Blooms of Darkness: A Novel [Paperback]

I began with Badenheim 1939 when it first came out and over the years I have read every one of his novels. Sometimes the Holocaust is a central character and the people are aware, or sometimes not. We, the readers, know what is coming and even where it is going, but the characters are often lost to fear, despair, wild hopes, incredulity, denial. They are history happening and at the same time, they are off to the side of history. Footnotes almost. This distancing, this gap, this chasm is what makes Appelfeld unlike all others who write fiction about the Holocaust.

Blooms of Darkness takes place within a 2-year period so mid-1943 to mid-1945 when the Russians marched westward into central Europe. Hugo is the tall-for-his-age 11-year-old son of pharmacists in Ukraine. They speak German at home but there was a Ukrainian servant girl and he picked up a lot from her--speaking Ukrainian and becoming more fluent later in the novel is considered essential if Hugo is to survive.

The deportation net has shrunk their lives; Papa was picked up for labor. Really? Was it really labor? Mama keeps them going materially and spiritually. They are not religious or observant but consider themselves Jews. A hiding place must be found for Hugo--they cannot postpone it any longer. Mama tells Hugo she has a place for herself but only for herself and not safe for Hugo. Hugo will be better off with Mama's dear friend, Mariana, who works as a whore in a brothel and who has agreed wholeheartedly to protect and care for Hugo. The customers are German military.

The bulk of the novel takes place in the brothel and inside Hugo's head. He dreams, he has visions, he remembers the past, he remembers his mother's words, and he writes to her in his diary to ease his longing.
I don't want to detail any more of the story--it should be discovered by the reader. Until the last few pages, we don't know what will become of Hugo. This is a stunning novel.

Blooms of Darkness is a profound, and genuinely profoundly moving, novel. Appelfeld's voice is quiet, as always, but his work emotionally resonates like no other writer's. In this novel he situates you squarely, day by day, in the life of Hugo, in hiding from the Nazis. Hugo's protector is Mariana, a prostitute. You will not soon forget these characters, or this novel. It aches, and leaves the reader aching, with so many powerful emotions. This isn't a good novel, it's a great novel. It seems criminal to me that Appelfeld isn't celebrated worldwide. He should already have earned the Nobel Prize for literature. He has written so many incredible novels. Start with Blooms of Darkness, and then relish the rest of his tantalizing body of work. No matter where you go next, you can't go wrong.

In 1941, Axis forces invaded the part of modern-day Ukraine in which the city of Chernivtsi is situated, holding it until its "liberation" by the Red Army in 1944. As was the case throughout Poland, the Baltic States and the Soviet republics that were invaded, the many Jews living in the region were prime victims, and the great majority were killed. Aharon Appelfeld, born in Chernivtsi, was nine years old at the time of the invasion. He was placed in a labour camp with his father, but they became separated and he succeeded in fleeing to hide in the woods, ultimately surviving. Blooms of Darkness is not closely autobiographical, but the fictional story of 11 year old Hugo Mansfeld clearly reflects parts of Appelfeld's own story.

The novel opens some months into the occupation, in what we may take to be early 1942. The Jews of Chernivtsi have been concentrated in a ghetto; some, including Hugo's father, have been deported to labor camps; many children have been snatched to be asphyxiated in mobile gas chambers; all those remaining in the ghetto, adults and children, are being systematically removed to an unknown destination (in fact Transnistria). In a desperate attempt to preserve his life, Hugo's mother finds a hiding place for him in a brothel, in the custody of one of the whores, a one-time school friend, Mariana. Despite Mariana's profession, Hugo's mother has never renounced her friendship; her steadfastness will now be repaid.

Hugo has to spend most of his time in an unheated closet off Mariana's room. German soldiers, "entertained" by Mariana, regularly come within a few feet of him. He overhears all. One by one, the other whores learn of his presence, increasing the danger both to him and to Mariana as the Germans hunt down every last Jew and their protectors. Totally innocent at the outset, Hugo gradually comes to understand the nature of Mariana's work, her self-disgust, depression and resort to alcohol. Despite the haphazard nature of her provision for him, Hugo and Mariana become emotionally important to each other. He hears absolutely nothing of his parents, but realistic scenarios of what might have happened to them occur in his dreams.

As the tide of war turns, the business of the whorehouse falls off and it closes. Hugo and Mariana are then obliged to face the dangers of life on the outside.

With short, simple sentences and a brisk pace, the effect of this novel is reminiscent of a movie, except that a movie would place greater emphasis on dramatic incident and the horror of the situation. As readers, we are left to reflect on such matters for ourselves. Measures of Aharon Appelfeld's success with his story are regret that it is not more extended, and a hope that perhaps there might be a sequel.

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