All Whom I Have Loved (16 page)

“They make no impression on me at all.” Victor dismissed them lightly.

“Now they're telling us what to think.”

“Telling who?”

Victor talked to Father softly, persuading and promising, stuffing banknotes into his pockets. One evening Victor came by with five of his friends and announced that the Pissarro Foundation's Committee for Visual Art had decided to award Father its annual prize. Victor hung a gold medallion around Father's neck as the five friends clapped. Father must have guessed that this was Victor's invention, but he was still happy. He drank, told jokes, and did not take the medallion off his neck the entire evening.

The next day Father did not get up to paint as I had expected, but slept until the afternoon. When he got up he asked, “Where's Victor?”

And Victor did come. Father asked if there'd been any interest in the exhibit. Victor told him that seven paintings
had been sold so far and that there was considerable interest. Father looked dubious, but Victor put his hand on his heart. “I swear to God.”

Then they sat in the living room, and Father suddenly asked about the general. Victor told him the story right from the beginning.

The general's wife, Victor's aunt, had been very unhappy when he converted to Judaism, but she was convinced that it was a passing whim. The poor woman could never have imagined that he would grow a beard and sidelocks, and that he would rise early every morning to go to the synagogue to pray. When she saw he was serious she threatened to leave the house, but eventually she gave in to his folly in the hope that one day he would revert to what he had been. His sudden death changed her, and she began to believe that his ancestors must have been Jews who were forcibly converted. She told not a soul of this conviction, except for Victor. Before her death she bequeathed all her property to him and asked Victor to turn the house, or at least one of its wings, into a museum, so that Jews could come and see how even famous generals can be drawn to the Jewish faith. The poor woman did not understand that the Jews themselves no longer wanted to live as Jews, and that nothing would help.

I loved listening to Victor speak about the general. A faint smile would play about his round cheeks. Father asked lots of questions, but Victor apologized bashfully, saying that he hadn't spoken with them all that much; his aunt had been a private woman and the general a stern man.

One morning little Tina came by and asked if Father was at home.

“He's sleeping,” I whispered to her.

She immediately retreated to the doorway, apologizing. From sheer embarrassment I did not ask her to stay. The few encounters I'd had with her had instilled within me a closeness to her. Father, who was confused and angry at the time, had forgotten her, but I had not.

Winter grew more bitter with every passing day, and we hardly left the house. Victor would come by in the afternoons, bringing provisions and some bottles of cognac, and would tell Father how interest in his pictures was mounting and that it was time to start planning a new exhibition. It isn't easy to deceive Father. There are times when he's completely firm in his feelings and does not hide his opinions. “This isn't the time for art,” he said.

“But there's the intelligentsia.”

“I can't see it.”

So now Father vented his anger—on the Jewish petite bourgeoisie, on anti-Semites, and on art critics of any ilk. To calm him, Victor took us out to a restaurant in the country. Here Father's rage subsided a little, and he talked about his childhood in the orphanage and his early exhibitions. The clouds passed over his face, and for a moment a youthful wonderment again shined in his eyes. His words flowed easily, and he didn't blame anyone. I saw Father as a young man borne from city to city on the shoulders of his admirers. The galleries in which his works are exhibited are full of people, and he's loved and admired by one and all.

Sometimes I thought that soon he'd go back to painting
and that I saw signs of this. But I quickly learned that these signs were misleading. Father slept late and awakened angry—cursing, tearing up papers and tossing them into the fire. His face had changed over the past weeks: the anger had come to rest in his hands, and I was filled with fear that he'd strike someone again.

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.

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.”

“I'll get myself a studio first thing.”

“Just telegram me and I'll send you anything you need.”

“Thank you, my dear friend.”

“Don't thank me.”

“But I want to thank you.”

“There's no need. Good-bye, dear friend. Don't forget to write me. I'm not going to budge from here.”

And with these hurried words we parted from Victor and were pushed into our compartment. There were no longer any empty seats, and Father regretted not taking Vic-tor's advice to buy seats in first class. He sat me down on the suitcase and stood next to me. I was tired, but I saw clearly the spacious house in which Victor had put us up, the chests of drawers, the wide beds, and the great light that streamed in from the large windows. Now it all seemed distant and imaginary, as if I hadn't ever been there.

I asked Father if we would return to Bucharest.

“Of course we'll come back. In Bucharest we have such a true friend. He'll welcome us with open arms whenever we come.”

I sensed the trembling in his legs, and it hurt me that he had no place to sit down.

Then I fell asleep and I saw Mother. She was in a swimsuit, sitting alongside the stream and preparing a midmorning snack. Her face was clear and open, and a bright smile played upon her lips.

“Mother,” I said.

She turned her head slowly toward me. I'd always known this way she had of turning her head, but now it was as if I were seeing it for the first time. I felt her love for me, and I was gripped by silence. She immediately explained that she'd wanted to come to me at Christmas and take me to the Carpathians, but things hadn't worked out. I didn't know what she was talking about, and I wasn't going to ask her. Her love was so apparent that it completely overwhelmed me.

“Mother,” I said again.

“What, my love?”

“How long will we be here?” I tried to hold her attention.

“All the time,” she replied after a brief pause.

“And I won't see Father anymore?” I asked, then regretted it.

“I, at any rate,” she said in a tone that I recalled well, “intend to make the summer vacation last as long as I can.”