Until the Dawn's Light (4 page)

EVEN BEFORE THE
end of the school year, Adolf was told that he couldn’t stay in high school. Dr. Klein and Dr. Weiss demanded his expulsion. The pleas of the assistant principal and some of the other teachers were to no avail. The decision to expel Adolf passed by a single vote. The announcement was sent to him in writing, and Adolf, in his fury, burned all his mathematics and Latin books in the school yard, shouting out loud, “Death to Klein! Death to Weiss! Long live freedom!”

Blanca returned from school in tears. Her pupil, whom she had tried so hard to help, had failed. Her mother tried in vain to console her.

“Klein and Weiss were cruel to him,” Blanca said angrily, still weeping.

The next day Blanca met Adolf at school. His face was furious and closed. Students surrounded him and tried to cheer him up, but Adolf rejected their efforts.

“I’m not upset,” he said. “The ones who failed me will pay the price.”

“I’m sorry, Adolf,” Blanca said, trying to take some of the blame on herself.

“You’re not to blame. It’s Klein and Weiss,” he said drily.

Adolf’s face was frightening, but Blanca didn’t leave his side.

“I don’t like pity,” he said repeatedly. “I’ve declared war, and I won’t be deterred.” That was clear in his appearance. The skin of his face was taut, and his lips were set in a firm line—which was exactly what Blanca found so enchanting.

“Good God,” she said when she got home. “Why are good people hurt? Why are they made to fail? People ought to be judged favorably, to bring out the good in them. So what if someone has trouble with mathematics or Latin? Is that a reason to expel him from school? What harm did he do?”

The school year ended, and Adolf was not among those who received report cards. His absence was conspicuous, because no boy in the school was as tall or as broad as he was. The excellent grades that sparkled on Blanca’s report card didn’t make her as happy as they had in the past. It seemed to her that they had come at Adolf’s expense.

“In mathematics there are those who are good and those who are better,” said her father enigmatically.

“Is that why they don’t let students study and expel them from school?” Blanca asked.

“What can you do? That’s nature.”

“Isn’t our motto that everyone should work according to their ability and receive according to their needs?”

“That principle doesn’t apply to the study of mathematics.”

“If mathematics leads to discrimination, I don’t want anything more to do with it.”

“Dear, you’re going too far.”

“I’m completely serious.”

Blanca’s father was proud of her, and now, hearing her opinions, he was even prouder. Her mother didn’t enter the argument. In matters of logic, her husband and daughter were better than she. Every time they caught her in a contradiction, she would say, “I raise my hands in surrender.”

That summer they didn’t go to Winterweiss. The doctors ordered Blanca’s mother to rest at home.

“I’m sorry, Blanca,” her mother said.

“Why are you saying you’re sorry, Mama?”

“Because of me, we’re not going to Winterweiss.”

“What are you talking about, Mama? I love being at home.”

Meanwhile, Adolf surprised Blanca by inviting her out for a bowl of ice cream. They sat in the busy café, and Adolf told her about his plans. Next month he would start working at a dairy, and he would be making a living. He was tired of being dependent on his parents. A man should work and make money.

Blanca was embarrassed and didn’t say a word. Being close to Adolf’s strength dazzled her.

“And you’re going to go on studying?” he asked, like someone who had himself been liberated from such things.

“What can I do?” She wanted to draw near to him.

“Aren’t you tired of it?”

“In another year, I’ll finish, too.”

When they parted, she, too, felt disgust for the institution called high school, which tortured the weak and raised the talented up to the skies. Her fury burned against the teachers who were so good to her, Dr. Klein and Dr. Weiss; because of them, about twenty students were expelled from school every year. High school without Adolf would be barren. “By virtue of the weak, we are humane.” She had heard that once from her uncle Salo, her father’s brother, who was a communist, heart and soul, and had been imprisoned for a number of years. After his release, he died suddenly of a mysterious illness.

FROM THEN ON,
Blanca would see Adolf everywhere, in her dreams and while awake. She wanted so much to see him that she walked as far as the dairy where he worked. Adolf was surprised and embarrassed by her sudden appearance. But he recovered immediately and introduced her to his fellow workers. This was the first time Blanca heard the German peasant dialect, and she didn’t understand a word of it. The workers were tall and clumsy, and the odors in the dairy were pungent and stifling.

“Why did you come here?” Adolf asked.

To see you,
she was about to say, but then she thought better of it and said simply, “I was taking a walk.”

“Isn’t there any school today?”

“There is, but I took a little vacation.”

“I understand,” he said, but showed no sign of excitement at her presence. But that very lack of emotion enchanted her. She interpreted it as inner quietness, as natural behavior, as masculinity of the proper kind.

Blanca’s thoughts were now filled with fantasies of Adolf.
When will I see him again?
she wondered. Her grades were no longer as brilliant as they used to be.

“What’s the matter with you, Blanca?” Dr. Klein wondered.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t reveal even the slightest thing.

Dr. Weiss was more merciful and spoke to her like a father. “Blanca,” he said, “you have all the talent and potential of a mathematician. Please, do yourself a favor, concentrate, and make an effort so we can give you a scholarship to study in Vienna. The mathematics department in Berlin may be better, but they’re no slouches in Vienna, either. I don’t have many students like you.”

“I’ll try,” she said to mollify him.

“For the sake of your future, my dear.”

Blanca didn’t want to reveal her deepest thoughts to them. Ever since Adolf had been expelled, she hated the high school, and the mathematics and Latin classes in particular. It seemed to her that the continued existence of that arrogant institution was for nothing but the persecution of Adolf’s soul. She remembered how Adolf had carried desks on his broad shoulders from classroom to classroom, and she felt a stabbing in her heart. That was the gratitude they showed him. Anyone who lacked an analytical brain was banished to the dairy.

“I won’t lend a hand to it,” she said to her father one evening, but her father was so preoccupied with the business of his store that he didn’t notice her anger. “That’s right,” he replied distractedly.

Blanca used to meet Adolf from time to time in the street or near the tavern. He was well liked everywhere, and people gathered around him. Sometimes she would pass him without his noticing her. One evening, on her way home, he approached her and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way home.”

“How’d you like to have a beer?”

“Gladly.”

Blanca had never been in a tavern, although she had read a lot about them. Dim lights illuminated the corners of the room, the gramophone blared, and the smells of beer and smoke billowed up to the ceiling. On a low stage couples danced, kissed, and cuddled.

“Do you plan to study at the university?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“All the young Jews are sent to the university, right?”

First, not all the young Jews,
she was about to say,
and, second, they aren’t sent
.
People have free will and the ability to choose, and they go of their own accord, not because they’re sent
. But she controlled herself and said simply, “I don’t know.”

Adolf didn’t realize that her answer was evasive.

“All the young Jews are sent to the university,” he insisted. “I know.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but it certainly isn’t good.”

Logic wasn’t Adolf’s strong suit, and whenever he got stuck, he became obstinate. But Blanca found charm in that stammering as well, and, rather than criticizing his response, she was enchanted, as if she had been shown a wild spot where rare flowers grew.

“I met Adolf,” she told her mother. “He’s working in a dairy.”

“Poor fellow.”

“I prefer the dairy to high school. In the dairy there’s no distinction between one person and another. There people aren’t tested on their knowledge of mathematics and Latin every week.”

“You’re right, dear.” Her mother knew in her heart that Blanca’s argument was flawed, but once her daughter had entered high school, she no longer commented on anything she said. She would say to herself that a girl who excels in mathematics and Latin, who is admired by her teachers, and who is a candidate for the prestigious Salzburg Prize certainly knows what she’s talking about. That was also how she felt about her husband. She was certain that one day his talents would come to light, and he would even do wonders in business.

While Blanca was wondering in her heart where to go and what to do, Adolf came and made the decision for her. He did it the way he did everything, directly and bluntly.

It was in the evening, and they were sitting in the tavern and joking about how short Klein was, how he saw the world through a dwarf’s eyes. Blanca was the one who raised the idea of dwarfs, and Adolf, because of his hatred for Klein, added a few humorous outlines. Now it seemed that a strong emotion bound them together: Klein’s dwarflike appearance and the hatred he aroused in both of them.

For a long while they laughed, and Blanca was pleased that she had managed to make a mockery of the man who had expelled Adolf from high school. As Adolf was walking her home and they were laughing about Klein and Weiss, he said to her, almost casually, “How would you like to be my wife?”

“Me?” Blanca said.

“You.”

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about such things.”

“It’s only that it’s a surprise for me.”

“I’m a Christian, and Christians don’t joke about such things.”

It was a simple trap, and she was caught in it. Later she would say to herself,
How was I trapped? How did I fail to see? What blinded me so? After all, I was a person who stood on her own two feet, someone with an awareness of the world
. But that evening she was drunk with happiness, so drunk that she didn’t dare tell her secret even to her beloved mother. It was not until the next morning that she revealed her engagement to her mother, who caught her breath, hugged Blanca, and burst into tears.

BLANCA WANTED TO TELL
Otto everything, to describe in detail the insults she had borne over the years, what she had done to herself and to others, and how blind she had been. It was important to her now for no detail to get lost, so that when the time came, Otto would know the course of events in full. Every night she sat down and wrote. First she was particular about the order of events, but time made a fool of her, and everything got mixed up together.
No matter,
she said to herself,
Otto will understand by himself what came first and what came afterward
.
The main thing is that no detail should be unknown to him.

Sometimes a bad dream would disturb Otto’s sleep, and he would awaken in a panic.

“It’s nothing, dear, dreams speak hollow words.” She hugged him tightly.

“I dreamed about Papa,” he told her.

“And what happened?”

“It was very frightening.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, dear. Would you like something hot?”

“What are you doing, Mama?”

“I’m writing.”

“What are you writing?”

“Memories.”

“What are memories?”

“Everything that was and will never be again.”

“I’ll write someday, too.”

“Certainly.”

Otto grew and changed. The memory of the house was gradually erased from his mind, and he sank into daydreams and into his games. Blanca didn’t interfere. The thought that time was short, and that she had to leave Otto a detailed account, drove her to the writing table night after night. But the order of their days remained unaffected. Until sunset they would tarry by the water, and in the evening they would go out for a walk along the riverbank. After the walk, Otto would sink down on the mat and fall asleep, and Blanca would fall upon her notebook and write until after midnight.

Sometimes an image from distant childhood would intrude, and it was crystal clear. At first she would ignore it, saying to herself,
I have to be faithful to order, to write only what touches upon this affair
. In time she ceased that, realizing that distant memories also belonged in her account. Memories of Grandpa and Grandma and her uncle Salo.

She concluded a long chapter with the words “I did what I did, and I am prepared to submit to justice for it.”

IT WAS FIVE MONTHS
after her marriage, and Blanca, in the city where she was born, had no one close to her. Everyone appeared to have conspired to ignore her. Grandma Carole stood at the entrance to the synagogue every day and cursed the converts. Her closed face, withered from the sun, was now even more threatening. Blanca would make her purchases in the market hurriedly and then escape. Adolf would return from the dairy late, irritable, demanding his meal right away. If the meal didn’t suit him, he would say, “It’s tasteless. You have to learn how to cook a meal.”

After he slapped her face, she seldom left the house, taking care only to purchase what was needed and to heat the bathwater. Every week a postcard came from the mountains, reminding her that she had a father and a sick mother. In the morning, when she was alone, she would remember that less than a year ago, she was studying in high school. She had been an outstanding student, and her parents were proud of her. Now it all seemed so distant, as if it had never happened. In the afternoon, fear would possess her, and she wouldn’t leave her room. Her hands trembled, and every movement cost her great effort.

More than once she said to herself,
I mustn’t be afraid. Fear is humiliating, and one must overcome it
. But it didn’t help. Ever since Adolf had slapped her, she was afraid of every shadow and wanted only to do his will, like a maidservant. Strangely, just at those moments of dread, she remembered Grandma Carole.
If a blind old woman can stand in front of the synagogue and curse and not be afraid,
she said to herself,
I, too, mustn’t fear
.

Once, she mustered courage and said to Adolf, “I’m afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” he said with a coldness that sent chills down her spine.

“I don’t know.”

“Jews are always afraid. A Christian woman doesn’t fear.”

Once a week, usually on Sunday, Adolf’s parents would visit. They were tall and broad, and their faces reflected a strange mixture of piety, obtuseness, and anger. Their clothes reeked of alcohol. At their side, Adolf was obedient and submissive.

“Yes, I didn’t think of that,” he would say.

The three of them together would suck all the air out of the living room.

Once Adolf’s mother said to her, “Blanca, you have to change your name. That name isn’t common among us.”

Blanca was frightened. “That’s true,” she said.

“You don’t have to choose. The priest will pick a name for you.”

Blanca rushed to the kitchen to bring out some sauerkraut, and the conversation went elsewhere. Meanwhile, Blanca’s parents had come back from the mountains. Her mother had made up her mind to die in her own bed and not in a strange place. Her father ignored the doctors’ advice and submitted to his wife’s wishes.

“Forgive me,” Blanca’s mother said to her astonished daughter. “My days in this world will not be many. I won’t disturb you too much.”

A doctor came one morning and examined her, gave her an injection of morphine, and left no doubt in the hearts of those who loved her that her illness was mortal, that they must prepare for the inevitable.

“What can I do?” asked her father in a broken voice.

“Nothing,” said the doctor.

But the next day a miracle happened. Blanca’s mother rose from her bed and sat down at the table. Her father, stunned, looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

“Why did you get out of bed?” he asked.

“I feel better.”

“The doctor said that you mustn’t get out of bed,” he murmured with a trembling voice.

When he realized that she did indeed feel better, he made her a cup of tea and sat by her side.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I saw my sister Tina in a dream, the way I haven’t seen her for years, and she told me to get out of bed. I didn’t believe I could, and I said to her, ‘Excuse me, Tina, I’m ill.’ ‘Now you’re not ill,’ Tina said to me.”

“And what happened after that?”

“She sat by my side the way you’re sitting by my side.”

“And what else did she say to you?”

“I don’t remember.”

When Blanca saw her mother sitting at the table, she went down on her knees.

“Mother, what am I seeing?” she said.

Blanca was glad that her parents had come back, but to tell them what had happened to her, how she was enslaved—she didn’t dare.

She sat at her mother’s bedside without saying a word. Her mother saw, with a feeling of helplessness, that Blanca’s way of moving had changed. She was thinner. Her eyes were puffy, and her lips formed a thin, tight line. It was hard for her to talk, because it was hard for her to say what was oppressing her.

Blanca’s father was entangled in debts. His elder brother, Theodor, did send them a small sum from Hungary every month, but it wasn’t enough. In vain he sought other sources of income. Finally, he sold some of his wife’s jewels.

Blanca’s mother parted from her jewels with a heavy heart. “I intended to give them to Blanca,” she said.

“Mama,” said Blanca, “I don’t need jewels.”

“I’m just a guest here for the moment, dear. These hours were given to me as a gift.”

“What gift are you talking about, Mama?”

“These hours, dear.”

The house seemed to change in appearance. Blanca’s mother’s breathing was weak, and the shadows cast by her arms were longer than her arms themselves, but her eyes were wide open. Blanca momentarily forgot the misery of life in her own home. The light of her mother’s life surrounded her with a circle of warmth, and words like none she had ever heard, words like the sounds of prayer, trembled on her lips.