The Story of a Life: A Memoir - Hardcover

Appelfeld, Aharon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805241787 ISBN 13: 9780805241785

Publisher: Schocken, 2004

Synopsis

In spare, haunting, almost hallucinogenic prose, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning novelist shares with us–for the first time–the story of his own extraordinary survival and rebirth.

Aharon Appelfeld’s childhood ended when he was seven years old. The Nazis occupied Czernowitz in 1941, penned the Jews into a ghetto, and, a few months later, sent whoever had not been shot or starved to death on a forced march across the Ukraine to a labor camp. As men, women, and children fall away around them, Aharon and his father (his mother was killed in the early days of the occupation) miraculously survive, and Aharon, even more miraculously, escapes from the camp shortly after he arrives there.

The next few years of Aharon’s life are both harrowing and heartrending: he hides, alone, in the Ukrainian forests from peasants who are only too happy to turn Jewish children over to the Nazis; he has the presence of mind to pass himself off as an orphaned gentile when he emerges from the forest to seek work; and, at war’s end, he joins the stream of refugees as they cross Europe on their way to displaced persons’ camps that have been set up for the survivors. He observes the full range of personalities in the camps–exploitation exists side by side with compassion–until he manages to get on a ship bound for Palestine. Once there, Aharon attempts to build a new life while struggling to retain the barely remembered fragments of his old life (everyone urges him simply to forget what he had experienced), and he takes his first, tentative steps as a writer. As he begins to receive national attention, Aharon realizes his life’s calling: to bear witness to the unfathomable. In this unforgettable work of memory, Aharon Appelfeld offers personal glimpses into the experiences that resonate throughout his fiction.

About this title

About the Author:

Aharon Appelfeld is the author of more than twenty acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including Badenheim 1939, Tzili, The Iron Tracks, and The Conversion. He lives in Israel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

At what point does my memory begin? It sometimes seems to me as if it began only when I was four, when we set off for the first time, Mother, Father, and I, for a vacation into the heart of the shadowy, moist forests of the Carpathians. But I sometimes think that memory began to bud from within me before that, in my room, next to the double-glazed window that was decorated with paper flowers. Snow is falling, and fleecy soft flakes are slowly coming down from the sky with a sound so faint that you cannot hear it. For hours I sit and gaze in wonder, until I merge with the white flow and drift off to sleep.

A clearer memory is linked for me to one word, too long and rather hard to pronounce, Erdbeeren, which means “strawberries” in German. It is spring. Mother is standing at the open window. I am perched on a chair next to her, and suddenly, from a side alley, there appears a young Ruthenian girl. She is carrying a broad, circular wicker basket full of strawberries on her head. “Erdbeeren!” Mother calls out. Her call is not directed at the girl but at Father, who is in the back garden and very near the girl. Father stops her, she lifts the basket off her head, and they speak for a moment. Father laughs, draws out a banknote from the pocket of his jacket, and presents it to the girl, who, in exchange, gives him the basket with all the strawberries inside it. Father comes up the steps and enters the house. Now one can see it close up: the basket is not deep but extremely wide; the berries are tiny and red and still alive with the scent of the forest. I so want to put out my hand and take a handful from the basket, but I know that this is completely forbidden, and I restrain myself. Still, my mother understands me, and she takes a handful from the basket, rinses them, and serves me them in a small bowl. I’m so happy that I can hardly breathe.

Here the ritual begins: Mother sprinkles powdered sugar on the tiny fruit, adds cream, and serves up the delicacy to each of us. There’s no need to ask for another portion: Mother ladles it out, more and more, and we feast on it with great relish, as if we are about to finish the strawberries. But there is nothing to worry about, the basket is still full, and even if we go on eating all through the night, it won’t get any emptier. “A pity there are no guests,” says Mother. Father laughs quietly, as if a partner to a conspiracy. And the following day, too, we eat more overflowing portions, though distractedly and no longer with a ravenous appetite. Mother puts the remaining strawberries in the pantry. Later I saw, with my very own eyes, how the glorious berries had turned grayish and had shriveled up; for the rest of the day, I felt sad whenever I remembered them. But the woven basket, made of simple twigs, remained in our home for many days, and every time I glanced at it, I would remember how it had looked like a red crown when it rested on the head of the Ruthenian peasant girl.

. . .

Clearer memories are the walks along the banks of the river, on the paths by the fields, and on the grassy meadows. I see us climb a hill, sit on top of it, and gaze around. Speaking little, my parents listen attentively. With Mother it is more obvious. When she listens, her large eyes are wide open, as if trying to take in everything around her. At home, too, there is more quiet than talking. Nothing spoken—no phrases—remain in my memory from those distant days, only Mother’s gaze. It was filled with so much softness and tender solicitude that I feel it to this very day.
Our house is spacious and has many rooms. One balcony faces the street, and the other one, the public park. The drapes are long, trailing on the parquet floor. When the maid changes them, a scent of starch fills the whole house. But even more than the drapes, I love the floor—or, rather, the carpet that covers the floor. On its floral patterns I construct streets and houses from wooden blocks and populate them with stuffed bears and tin dogs. The carpet is thick and soft, and I sink into it for hours, pretending that I’m traveling on a train, crossing continents, and eventually arriving at my grandfather’s village.

In summer we will travel to Grandfather’s village, and just thinking of it induces a sort of drowsiness, as memories of the previous visit surface. But the images I see in my memory have become so hazy since then that they are more like a dream. All the same, one word remains, and that is mestameh—“presumably.” The word is strange and incomprehensible, yet Grandmother repeats it several times a day. Many times I was about to ask what this strange word meant, but I didn’t. Mother and I speak German. Sometimes it seems to me that the way Grandfather and Grandmother talk makes Mother uncomfortable, and that she’d prefer for me not to hear their language. All the same, I summon up the courage and ask, “What’s the language that Grandfather and Grandmother are speaking?”

“Yiddish,” Mother whispers in my ear.
Days in the village are long, stretching deep into the white night. In the village there are no carpets, only mats. Even the guest room has a mat. At the touch of a foot, the mat makes a dry rustling sound. Mother sits next to me and carves into a watermelon. In the village there are no restaurants and no cinema; we sit out in the yard till late, watching the sunset that goes on till the middle of the night. I try hard not to doze off, but eventually I fall asleep.

Here the days are full of small enchantments. A band of three Gypsies suddenly enters the yard and bursts into the sad strains of violin music. Grandmother doesn’t lose her temper; she knows them well and lets them go on. Their playing makes me sadder and sadder, and I want to cry. Mother helps out and asks the Gypsies to stop playing, but they won’t. “Don’t stop us! This is the way we Gypsies pray!”

“But it’s frightening for the child,” Mother implores.

“There’s nothing to fear—we’re not devils.”

Eventually Mother gives them a banknote, and they stop playing. One of the Gypsies tries to come up and be nice to me, but Mother keeps him at a distance.

Just as the Gypsies have left the back yard, a chimney sweep appears. A tall man, with black cables wound completely around his torso, he sets to work without delay. His face is all sooty, and when he stands by the chimney flue he looks like one of those demons from the tales of the Brothers Grimm that Mother reads me before I go to sleep. I want to let Mother in on this secret, but I hesitate.

Toward evening, the cows come back from the pasture. The lowing and mooing and the dust fill the air with melancholy, but this is soon dispelled by the nightly ritual of boil- ing up preserves. Plum jam, pear-and-plum jam, ripe-cherry jam—each jam has its appointed hour of the night. Grandmother takes a large copper pot from the kitchen and puts it on the garden bonfire, which has been kindled since twilight. Now the copper pot is gleaming golden. The boiling goes on for most of the night. Grandmother tastes and stirs, adds laurel leaves, and eventually serves me a dish of warm jam. The sweetness, for which I have waited so eagerly, brings me no happiness this time. The fear that the night will end and that in the morning we will have to climb into a carriage to return to the city—this fear now grips me, stealthily spoiling my happiness. I take Mother’s hand and kiss it, kiss it again and again, until, intoxicated with all the night scents, I fall asleep on the rush mat.

In the country, I’m with Mother. Father remains in the city to run the business, and when he suddenly appears, he seems alien to me. With Mother I go out to the meadows by the river, or, rather, by one of the streams of the River Prut. The waters flow slowly, the clearness is dazzling, and one’s feet sink into the soft ground.

In the summer, days stretch out slowly and without end. I know how to count up to forty, to draw flowers, and in another day or two I’ll know how to write my name in block letters. Mother doesn’t leave me for a moment. Her close- ness is so wonderful that even a moment without her makes me sad.

Sometimes, unexpectedly, I ask her about God, or about when I was born. Mother is embarrassed by these questions, and it seems to me that she blushes. On one occasion she tells me, “God is in the sky, and He knows everything.” The answer delights me as much as if I had been presented with an enchanted gift. But for the most part her answers are short, as if she simply has to discharge a duty. Sometimes I keep on asking, but it doesn’t make her talk more.
Unlike Mother, Grandmother is a large and sturdy woman, and when she places her two hands on the broad wooden table, they fill it. As she talks, she describes things, and you can tell that she loves what she’s describing: the vegetables in the garden, for example, or the orchard behind the cowshed. It’s hard to understand how Grandmother can be my mother’s mother. Next to her, Mother looks like a pale shadow. Grandmother frequently scolds her daughter for leaving some of her soup in the bowl, or a piece of vegetable pie on her plate. Grandmother has firm views on everything: how to grow vegetables, when to pick plums, who is an honest man and who is not. When it comes to children, her convictions are even firmer: children should go to bed before dark, and not at 9 p.m. Mother, on the other hand, doesn’t see any harm in a child falling asleep on the straw matting.

Grandmother isn’t always in a decisive mood. Sometimes she closes her eyes tight, seems to sink into her large body, and tells Mother about bygone days. I understand nothing of what she says, and yet I enjoy listening to her. When she picks me up and lifts me high above her head, I feel as weak as if I we...

About this edition

• Publisher: Schocken
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0805241787
• ISBN 13: 9780805241785
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208