she walks, she wipes her tears, she hasn’t noticed him on the other side of the street, and even if she did, she’d have no idea why he was standing there, and by the time she reaches the next corner, it won’t even be possible to tell that she’s been crying. When she turns off the street, an old man is coming from the other direction and almost bumps into her, he is holding a bowl. The old man nods to the woman, then continues slowly on his way to the building’s front door, which he pushes open with his shoulder so that the contents of his bowl — perhaps soup that he wants to bring to the woman in mourning — will not spill. He, the highest ranking mourner, standing a stone’s throw away, sees the stooped shoulders of the old man, and knows who it is: Simon, the coachman from the Jewish quarter who is usually off carting wood shavings, rubbish, and milk, he’s often seen him from behind sitting atop his coach box. All the people here seem to know what their duty is, he’s the only one asking himself what to do. If his mother were still alive, she would be praying the rosary with him now, he would be sitting beside the tiny coffin in the parlor and would be the father of the dead child. Is it a sign of cowardice if one leaves one’s life behind, or a sign of character if one has the strength to start anew?
7
The question of whether the nursery should remain sealed up forever is one she doesn’t have to answer, since it’s obvious she must give up the entire apartment. The only option that remains to her is moving back in with her mother. Hadn’t it pleased her when her husband married her — a Jew — without his parents’ consent, and above all that his passion for her was so strong it made him forget his own origins? This time, she’s the one he’s taken a mind to abandon, he is leaving her behind without her consent. She knows that his absence will be no greater and no smaller than his love for her and their child — and what she’s seeing reflected now in the line of death is in the end nothing more than the bond joining him to her.