All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (43 page)

If there was a “Prince of Lithuania,” it would have been our friend Izis, an exceptional, inspired photographer, intimate of the poet Jacques Prévert and André Malraux. Nicolas, my friend from Ambloy and Versailles, helped research the text for his album on Israel, a masterpiece.

I also spent time with Mane Katz, an old friend of Yehuda Mozes, the owner of
Yedioth
, who had asked me to get in touch with him. Short and bubbly, astonishingly agile for his age, he skipped as he walked and talked. He liked to tell anecdotes (true or invented) about his vague resemblance to Ben-Gurion. A woman supposedly fell in love with him when she mistook him for the Israeli prime minister. A spy
offered him Arab military secrets in exchange for a recommendation addressed to the Good Lord Himself, who, as everyone knows, lives somewhere in Jerusalem. A crook offered him a large sum of money for the treasury of the Jewish state. “Funny thing, the moment I reveal my true identity, they disappear,” he added with a chuckle.

His apartment looked like a storehouse of Jewish antiques. Ritual objects and ancient books were scattered everywhere, in indescribable disorder: on the floor, on the bed, and even under it. I wondered how he managed to sleep, live, and paint in such chaos, but somehow he did. There was always a bottle of whiskey or vodka under his blanket, and we would drink out of cups as we chatted. He told me of his childhood in Kremenchug, his nomadic adolescence, and his early years in Paris, where he came into contact with the greatest names in the art world. He was jealous of Picasso and especially of Chagall. He knew countless stories about the former’s love life and the latter’s intrigues to advance his career.

One day when he was in an especially good mood, he told me he had a present for me. “I’m alone in the world,” he explained, “for all practical purposes without an heir. The jackals will get their claws on my canvases. So why don’t you take a few?” Without waiting for an answer, he brought them out to me, and I don’t know which touched me more, his generosity or the atmosphere that permeated his work. His pictures were of old Hasidim and their young disciples, and resonated with the melodies that filled my memory. I needed the warmth that seemed to pour from his paintings, a warmth that carried me back to a world swallowed by history. “What about it?” Mane Katz asked. “This present will be worth millions someday, and you don’t even say thank you?” He laughed, while I was so gripped by emotion that I felt like hiding. “Thank you,” I finally managed to stammer, “a thousand thanks, but I cannot accept such an extravagant gift.” He was speechless. “What, are you crazy?” he said. “I offer you treasures and you turn them down? You don’t like my work? If Chagall or Picasso gave you some canvases, would you refuse them too?” He shook with anger. “I love your work,” I told him. “Really I do. It’s just that as a journalist I can’t accept gifts. It’s a question of professional ethics.” He exploded with indignation, telling me that ethics had nothing to do with it. We argued about it for a while. Finally, he sat down on his bed, legs folded under him, and pointed to a stool. “Okay,” he said. “Explain your ethics to me.” I tried to beg off, but he insisted. Citing ancient sources
that had nothing to do with the matter at hand, some drawn from Scripture, others from my own imagination, I spoke for an hour or two, or perhaps until dawn. I talked about the duty of objectivity, the pitfalls of complacency, explaining that a reporter is both witness and judge, and that the Bible is scathing in its criticism of judges who take gifts. I don’t know if I convinced him, but I do know I wasn’t telling the truth. Actually, I turned down his gift because I was too poor; I had no place to put such valuable works. My only possessions were a typewriter and a suitcase. What would I do—hang the paintings in my suitcase?

Another “gift” I declined torments me to this day. The Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever and my colleague Léon Leneman were both close friends of Marc Chagall. One day they sent me a message from the artist. It seems he liked my book
Souls on Fire
and proposed that we collaborate on a book about the great masters and their disciples. He would do the illustrations.

I hesitated and procrastinated, delaying my response. Finally, I let this project, a chance to work with one of the century’s great painters, slip away.

One gift I was lucky enough to reject was a pair of shoes. At a Zionist meeting an elegant, seemingly educated man approached me. He spoke halting French but perfect Yiddish. He told me he was from my region and asked if we could have coffee together. We went to an outdoor café and he told me an interesting tale. He remembered Sighet, which he had passed through during the war. Drafted into the labor battalion, he had followed the Hungarian army through Poland and into Ukraine. Now he was an international businessman. Import-export—the magic words. He was making so much money he didn’t know how to spend it. “Listen,” he said. “I have a brand-new pair of expensive shoes. They’re too small for me, and I’d be delighted if you would wear them.” I refused. He insisted, but to no avail. No longer a starving Sorbonne student, I owned a perfectly good pair of shoes. But he refused to take no for an answer, acting as though his future were at stake. I therefore fell back on my standard argument: professional ethics. It sounded less convincing in Yiddish than in French, but I can be stubborn when I have to be. I don’t remember exactly how we parted, except that he asked for my card.

A few weeks later I was summoned to the Quai des Orfèvres, national police headquarters. My heart was in my throat as I walked in.
Kafka was right: You can feel guilty even when you don’t know what you’re accused of.

The
commissaire
who received me looked like a detective in a crime film: impassive face, icy voice, penetrating stare. He asked to see identification, and I showed him my press card. “Citizen of?” Stateless, I said. “I see.” He pondered in silence while examining a file on the desk in front of him. I would have given a lot to know what was in that file. “So,” he finally said, glancing at me sidelong as if to see if I would fall into the trap, “tell me about Vargas.” I told the policeman I didn’t know any Vargas. “Are you sure?” His voice seemed threatening. “You maintain you don’t know Vargas?” My brain whirled. If I gave the wrong answer, I was obviously in deep trouble, but I didn’t know any Vargas, except for the president of Brazil, which is what I told him. Did the
commissaire
think I was toying with him and with the authority he represented? “Okay,” he said. “Forget Vargas. Tell me about Jacques Rubinstein.” Rubinstein? I knew a tailor named Rubinstein on the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, but his name was Boris, not Jacques. I also knew a medical student by that name whose father had just died, but that was Albert. The
commissaire
was obviously displeased. “All right,” he said. “Let’s forget Jacques Rubinstein too. What do you know about Kurt Zeligman? And don’t tell me you don’t know him either.” Unfortunately, I was forced to admit that I knew Zeligman no better than I knew Vargas or Rubinstein. Surely this
commissaire
was anti-Semitic. What did he want from me? I was so tense I thought I would eventually confess to every unsolved crime in Paris. Without taking his eyes off me, he opened another file and slid a photograph across the table to me. “I suppose you don’t know him either,” he said sarcastically. I gave a start. “But that’s …” The
commissaire
jumped. “That’s who?” The man with the shoes, I said. “Shoes?” he exclaimed, clearly excited. “Did you say shoes?” I told him the whole story, and he picked up the phone and issued instructions that were later explained to me. The man in question had been traveling from continent to continent on false passports. He was wanted by Interpol. He had just stolen some diamonds which, thanks to me, would now be returned to their rightful owner. When I asked the
commissaire
how they had connected me to all this, he explained with a smile, “Your card. We found it in his pocket. If you hadn’t mentioned that business about the shoes, we would have had to let him go.” The
commissaire
invited me to attend the trial. The thief did not act guilty. He claimed to speak only Yiddish,
and after considerable effort the court managed to come up with a sworn interpreter. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to several years in prison. I’m not sure why but I avoided looking at him as I left the courtroom.

Years later he sent me an angry letter. “If you had agreed to wear my shoes, we would both be millionaires today.”

I finally met Mendès-France at a reception at the Weizmann Institute in New York, but by then he was out of power. So I never did get that scoop, though not for lack of trying. But there is always a reason for everything in this life, even if it takes time to see the links. It was thanks to Mendès-France that I made the acquaintance of François Mauriac, whom I had initially contacted in the forlorn hope that he might help me get an interview with Mendès-France, whose intellectual master he was. Yet it was my encounter with the great writer and Nobel laureate that turned out to be one of the most important in my life.

I first saw Mauriac in 1955 during an Independence Day celebration at the Israeli embassy. As always, he was surrounded by a throng of people hanging on his every word, and I wasn’t sure how to approach him. Plagued by my usual cursed timidity, I stood on his right, on his left, and finally directly in front of him, not daring to open my mouth. Constantly underfoot, I was unable to utter a single word. At last he said goodbye to his official hosts. “Now or never,” I said to myself, but he was already on his way out. I followed. Someone handed him his overcoat, and I helped him put it on. He must have thought I was part of the embassy staff, because he shook my hand and thanked me for the warm welcome. “No,” I began to stammer, but he went on, “I’m delighted you invited me. Israel is dear to my heart, and I enjoy participating in its celebrations. God knows it has every right to celebrate.”

Overcoming my embarrassment, I told him I was not a diplomat but a journalist. He asked which paper I worked for. I told him and quickly asked for an interview. I expected him to plead lack of time or to tell me to call his secretary, but instead he took out an appointment book, and an instant later, I was the world’s happiest journalist. “Are you sure you’re not busy that day?” he asked. I was sure. “But you didn’t even check your book.” No need, I told him as we shook hands. You only had to dare, I told myself, and the rest was easy.

It was easy, that is, except for the usual waiting. To make time pass, I wrote a few pieces: Paris by night, Paris on Sunday, Paris at dawn. A colleague of mine—Yerahmiel Viernik, a former leader in Jabotinsky’s party and editor in chief of the review that had published my long piece on Beethoven—joined me for an all-night walk through Pigalle, the Parisian red-light district. We bought some french fries and stood under the glaring lights of a café counter drinking coffee and discussing (don’t laugh!) the poetry of Chaim Nahman Bialik, the man who had said that words were whores. Not surprisingly, none of the working girls approached us. No doubt they realized at a glance that we were not prospective customers. Luckily, they didn’t understand our Hebrew, or they would have collapsed in laughter. Back home I faced the astonished smiles of the Lenemans sitting at their breakfast table. It was the first time I had stayed out all night, but they were too discreet to ask questions. “I was out working on an article,” I told them. I had completely forgotten that I was supposedly involved in a complicated love affair. They must have thought me a wretched liar.

The next day I was invited to a performance of the Marquis de Cuevas dance company. In truth, I am not a lover of dance. But that night I was the guest of a member of the Israeli parliament—Shraggai, a politician friend of Viernik’s and mine. He adored ballet, and for me it simply meant spending a couple of hours in his company. A tireless emissary of his movement, Shraggai had clear blue eyes, a thick, drooping moustache, and incredible charm. If he didn’t know everybody, he knew everything everybody wanted to know about everybody else. I loved listening to his gossip, predictions, and analyses. Besides which, he told me he had a pleasant surprise for me.

He was right about that. The surprise was a young American student whose beauty left me breathless. Her name was Kathleen and that night she tiptoed into my life. I liked her name, its melodious sound. Everything about this girl was attractive: her dark brown eyes, silky black shoulder-length hair, a discreet, mysterious smile. I knew if I lowered my guard I would be hit by one of those thunderbolts I never knew how to handle. So of course I lowered my guard.

I pretended to be absorbed in the show and to ignore the young American girl seated between Shraggai and me. But suddenly I forgot all about my appointment with Mauriac. I forgot about Mendès-France. I even forgot about Givon. A single question popped into
my mind: Was she Jewish? But then, did it really matter? After all, I wasn’t going to marry her. Just the same, I was curious. During the intermission she left us for a moment. “So?” Shraggai asked. “Not bad,” I lied, “but believe me, I’m not interested.” He wanted to know what I was interested in. Mauriac and Mendès-France, I told him. He didn’t believe me, and I tried to convince him. In the meantime, Kathleen came back. Having overheard snatches of our exchange, she asked me about Mauriac and about my work. My English left a lot to be desired and her French wasn’t great, so Shraggai acted as interpreter. She asked me why I thought Mauriac was “underrated” in her country. The word was unfamiliar to me, and there followed an incongruous but intense discussion about the difference between “underrated” and “underestimated.” Suddenly Kathleen took my arm and asked, “Would you like me to give you English lessons?” Ask a child if he wants candy, a sick man if he wants to live. “And you can help me with my French, all right?” Shraggai watched, amused; I had fallen into the trap he had set for me.

The bell rang to alert us to return to our seats. I continued to feign enthusiasm, applauding in all the right places, admiring the choreography and the ballerinas. It’s amazing what you’ll do for someone you’re about to fall in love with, someone you already love. Had Kathleen suggested we go onstage for a few
entrechats
, I would have followed her without fear of ridicule. Maybe that’s what love is: not to fear. But I had feared it all my life, and when the curtain came down, the old inhibitions resurfaced.