AHARON APPELFELD
441
living from occasional jobs. Freight trains load and unload grain and
building materials for the villagers in the area. We serve them. The win–
ter worries me more than anything," she finished, not speaking to the
point.
"Why?" Kurt bent his head.
"The isolation, sir. It's harder to bear than the damp."
"Don't you meet on Sundays?"
"We meet, but it's hard to talk."
"I understand," said Kurt, for some reason.
"A person has to live here in order to understand," she said and
pursed her lips.
Now he saw Donia as he hadn't seen her for a long time.
In
high
school she had been a brilliant girl. She had done excellently in mathe–
matics and Latin, and the teachers predicted a future in science for her.
"But life was stronger than she and swept her up," Kurt uttered that im–
penetrable sentence to himself, rose
to
his feet, and stepped over to the
window. The sight was splendid: bare treetops rising to the height of the
window, but when he lowered his gaze, he was nearly struck with
blindness: two girls and next to them a boy of about ten were rolling
on the grass and shouting. Donia stood in the doorway, with a belt in
her hand , threatening to punish them. At her side stood her mother, Jo–
hanna.
It
was now hard to distinguish between mother and daughter.
They looked like sisters. Suddenly a man emerged from the toolshed and
said, ''I'm going out."
"Where?" asked Donia without turning toward him.
"To the village, to have a drink."
"Don't drink too much, do you hear?"
After her husband left, Donia went down to the courtyard, and
without mercy she whipped the children. The children screamed,
howled , and tried to escape her, but to no avail. She pounded them
with the belt and with her fists. All the time Johanna stood in the
doorway and watched what her daughter was doing. The same silly smile
was spread across her face.
When the storm of anger died down, the children lay on the
ground weeping and screeching, their legs quivering. "They're strangling
me," said Donia and threw down the belt.
Kurt lit a cigarette and opened his bag.
In
the bag lay a prayer
book, a prayer shawl, phylacteries, and two sandwiches that Hirzl had
wrapped in white paper. He swiftly closed the bag, as though he had en–
countered a familiar object that could no longer serve him.
For a short while he stood and watched the unseemly commotion.
Then he picked up his bag and headed toward the counter with a silent
