Soul's Friend (a short story)
Appelfeld, Aharon
SOUL'S FRIEND AHARON APPELFELD TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL SWIRSKY Aharon Appelfeld is one of Israel's most honored prose writers. This past winter Appelfeld, the winner of several prestigious...
...Following an examination of his documents, the questions immediately began to dig down into the depths of the forgotten years when he had been a young, inexperienced agent, struggling with a well-known firm and with buyers, charting his course through heavy seas of foreignness, mistrust, and hostility...
...And what do you think you'll do now...
...And what about my past...
...The promotion gave him high hopes...
...Every detail excited him...
...The cold got progressively worse, and the merchant began to worry that Siegfried would fall victim to hallucinations from its severity...
...Though these questions might well have surprised him, they were not unfamiliar...
...All along the way the merchant joked about Austrian thickheadedness...
...His last appearance in MOMENT, The Escape, was in March 1980...
...I don't know," Siegfried confessed...
...She could mess up the figures so badly I'd never get out of it alive...
...He hadn't been home for years...
...Meanwhile, Siegfried carefully shunned all contact, even of the eyes, with his cell-mate...
...So he turned to the investigator and asked for a few hours' respite to settle his account at the nearby general store and perhaps arrange for overnight lodging at the inn...
...He took up a position near the bars...
...What's the matter with you, Siegfried...
...He had been promoted the year before...
...More than anything else they reminded him of his own father and mother, his aunts and uncles, the great swarm that would descend on the house at holiday time...
...The merchant was being interrogated by another official...
...Siegfried now began to ask a lot of questions, out of curiousity, like a blind man...
...It'll be all right soon...
...And one thing was clear beyond any shadow of a doubt: there would be fewer obligatory visits home, perhaps none at all...
...From now on, he would be working for himself...
...The snack-bar attendant stood to one side, near the counter, watching the comings and goings indifferently...
...He straightened his legs, and, lifting his head, asked, "Are you suffering from something...
...The word "Jew" grated on Siegfried's ears...
...A merchant in every respect...
...The next day they tied the two together, and a paddy wagon took them to another station...
...He no longer thought of his wife and daughters as his own flesh and blood...
...But there's a new cashier at the store...
...The investigator did not react...
...The thought of sharing quarters with a Jewish merchant was more painful to him than the indignity of the confinement itself...
...What was it you wanted...
...The merchant was now quite caught up in his own words and gestures...
...More than once did his wife create a scandal at Sanger...
...It was late at night when he returned to the cell...
...he said to the snackbar attendant...
...As he saw it, he was being called upon to represent the firm and not himself...
...He felt a stronger tie with the children...
...his brothers had been more successful...
...For a moment he had the feeling he was about to be released from this encirclement...
...He preferred the interrogation table to the company of the latter...
...Who was involved in it...
...As for the Jews, since they were addicted to money, they believed in nothing but money and the things money could buy...
...And once again the merchant relieved him of his perplexity...
...But where was the inquiry leading...
...Why are you doing all this for me...
...Siegfried recoiled...
...The merchant crawled over to him...
...He assumed it was a routine inspection, a mistake, or a misunderstanding, and his bearing— the annoyed surprise of a person of authority—reflected this...
...I left my account unsettled there...
...He even admitted that had it not been for her he would never have struck out into the wider world...
...He had cookies and jam, and they ate together on the floor...
...I'm a practical man, and I have to deal with practical matters all the time...
...the merchant asked...
...But the truth was bitterer still...
...It was as if his hands were accustomed to performing such service...
...How could you...
...Once more he got up on his knees and beat his head against the cement floor...
...He was summoned to Vienna, and there, before the assembled department heads and agents, he was given his representative's certificate, his tenure, and the various other perquisites, public and private, that go with being an authorized agent...
...It was insult added to injury...
...He wanted to ask forgiveness, but immediately understood that it would be out of place here...
...A nondescript face, much like that of his cousin Pinye...
...But this impulse had been nipped^n the bud...
...Always...
...An hour or so later, he got up...
...He came over to him, covered his legs with a blanket, and propped his head up...
...He was 43 years old and had a wife and four children...
...Hush," the merchant would chide him, "A person shouldn't think so much about himself...
...As if his personal case were not to be judged except insofar as it concerned the firm...
...That's a curse I know all too well myself...
...Someone he knew outside had connections with the snack-bar attendant, and, through her, with the interrogator...
...He would describe his dreams to Max...
...The investigation now turned in a different direction: the early years of his marriage...
...The words slipped from Siegfried's mouth, and quickly he added, "I don't understand...
...Siegfried's interrogation came to an end...
...This past winter Appelfeld, the winner of several prestigious literary prizes, held the position of the Gerard Weinstock Visiting Lecturer at the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies...
...The Jew immediately understood that here too he was not wanted, and after surveying the cell he squatted and sat down in a corner...
...Nonetheless, he had his feet firmly planted on the ground, and from this he derived a simple manner...
...That night someone else was brought into his cell, a man in a blue pinstripe suit, of average height and typically Jewish features...
...We'll get to them too, soon enough...
...No," Siegfried said...
...His wife stopped sending warnings and threats...
...He would now no longer be tied to the crowded home office and the draining, humiliating weekly reports...
...Again he was trying to dissociate himself...
...Even Siegfried was provoked to laughter...
...This time it was prolonged and did not end until nightfall...
...He left for the interrogation stiffly erect...
...The merchant went over to him and, without asking, stretched him out...
...The arrested man did not utter a sound...
...What have I ever done to deserve it...
...Siegfried felt like dying...
...He would have liked to learn more from him, but the fits of delirium gave him no rest...
...Losses and defaults appeared in his accounts...
...How did it go...
...the merchant said reprovingly...
...Siegfried looked around the cell, then bent over as if about to pull up a chair...
...He would leave the cell and return with a curious self-importance about him, as if his affair were of a different nature than his cell-mate's...
...The thought that his whole station in life—the commissions, the percentages, the tenure, the certificate of authorization to undertake medium-sized obligations in the name of the firm—the thought that this lovely edifice might be in danger made Siegfried's fingers tremble...
...As I've told you, Siegfried, it's not easy, not easy...
...Naturally they also spoke about percentages and benefits and certain evasions Siegfried had been suspected of during the first few years...
...He hated the little Jews who drifted about this district...
...Early marriage came as a matter of course...
...You've got to be strong, you've got to be tough," the merchant told him, as though addressing a foreigner in some dark office, undistinguished except for its frightening severity...
...The thud was crisp, like that of a rounded object striking a dense surface...
...Now Siegfried began to treat his investigation as a personal matter which was no one else's business except the investigator's...
...Do the Jews not have a kind of herding instinct...
...Siegfried answered confidently, in detail...
...Siegfried did not open his eyes...
...How long...
...Siegfried By morning he felt better...
...Are you a religious man...
...Soon it would be plain to everyone that he was a solid citizen and had served the company faithfully...
...Suddenly, Siegfried felt a strange closeness, like none he had ever felt before, toward the man sitting opposite him all bundled up in a blanket...
...The pus that had been collecting inside him could now be drained...
...That's an improper way of doing things, and I don't want anything to do with it...
...Through the thick gloom their glances met for the first time...
...The morning light etched ugly lines in his face...
...The investigation proceeded in slow motion, with a searching thoroughness that was bound to re-open old wounds, to reactivate old hostilities and quarrels...
...For whatever he told him was told without self-interest, even when he spoke of business...
...Have I wronged you in some way...
...Siegfried was stunned...
...He would rouse him from time to time, as one rouses someone from a faint...
...As though he were not a prisoner with the threat of judgment hanging over his head but someone in the grip of a deep secret...
...They certainly do make out wherever they are, Siegfried muttered, even when they're arrested for questioning...
...The next day the investigator arrived late...
...Each had made his way up, step by step, in total disregard of colleagues in similar pursuit of advancement...
...He had in Vienna a wife and two daughters, who had learned over the years to live without him and his support...
...He was oppressed by the thought that this merchant, toward whom he had felt undisguised hatred, bore him no ill will in return...
...He would stretch out on the cold floor, mostly to demonstrate his own rectitude and self-respect in the face of investigation...
...The dim light in the cell was enough to reveal the plates lying on the floor and the leftover scraps of bread...
...But Siegfried now seemed to have been utterly transported, carried away to a kind of wonderland...
...I'm only surprised at the way you treat me...
...During his fits of delirium he would see himself returning home along the route he had always taken...
...He talked about the difficulties and about the affection he had developed for this lonely woman...
...The chilly gusts buffeted the exposed cell and tore at the tin sheeting on its walls...
...For a moment, Siegfried was captivated by his voice...
...The merchant's brethren paid many bribes for each blanket...
...The attendant turned out the light, and he was left alone in his cage...
...Yet now, returning elated with his case chock full of new orders, a strange thing happened: he was approached by a man without title or uniform who asked him with a quiet certainty whether he was Siegfried Holtzmann, authorized Sanger representative, and whether he would be good enough to come along with him...
...His right leg elevated itself blindly, groped about, and fell against the wall...
...Like that woman who had helped Siegfried when he was first getting to know the territory...
...These and similar questions melted into the thin darkness...
...Winter...
...Even in his delirium, Siegfried could scarcely imagine how many trials still awaited him...
...That's the way things are...
...He was enraged to think that his wife might be suing him yet again for nonsupport...
...Of course there was also the matter of the forgotten wife and children, which intruded itself as if out of spite...
...Once in the cell they were not interrogated any further...
...He spoke of his wife affectionately, but not overly so...
...And at the first opportunity he even told the investigator of his consternation that such a low-class sort had been thrown in together with him in the same cell...
...But these scandals only hardened him...
...He had thought it was only rural people who had faith...
...The merchant took his shoes off for him, loosened his tie, and wrapped him in his old raincoat...
...As a result, the merchant got two blankets, a tin cup, and, when the interrogators weren't around, a cupful of hot coffee...
...They got to know many floors, many tin plates...
...The woman lived alone, but she had some cousins who might well have inflamed the affair...
...He was up to his ears in business, and the promotion only confirmed him in the path he had chosen...
...He had not been lucky in his business...
...It was at an abandoned railway depot, in whose ramshackle stationhouse one could hardly imagine that a conductor or snack-bar attendant was still to be found—it was in this forsaken outpost, which had once served as the local lumberyard, that the authorized representative of the renowned Sanger Company decided to make a stop...
...He no longer asked for release on bail but for separation...
...And the angrier he got the more readily the words flowed: strong, harsh words, full of invective and indignation...
...My damned ulcer...
...He loved church music...
...You save, you build, you develop a bit of trust, and suddenly the malevolent hand comes down upon you...
...He attributed it to their bad upbringing, their narrowmindedness...
...The bosses are sure to be called on the carpet...
...I don't owe anyone any explanations," was the annoyed reply...
...But the inspector turned out to know a great deal, too much...
...He had tried several times to emigrate to America but was never able to get together the means...
...Meanwhile, the snack-bar attendant served coffee in an old-fashioned railroad mug...
...but here too he was able to formulate appropriate responses...
...Siegfried lowered his head with a jerk, fearing to meet the other's gaze...
...Rising on his knees, he stretched upward toward the window...
...The delirium held him captive like heavy chains...
...I'l l try to get my investigator to put in a word with yours...
...I would gladly take you on as a partner...
...Since his youth he had always thought it in bad taste to use it overmuch...
...It was Sunday, and the investigators did not come...
...The merchant, for his part, spoke about bitter fate, misunderstanding, the obstacles placed in the way of petty merchants, and, hardest of all, the enmity...
...Telephone...
...His monotonous voice filled the vacuum with words...
...Moving from one matter to another, he permitted himself wit and irony...
...But there was another factor he had not taken into account...
...It was as if they were foraying together into a region which held danger but also some kind of hidden hope in store for them...
...They appeared to be, not a family at all, but three abandoned girls...
...The two of them were dragged about from place to place like sacks of potatoes, from one frozen region to another...
...You can ask for a postponement...
...The girls doted on him...
...The snack-bar attendant turned off the lights, locked the doors, and left...
...Night fell, and Siegfried was put into a detention cell...
...Usually he would meet someone here...
...Let me help you stretch out...
...Meanwhile, autumn days arrived, and with them autumn winds...
...Their ludicrous, smalltime way of eking out a living, their Yiddishized German, never failed to repel him...
...After all, if he hadn't been so loyal he would not have been promoted...
...You speak so simply about these things," Siegfried said, amazed...
...His whole manner now bespoke the confidence of a trader hardened by misfortune...
...The merchant told him about himself, about his business...
...When the thought of them did cross his mind, it was like thinking about strangers...
...His previous salary had been far from lavish...
...The rest he wasted...
...Neither his appearance nor his voice was at all comely...
...I haven't served the firm faithfully," Siegfried repeated...
...Or take the loudness: it drives me out of my mind...
...A man shouldn't incriminate himself," the other said, turning to Siegfried and speaking with a reproving undertone in his voice...
...Evidently the company is in big trouble, with all the department heads and sales agents under arrest...
...Everything...
...Sometimes he would go to the villages to see the mass...
...He knew the company managers well, especially those who had come up the ladder with him...
...The agent happened upon the place on his way to Vienna...
...The merchant went back to his corner and watched him closely, studying his every move...
...I always thought," Siegfried said, "that the Jews—how shall I put it?—even though I myself am...
...The merchant lost touch with his brethren...
...Several times the merchant offered him bread and the blanket, but Siegfried ignored these offers as if there were something despicable about them...
...He spoke angrily about his wife and his mother-in-law, who had tried all those years to confine him in their insular little world and to squeeze out of him every penny they could...
...And when asked about religious matters, he would lower his voice as though embarrassed...
...There was an oddness to his move- ments...
...The merchant reacted skeptically to the stressed words: dedication, faithfully...
...The scenery kept changing: mountains, valleys, deserted wintry plains...
...I don't look for other people's faults...
...As for Max, they found another way of humiliating him...
...The merchant's interrogation, too, was completed, or rather he was rescued from it...
...Someone seemed to be taking care of the merchant: he received more blankets, and during the night two dishes were brought in to him...
...I haven't served the firm faithfully...
...There's no one in his office," she said...
...And Max talked...
...His hand simply dangled in space...
...His life was blemished, Siegfried replied, and it must be that he had failed to serve the firm faithfully, that his dedication had not been complete...
...His voice was quite monotonous...
...said the attendant...
...I've got enough of my own...
...There had been a time when he would put in appearances...
...I asked you how long you'd been holed up in here," he whispered a bit more loudly...
...I 'm leaving right away myself...
...I s there some way you can help me get in touch with the general store...
...The promotion also opened up, as they say, new possibilities, new vistas, new opportunities for wheeling and dealing...
...Benefits, commissions, and an expense account had been added on to his monthly salary...
...At last he burst out, "You'll always be guilty...
...It was, in fact, a wellordered office...
...the merchant asked, getting up on his knees...
...The interrogation was rough, she informed him...
...Siegfried no longer tried to keep track...
...The merchant spoke of himself with a kind of easy fluency, like a man discussing his own death without flinching...
...At an early age he had already begun to fill in for his ailing father, first as a traveling salesman and then in a small shop...
...Not always...
...Feel better...
...All through the years he had been alone, in flight or on the climb, and now here he was with Max, a man whom adversity never got the better of, who could always pick himself up, wipe his face, and say, " I t ' s not the worst thing that can happen to a person...
...Conditions in the cell did not improve: the same darkness that was neither day nor night...
...The investigator knew the most intimate details...
...He yearned for wide-open spaces, and it was here that he had found them...
...He was, in fact, familiar with this very cell...
...The many personal questions that had been put to him were unpleasant, to be sure, but by reacting cleverly he had been able to diffuse the unpleasantness...
...And his reward was not long in coming...
...He had already been with the firm for twenty years...
...After midnight, in the heavy darkness, the pains began to gnaw at him...
...The cell was filled with a damp cold...
...It was an empty room illuminated by a single small bulb...
...How else should I speak...
...His successful dealings earned him a reputation back in the capital...
...And if he had felt a wanderlust, it was mainly out of a desire to get away from them...
...If it happened to be a fellow-Jew, all well and good...
...Siegfried drew himself up tohis full height and laid his smallish suitcase out on the chair, trying all the while to maintain some measure of composure...
...Would you mind calling the investigator...
...Yedid Nefesh," Soul's Friend, is the title and opening phrase of a Jewish mystical hymn, addressed to God, sung to usher in the Sabbath...
...Siegfried asked...
...The merchant spoke more about himself, his childhood, this district that had never given him any satisfaction...
...Been avoiding fried foods for the last few years...
...So far he did not feel directly implicated himself...
...As you wish," the merchant said softly...
...Evidently the Jew had finished everything...
...At first he tried to protest the procedure, to demand that a distinction be made between his private life and business affairs...
...But then he remembered the unsettled account at the general store, and this worrisome bit of unfinished business scared him out of his mental lair...
...She got a job in a factory and supported the girls herself...
...And in between his seizures he would marvel at the fate that had brought Max his way...
...They stood squeezed against the bars...
...He admitted everything...
...His whole situation bespoke success: two offices, a secretary, four assistants...
...It was as if Siegfried had forgotten his usual vocabulary...
...His brethren on the outside paid off whoever had to be paid off...
...He knew that the way led back to some unknown beginning, perhaps to his former life, which lay far beyond this winter haze...
...The wind died down, and a drizzle sprinkled the fields...
...What is one to make of such behavior...
...He stammered and apologized...
...Twice a day, early in the morning and in the evening, Siegfried was required to stand up and announce, "My name is Siegfried, but I am a Jew...
...The whisper met no response...
...It was the winter of 1939...
...He wanted to ask his forgiveness, but how do you ask forgiveness of a man who even now seems unworthy of gratitude...
...Siegfried continued to gaze in the direction of the barred window...
...He had spent many long days and nights mulling them over in his mind, becoming in the process as intimate with them as with the scars left behind by a childhood disease...
...He drank and dallied with women...
...And as always, there was the dim light in the window, his wife and two children on the floor...
...The coat seemed to have warmed him up, and his breathing had resumed its normal rhythm as well...
...The feeling lasted only a few hours...
...I should be able to handle the interrogation," he murmured...
...Nothing...
...I've got no keys, and everything's locked up around here...
...The hours between humiliations stretched out interminably...
...The firm has always come first for me, he insisted...
...But now the hostility was gone...
...He had a strange sense of relief...
...Nor had he himself been altogether innocent in this struggle...
...The cashier is new, and she's likely to mess it up...
...As the years rolled by, he grew more and more distant, and when he was in Vienna, he no longer went to his own house...
...Me...
...Like Pinye, the man had not pursued his studies but had instead undertaken the heavy burden of supporting a family at an early age...
...Finally he whispered, "How long have you been holed up in here...
...The idea that they had thrown into his cell a man with such a Jewish face, a man who was undoubtedly mixed up in shady dealings of one sort or another, so aroused his indignation that he turned to the policeman and said, "This cell is not for swindlers...
...The flow of words came back to him, and he spoke rapidly...
...As it turned out, the hut was not as broken down as it had appeared from outside...
...Elated at all the orders he had in his briefcase, and out of some unaccountable curiosity, he turned off at the neglected stationhouse and there stopped to rest...
...Now here was one of them, in the very display case of his humiliations, a Jewish businessman of the worst kind...
...The merchant, who was not taken for questioning that day, tried through the snack-bar attendant to find out what fate had befallen his cell-mate...
...Snack bar...
...They are always together, in swarms, Siegfried thought, his old fixations coming to life...
...Then, one night, Siegfried rose to his knees, clutched himself about the waist, and, in a gesture of abject despair, beat his head against the floor...
...They sat now facing one another, wrapped up in blankets...
...I don't follow you...
...Apparently they had the day to themselves...
...Two brothers and a sister in Poland...
...The first light of dawn sliced the cell into two narrow triangles...
...For some time he sat there without saying a word...
...It was already evening, and Siegfried realized that an investigation this exhaustive and well documented was not likely to end quickly...
...The inspector responded only indirectly to his request: to be sure, the two men's cases were completely separate, but as far as he was concerned there was no harm in their sharing a cell...
...And since they passed from place to place and met many arrested merchants along the way, Siegfried imagined each of them to be a kind of wonder, for they were all like Max...
...Quite a few Jews worked for the company too, but he avoided them...
...the merchant asked, in the way one questions someone who is ill...
...Touching this old cup restored his confidence somewhat...
...But since there are so many practical decisions to make and they are so difficult, I do worry whether or not I'm doing the right thing...
...Was it an internal investigation within the firm, or were outside elements involved...
...he muttered indignantly, like a man accustomed to giving orders whose authority has suddenly been called into question...
...He, meanwhile, did well in the outlying districts, where he established himself, learned the dialect, and got to be well liked...
...He and his undistinguished satchel, a bag of the most mediocre sort...
...Siegfried no longer avoided his neighbor, and the merchant talked...
...Better, in fact, to use it as little as possible...
...That's not up to you to determine," said the merchant as softly as he could...
...There was no telling how far he might go...
...Several times he had been arrested, sometimes with, sometimes without cause...
...I can't wink at my own misdeeds any longer...
...He concealed nothing...
...Never mind those petty accounts...
...He spoke uncomplainingly, as though he did not expect things ever to change...
...I thank you...
...The investigator ignored the request...
...I confessed...
...Now the investigation, which had at first seemed thorough but businesslike, reached out to more intimate realms...
...But above all, there was the fact that he now had tenure: the knowledge that he was no longer dependent on the whims of one supervisor or another, that he was on the firm's regular payroll, authorized to represent it in middle-level transactions and at expositions and fairs, gave him, overnight, a new sense of stature...
...He for his part spoke informally, almost identifying, in an odd way, with the interrogator...
...The woman had taken sick and died of typhoid fever, and Siegfried had been compelled to transfer to a less populous district so as not to arouse suspicion...
...Yet despite his intentions the questions dug into his flesh...
...The countryside could not be seen, but they could hear the slow penetration of the rain...
...He understood nothing about music, never went to museums, and, except for a few sayings learned in a Jewish school, had never gotten an education...
...He had been trading in the area for years...
...but he found their affection burdensome and learned to ignore them...
...Max neither comforted him nor tried to sweeten his sorrow...
...There was the matter of the women, of course, local women to whom Siegfried had been attracted since his younger days...
...His white, chastened features were devoid of expression, as if the skin had frozen...
...To what...
...At last he sat down cross-legged like a beggar...
...For a moment he tried to think clearly, but his thoughts dissolved in the darkness...
...The ulcer attacks had subsided but were not completely gone...
...He had just carried off a whole series of important deals...
...If you like you can work with me...
...It was as if he had come to the conclusion that life on this earth was not so grand as to be worth making a commotion about...
...He was brought by an ordinary policeman, who unceremoniously shoved him inside...
...SOUL'S FRIEND AHARON APPELFELD TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL SWIRSKY Aharon Appelfeld is one of Israel's most honored prose writers...
Vol. 5 • May 1980 • No. 5
