All Whom I Have Loved (7 page)

After this, the restrained weeping turned into long and drawn-out sobbing. Halina lifted up her head and said, “I don't know why, but this evening always moves me.” Tears welled up in her eyes. And so we stood there for a long time. The wonder faded slightly, but I felt that this evening would long remain with me, even after I grew up.

We went inside. Halina lit a lantern and said, “These Jews always amaze me.” In what way, I wanted to ask but did not.

Mother returned late. Her face was covered with weariness and indifference, as if her secret had been snatched from her. I wanted to feel pity for her, but my heart wouldn't let me. I remembered the black night and how I had called out, “Mother, Mother!” and I immediately felt estranged from her.

Father appeared immediately after Yom Kippur. His expression frightened me, and I clung to Halina's legs. Father's face had grown darker since I last saw him. He was wearing a long raincoat and a black peaked cap, and he carried a bag in his right hand. “Father!” I called, without letting go of Halina. On hearing my cry, he bent down and stretched out his arms to me. I detached myself from Halina and went to him.

Once again, we crossed and recrossed the main street in silence. Father wanted to say something, but the words stuck in his throat. Father is tall and strong—he can lift tables and chests of drawers—but he finds talking difficult. When he's angry he smashes things, but he doesn't lash out at people. Once I saw him break a chair into pieces. Mother stood by the door without uttering a sound. From then on I knew that he must not be annoyed.

We sat in the café we used to go to. To break the silence, I told him about my walks with Halina, about the ice-cream shop and the candy kiosks. Father listened but he was not with me; his thoughts were elsewhere. The waitress brought him a cup of coffee and me a hot chocolate. His face had become more wrinkled, and I saw that his thoughts gave him no rest.

When he finished the coffee, Father began talking with pent-up anger about a certain man who had just been appointed curator of the municipal museum, a Dr. Manfred Zauber, who once wrote a scathing review of his paintings. I gazed into his blazing eyes and saw the fire burning in them.

Later, we sat in the tavern. Father talked about the delays and the obstacles that kept him from painting. He had never talked with me about his paintings. Now his words rolled out of his mouth like heavy stones. I was afraid to look at him. After a few drinks he relaxed, spoke with the waitress, and complimented her. The waitress confided that she would soon be leaving this backwater and going to Czernowitz. Life in the provinces depressed her; it was better in a large city—you've got cinemas and nightclubs there. Father looked at her as if to say, “I hope you won't be disappointed.”

On the way home he asked me if I had seen Mother's new friend.

“No,” I lied.

“Your mother has a boyfriend, and his name is André.” Father rolled the
r
with a strange emphasis. I glanced at his face and was afraid that he would go on questioning me, but he didn't. His face got tighter and tighter, and he looked like a man rushing to get somewhere. At the house he hugged me and said, “Hurry on in!” Then he immediately turned away.

I stood watching him for a long time. I was sure that at any moment he would smash the gate of the municipal park and the wooden platform where the fire-brigade band played every Sunday. I stood and waited for the noise of wood smashing, and when it didn't come, I went inside.

It was already late, and Mother hadn't arrived yet. Halina didn't ask how it went. We sat on the floor and began to play cards. Most of the time I'm lucky and I win.
This time Halina won. Whenever she won, a malicious grin spread across her face, as if she were saying, “Don't I also deserve to win sometimes?”

I said nothing about what Father had told me. Whenever she said, “Your father,” it was with a wicked smile on her lips. In the end, she couldn't contain herself and said, “Your father is a good-looking man; all the girls are in love with him.” It was clear to me that she counted herself among them, but she was careful not to say it.

Later I asked her if she believed in God.

“Of course I believe,” she said, kissing the crucifix on the chain around her neck.

“Why doesn't Mother believe in God?”

“She's a teacher.”

“Teachers don't believe in God?”

“Only Jewish teachers.”

“But the bearded Jews believe in God.”

“They? Yes.”

The conversation confused me.

Mother arrived later, apologized, and said, “Our staff meeting took longer than usual.”

I did not believe her.

It rained incessantly, and we sat on the broad bed playing cards. For an instant it seemed that it would be like this forever, and I wasn't sorry. Halina was amazed by my victo-ries—when she was amazed at me she hugged me and kissed me and called me her sweetie. She was wild and her embraces could hurt, but mostly they were pleasant.

Mother was so distracted and confused that sometimes she called me Arthur, my father's name—last night she did it again. Not only were her thoughts scattered, but her movements, too. From time to time, a saucepan or a glass would slip from her hands. Yesterday she dropped a stack of plates. Seeing the pieces, she knelt down, covered her face, and said, “What's happening to me? Everything's slipping through my fingers.”

When I was just about to fall asleep, Mother asked, “How is Father?”

“He's all right.” I didn't mean what I said.

“What did you do?”

“We sat in a tavern.” I let her in on something I need not have told her.

Mother came over to me and, with a catch in her
throat, said, “You mustn't go into a tavern. A tavern is a dan gerous place.”

“Why?” An impish devil egged me on.

“People get drunk in taverns,” she said, and burst into tears. She sat on the bed and cried for a long time, but I felt no pity for her. I was sure that she was not crying for Father or even for me, but for herself.

Since she had started coming back late, only to disappear at night, I have been repulsed by her. Even her clothes, which I used to love to smell, put me off—they were now saturated with a suffocating perfume, and I was glad that Halina crammed them into the chest of drawers in the morning.

“What's the matter?” Mother sometimes asked.

“Nothing,” I said without meeting her gaze.

Once I loved hearing her read aloud from a book. Even now she forced me to listen to her reading. But I didn't listen to her, I only looked at her lips and told myself, “These lips that kiss André in the dark are not clean lips. I'd far rather have Halina's kisses, because she hates her fiancé and she loves me.”

On my last outing with Halina we got as far as the Jewish orphanage, on the outskirts of the city. We stood next to the high fence for a while. Everything there looked rundown, peeling, and neglected, and the children's faces were sickly and jaundiced. Halina told me that if a child had no father or mother, he was sent there.

“But I have parents,” I hastened to say.

“True,” Halina said.

Yet I couldn't shake off the feeling that soon I would also be sent to the orphanage. I did not tell her about that feeling. I had begun to be haunted by a different fear. I dreamed that André was punishing me the way the Ruthenians
punish their children. First they make them bend over, and then they strip off their pants. The children scream and try to escape, but it's useless—the belt comes down on them time after time, and the father won't stop thrashing until he draws blood.

Mother abandoned me every night so she could go to André. The darkness frightened me, but I swore to myself that I was not going to cry. I sat on the bed or stood by the window. Sometimes I armed myself with two kitchen knives, so that if the darkness invaded, I could thrust into it, wounding it on the spot. Halina had told me something else: that Jews do not marry non-Jews. When I asked her if André was Jewish, she laughed and said, “He's a goy—you know what a goy is?”

“No.”

“Whoever isn't a Jew is a goy. Not a nice word—don't use it.”

Mother, it seemed, had no idea that I was awake during the nights, that I heard her dressing and leaving stealthily and returning toward morning. She thought that I didn't know what she did at night, but I knew everything. Halina had already told me and made me swear that I wouldn't tell a soul. After they kiss, they would undress and stick to each other when they were naked. I had complete faith in what Halina said. Halina didn't lie to me like Mother did. Since she had told me this secret, it had been hard for me to speak to Mother. I had nothing but scorn for her, and I swore to myself that as soon as I grew up I would not see her face anymore.

Catastrophes come when you least expect them. While we were sitting and playing cards on the broad bed, enjoying the warmth of the stove, eating cheese pastries filled with raisins, playing, laughing, and fooling around, a man's shadow appeared at the entrance of the house. He knocked on the door. At first it seemed that this had to be someone who was lost and found his way here by accident, but the shadow stayed stuck to the door and the fist continued to rap on it.

“Who's there?” asked Halina.

The man said his name and Halina opened the door. As it turned out, it was a soldier, Halina's fiancé. The fiancé was not happy and did not embrace her but immediately began to ask her questions in a loud voice. Halina answered but must have become confused. The fiancé became angry and raised his voice. Halina rallied and spoke in a flood of words. He interrupted her and silenced her. Halina ticked off on her fingers everything that she had done in the past few days, but he shouted, “Shut up, you liar!”

“You're the liar!” she burst out to his face. “You've got another woman in the village!”

“You'll speak to me with respect!” He turned on her in a choked voice.

“I'm not afraid, you're not my husband,” she said defiantly.

“I'm your fiancé, so mind your language.”

“I'll do as I please.”

“You certainly won't!”

“I will.”

“You will not.”

“Get out of here, this isn't your house!” she screamed at him.

When he heard this last pronouncement of hers, he loaded his rifle and took aim. It was a very strong shot, and it shook the house. Immediately there was silence. Halina fell to the floor with a groan. The neighbors burst in. The fiancé made a dash for it, slipping away as the neighbors shouted, “Catch the murderer!”

“Murder! Murder!” everyone was shouting. In no time at all, the police arrived, accompanied by the doctor and a medic. The doctor knelt down and exclaimed, “She's wounded! Take her to the hospital at once.”

“Is she breathing?” the women in the doorway asked.

The doctor ignored them. He and the medic carried Halina to the open cart outside, laid her on the flat surface with her arms dangling, and were off at once.

“God, spare Halina!” I cried, breaking down. Meanwhile, there were people all over the house. Everyone knew that Halina had already been taken to the hospital, and yet they stood there as if rooted to the spot, as if a secret was still lurking within. The news spread rapidly and reached the school. Soon Mother pushed her way through the crowd and hurried toward me. André was with her, which stripped the meeting of all emotion.

Mother did not ask, “What happened? What did you see?” as once she would have. She just stood there and explained to André about Halina's life. I was hurt that she could tell him things that were only for us and Halina. I was about to shout, “Shut up!” but didn't dare. I moved aside and went into the bedroom. I saw the disheveled bed where we had been romping about a short while ago, and my heart tightened and my legs trembled.

Mother and André were engrossed in their conversation and didn't even look for me. “God, give me back Halina!” I cried out, feeling pain in my stomach. The pain spread to my thighs and stayed there. And for a moment it seemed to me that Halina was hiding beneath the bed, as she used to do. I lifted the cover and bent down carefully. The musty darkness assaulted my nostrils.

I told myself that Halina was in a deep sleep and that the doctors were taking care of her. Last spring, Father and Mother had taken me to the hospital to have my tonsils removed. They had been inflamed and had hurt me the entire winter. Father had said, “It will be as easy as removing a hair from a glass of milk.”

I had believed him. A short time after that one of the doctors, a large, strong woman, had put a mask over my face and suffocated me. I don't remember anything of the operation, only the suffocation before it and the pain that followed it, and the ice cream that Mother fed me. The ice cream had looked wonderful but didn't taste good. I could taste the medication in it.

I envisioned Halina lying in bed and one of the nurses giving her ice cream. Halina tells her about the pain and the
nurse explains to her that the ice cream heals like medicine. I got into bed and covered my head with the blanket. I immediately felt more certain that Halina would get better and that, in a short while and to everyone's astonishment, she would rise, like Jesus, and come to me.

I slept until late morning. When I woke up, Mother said, “I'll be leaving for school soon. There are sandwiches and drinks in the pantry; you'll have to look after yourself.”

“Where is Halina?”

“In the hospital.”

“When is she coming back?”

“Let's hope she recovers.”

Only when Mother had gone to school and I was all alone did I again see Halina as she fell to the floor. Everything spun around me.

I went outside. The garden was quiet, illuminated by the muted morning light. I approached the fence between us and the bearded Jews. An elderly man came up to me and asked how I was. I told him that the day before, Halina's fiancé had wounded her and now she was lying in the hospital.

“And who's looking after you?” he asked with concern.

“I'm on my own, but I'm not afraid.”

The old man smiled and said, “God will look after you.”