Unto the Soul by Aharon Appelfeld

Author:Aharon Appelfeld
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

That night they sat next to the open windows and gulped down drink after drink. Gad spoke about Mauzy’s wickedness and about his earlier sins. Several times he had attacked pilgrims, and once he had even bitten an old Jew. It seemed to Amalia, for some reason, that he was not speaking about Mauzy but about things that had happened to him in his distant childhood, about oppressive burdens that the years had not wiped away, which floated up whenever a crack was opened. That, of course, was an error in hearing. Gad stood and listed Mauzy’s sins one after the other, like a peddler. Finally he summed them up categorically: he had not died by chance. A can of worms had been lying on his back.

When she grasped, finally, that he was talking about Mauzy’s old offenses, she became angry at Gad for speaking about Mauzy without mercy. If there had been moments of pleasant tranquility on this dark peak, they were moments passed in the company of Mauzy and Limzy. True, Gad sometimes used to be incensed at their closeness, but he himself liked to walk around the peak with them, and more than once she had found them curled up together on the floor.

Now Mauzy was lying dead in a ditch. The thought of big Mauzy, who had grown thick fur during the winter, who liked to doze off on the floor in a heedless sprawl, responding to being patted and yawning with pleasure—the thought that that friendly creature had become a ferocious animal all at once filled her body with dread, and she was seized with trembling.

“What happened to poor Mauzy?” She tried to defend him for a moment.

“He went out of his mind,” he answered, almost offhandedly. Hardly had the words left his mouth when he remembered that Uncle Arieh had told him a few days before his death that the peasants had once tried to poison Mauzy and Limzy, but he had discovered them in time and run after them and caught them. They admitted it and swore they wouldn’t do it again. He had let them go on their way.

“The peasants are always trying to poison our dogs.” He spoke distractedly.

“Why do they do that? What harm did those creatures do them?”

“It’s very simple: to make it easier for them to steal.”

Hearing that practical answer, her voice trembled, and she said agitatedly, “He died innocent.”

Gad, for some reason, was wounded by her words and said, “No one kills a dog because he’s a dog.”

“But they poisoned him.” The old tone returned to her voice.

“Right. What could we have done? You saw with your own eyes how dangerous he was.”

“Wasn’t it possible to save him?”

“A poisoned dog is as good as dead.” He was glad to have found the correct words.

Amalia bent her head. All her fears were enfolded in her face. That is how she sat after her father died. For a moment he was about to stand up and scold her, but his words were mute and he withdrew.

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