After the ceremony they served strong drinks and honey cake to the guests. Some girls from school, whom Blanca barely remembered, approached her and hugged her. Adolf looked content in the company of his friends, who surrounded him and congratulated him. He was especially happy with his cronies from work, who looked like him, suntanned and strong.
Now Blanca remembered the bar mitzvah celebrations in the synagogue. Her mother used to take her to them now and then. It was crowded there, too, but most of the people were short, and their presence wasn’t crushing. She and her mother would stand together and watch everyone celebrating. At the end, they would go up to the bar mitzvah boy, congratulate him, and depart. Public places and crowds of people had made Blanca sad since her childhood. Her mother knew that and would bring her to these ceremonies only occasionally. Now she had to learn how to cope with that, too.
“How do you feel?” Adolf’s eldest sister asked her.
“Fine,” said Blanca, glad she had said so.
34
THEN CAME LONG, hot days, and Blanca worked in the garden early every morning. The neglected garden bloomed again. On rainy days she tidied the house, did laundry, and decorated Otto’s cradle. When Otto woke up at night, she got out of bed, fed him, and sang to him. Adolf wasn’t pleased by these nightly attentions.
“Let him cry,” he said. “The devil won’t take him.” But Blanca wasn’t at ease with this approach. She would go over to Otto’s cradle and rock it. Once Adolf commented, “He’ll turn into a slug.” Blanca noticed that his sentences, like his movements, were abrupt; he explained little, and what he said cut like a razor blade.
The good thoughts that had made her throb with life in the hospital died out on their own, and again she became what she had been: a maidservant, working from dawn till dark and crushed under Adolf’s heavy body at night.
Dr. Nussbaum tried with all his power to raise money to reopen the hospital, but his efforts were in vain. Having no choice, he turned his home into a hospital. Dozens of people crowded the gate of his courtyard and sought his aid. Whatever he could, he gave.
One day, the doctor met Blanca downtown and invited her to join him for a cup of coffee in My Corner. Blanca was embarrassed to admit to him that Adolf treated her the way he did and, also, that he kept grumbling, “Jewish doctors won’t tell me how to behave.” Dr. Nussbaum looked into her eyes and knew what was on her mind.
“You have to come to see me every month,” he said. “And if your husband abuses you — tell me immediately.”
After that she thought of going to Himmelburg, but she put off the trip. She was afraid to travel with Otto. Adolf would have said, “He’s weak. He’s pale. With us, children aren’t like that.” Blanca used to bring the cradle out into the garden so he’d get some sun. To her dismay, this only brought out his delicate features, and she stopped. One night in a dream she saw her father standing in the courtyard of the old age home, as though he were trapped. His face was gaunt, and an unfamiliar expression of irony, not his, flickered in his eyes.
“Papa!” she called out, and awoke.
The next day she gathered her strength, diapered Otto, prepared food, and set out. At the old age home, Theresa hurried over to her and cried, “Here’s Blanca!” and everyone was excited.
“The child looks a lot like you,” Theresa said. “What’s his name? Otto? A nice name. His features are very delicate. Let’s pray that fortune favors him.” They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee, and Blanca knew that her life had no attachment to any place now. Theresa wasn’t a delicate woman; she was straightforward and understanding. You didn’t have to explain to her what harm a cruel husband did. She had felt it on her own flesh.
“The situation here couldn’t be worse,” Theresa told Blanca. “The treasury is empty, and the Jews of Himmelburg are no longer as generous as before. Conversions are many, and the children deny their parents. They do send us some money from Vienna, but it isn’t enough for regular maintenance.”
“So what are you going to do?” Blanca asked anxiously.
“I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”
“Doesn’t the church help?”
“Have you forgotten, dear, that this is a Jewish home?”
Theresa mentioned the old age home in Blumenthal again, and all the advantages Blanca would have if she worked there.
“You have to be far out of his reach,” she said. “Every hour that a woman saves herself from a beating is a pure benefit.”
“What should I say to him?”
“Tell him that you want to work and contribute to the livelihood of the house.”
“And who will watch over Otto?”
“A housekeeper. I raised three children that way.”
“I’m so afraid of the beatings, and now I’m afraid he’ll hit Otto.”
“You mustn’t be fearful, my dear.”
“I tremble all the time.”
One of the old people approached her and said, “We sometimes remember your father here. He was a very special man. We all liked him. Since he abandoned us, we’ve missed his great soul. You know that Jewish saying, don’t you?”
“No.”
“It’s a marvelous expression. It’s more than an expression.”
Blanca didn’t know how to respond, so she said, “This is my son, Otto. He’s growing and developing nicely.”
Theresa continued to speak about children who neglected their parents, and about old age, with its diseases and torments. If it weren’t for God, whom we believe in and cleave to, she said, were it not for the strong feeling that He is close to us, our lives would be a horror.
“Blanca, my dear, it seems to me that the Jews have lost their connection with God, and that makes their lives so much harder.”
“Do you stay in touch with your children?” Blanca asked.
“If they need money, they write to me.”
“And who comes to visit you?”
“Only my sister. She lives very far from here, but she always comes, and she brings me things. She knit this sweater with her own hands.”
“Strange,” said Blanca.
“Why do you say that it’s strange? That’s how it always was, and that’s how it always will be.” Her face displayed a frightening honesty, as though the years had engraved every injustice and distortion on it. Anyone who looked at her knew that life was flooded with sorrow and filled with clouds.
35
THE MONTHS PASSED. Otto was already crawling, and Blanca reconciled herself to her painful body and clouded life. Sometimes she would remember earlier times, and they seemed hidden to her, as though they were part of the life of another woman. Even the town, where she knew every corner, now seemed to belong to the church.
Every Sunday she went to mass. The family made a point of attending on Sundays and holidays. There Adolf was also surrounded by friends, embracing them, chatting with them, laughing. Blanca never missed confession. She would kneel and say, “I didn’t want to see my mother’s death, and I fled from the house. Afterward I abandoned my father in the cemetery. I’m a sinner and worthy of death.” The priest listened and asked no questions.
Once, however, he commented, “Our Lord Jesus has already atoned.”
“But my sin is unbearable.”
“Pray. Prayer will drive away your bad thoughts.”
“It’s hard for me to pray, Father.”
Sundays were the hardest day of the week: in the morning in church and afterward, the gathering in her house. Those parties brought together many of Adolf’s friends as well as his relatives, and they became merrier and dizzier from week to week. Blanca would serve the guests and chat with her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law had suffered a lot in her life, but she didn’t complain.