All Whom I Have Loved (12 page)

“You're alone?”

“Yes.”

“Where's Father?”

“At work.”

“Strange,” she said, as if only now had she grasped that she was there.

“Why strange?”

“I don't know.”

She stood there, looking around the room. It was a mess, and she didn't like the soot. She put her hand to her forehead, a gesture that I remembered well, a gesture of dissatisfaction and sometimes despair.

“Come, I'll show you the Prut.” I tried to extricate her from her confusion.

“But it's raining.”

“We'll put our coats on.”

Reluctantly, she put on her coat and we went out.

The Prut was now a dark brown; it cast its heavy waves against the bank. This was my mother, and yet she was so different. The heavy coat made her look shorter, and her long arms seemed truncated. We stood and watched for a short time. There was no beauty in the sight. The wet wind lashed at our faces. “Let's go inside, otherwise we'll be soaked to the bone,” she said. She was wearing rural galoshes that made her legs look thicker.

We sat at the table, and Mother took out the gifts she had brought in her bag: a particularly large set of dominos, a pack of cards, and, best of all, Suchard chocolate.

“How do you spend all your time, my dear?”

“I read.”

“What do you read?”

“Father's books.” I tried to impress her.

“They're very hard books,” she said, as if she had caught me attempting something that was beyond me. To tell the truth, I didn't like her inflection.

“You've changed.” The words just slipped from my mouth.

“In what way?”

“I don't know.”

Mother took some sandwiches out of her bag and then immediately removed them from the wax paper in which they had been wrapped. I remembered Mother's sandwiches. That's how she used to prepare them in our home
in Czernowitz, and after that in Storozynetz. There was something of her grace in them. I immediately bit into one.

“I've come to fetch you,” she said.

“To where?”

“To Storozynetz.”

“No,” I wanted to say but stopped myself.

Mother must have sensed my refusal, for she said, “I've found a nice girl, like Halina.”

“And Halina isn't coming?” I interrupted her.

“What are you talking about, my dear?”

“I'm sorry.”

She said nothing about André or the wedding. There was no need to say anything; the expression on her face said it—that she was now married to André, preparing meals for him, washing his shirts, and laughing with him. But her face was not happy. It was somewhat frozen, and the more I stared at it, the more frozen it seemed, as if the tiny veins of happiness had been drained from it. She was the mother that I had once loved, and yet not. We sat without talking.

“We'll pack your clothes and go back home,” she said in a whisper.

“I don't want to go,” I replied in a clear voice.

My words must have astonished her; she put her right hand to her mouth and her eyes lost their luster.

“I love the river.” I tried to soften it.

“And you don't want to come with me?”

“Not now.”

“I understand,” she said, and her eyes moved slightly.

Then she put on her coat and closed her bag. She didn't try to convince me, not even by so much as a word. I knew that I was being cruel to her, but I also knew what I wanted, and nothing in me stirred toward her.

“I won't force you,” she said as she buttoned her coat. She must have expected me to waver, but I didn't.

The falling rain struck the door and the windows, darkening the room. “It's raining,” I said, trying to keep her from going.

“Never mind,” she said, lifting her collar. She kissed my forehead and went out.

I stood in the doorway and watched her grow distant. She made her way heavily, as if leaving a place she found distasteful.

“Mother!” I called, but my voice couldn't have reached her. I kept calling, my voice choking. I put on my coat and ran after her, but the rain and the mud dragged me down and I turned back. I sat at the window and waited for her to return. It was clear that she wouldn't, but with my thoughts I still tried to will her back to me.

Throughout the long hours of the afternoon I sat at the window, waiting for Mother to return. When it got dark, I heard footsteps approaching; it was Father. Father came back in good spirits. He had had a few drinks on the way home, and the moment he walked in, he announced, “Dinner should be lavish.” I was happy, too, and forgot to tell him about Mother's visit. I told him later.

“And what did she want?” he asked lightly.

“To take me back with her.”

“I understand. And what did you say?”

“I refused.”

“And what did she say?”

“Nothing.”

Father did not scold me, and he did not praise my behavior. We sat up till late, he on the bed and I on the floor. Father read intently and I watched, observing how his eyes raced from line to line. When he read, he looked like a man who is searching. Sometimes he seemed to be searching for something he lost many years ago. I noticed that when he finished reading, he made a gesture of dismissal with his right hand, as if to say, “It's all nonsense.”

That night he revealed to me that Mother had married
and was living in André's house. It was hard to know if he was angry. Whenever he spoke about Mother, he was careful, and it was clear he did not reveal all his thoughts to me.

“Has she become Christian?” I asked for some reason.

“Supposedly,” he said.

“But we are Jews, aren't we?”

“True.”

Then I remembered what our landlord had said, and my heart was sore. I tried to remember it in detail, but I couldn't. Later, I recalled a bit and asked, “Is it true that Jews are the sons of kings?”

“Who told you that?” Father laughed quietly.

“The landlord.”

“He lives in a world of his own.”

“Jews are like everyone else?”

“A little less,” Father said, and chuckled again.

I was indignant that Mother had converted. “Why did she convert?” I asked.

“Because she married André.”

Later, I could see her before me: her cropped hair, her legs in their heavy galoshes, and the difficulty she had in walking. The expression on her face was that of a person whose thoughts had been uprooted, with other thoughts implanted in their place. We talked no more that night. Father read and I leafed through his art books. I didn't understand most of the things that I read in Father's books, but I still liked to go through them. Sometimes I wanted to ask him the meaning of a word, but I didn't. Once, he blamed me for interrupting his reading.

One morning when I was looking through his books I saw Father's name and I gasped. I read it again:
Arthur Rosenfeld.
On the facing page there was a photo of him when he was young. Father, it turned out, was born in Czernowitz in
1905. His parents died when he was five years old, and he grew up in an orphanage. It was at the orphanage that his talent was recognized, and he was sent to study at the Academy for Fine Arts. When he was fifteen, there was an exhibition of his work at the celebrated Leonardo da Vinci Gallery; the exhibition traveled to Vienna and then on to Salzburg. Two years later, he exhibited at the Cézanne Gallery, then back in Czernowitz, and then on to Vienna and other major cities. “A remarkable artist whose marvels we'll likely see more of in the future,” ran a line from that paragraph. I read it again and again, unable to believe my eyes.

In the evening Father returned tired and depressed, his face dark and somber. It was clear that he had had several drinks, but they didn't relieve his depression. When Father was depressed his face became taut and his jaw clenched; the sockets of his eyes darkened and his eyes seemed to sink into them. He prepared our evening meal without uttering a word.

I sit at home looking through a book on the history of art. The word “expressionism” crops up on almost every page. It's as if it's a magic word, and if I knew how to pronounce it, I'd be enlightened, and wiser. Two of Father's drawings are in the book. In the first you can make out utensils and fruit, and in the second, a young woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. The woman looks like Mother, not the Mother who was here some days ago, but the Mother who was with me over the summer vacation by the tributary of the Prut.

Now I can picture Father as a beloved prince borne aloft on his admirers' shoulders, greeted in every city with flowers. Father does not speak, as the way of princes is not to speak. But now there is no one who knows that Father is a prince. In the city he has many acquaintances, but they also don't know that he is a prince. They speak to him as an equal. If they only knew, they would kneel before him. Our landlord has worked out a bit of the secret. Once he said to me, “Your father is a real prince; it's a pity that he doesn't pray.” I showed the landlord the book, and I pointed to Father's name and to his two paintings.

“I didn't know that he was a painter, but I knew he was a real prince,” he told me.

“How can you tell?”

“By his features. There are many real princes among the Jews, but they've forgotten who they are and they behave like anyone else.”

“Why have they forgotten?”

“It must be God's will.”

“And when will they wake up from their forgetting?”

“Who knows?”

At this time of the year the landlord works in the yard. When it rains he's in the cowshed or the barn. He walks slowly, mumbling to himself. Sometimes he speaks to the animals as if to partners who labor alongside him. Once I saw a cow giving birth to a calf. I could not bear the sight of the blood and the pain, and I went into the house.

I want to ask Father about the days when he would paint and travel with his paintings from city to city. But I don't ask because I know there are secrets of which one must not speak. Father guards a big secret; if you get too near to his secret, his face darkens.

Once, he saw me looking through the book about the history of art and said, “That's not for you.” I kept quiet and did not tell him that I had discovered his secret. “Why don't you read your own books?”

“They don't interest me.” I didn't hide it from him.

A smile spread over his face, and I knew that he understood me.

At night we go to the church refectory. It is full, and they serve corn pie, with milk and cream, at the counters. Father meets many acquaintances here, and they slap him on the shoulder. They say that the old man is sick and that it is doubtful that he will preach. It's a shame that here they
don't know that Father is a prince. If they knew, they would carry him like they carry the venerable old man. True, Father is a silent prince, and he guards his secret behind seven doors. If he would only let me bring along that book,
The History of Art in the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
and show them the photo of Father and his two pictures, then they would believe me. They would cheer and crown him.

This evening the old man does not speak, but everyone sings. It is a thunderous song that shakes the walls of the hall. People cover their faces with their hands, and Father also sings with his eyes closed.

Then we walk for hours in the fine rain, visiting churches and galleries. Father does not like the pictures in the galleries, and he is particularly angry with a gallery that shows Jews in traditional clothes, calling it a desecration of man and other names that I don't understand. Before we take the tram, we go into a tavern and Father downs a drink or two. In the tram he suddenly says to me, “There are things that we will never understand.”

I know his mind is elsewhere, and yet I still feel that he is offering me a fragment of his mystery.

Cold, gray days follow and the sun is nowhere to be seen. Snow falls darkly and incessantly, covering the roofs and the fences. Even the mighty Prut stops roaring. Father comes home drunk and depressed and throws himself onto the bed. I don't know what to do, so I just sit next to him. When his depression worsens, he tears up papers and drawings, tossing them into the mouth of the furnace. This is no longer anger, but despair. The work at his school leaves him totally exhausted, the students have no talent, and the administration drains his vitality. “What am I asking, after all—just a little time and a studio!” he bursts out, and it seems to me that blood will spurt from his mouth, and I am shocked, frightened.

Every morning, while it's still dark, Father dresses and leaves to catch the first tram. His departure freezes the darkness of the room, and it seeps into me throughout the day. Sometimes I feel that I must be a burden to him and I want to slip away. When I told him that, he began to cry. Now he occasionally cries, and it's more frightening than his anger.

The landlord comes in every evening, bringing us provisions.
Father scarcely talks to him and asks nothing. The landlord doesn't take offense. “Arthur, my dear, you mustn't despair, there is a God in heaven,” he says. Father raises his eyes as if to say, “Why should you torture me, too?” The landlord lowers his head, mutters a short blessing, and goes out.

But to me the landlord says something that shakes me: “God has removed Himself from him, and until he returns to his forefathers, he'll be tormented by demons. Where there is no God, there are demons; they breed like insects.”

“What should one do?”

“Pray.”

There is a kind of certainty in his voice that shocks me.

I don't remember how long this darkness lasts. With every passing day Father's face darkens, and the trembling of his hands increases. I want to help him, but I don't know how. One evening he returns home drunk and happy, a telegram in his hand. A distant friend—a forgotten friend who lives in Bucharest and was once a gallery owner—writes that he is putting a house at Father's disposal and has prepared a generous advance for him. The telegram ends: come to us at once; those who love you await you. Father reads it and tears roll down his cheeks. The good news affects him so that he can hardly stand on his feet. We drink coffee and do not eat supper. Father calls Victor a savior from heaven. He swings me high, up to the ceiling, proclaiming jubilantly, “Bucharest! Who would have imagined that redemption would come from Bucharest?!” After this he says no more, and I see tiredness overcome him. He sleeps deeply, and his breathing is regular. I cover him with a blanket and am glad that God has hastened to his aid.