Katerina by Aharon Appelfeld Page B

were happy to be together. On the hard and unwelcoming benches of the canteen he told me several secrets about his past. I was afraid he would ask me a direct question.
    Apparently, Sammy sensed my weakness and he allowed himself to stay longer at the tavern. He would return at ten o’clock, not drunk, just foggy, as though he knew I wouldn’t scold him.
    What would happen, and how would the days progress? I didn’t know. Fear dominated me. To blunt the fear, I worked. I worked in the store and I worked at home, and sometimes I would get up early and prepare him a hot breakfast.
    “Why all the bother?” He didn’t understand.
    “It’s hard for me to sleep.”
    That was the absolute truth. As early as five, evil thoughts would crawl into my head and fill me with dread. I could, of course, have gone to a doctor secretly and had an abortion, but that thought frightened me even more. Village girls used to travel to the city to have abortions. Upon their return, their faces were dismayingly yellow.
    “What are you thinking about?” he asked again.
    “This and that.”
    “Something is disturbing you.”
    “Nothing at all.”
    The truth could no longer be concealed, but I, for some reason, did conceal it, as though burying my head in the sand.
    Before we knew it, the long nights came, the sleepless nights. I felt ill, and I had to go outside and vomit. First he didn’t notice, but when he did, the look of my body had already revealed the secret. Sammy opened his eyes and astonishment virtually froze them.
    What could I say? I piled words upon words, and the more I added, the more his face froze. Before leaving for work, he said, “I’m very sorry. I don’t know why I deserve this. There are things that are beyond my understanding.” Each of his words, even the spaces between the words, cut into my flesh.
    I was weak, but I still went to work. I didn’t want to stay in the house. In the courtyard I saw Sammy. His back was bent, and he was busy sorting out the merchandise. I gathered my strength and approached. The frost in his eyes hadnot faded. The veins in the whites of his eyes now looked bulging and thick. His look wasn’t hard, just weary.
    “Forgive me,” I said.
    “No need to ask forgiveness.”
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    He didn’t answer. He walked away and immersed himself in his work. I stood where I was and watched his movements, constricted, like those of a man just now risen from his sickbed. In the evening, I served him a meal and he didn’t say anything. I washed the dishes and did some laundry, and when I came back in, he had already fallen asleep.
    Between us the words grew ever more limited. Jews don’t beat you, but they get angry silently. I knew that. In the end I said, “I don’t want to be a nuisance to you. As soon as the rains stop, I’ll go back to my village. I have a house there.”
    Sammy fixed me with his icy gaze and said, “Don’t talk nonsense.” He made a convulsive gesture with his right hand, and that was the evil omen. He returned to the tavern and began drinking as in the past. First he would come home in a haze but not drunk. Before the week was out, he had ceased getting up to go to work. His face turned gray, and the tremor returned to his fingers. I was familiar with his drunkenness, and I wasn’t afraid of it, but this time it turned out to be a different kind. He would return late, sit next to the table, and mutter in a mixture of Yiddish, German, and Ruthenian. In the past when he had gotten drunk, I used to entreat him, but now I stood at his side and kept silent. My silence only augmented the flow of his words. I wasn’t afraid of him, only of his Ruthenian words.Once I said to him, “Why don’t you lie down and rest?”
    “Don’t tell me what to do!” he scolded.
    He used to rise late and go to the tavern. That was how my father behaved in his time. For my part, I worked hard from morning to night, so that nothing would be lacking at home.