48

Everyone in the Land was enlisted in the struggle, even old people. I still saw myself returning to Ephraim’s team, and it was hard for me to accept that I would not be regaining my youth, that I was sentenced to observe and not take part. I imagined myself walking on my own, awestruck by the pinkish-red peach blossoms in the orchard.

One night I saw Father, and he was pale from some significant effort. I asked him whether he had succeeded in finding a publisher. He looked at me with great intensity.

“One mustn’t despair,” he said. “I have been in places that could have discouraged men even stronger than I, but I, as you see, am alive and well.” It was hard to know whether he was talking about his experience in the camps or about his writing, with which he had struggled for years.

—

I went back to copying. Sometimes I had the feeling that I wasn’t copying but revealing ancient finds, removing the earth that clung to them, and suddenly—as in a magic trick—an urn decorated with Hebrew letters stood before me.

Every day brought new discoveries. I dreamed that in an excavation I found ancient coins. I tried to read what was written on them. In the end I managed to read the name of Eli the priest on one of them. I was glad that the old priest, who fell from his chair and met his death on the stone floor, had come to life in a figure on a coin.

Sometimes the formal, printed letters seemed to be angry at me for removing them from their pages and writing them in cursive.

“We’re permanent letters, not written letters. You aren’t allowed to change our form and move us from place to place. The printed form is our proper resting place.”

The copying filled my days. I told Mother that it wasn’t an ordinary task, but a slow coming to know and melding of hearts. Letters that weren’t revealed to you in childhood require a prolonged period of acquaintance.

“What do you mean by acquaintance?” Mother wondered. “A person can copy and copy, and in the end he acquires only the skeletons of letters, and not the living letters. Only the letters of your mother tongue live inside you.”

I knew there was a degree of truth to her words, but nevertheless I refused to accept her argument. The days I spent in copying did connect me to the Hebrew letters. Roman letters became foreign to me.

“That’s what people mean by ‘neither here nor there,’” said Mother, in a voice not her own.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Mother wasn’t a pedant, and she didn’t intentionally use hurtful words. But she tried to warn me before I reached the edge of the abyss.

—

I woke up early. The nighttime visions remained before my eyes and made me dizzy. There was no one in the dining hall. The practical nurse accosted me again. This time she wasn’t satisfied with kissing my hand, and she also kissed my neck. I knew what she was plotting.

“Not today,” I said firmly and slipped out of her hands.

I drank two cups of coffee and went back to my room. I had neither the strength nor the will to sit and copy. The despair that secretly dwelled within me raised its head. I knew that I mustn’t close my eyes.

My longing for Dr. Weingarten brought him to me. He went looking for me that morning, and by eleven there he was. I was astonished by the change in his appearance: he was tan all over. He was no longer guarding building sites; now he was working in an orchard.

“Dr. Weingarten!” I called out, raising my upper body.

When he heard my excitement, he said, “What can I do? This is my new incarnation.”

I told him about my injury and about Dr. Winter’s efforts to restore my legs to me.

I saw his face fill with sorrow. He sat next to me and didn’t say a word. Finally, he asked to learn more about my recuperation. My mother tongue no longer flowed easily from my mouth. Still, I managed to depict with words some of what I was feeling. Dr. Weingarten stared at me.

“It’s hard for me to decide whether you’re more like your father or your mother,” he said. “Your face is your mother’s, but your expressions are your father’s.”

I told him more about my struggles with the Hebrew language. He asked whether I had managed to write anything. I said I hadn’t.

“Did you try?”

“No.”

Once again Dr. Weingarten promised himself that if he had the strength, he would return to Europe to look for Father’s lost manuscripts. I wanted to stop him from leaving, but a great fatigue fell upon me, and I sank into a deep sleep.

In my sleep I saw the refugee camp, the rumbling kerosene stoves, and the tense faces of the people staring at me. I had the powerful feeling that they were all my relatives and that they had distanced themselves from me—or that I had distanced myself from them. That bitter estrangement hurt me.

I wanted to call out in a loud voice, I didn’t betray you. I’ll always be with you. You are inside me. But my voice was blocked and stifled. I woke up out of breath.