After supper, Ileana urged her husband – Ionu was a man slow to react – to make up a bed for the ‘young sir.’ Which is to say, to make up the only bed in the house: the others slept in the main room – Ionu, Ileana and their eldest daughter Eudochia on the chests that lined the three walls, and the two youngest, Andilina and Ion, on the shelf behind the stove.
Ionu had bought the only bed in the house a long while ago, without planning to do so beforehand, at the big fair in Sighet: he had liked the light pinewood, stained light brown, and above all he had liked the two white doves carved on the tall headboard, on whose beaks rested a large red heart. Sweating and triumphant, Ionu had carted the bed back from the fair. The whole family had liked it, but when night fell, nobody had wanted to sleep in it. Ileana and Ionu himself, along with their daughter Eudochia, preferred the chests in the main room, and neither of the two youngest children had wanted to abandon the large, warm stove behind which they slept. And so the beautiful bed with the red heart and white doves had remained unused, in the narrow chamber next to the main room.
The hosts were overjoyed to have the opportunity to provide the young sir from town with town-like accommodation.
But nor did Ernst feel at ease in the large bed in the small chamber. Perhaps because the straw mattress was too hard, packed too tightly, or perhaps because of the feather duvet, which was stuffed not only with down, but with whole feathers, which pricked him through the cloth. Or perhaps because with the coming of night a shadow of fear also descended, thickening the darkness.
Nor did the host, Ionu Stan Son of the Trustworthy One sleep peacefully that night. Ernst could hear him tossing and turning and then going out onto the veranda to breathe some fresh air. Or perhaps he went out merely to gaze at the stars? Or perhaps a fine coating of fear had settled on his soul too?
Towards morning, Ernst, exhausted, drifted off and finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. He was awoken by the rays of the already risen sun, which poured down warmly over the cool uplands.
Although his hosts had left a basin and a mug of water for him on a stool in the corner of the room, Ernst did not wash inside the house. He took his towel and a fragment of soap and went down to the stream in the valley. The water was cold, invigorating. Ernst rinsed with a little water and then rubbed his chest and back with the towel. His skin reddened and he felt well. He went into the house to eat breakfast. A flat loaf of maize bread, fresh from the oven, was waiting for him, and cottage cheese and a mug of milk. The family had long since eaten and gone off to do their chores. The children had gone down to the school in Sihei. Ionu, before going to guard the woods, was busy in the barn, where he kept a cow, after which he would muck out the hencoops.
Ernst went into the barn and called Ionu into the house, because he wished to speak to him and Ileana.
They sat down at the table and Ernst told them that there was no point, nor was it proper, that he stay in the house. Relatives and friends of the family would come to visit and ask all kinds of questions. People are curious by nature: ‘Who’s that man? Where’s he from?’ ‘A relative.’ ‘What kind of relative? How come I’ve never seen him before?’… No, he would spend the day outside, in the forest, and he would come to the house to eat when he was hungry. He would come inside only when he was sure there were no visitors there. And in the evening, he would cross the fence by the stile at the back of the house and sleep in the hayloft of the barn. The children shouldn’t tell anybody he was staying there. They were old enough to understand.
His hosts remained silent. It was obvious they were in a quandary.
‘I like to sleep in haylofts. That’s what I do when I’m hiking,’ said Ernst.
Ionu Stan remained silent for a long time. He was somewhat embarrassed, but ultimately satisfied with the proposal. After a time, he said:
‘If you think it will be better that way –’
And Ileana added: ‘Yes, yes, if that’s the way the gentleman wants it.’
Ernst went outside and found himself in the vastness of the Agriș Valley, surrounded by forests. He was free. For the first time in his life, Ernst was free in the truest sense of the word. He had nothing to do, no business to attend to. He did not feel any need to read a book. He did not wish to look through the newspapers or to arrange a date with a girl. He did not have to be home at set times to eat meals with his family. He did not have to work on the designs for some house or villa, to fray his nerves because of some irascible, snobbish patron or because of some rival young architect cleverer than him. This was what had happened three months previously, when he had designed a villa, but the patron had opted for the plans drawn up by another architect, because he had put a completely pointless and unsightly turret above the front door. But it was precisely that turret that had delighted the patron, who had accepted the design, compensating Ernst with a niggardly sum for the hours of work he had invested.
No, there was nothing to fray Ernst’s nerves up here. He was free and he felt like gambolling through that vast space, gambolling, running like a thoroughbred dog released from its master’s leash. He felt like rolling down that immense valley, which was as round as a cauldron, rolling down to the bottom, where stood a solitary, lightning-blasted tree, and then, thanks to the momentum he would gain, rolling up the other side and back down again.
He had an unquenchable thirst to walk. He reached the lightning-blasted tree. It was a large, magnificent oak, which had been struck many years ago. Since then, it had stood majestic, powerful, its thick roots and black leafless branches infinitely confronting Time. The tree had not rotted. It had a large hollow, the inside of which was scorched. The soot had in time hardened and gleamed like ebony.
All around that broad valley, over the hills that rose from its rim, there were groves of oak trees at the edges of the forests of tall firs. Higher up, the vegetation thinned, and stunted pines dotted the mountaintops.
The whole of that realm of silence now belonged to Ernst Blumenthal. But like every realm of that kind, it also had an egress to the land of people and cares… At the top of Solovan Hill there was an old wooden watchtower, which had once served as a lookout post for spotting fires. From the tower it was possible to see the town of Sighet in the valley, clasped between two rivers: the Tisza and the Iza.
Ernst looked down at the town. Viewed from up there, it looked as small as a toy, and the people were small too, as they went about their petty business.
The town’s age-old tranquillity was not to last for long. The time was mid-April, in the year 1944. Ernst lay in the grass, among the trees, his hiding place by the lookout post on Solovan Hill, and gazed at an anthill. Each ant was working assiduously, carrying heavy weights: seeds, all kinds of crumbs. They moved rapidly back and forth, without bumping into each other, without traffic accidents, without workplace accidents. It was something admirable and wholly incomprehensible.
All of a sudden, as if in a dream, he seemed to hear strange sounds from the town in the valley below: weeping and wailing, sighs, yes, even the sighs reached up into the mountains, wafting ever higher. Ernst quickly climbed the watchtower and looked through his binoculars at that other anthill. A human anthill. Along the town’s streets, motley columns of people, carrying heavy suitcases, pillows, quilts, some of them pushing handcarts, were all heading in the same direction, towards the western edge of the town, where there were a brickworks and the poorest residential quarter.
What did it mean? What was happening down there? Ernst wondered in alarm. He would ask Ionu Stan to go into town straightaway and find out what was happening.
Ionu took his knapsack with the two canisters – the house had almost run out of lamp oil and matches – and went into town. He returned that evening and the news he brought was not at all encouraging. The Blumenthals’ house was shut up, the door sealed by the town hall. And all the Jews had been taken to the tanners’ quarter and the brickworks. It was not possible to enter the quarter because a barbed wired fence had been erected and gendarmes with cockerel feathers in their caps guarded the entrances.
Ernst chanced to discover more a few days later. He was coming down Meia