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The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping

A Novel

Author Aharon Appelfeld

Paperback

$17.00 US

Knopf | Schocken

On sale Jan 07, 2020 | 304 Pages | 978-0-8052-1261-7

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Humanities & Social Sciences > English > Comparative Literature > Literature of the Holocaust

Erwin doesn’t remember much about his journey across Europe when the war ended because he spent most of it asleep, carried by other survivors as they emerged from their hiding places or were liberated from the camps and made their way to Naples, where they filled refugee camps and wondered what was to become of them. Erwin becomes part of a group of boys being rigorously trained both physically and mentally by an emissary from Palestine for life in their new home. When he and his fellow clandestine immigrants are released by British authorities from their detention camp near Haifa, they are assigned to a kibbutz, where they learn how to tend the land and speak their new language. But a part of Erwin clings to the past—to memories of his parents, his mother tongue, the Ukrainian city where he was born—and he knows that despite what he is being told, who he was is just as important as who he is becoming.

When he is wounded in an engagement with snipers, Erwin spends months trying to regain the use of his legs. As he exercises his body, he exercises his mind as well, copying passages from the Bible in his newly acquired Hebrew and working up the courage to create his own texts in this language both old and new, hoping to succeed as a writer where his beloved, tormented father had failed. With the support of his friends and the encouragement of his mother (who visits him in his dreams), Erwin takes his first tentative steps with his crutches—and with his pen. Once again, Aharon Appelfeld mines personal experience to create dazzling, masterly fiction with a universal resonance.

“As its title suggests, there is a dazed, dreamlike quality to the prose of this bildungsroman, in which a masterly English translation by Jeffrey M. Green manages to retain the direct, concrete quality of the original Hebrew as well as its austere poetry. This is particularly valuable in a novel whose subject is, in part, language and how it forms us, what it lets us see and what it obscures.” —Geraldine Brooks, The New York Times Book Review

“Powerful and hallucinatory. . . . Haunted by loss, illuminated by hope, and richly textured with tradition, Appelfeld's narrative probes questions of history and identity, vocation and meaning in language that's deceptively simple—as luminous and lingering as poetry.” —Christian Century

“By constantly recasting the stories he has created over a long career, Appelfeld creates a literary way of bringing his pre-Holocaust past into his Israeli present. There is no longer a need to return to Bukovina in Ukraine. There is a creative way of bringing Bukovina to the cafe in Beit Ticho in Jerusalem, where the venerable and venerated Appelfeld comes to sit and write.” —Hadassah magazine

“Gently tragic, intensely moving, and filled with metaphor. . . . Careful reading showcases the author’s exquisite poetic style, drawing us into Erwin’s painful experiences and his determination to form an identity that both encompasses his roots and honors what (and who) has been lost.” —Booklist, (starred review)

“Appelfeld’s novel delineates the process of becoming a writer, with details incorporated from his experience as a Holocaust survivor and refugee. . . . Throughout, he focuses not on historical events or moral judgments but on the formation of a writer, one much like himself, able to transform memory into transcendent prose.” —Publishers Weekly, (starred and boxed review)

“Appelfeld once again delivers with a novel of great sensitivity, finely attuned to the difficulties of responding to post-Holocaust living. . . . His style is never flashy, but the plainness of his writing gives these events both starkness and power.” —Kirkus Reviews

I

At the end of the war, I became immersed in constant slumber. Though I moved from train to train, from truck to truck, and sometimes from wagon to wagon, it was all in a dense, dreamless sleep. When I opened my eyes for a moment, the people looked heavy and expressionless.

No wonder I don’t remember a thing about that long journey. I ate what they gave out or, rather, from what was left over. If I hadn’t been thirsty, I probably wouldn’t even have gotten up to look for a slice of bread. Thirst tortured me all along the way. If some memory of that sleep-drunk journey still remains with me, it’s the streams where I knelt to gulp the water. The chilly water put out the fire inside me for a while but not for long.

The refugees carried me and supported me. Sometimes I was forgotten, and then someone remembered me and went back to pick me up. My body remembers the jolting more than I do. Sometimes it seems that I’m still in that darkness, drifting and being borne along. What happened to me during those days of sleep will probably be unknown to me forever. Sometimes a voice that spoke to me comes back, or the taste of a piece of bread that was shoved into my mouth. But aside from that, there is just darkness.

That’s how I arrived. The truck drivers rolled up the canvas. People and bundles tumbled out. “We’re in Naples,” the drivers announced. The sky was high above us, the sun blazed as it dipped into the sea, and the light was intense and dazzling.

I had no desire to push my way in to look for a bed in the sheds or to stand in line to get the used clothes that people from the Joint Distribution Committee were giving away. Everything around me buzzed with desire and a thirst for life, but the people looked ridiculous in their rushing about.

I could barely stand on my feet. At last I dragged myself over to a tree, sank down at its foot, and plunged into sleep.

It was a more diluted sleep. I could hear voices and the noise of the generators. I was borne along but without force. I felt the hard earth beneath me, and I said to myself, In a little while they’ll come and shake me. At first that worry kept me from sinking into a deeper sleep, but, nevertheless, I eventually did so. In the evening a man approached, nudged me, and called out loud, “What are you doing here?” I didn’t open my eyes and didn’t bother to answer him. But he kept shaking me and bothering me, so I had no choice but to say to him, “I’m sleeping.”

“Did you eat?” asked the man.

“I’m not hungry,” I replied.

My body knew that kind of annoyance. All along the way people tried to wake me up, to shove bread into my mouth, to speak to me, to convince me that the war was over and that I had to open my eyes. There were no words in me to explain that I couldn’t open my eyes, that I was trapped in thick sleep. From time to time, I did try to wake up, but sleep overpowered me.

Waves of darkness carried me along, and I moved forward. Where are you heading? I asked myself. Home, I replied, surprised at my own answer. Only a few of the refugees wanted to go back to their homes. Everyone else streamed to the sea in trains and trucks. People knew what they wanted. I had just one wish—to return to my parents.

As I was being carried forward, a hand touched me, and when I didn’t react, the hand shook me again. I didn’t want to answer, but the pulling disturbed me, and so I said, without opening my eyes, “Leave me alone. I want to sleep.”

“You mustn’t sleep for such a long time.”

“My weariness isn’t done. Leave me alone.”

The man went away, but then he came back and prodded me again. My sleep was no longer deep, and I felt the man’s determination to draw me out of it, no matter what.

I opened my eyes and was surprised to see that the man, on his knees and wearing glasses, looked like my uncle Arthur. I knew he wasn’t Arthur, but still I was glad to see him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked softly.

“I came with the refugees.”

“From where?” He stretched his neck toward me.

I couldn’t answer that. The places where we had stopped slipped past me without leaving a trace.

The man stared at me and asked if I wanted something to eat. I was about to say, A cup of cocoa, but I realized that would be a foolish request. Only at home, at breakfast, and toward evening at supper would Mother make me a cup of cocoa.

“I’ll bring you a sandwich and a glass of milk,” the man said. Without waiting for my response, he went off to get it for me. I wondered about the man who resembled my uncle Arthur, not only in his build and face but also in his movements, and I decided to ask him whether he was a communist, too, like my uncle.

He came back with a tray of food.

“Thank you,” I said. Since I had left the house, years earlier, no one had served me food on a tray.

“Hearty appetite,” said the man, another term I hadn’t heard since the war broke out.

I ate. The more I ate, the more my appetite grew, and I finished it all. The man watched without disturbing me. Finally, he asked my name.

I told him.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Sleep,” I said.

“I’ll leave you alone,” he replied, and went away.

I was by myself again, and I felt relieved. After the war, it was hard for me to be with people. Sleep was right for me. In sleep I lived fully. I needed that fullness like I needed air to breathe. Sometimes a dream floated up and threatened me.

AHARON APPELFELD is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Iron Tracks, Until the Dawn's Light (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award), The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger), and Badenheim 1939. Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. Blooms of Darkness won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012 and was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, Appelefeld died in Israel in 2018.