Until the Dawn's Light (17 page)

ON MONDAY BLANCA
left the house. As she got ready to go, Otto wrapped himself around her legs, encircling her with his arms and not letting her move. Blanca promised him that this time she’d come back soon. At that, he let her go and said, “You promise, but you don’t keep your promises.”

“This time I’ll keep it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I swear.”

Blanca was so moved by Otto’s words that she made her way to My Corner at a quick pace. Upon entering My Corner, she stopped and looked around. This was her town, the streets where she had spent her childhood and youth. Now everything was wrapped in an alien mist. She felt like a prisoner who had received a short leave and didn’t know what to do with it.

In My Corner she was greeted with pleasure, and they rushed to serve her a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. She had planned to ask whether anyone knew of a goldsmith or a jewelry store where she could sell a jewel, but she checked herself.

While Blanca was busy with her thoughts, a short young man approached her. He stood next to her table, his head bent, and for a moment she didn’t recognize him. But as soon as she did, she cried out, “Ernst!”

Ernst Schimmer was her great competitor in elementary school and later in high school. He, too, excelled in mathematics and Latin, but he had some sort of inhibition that blocked him and overshadowed his obvious talent. All of his excellent grades always had an annoying “minus” attached to them. The mathematics and Latin teachers liked him and encouraged him, and there were days when he displayed wonders at the blackboard, but then that hidden flaw would appear and spoil the effect. Blanca didn’t like Ernst and ignored him. From an early age a bitterness showed itself on his lips, the sign of a person dissatisfied with himself. He suffered in class, especially from Adolf. Adolf used to call him a Jewish slug.

Blanca overcame her muteness. “How are you, Ernst?”

“I came to visit my hometown.”

“And where do you live now?”

“In Salzburg.”

Fortune had not smiled upon Ernst, either, it seemed. He had studied at the university for a year, but his parents couldn’t afford to support him, and he was forced to go out and work. He worked in a children’s clothing store in Heimland for a year, but then both of his parents died and he moved to Salzburg. There he was a cashier in a department store. Blanca looked at him and said, “You haven’t changed.”

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I live and breathe.” The voice of past days returned to her.

“May I join you for a cup of coffee?” Ernst said, sitting down beside her.

No, Ernst hadn’t changed. The wrinkles of bitterness had indeed become somewhat deeper, but there was no alteration in his appearance. He spoke as he used to, emphasizing, for some reason, the word “future,” a word his parents had apparently used frequently. His parents had been known in the town as hardworking people whom fortune had not favored.

“You haven’t converted, have you?” Blanca asked.

“No.”

“Like everybody else, I did.”

“My parents didn’t push me into that, and I myself never felt the need to do it.”

“You did right. A person should be loyal to his sentiments,” Blanca said, feeling that those words hadn’t come out of her own mouth.

“Who knows?” he replied, like someone who has already been burned.

After a pause he added, “When we were children, we competed with each other. People used to say, two competitive Jews. You were better, I must admit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You were more open. Your response to a math problem was spontaneous. You immediately saw the possibilities, and sometimes all the possibilities.”

“But you were more thorough.”

“Maybe. But I was immersed in unnecessary details.”

“Strange, we never talked about it then.” For a moment she wanted to stop the stream of words.

“You were brilliant, and I was sure that I couldn’t catch up with you. Your quickness, your agility, proved to me every day that I was on a lower level.”

It was the same Ernst, with the same inhibitions coming out of hiding. Blanca wanted to contradict him but didn’t know how. Once again muteness seized her.

“I have to go back,” Ernst said, rising to his feet. She even remembered his way of standing up now. The journey from his seat to the blackboard was an obstacle course for him. On the way his momentum would dwindle, and he would reach the blackboard without any strength, immediately declaring, “I was mistaken. I had an idea, but it turned out to be useless. Excuse me.” Because of those apologies, he aroused mockery. In her heart, even Blanca was contemptuous of that weakness of his.

“How long were you here for?” Once again she overcame her muteness.

“Just a few hours. I felt a kind of urge to come, so I did. I took a walk around all the familiar places, but I didn’t meet anyone I knew. You’re the only one. I didn’t want to go inside the high school. That wasn’t a place that was pleasant for me.”

“And how was your parents’ house?”

“Still standing. I sold it very cheaply at the time.”

“Ernst, forgive me.”

“For what?”

“I didn’t know how to appreciate your abilities, and that greatly troubles me. In many areas, you were better than I was.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“I’m not saying it to flatter you.”

“I know. But the truth mustn’t be ignored.”

“In any event, pardon me, if it’s not hard for you.”

“For what, Blanca?”

“For the bad things I did to you.”

“You never did anything bad to me. You were the model I was aspiring to.”

“I ignored you.”

“Rightly.”

“Ernst,” she said, not knowing what she intended to say.

“See you soon,” he said, and hurried to escape the place.

“Ernst!” she called, stretching out her arms to stop him. But Ernst was already outside, directing his steps toward the train. Blanca didn’t move. She didn’t remember what she had said or what Ernst had told her. It seemed to her that the injustice that had been done to him years ago was now demanding recompense. True, Adolf had been much harder on Ernst than she had been: once he had beaten Ernst till he bled. When the vice-principal had asked Adolf why he had done it, Adolf replied, “He annoys me. His very existence is annoying.” The vice-principal had indeed scolded him, but not very severely.

“Ernst,” she said distractedly, trying to stand up.

The café was now full of retired people and idlers. Blanca knew most of them. One of the storekeepers whom she knew well, though she didn’t remember his name, turned to her and said, “Your grandmother Carole was a brave woman in a generation when the Jews were fleeing from their Judaism like mice. You can be proud of her.”

“I am proud of her.”

“She was the only Jewish woman in the city who wasn’t ashamed of her Jewishness, and she denounced the converts to Christianity and those who hid their Judaism.”

“I know,” said Blanca.

“That’s not enough,” said the storekeeper, rising to his feet. “You have to identify with her publicly.”

“But I converted, sir,” Blanca whispered.

“Sorry, I didn’t know. I’ll do it. I’ll stand up. Tomorrow. A closed sanctuary is a sign that there is no judgment and no judge.”

In the café they knew: the man wouldn’t keep his word. He had already made that declaration several times, but this time it had a special sharpness.

Blanca rose and said, “Pardon me.”

“I have to beg your pardon,” the storekeeper said. “You’re exempt from that obligation, but I’m not. I owe it to my father and mother. They were simple, proud Jews.”

After Blanca left the café she wandered through the streets, astonished by the wonders that the morning had brought her. At noon she went back home to see how Otto was doing. Otto was pleased and said, “Mama, you’re beautiful.”

“You’re more beautiful.”

“I’m still little.”

“But you’ll be the biggest.”

To Kirtzl she said, “I looked for work and didn’t find a thing. I’ll go to Himmelburg; maybe I’ll find something there.”

“You must find something,” said Kirtzl.

“True,” said Blanca, and the thought flashed through her mind:
I’ll get rid of her, too, one day.
This time Otto didn’t wrap himself around her legs. He waved and called out, “Come back soon, Mama.”

Blanca reached the station at one o’clock. The train to Himmelburg was late, and she sat at the narrow buffet and saw Ernst again. Now she realized that the inhibition dwelt in his neck. Whenever he was called to the blackboard, his head would bend to the right, the words he was saying would be choked off immediately, and he would start to stammer. His stammer, more than the rest of his movements, attracted mockery. He tried to overcome this defect, but it was, apparently, stronger than his will. Now Blanca remembered those moments with blinding clarity.

THE TRAIN ARRIVED
an hour and a half late. Blanca went to the buffet car and ordered a drink. At the counter she met the veteran conductor Brauschwinn, a sturdy man whose bearing had been crushed by the years, but not his spirit. Every year he had accompanied Blanca’s family on their vacation. He had witnessed her mother’s illness, and during the shivah he had come to console her father. Then he had watched her father’s decline, and he had tried to ease his mind with old folk sayings. Blanca had told him about her father’s disappearance.

Blanca’s parents had liked Brauschwinn. They used to buy their tickets from him and tip him. Brauschwinn would sit and tell them about his troubles with his wife, his sons, and his daughters. He got no joy from any of them—from his wife because she was a nag, from his daughters because they had left the house and moved to the big city, and from his sons because they had no ambition, worked like mules, and barely made a living. In his youth he had spent time with Jews in Vienna. He had worked in their stores and in their small textile factories. Had it not been for his wife, who had pulled him to Heimland, he would not have left Vienna. The provinces were a cage that stained a person’s soul, he said repeatedly.

Brauschwinn loved Jews and didn’t hide his love from anyone. It was a long-standing, devoted, and arbitrary love. The other conductors knew about it and made fun of him, but Brauschwinn wasn’t like other people: if anyone reviled Jews in his presence, he upbraided them, and if the reviler was particularly impertinent, he’d get a slap. Because of his love of the Jews, he was called insulting names, but Brauschwinn didn’t relent. More than once he had stood on the platform and shouted: You’ll be asking their forgiveness soon enough.

Brauschwinn spoke Yiddish without an accent and knew some prayers. He had absorbed the ways of the traditional Jews who had migrated from Galicia to Vienna, and nothing was lost on him. Blanca’s father used to tease him with questions, but it didn’t faze him. He used to say that there’s unusual beauty even in removing all the unleavened foods before Passover. When he learned that Blanca had converted to Christianity and married Adolf, he expressed his disappointment in a single phrase.

“Too bad,” he said.

Brauschwinn was pleased to see Blanca now, and in his joy he called out, “Here’s Blanca. You haven’t changed a bit. Thin as ever.”

“And how have you been?”

“Tsoris.” He used the Yiddish word he’d learned from the Galician Jews. Grandma Carole had used that word, but Blanca didn’t remember exactly what it meant.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been sick.”

Blanca didn’t ask any more. His face told the whole story, but in his eyes the fire still burned of a man who cherishes precious memories, those of his youth among the Jews of Galicia who had been uprooted from their home ground and exiled to the big city.

“What came afterward wasn’t life but leftovers,” Brauschwinn had let slip once.

“What attracted you to those Jews?” Blanca dared to ask him this time.

“Their prayer. Have you ever seen Jews praying?”

“I was in the synagogue with my mother a few times.”

“Those weren’t Jews anymore, my dear. Among the Jews of the east there’s a style of prayer, of blessing, and also of human connection.”

“Don’t the Austrians have any style?”

“They do, but it’s clumsy.”

Strange,
Blanca said to herself.
After all, I was once Jewish
.

Brauschwinn sat and spoke, and the more he told her, the more spiritual his face appeared. It was clear that this simple man who had never set foot in a high school, who had worked hard on trains all those years, whose wife vexed him, who got no joy from his sons and daughters, that this man had a secret that nourished him even at this difficult time, a day before he was to be hospitalized.

“Mr. Brauschwinn,” Blanca said, rising to her feet. “Your love for the Jews is a mystery to me.”

“They’re worthy of it, believe me,” he said, removing his cap.

“Will we see each other soon?” she asked when the train stopped at Himmelburg.

“Everything is in the hands of heaven, as people used to say.”

In Himmelburg a pleasant summer light filled the streets. The courtyards and roads were bathed in silence. Blanca wished she could go into one of the little cafés, order a cup of coffee and a piece of cheesecake, and sink into her thoughts, the way she used to do. But her legs refused to do her bidding. They drew her to the old age home.

Theresa saw her from a distance.

“Blanca!” she called out.

Blanca noticed immediately that the corridor had been emptied of its residents, and in the dormitory the old people moved like shadows. Theresa told her that the situation in the old age home couldn’t be worse. The assistance from Vienna had stopped, and though the Himmelburg community continued to support the home, it didn’t have the means to maintain the place. Anyone who had a bit of money ran away. The salaries had been reduced, and they were months in arrears.

They sat in the kitchen, and Theresa served her lunch. She told Blanca that her husband was ill again and had been hospitalized. She spent whatever she made on doctors and medicines. There was never any word from their absent children. Except for her sister, whom she saw occasionally, she had no close relatives. But one mustn’t complain, she said; anyone who was walking on their own two feet and not confined to a wheelchair should bless their good fortune.

Blanca raised her voice. “I felt that I had to come back here.”

“When did you have that feeling?”

“Yesterday I saw my father passing before me.”

“The dead go to their own world, dear, and we’ll see them only at the great resurrection.”

“Sometimes I feel that my father is angry at me.”

“You are mistaken. In the world of truth, our parents speak only on our behalf. They know what we’re going through.”

It was hard to know whether that was an expression of faith or a habit of speech that Theresa had inherited from her mother. She spoke to Blanca the way one speaks to an injured person, to soothe the pain. Blanca took in the words that Theresa showered on her but wanted to say,
My guilt feelings can’t be healed by folk wisdom. I’ll wallow in them all my life
.

Theresa didn’t say any more. Blanca remembered when she first arrived here with Adolf—how he had surveyed the old people with wordless contempt, and how he had threatened the director so that she, in her fear, had agreed to take in Blanca’s poor father.

“I have to rescue Otto,” Blanca said, rousing herself.

“You have to be patient, to wait and see.”

“To wait, you say?”

“They’re punished in the end, whether by people or by heaven.”

“How many years did you wait?”

“The years pass quickly, and in the end freedom will come. You mustn’t rush things.” In her voice Blanca heard a cruel simplicity, a kind of women’s spell that was passed down from generation to generation, that said again and again,
Wait, wait, until the bastard croaks, and then you, too, can go free and enjoy a new life
.

Before leaving, Blanca asked, “Do you know a goldsmith or a jeweler?”

“Yes,” Theresa said, and smiled as though she were sharing another secret. “There’s a Jew in this city who has a jewelry store, an honest man. He’ll appraise the jewel and pay you its price. He won’t cheat you.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“What did I do for you?”

“Once again, you pulled me up out of the underworld.”