Blooms of Darkness

Blooms of Darkness, by Aharon Appelfeld, reminds me of those times we hear about a female teacher seducing an underage boy. Though we make not speak it aloud many men will inevitably think, especially if the woman is attractive, "Where was she when I was in school?" This is a sharp difference from when the genders are reversed--then the male teacher is a predator and the underage girl is a traumatized victim.

I'm not smart enough to figure out why that is; I guess there's a long literary tradition of boys being taught sex by older women. That's the case in Blooms of Darkness, when a young Jewish boy hides out from the Germans in a brothel.

Appelfeld, who passed away recently, is about the age of his hero, Hugo, in the book--11 through 13. He is a child in the Ukraine, the son of two beloved pharmacists. His father is dragged away to a concentration camp, and his mother is going to flee, but first she leaves him in the care of her childhood friend, Mariana, who is plying her trade. Hugo is kept in the closet, but Mariana comes to have great affection for him, and vice versa. "In recent days Hugo has felt an agitation in his body, and when Mariana hugs him, the pleasure grows stronger. It seems to Hugo that this is a feeling it’s forbidden to express openly, but when he is lying in Mariana’s embrace in bed, he allows himself to kiss her neck."

She calls him her puppy and speaks of herself in the third person, often like a simpleton. But Hugo is naturally entranced by her. Though it is not specifically described, it is clear that Mariana takes him to her bed for sex.

While the war is still going on the two have to sweat out searching Germans, because anyone hiding a Jew will be executed. Then, after the war, the two take to the hills to find a home, while the victorious Russians will kill anyone, including prostitutes, who were friendly with the Germans.

I have no idea if this really happened to Appelfeld, but the book feels like a memory, the kind where a young person remembers their first love many years later with the wistful patina of nostalgia. The writing is simple and straightforward, and is at times too treacly, especially when Mariana carries on. But she does have some rules for life; "Wait a moment, I forgot the main thing—a bathtub. In our house there has to be a bathtub. Without a bathtub, life isn’t life. You have to lie in the bathtub for  two or three hours every day. That’s the kind of life I foresee. What do you think?”

Blooms of Darkness is basically The Summer of '42 set during the holocaust. I suppose if one is going to be caught in such a bind, there are worst ways to spend it than in the closet of a whore with a heart of gold.