And, in fact, one evening when we were about to order dinner in a restaurant, the maître d' came up to us and asked us to move to a corner table. At first he claimed that the table had been reserved, but eventually he admitted that the other diners didn't want to sit near us, and he had to take their feelings into consideration.
“What defect do they find in us?” Father asked in a loud voice.
“I don't know.”
“Let them move to a corner and not us.”
“I insist that you move,” said the maître d', in a tone that drove Father crazy. Father got up and, without further ado, hit him. The man rallied quickly and sprang at Father, who brought him down with a single punch. The restau-rant's employees immediately gathered around and fell upon Father. Father took many blows and hit back, and he cursed in all the languages that he knew. Finally we found ourselves outside. Even now Victor did not lose his head. The incident amused him, and he threw himself into the snow, muttering and calling out, “Painters are strong, very strong; they know how to give as good as they get.” Father did not laugh but went on cursing. In the end we went to the tram on foot. The walk calmed Father down, and he sang Ruthenian songs that he had heard in his childhood from the women who worked at the orphanage. And all that evening at home he sang these mournful Ruthenian songs, as if his soul had found a temporary refuge in them.
And so March passed. Father did not paint and did not read; he did not even listen to the news on the radio. Victor did not hide from us the fact that anti-Semitism was on the rise. One evening several walls were plastered with vicious slogans, and more and more the radio was full of venomous propaganda.
“We'll move to France,” said Father.
“That's an idea,” agreed Victor.
It was as if we were in a cage. Sometimes it seemed that Father was about to cause a huge scene that would topple houses and start a great conflagration. Victor would talk to him quietly, as if to someone who was sick and needed to be soothed. In the meantime, the demons had fled the house. I, at any rate, did not see them. But perhaps they had not been expelled, but were instead hiding in the cracks, and would emerge in the spring from their hiding places. Perhaps they were afraid of Father's rage and did not dare provoke him.
Last night Father surprised me and said, “We haven't heard a word from Mother. She promised to come and she hasn't.”
“Mother promised to take me to the Carpathians,” I reminded him.
“It won't work out this year. We're close to the end of winter. The snow is melting.”
Later, Father told me that when he was young he had spent a month with a rich Jew who owned tracts of forests in the Carpathian Mountains. He had been hired to create paintings for the man's home, and he did begin to work, but when the rich man's wife saw the paintings, she clutched her head with both hands and shouted, “I don't want these paintings in my home — they depress me!” At first the husband tried to convince her that it was good art, showing her articles that praised Father's work, but it didn't help at all. So finally the rich man compensated Father with a substantial sum, and Father left. He told the story without bitterness, as if it were just a fleeting episode and not an unpleasant one.
47
While this was going on, I got a telegram from Mother: SICK WITH TYPHUS. CAN'T COME. LOVE YOU. MOTHER.
I showed it to Father. He read it and said nothing.
Victor came by in the afternoon, talking enthusiastically of the need to encourage real art as a shield against the darkness. Father didn't agree with him; he claimed that art no longer had a place in the face of the evil and vulgarity that had overtaken life. Victor's attempts to ease Father's despair were futile. “Bucharest is no different from Czernowitz,” claimed Father, “and it's doubtful that the epidemic can be kept from spreading.”
I was sad to see Father in such despair. Only a few weeks before, he had been happy and painting feverishly, but since the opening of his exhibition, he'd been angry, with furious words on the tip of his tongue. Now Victor took him only out to the country. They didn't bully us in country taverns, perhaps because they couldn't tell the difference between a Jew and someone from the city.
Then some of Victor's friends came to the house. They made toasts, joked around, and called the anti-Semites derogatory names. They spoke about the people running the country and about distant lands, and the heavy atmosphere lifted somewhat.
After the guests had gone, Father said, “We must set off immediately to see how Mother is doing.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
It's hard to guess what Father's reactions will be. They're so sudden.
At first Victor tried to talk him out of the hasty journey, but when he saw that Father's mind was made up, he stopped. For a few days Father was caught up in a strange frenzy, tearing up papers and sketchbooks and talking about the need to arrange his life differently. “The house is yours,” Victor kept promising. “Any time you'd like to return, just come.”
Father didn't thank him but simply repeated, “Right now I have an urgent journey.” The bottle of cognac was constantly on the table, and before uttering anything, Father would take a swig.
Just before we left, Victor came by and gave Father a wad of banknotes. He promised Father that he would buy any of the paintings that weren't sold in the exhibition and would send him the money anyplace Father wanted. Father was embarrassed. He shoved the banknotes into his coat pocket and thanked Victor with short bows. “As soon as Henia's health improves,” he promised, “I'll rent a studio and I'll start to work.”
We hardly packed for this trip. Father put my clothes into one suitcase and his into a duffel bag. The math books and the rest of the schoolbooks were left, for we both agreed that I wouldn't need them any longer. Victor was embarrassed, and he kept apologizing for the dismal atmosphere in the capital. Father was distracted. He kept patting his coat pockets and muttering, “I must first get to Storozynetz; when I'm there, I'll decide what to do.”
Then Father sat in the living room with Victor, and I went from room to room. Since Father had decided on this journey, it had felt strange there, as though the spacious rooms filled with handsome things were about to be taken away from me and would soon be erased from my memory. I was sad about losing the visions of light that had been revealed to me there, and I tried to see them again so as to store them away inside me. But for some reason they resisted this, and my feelings were slowly being planted elsewhere.
Father got to his feet and said, “We have to go.” Outside there was a fierce, snow-filled wind. Victor was sorry that he hadn't brought a sleigh.
“Don't worry,” Father said, “it's not far to the tram, and we can do it in half an hour.” His face was red, and he could hardly stand.
So we set out. On the way, Father told Victor about an art critic named Zeigfried Stein, who had written some nasty reviews of his early exhibitions. And as if this weren't enough, Stein then traveled to each place that Father's paintings were being shown, declaring publicly that this was dangerous, decadent art and should be banned.
“And what did you do?” asked Victor.
“I wanted to thrash him, but God got there first and shut him up.”
“What happened to him?”
“He drowned in the river.”
The train came on time. There were hundreds of people on the platform. Victor embraced Father, and tears coursed down his cheeks.
“Look after yourself.” He spoke as if he wasn't Father's agent but his father.
“I promise you.”
“You must paint,” Victor persisted. “Every hour is precious.”