Elie Wiesel (17 page)

With that, I felt liberated. I glanced at my watch: I would be late for my class. If I hurried, I could just make it.

My students noticed nothing. In fact, it was probably the best class of the year, if not of my whole career. We were discussing biblical poetry and its effect on prophecy. I remember my conclusion: “Jeremiah was an activist, but what
remains of him? The politician? No. The poet.” Dina, my best student, was waiting at my office door. “Thank you,” she said, “for making us love Jeremiah.”

I reached home at dusk. Loretta announced that dinner was ready. “I’m not hungry,” I told her. She looked closely at me, and her hand went to her mouth. She retreated to the kitchen. I could not erase Dr. Pasternak from my mind. I had to make an effort not to call him and ask, “How much time does ‘for the moment’ mean? How deep will the erosion go? And just what do you mean by me word ‘miracle’?”

As a Jew, I believed in miracles. Our survival is just that. But according to the Talmud, miracles ceased with the destruction of the Temple. Since then, miracles of another sort, daily and ordinary, occur before our very eyes. I speak to someone who understands what I say—isn’t that a miracle? I love someone who loves me—isn’t that a miracle? Any encounter involves the miraculous. We find it also in the connection between the event and the story of that event. And in the hidden meaning of that story.

The hidden meaning of the written word. There again, I am too much a Jew not to cling to the word. At first it calms me; then it disturbs me.

That’s how it is. I’ve done all I can. There comes a time when words are like stars or prayers, and then all turn to dust.

I am thinking of Zarathustra. We read him in class, I can’t remember when. Nietzsche had him return to the mountains and the solitude of his cave, where he “withdrew from men, waiting like a sower who has scattered his seed. But his soul grew full of impatience and desire for those whom he loved, because he still had much to give them. For this is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves, and to keep a sense of shame while giving.”

Why Zarathustra? Why Nietzsche? Why recall my lectures? To persuade myself that I still have things to give? Is that why I am writing? To remain modest by forgetting what I can no longer give?

Malkiel, one day you asked me why I did not write down my own story.

“I must not,” I answered.

“Try,” you told me.

“I must not even try.”

Fact is, I did try. Several times. I tore up the pages as fast as I filled them. The gaps between my memory and words seemed unbridgeable. Despite the perils of syntax, paradox, and faded images, I’d have hoped for coherence, not perfect but enough to convey the essence of memory. Unfortunately, I never managed to connect all the fragments to a center; too often the words surfaced as obstacles. I fought them instead of making friends with them. And after the battle, exhausted, I contemplated them as if they were corpses. Sometimes, thinking of the dead whose memory I have sworn to preserve, I told myself, To write this story you’d already have to be dead; only the dead can properly write their story. Would forgetting be worse than dying?

I hope that when I sense my end I shall have enough strength to write this: I write these words to say that I can no longer write.

“Malkiel.”

“I’m here, Father.”

“Give your mother something to drink. Can’t you see she’s thirsty?”

“She’s not here, Father. You know she can’t be here.”

“I say she’s here. Talia, tell him you’re here. Your mother is here,
I tell you. And she’s thirsty. What kind of son are you? How can you show your own mother so little respect?”

“Father, look at me. I’m here beside you. In this room there are only the two of us. Even Tamar isn’t here. There’s only you and me, me and you.”

“I don’t believe you, and you don’t believe me. Talia, tell him it is a son’s duty to believe what his father tells him. Tell him it is not good to contradict one’s father. Tell him, Talia.”

“I could make you feel good, Father. I could go along with your fantasy and win your praise. But it would be unhealthy, false, harmful. If I let you go on like that, I’d fall alongside you. And then we’d both be lost.”

“But I see her!”

“You want to see her, so you see her. But remember—” Malkiel bit back the words: his father could not remember, and there was the tragedy.

“I see her as well as I see you, Malkiel. I don’t see anyone else. Talia, my magnificent Talia. Come close to me. Sit, sit. Our son is not wicked. You’ll see; he’ll bring you something to drink.”

“You’re thirsty, Father. Here’s a glass of seltzer.”

“Didn’t I tell you, Talia? What a fine obedient son we have! Aren’t you proud of him?”

“You mustn’t, Father. You mustn’t give in to fantasy. You remember my mother, and that’s good. Every time you remember her is important. But remember, too, that my mother is no longer of this world; I never saw her; I never kissed her cheek. Make an effort—your mind and your life depend on it, and maybe mine, too!”

Slumped, Elhanan seemed old, truly old. “If you’re right, son, help me, help me not to see your mother right here before my eyes just as I see you. Help me—I need your help badly.”

Malkiel got his father to bed. Then he went into the other room. He opened the window and let his thoughts wander through the hostile night.

At first Elhanan wanted to keep his sickness a secret. Rumor had it that he’d had a heart attack. And that he needed total rest: no visits, no aggravation. His sickness was surely not shameful, but he allowed no discussion of it.

One day a colleague came to see him. Without phoning ahead, he rang the doorbell. Loretta, brave Loretta, still hoping for a miracle, decided not to turn him away.

“Elhanan! How happy I am to see you! You look fine. Not in bed? You cannot imagine my joy on hearing that your heart is growing stronger. We worry about you at the university, you know.”

Elhanan listened, but could not quite focus. What did these pleasant banalities have to do with him? He scarcely reacted, so his visitor concluded that he was tired, perhaps depressed. To distract the patient, he retailed rumors and gossip about mutual friends. Elhanan feigned interest and answered, “Is that right? Imagine that.…”

Later on, Malkiel and Tamar encouraged visitors. They helped to fill his days. And who could tell—a word, a tone of voice, might help him recall something of the past.

An Israeli diplomat passing through New York insisted on spending an afternoon with him. Lean, almost ascetic, tense, this former Haganah officer had fought beside Elhanan in the Old City of Jerusalem. Together they had been shipped to the Jordanian desert as prisoners of war. “So you’re on sick leave, are you?”

Elhanan was in an armchair, a woolen blanket over his knees.

“Sick of extra duty, is that it?”

“It will pass,” Elhanan said.

“Do you remember that boy who brought us water? He
had a limp, poor kid. And the Jordanian sergeant who made us search the tents twice a day, remember him? We used to make fun of him.”

“The boy,” Elhanan said. “The Old City.”

“Yes. He slipped through the cellars and rubble like a mouse. You were fond of him.”

Suddenly the veil parted: Elhanan saw it all clearly. Jerusalem, 1948. “It’s coming back to me,” he said. “That was Israel’s time of glory.”

“Glory? And sorrow.”

They stayed up past midnight swapping old memories. Tamar and Malkiel, in the background, listened without making a sound. They were moved by an absurd hope: All was not lost. With the right key, you could unlock the doors of memory. And keys were easy enough to come by.

A few weeks later, when summer had arrived, Elhanan was visited by a woman he had treated for a nervous breakdown. She was young and frail, her expression warm and generous: she liked to give, to give of herself. “I heard you were sick, Professor,” she said at once. “Is there anything I can do?”

Elhanan recognized her but could not place her.

“Do you remember me, Professor?”

“Of course, of course.”

“A mutual friend, one of your colleagues, referred me to you. I came to see you. Anyway … one disaster after another: divorce, sickness, disappointment—I was suicidal. Without you, who knows …?”

Elhanan nodded.

“How many times did I come to burden you with my personal problems? You listened patiently and—how shall I say it?—seriously. And once you told me something I’ll never forget: Sometimes you let yourself be taken prisoner so you
can help other prisoners escape, and it’s the same for certain diseases—make use of your own to cure someone else’s.”

Elhanan was startled. A moment of his past came back to him in gusts. He should have devoted more time to therapy. But what about the teaching? Was he wrong to combine the two callings?

The woman took his hands. “Now it’s my turn to help you,” she said. “Just tell me how.”

“Another time,” Elhanan said.

She left in haste. At the door, out of his sight, she burst into tears.

Other visitors came to the house, former students and patients. Malkiel had never realized it, but his father enjoyed a solid reputation in the academic community. Because he was likable? and good? and wise? Because he greeted every man and woman without condescension? No one had ever heard him raise his voice.

“Do you see?” Malkiel asked him. “When you talk, your brain works better. Why not try to tell us more about your life?”

Very late one evening, Elhanan asked for a glass of hot tea, cleared his throat and invited Malkiel and Tamar to sit on the edge of the bed. “Usually,” he said between sips, “a man talks and cannot make himself heard. Just imagine if a man could make himself heard without talking! I would have liked to be that man.”

Without consulting each other, Tamar and Malkiel kissed him on his forehead.

O
ld Haskel, shivering Haskel, Elhanan remembered him. He was always cold, Haskel, hence the nickname. Beard, mustache, bushy sidelocks—he rubbed his hands for warmth while he talked, while he prayed, even while he ate. Elhanan was fond of him. He saw him in the morning, at the
mikvah.
Haskel was in charge of the ritual baths, and he never spoke. He greeted his guests with nods and indicated by gestures where they could go to undress.

Was he mute from birth? They said he had been a preacher in a Ukrainian village. They said he drew great crowds, and made them weep, and incited them to repentance. They said so many things about him. Did he know that? He never showed it.

Yet there was some truth to the rumors, as Elhanan learned from his father. Haskel was not a simple bath attendant. His muteness was not a whim. It was imposed upon him by his talent and his preacher’s calling.

Some years before, on a Thursday afternoon, he had appeared—hungry, haggard, a bundle on his shoulder—before the rabbi of Feherfalu, to pay his respects and ask permission to preach that Saturday afternoon in the great synagogue. The rabbi questioned him, and admired his
learning as much as his piety, and granted permission. Better yet: the rabbi promised to come himself and listen.

The synagogue was full, as if it were the eve of Yom Kippur. Men old and young, learned Talmudic scholars and simple artisans, students and merchants—they were all there. They all wanted to hear this preacher, whose reputation had preceded him. Was he really so eloquent? Yes indeed, he was. Draped in his tallith, he ascended the bimah, kissed the purple velvet cloth that covered the holy ark, leaned on the pulpit and commenced his discussion of the week’s
Sidrah
in melodious and incantatory tones. His text was Joseph’s reunion with his brothers in Egypt. The text says, “
Vayitapek
Joseph, Joseph controlled himself and refrained from bursting into tears.” From which we draw the lesson: It is better not to display our emotions; secret sobs are more real than the others. The orator developed this theme for an hour, dazzling his audience with Talmudic quotations, legends from the Midrash and references to Mussar literature. In the front rows wise men nodded and agreed with his every conclusion. The Hasidim loved these stories. The rabbi, eyes closed, listened with an air of admiring concentration.

And suddenly the preacher stopped. He looked at his audience and seemed to hesitate. Would he go on, or would he not? He shook himself and, in a quieter voice, more intense and intimate, began to speak not of the remote or immediate past but of the present. “But there comes a time when one cannot, one must not, contain one’s sorrow. To weep, Joseph had to leave his brothers. I am only a simple Jew.” Abruptly he pulled the tallith down over his forehead. They could not see his eyes. They could see only his mouth, twisted in pain. “Joseph wept,” the orator went on. “Why did he weep? Because he had just found his brothers again?
I shall never find mine. Joseph’s brothers were still alive, and mine are not. The enemy has killed my brothers.” The narrative followed, a chain of bitter tragedies. In the balcony, women sobbed. Down below, the young students could not understand why the old men had lowered their gaze. At some point the rabbi, who had been seated on the bimah, approached the speaker and whispered a few words in his ear. The orator looked at him from beneath the tallith and answered in a loud, clear voice, “I know, I know that today is the Sabbath, and that one has no right to be sad during the Sabbath, but my pain is too great.”