Marlene Read Online Free PDF Page A

where he had first seen the light of day.
    At this time most of the men of our big family had fallen in combat. Women in deep mourning often came together to our house. My mother, resolutely and affectionately, would attend to their physical and spiritual well-being. She believed in the effectiveness of abundant and healthy nourishment and went from room to room with bowls full of bouillon and cups of herbal tea. She combined the meat rations to prepare a broth that occasionally even contained an egg. The herbal tea was tasteless, it was supposed to calm the nerves and induce sleep. At spring-cleaning time my mother had work for everybody. My aunts, great aunts, and cousins in black, contrasting with the white walls, stood on ladders, scrubbed, cleaned and re-hung the curtains through which the April sun shone. On those days supper did not proceed as quietly as usual. Those gathered around the table gossiped and sometimes even laughed.
    Although the course of the day had remained the same, the rhythm and atmosphere had changed. My mother now moved around in a somewhat more leisurely manner, even the ringing of the doorbell couldn’t quicken her step. She moved slowly, languidly, she held her head the way weary people do. She no longer listened attentively to what was being said, she no longer waited expectantly. She comforted herself as if someone was sleeping in the next room.
    Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night and discovered my mother, fully dressed, lying on my bed and fast asleep. I was happy to see her near me. But I didn’t exactly know why that made me so happy. I had heard her say: “If only I could sleep.” And my aunt had answered: “The war has robbed us all of our sleep.”
    This war did not seem ever to come to an end. Peace was a long forgotten dream, and we had ceased to make plans for so distant a hope. Our victories were rarer. That was why the war dragged on so. Only our complete victory would bring it to aclose. We prayed for victory, we prayed for peace, we prayed for the dead, the forgotten dead. They had already been gone for so long, we had not seen them again, even once, before they departed from us. If we had not been told, no one would weep over them. It’s easier to tell the truth than it is to console women’s hearts. Naturally, everything I thought up in order to soothe the pain did not work, and I began to doubt many things that before I had accepted respectfully and automatically.
    Yet I hardly had time to reflect on those confusing realizations. Everything revolved around school, which demanded my full attention and involvement. I was exhausted and became even paler. After lunch I had to sleep. Once in bed I enjoyed this midday rest, but it brought disorder into my activities that had been skillfully divided to take up the whole afternoon, those brief periods that began at one o’clock and ended at seven when I would go to sleep. It was like this throughout the period of my school days. Sleep before midnight—in my mother’s view a miracle drug. She clung as loyally to it as to loyalty itself. This principle and the halo with which she surrounded it had, I believe, nothing to do with the fact that I, like all the children of my age, was undernourished. Throughout her youth and up to her marriage she had known the same discipline: She was sent to bed at the stroke of seven. She recounted this full of pride—Was she actually proud of something that concerned herself?—and obviously attributed great importance to it.
    I had to get up early in order to do my homework. Long sleep was lost time. For months I was up before daybreak, shivering with cold and fatigue in the light of a petroleum lamp. We had to save electricity, fuel, save our Fatherland. Although pale and thin, I felt strong and healthy. Morning, afternoon, and evening we ate turnips—turnip marmalade, turnip cakes, turnip soup, the roots and the leafy tops of turnips were