Read Online Blooms of Darkness by Jeffrey M. Green, Aharon Appelfeld - Free Book Online Page A

will improve.”
    It turns out there is a bathroom behind the cupboard in Mariana’s room. The bathroom is wide and luxurious, with little cupboards, a dresser, a mat, soap bars of every color, and bottles of perfume.
    “I’ll bring two pails of boiling water. We’ll add cold water from the faucet, and we’ll have a bath from paradise,” Mariana says in a festive tone.
    Hugo is stunned by the colors. It is a bathroom, but different from any he’s ever seen. The ostentatious luxury says that here people do more than take baths.
    In a few moments, the bathtub is full. Mariana touches the water and says, “Marvelous water. Now get undressed, my dear.” Hugo is astonished for a moment. Since he was seven, his mother had stopped washing him.
    Mariana, seeing his embarrassment, says, “Don’t be ashamed. I’ll wash you with perfumed soap. Plunge in, dear, plunge in, and I’ll soap you down right away. You start by plunging in, and only afterward you soap yourself.”
    The embarrassment evaporates and a strange pleasantness envelops his body.
    “Stand up now, and Mariana will soap you from your feet to your head. Now the soap will do wonders.” She soaps him and washes him hard, but it’s a pleasant hardness. “Now plunge in again,” she orders. In the end she pours tepid water on him and says, “You’re good. You do everything Mariana tells you to do.”
    She wraps him in a big, fragrant towel, puts the cross around his neck, looks at him, and says, “Wasn’t it nice?”
    “Excellent.”
    “We’ll do it often.”
    She kisses his face and neck and says, “Now it’s night. Now it’s dark. Now I’ll lock you in your kennel, honey. You’re Mariana’s, right?” Hugo is about to ask her something, but the question slips out of his mind.
    Mariana says, “After a bath, you sleep better. Too bad they don’t let me sleep at night.”
    Why? he is about to ask, but he stops his tongue in time.
    That night is quiet. Though he does hear voices from Mariana’sroom, they are muffled. He can feel the chilly darkness and the thin night lights that filter through the cracks between the boards and make a grid on his couch.
    The bath and the cross that Mariana put around his neck seem to mingle into a secret ceremony.
    Both gestures gave him pleasure, but he doesn’t understand what is visible here and what is a secret.
    That night Hugo dreams that the closet door has opened, and his mother is standing in the doorway. She is wearing the coat she wore when they parted, but now it looks thicker, as though she has filled it with wadding.
    “Mama,” he calls out loud.
    Hearing his voice, she puts her finger on his mouth and whispers, “I’m also in hiding. I just came to tell you that I think about you all the time. The war is apparently going to be long. Don’t expect me.”
    “When approximately will the war be over?” Hugo asks with a trembling voice.
    “God knows. Do you feel well? Mariana isn’t mistreating you?”
    “I feel fine,” he says, but his mother, for some reason, narrows her shoulders in disappointment and says, “If you feel well, that means I can go away quietly.”
    “Don’t go.” He tries to stop her.
    “I mustn’t be here. But there is one thing I want to say to you. You know very well that we didn’t observe our religion, but we never denied our Jewishness. The cross you’re wearing, don’t forget, is just camouflage, not faith. If Mariana or I-don’t-know-who tries to make you convert, don’t say anything to them. Do what they tell you to do, but in your heart you have to know: your mother and father, your grandfathers and grandmothers were all Jews, and you’re a Jew, too. It’s not easy to be a Jew. Everybody persecutes you. But that doesn’t make us inferior people. To be a Jew isn’t a mark of excellence, but it’s alsonot shameful. I wanted to say that to you, so that your spirits won’t fall. Read a chapter or two of the Bible every day. Reading the Bible will