The Iron Tracks by Aharon Appelfeld

Author:Aharon Appelfeld [Appelfeld, Aharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-307-48639-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1998-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

14

On the train north from Gruendorf I learned of Stark’s death. One of my rivals approached and informed me. “No!” I cried out without thinking. He was a short Jew with a tired expression who turns up in certain villages after me. I have even seen him in the Graten Mountains. His presence always annoys me. More than once I have nearly warned him not to follow in my tracks, not to undermine me. Now he stood before me like a scolded brother.

“When did you hear?” I asked, and I immediately felt that my world had been destroyed.

“Regularly, year after year, I would visit him at the end of July,” he answered in slightly formal language, as if he were an attendant in a funeral parlor. From close up he looked frightening: the camp smell still clings to his clothes.

“He was like a father to me,” I said and rose to my feet. “I was with him just two and a half months ago.”

“He was forsaken.” The Jew made a strange gesture.

“We all loved him,” I said.

“Only a few came to him in recent years.” He didn’t stop reproaching.

“And who took part in the funeral?”

“Not one of us. The nuns discovered him and buried him in the convent cemetery.”

“Where are the books? Where are the manuscripts?”

“I arrived a few days after the burial. The house was open, and there was nothing inside. The Mother Superior told me that the local council had given them the building as a gift, and they were planning to renovate it.”

“And the manuscripts?”

“They fumigated the house and apparently burned everything.”

If the train had stopped, I would have gotten off.

Whenever the whip lands on my back, I get off, curl up in a buffet, and lick my wounds. The train raced now at full speed, and the man sitting before me took no pity on me. He answered all my questions to the point, though not without aggression, saying: “We are indeed weak creatures, frightened and self-involved. But there are times when a person must stand up for himself and confront the truth. Lies make us filthy. We abandoned him. The time has come to admit it.”

I looked into his eyes and saw that his travels had given him a steady gaze. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I wasn’t referring to you,” he replied.

I always knew that one day my rivals would conspire against me, but I didn’t imagine that this was how they would do it. The train stopped, and I got off. It turned out to be one of those barren stations where the few passengers scatter quickly, and only the locals remain on the platform. A sign with all the usual warnings stands in place.

The owner of the buffet didn’t ask what I wanted to drink but served me, as he does the other customers, a mug of beer. Only then did the bitter news seep into me.

Stark, like my father, had risen through all the stages of the movement. He, too, lived underground for many years.

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