Legends of Our Time (12 page)

When he finished I said, “That was beautiful.”

I had been moved and I would have liked to shake his hand. And tell him: “You trouble me, I will follow you.” But his expression suddenly changed and I dared not move. His bloated face grew purple with rage. He approached me, seized me by the shoulders, shook me violently, and began to shout with contempt.

“That’s all you can find to say? That it was beautiful? You imbecile, I scoff at beauty. It’s nothing but façade, it’s only decoration: words die away in the night without enriching it. When will you understand that a beautiful answer is nothing? Nothing more than illusion? Man defines himself by what disturbs him and not by what reassures him. When will you understand that you are living and searching in error, because God means movement and not explanation.”

With that he relaxed his attack and hurried out quickly, leaving behind his heavy and mysterious anger.

Somebody burst out laughing and consoled me.

“Don’t let it bother you, young man. He’s strange in his relations with people who admire him or flee him. You mustn’t hold it against him, that would only lead you into his trap anyway. You mustn’t take his insults to heart. He likes to provoke suffering, it’s his favorite pastime, his stimulant. He has already ridiculed people older than you, more learned too. He wouldn’t be able to survive without his daily victim.”

And so, for the first time, I came up against his legend. I learned many stories praising his strength; he knew everything about everybody while always himself remaining in shadow. He had read every work, important or obscure, penetrated every secret, traveled through every country; he was at home everywhere and nowhere. Nobody knew where he lived, what he lived on. Who were his friends, his rivals? People called him Rebbe and did not even know whether he was observant. He recognized no law, no authority, neither that of the community nor that of the individual. Did he submit to divine will? There again, mystery. He seemed to arrive, always unexpectedly, from a distant shore, some enchanted country. The years had no hold over his body, nor over his mind: he was ageless. He remained the same, defying the imagination, provoking time itself.

Until late in the evening, those Jews in the synagogue
talked to me about him, and I listened, straining painfully, as I had listened long ago, as a child, amazed, to the stories the Hasidim used to tell with such fervor, between the prayers of
Minhah
and
Maariv
, stories of the miracles wrought by the
Tzadik
, the companion and servant of God.

“Don’t let it bother you, young man,” repeated the man who was trying to console me. “It’s a privilege to be insulted by our visitor.”

“But who is he? What does he do when he doesn’t have a victim in hand? Where does he hide and why? What must one do to meet him?”

The Jews shrugged their shoulders. Some thought him fabulously rich, others completely impoverished. “He’s a madman who makes fun at our expense,” declared one old gray-beard. His neighbor protested: “No, no, he is a saint, one of the just, and his mission on earth is to shake us up; we all need to have someone stir us up from time to time, no?” The bearded man assented: “Indeed, you are right, we do need it, otherwise the soul would rot in its casing. But I tell you, I don’t like our visitor, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t trust me; I think he’s in the service of Satan, it’s Satan who protects him and assures him his victories. To what end, at what price? I’d like to know. I’m afraid of knowing.”

Someone recalled the following episode. During the occupation, our itinerant orator was arrested by the Germans. When interrogated by a Gestapo officer, he declared he was Alsatian, Aryan, and, what’s more, a professor of higher mathematics in a German university. The officer guffawed:

“You teach at the university? You? You expect me to swallow that?”

“Certainly,” said the vagabond, without blinking.

“Show me your papers.”

“I lost them. In a bombing raid.”

The officer leaned forward, then said to the accused:
“You’ve fallen into the wrong hands, my little Yid. In civilian life I myself am a professor of higher mathematics.”

The Jew was not the least bit upset.

“What luck, my dear colleague! Happy to make your acquaintance! Naturally, I could propose that you question me. But, I have a better suggestion. I will give
you
a little examination. Here is a problem. If you find the solution, shoot me: I promise not to protest. But if it escapes you, you will let me go without asking any more questions.”

The officer accepted the bargain. The “professor” soon found himself free again and then succeeded in crossing into Switzerland, where the Chief Rabbi became one of his devoted admirers. How did he manage to get across the border?

“Nothing could be more logical,” said the suspicious old man. “It was Satan who came to his aid.”

“Not at all,” retorted his neighbor. “Do you really imagine Satan would help a Jew save his skin? I maintain our visitor is blessed—which would explain everything. Death had no hold over David while he was chanting his Psalms; in the same way, it is powerless before our visitor so long as he disturbs our torpor. Like all of us, death stands in awe of his temper.”

That night I could not and did not want to sleep. After leaving the synagogue I walked the streets and alleys of the sleeping city, driven on by an unacknowledged hope that I would see him rise before me, behind me, suddenly, like a criminal, like a sage in the guise of a beggar, to tell me: “Dawn is breaking, follow me.” Dawn broke, I went home alone.

I had to find him again, no matter at what cost. It was him I had been seeking since the end of the war, since the death of my teachers, since their fire consumed itself among the burning coals, somewhere in Silesia. He alone would be in a position to take their place and show me
what road to follow, and perhaps even reveal where it leads. To find him again, confront him, beg him. But where? With whose help? With what clue, with what help? I returned often to the synagogue on Rue Pavé; the faithful already knew me and understood the true purpose of my visits: it was not God who drew me there. They teased me, indulgently: “Hey there, young man, you want to be insulted some more?” “Yes,” I answered. They smiled: “Patience, young man, patience. He will return, he always returns, but it is impossible to predict when, with him it’s impossible to predict anything.”

Yes, he was the wandering Jew. Was he still in France? Think him here, he was already elsewhere, always somewhere else, in India, in Morocco, in Katmandu, in the heat of the desert or sailing the high seas: how was one to know? With him, all certainties turned to dust.

A few months later. Gare du Nord. I was taking the train for Taverny. I made my way there twice a week to teach a class on the prophets to a group of young Polish and Hungarian refugees, all of them survivors of the camps; in transit in France, they were living in an O.S.E. chateau while awaiting visas for Palestine.

My nose in my notes, I was going over my lecture when someone called out to me. I gave a start: that disagreeable, harsh voice. Yes, it was he. Unshaven, dirty, in rags, wearing the same old little hat: a circus character.

“Come here!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “There’s a seat here, next to me!”

The passengers shot us disapproving glances. I felt embarrassed and relieved at the same time: embarrassed to be seen in the company of a creature so ugly, but relieved to have found him again at last, when I had been sure I would never see him again.

“Where are you going?”

I told him the purpose of my trip. He gave his irony free rein.

“No, really? Extraordinary! I’d have expected anything but that! You, a professor, you! Now we’ve seen everything! The seeker turned guide, that’s it, isn’t it? Well, good, tell me about it. Tell me what you teach them, your pupils. Let me profit from it, too, won’t you?”

I did not want to, but he insisted. Seized with uneasiness, I could oblige only by mumbling some incoherent sentences about the Book of Job: that tale was in high style then, every survivor of the holocaust could have written it. In my class I spoke of the origin of the dialogue between man and his fellowman. And between God and Satan. I also dealt with the importance attributed to silence as a setting. Then the idea of friendship and justice, and to what extent the one diminishes the other. And the notion of victory in prophetic thought. What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy? His triumph or his fall?

Feigning interest, my companion stared at me with a condescending look. He was enjoying himself, that was obvious. He did not interrupt, but periodically emitted dry groans which added to my agitation: I no longer knew what I was saying, nor what I was trying to prove. Everything was muddled in my mind, I was hearing myself talk and it was someone else who was reciting a badly-learned, disjointed lesson. Everything rang false. Finally, I stopped, out of breath, on the verge of tears.

“That’s all?” asked the hobo, implacable.

“Yes, I think so …”

“Ah well, poor Job,” he scoffed, “as if he hadn’t already suffered enough without you!”

With that, he subjected me to a close interrogation which was to have been the final blow. My knowledge, acquired over the years at the cost of many sleepless nights and much renunciation, now slipped away like sand. I believed I knew the Talmud? Mistake. I thought I understood Rashi’s commentaries? Illusion. I could recite the Psalms by heart? So much the worse; that was pure presumption since I did not even grasp the first line.

The blood was pounding in my temples, a vague pain
was spreading through my body. Then I had lived for nothing, cheating, lying to myself. I had wasted my childhood, my youth; all my experience was nothing but empty boast. Like Job, I cursed the day I was born, I wanted to die, to disappear, to expunge my shame, to redeem myself. The hobo found this amusing. The more I talked, the deeper I sank into my own ignorance. I was touching madness, I was going to lose the use of my tongue, become a child again, speechless, innocent. I began to pray: “Please, God, let us reach Taverny soon, before it is too late, because I can bear it no more.” Taverny signified the promised land; there torturer and victim would say good-bye, or better farewell, my punishment would come to an end. The slowness of the suburban train exasperated me. Ordinarily the trip lasted an hour, but now it seemed to be taking eternity. Still, the hobo granted me no respite: his harsh and unpleasant voice pursued me. I thought: “The gray-bearded old man at the synagogue was right; he is Satan, he wants to destroy me; I won’t put up with him any longer, let him go away, let him leave me in peace, I won’t play his game anymore.”

Suddenly the train stopped. The conductor called out: “Taverny-y-y!” I shook myself to pull myself together. Ironically, the hobo imitated my gestures. I held out my hand: “I get off here.” He stood up and said: “So do I.” And he pretended not to understand my confusion.

Below, near the exit, I asked him where he was going.

“What a question! With you, of course!”

“With me?” I cried out, horrified.

“Yes, I’ve decided to accompany you.”

But why? For what reason? He did not know yet.

“I’ll know when we get there.”

But for the love of heaven, who had invited him? No one, of course.

“I consider myself a free man, I go where I please, when I please, with whomever I please.”

“And what about me? How do I figure in your calculations?”

“Too soon to tell, we’ll see.”

After a silent walk of about twenty minutes, we arrived at the chateau, where the sight of my companion provoked general laughter. I was intending to return to Paris the same night. I stayed a whole week. So did he.

My class was to meet outdoors, in the early afternoon. During lunch the old man watched me in silence; he was making me ill. I did not touch the food. Neither did he.

My nerves raw, I discouraged conversation at the table. I had premonitions of disaster: with him here, my exposition was sure to be a failure. How to get him out of the way? Say to him: “I beg you, Mr. Unknown, please be so kind as to go for a walk and come back this evening”? Sooner bury myself alive. Besides, my request would have been in vain. This was too good an opportunity for him, he was not going to miss it.

The director sent his charges outdoors for the lecture. With a heavy heart, I followed my pupils. I knew I was lost, there was nothing more to do: the die had been cast.

My companion sat down at my left. Seated in a semicircle under a huge tree whose branches seemed about to collapse, the students scrutinized us with a mischievous look. The hobo intimidated me, that was clear, and they could hardly understand why. They chattered among themselves and exchanged unkind remarks about him, no doubt about me as well. I called for silence while realizing that I had forgotten everything: I no longer knew even which chapter we were supposed to discuss. Fortunately, at the last moment, just as I was about to open the session, the grotesque old man touched my arm and curtly announced his decision to speak in my place. The pupils roared with laughter. I have never felt so relieved. The speaker cleared his throat.

“I know you are studying the tragedy of Job. I suggest
we leave him to dress his wounds. I have the impression he has been badly mishandled here these past few weeks.”

He gave me a side-glance: had I withstood the blow? I lowered my head. My loyal students appreciated the humor of my replacement; they were no longer laughing at him but at me.

“Here’s a suggestion,” the speaker went on seriously. “Suppose each of you tells me what subject is closest to his heart: then I shall discuss them all in a piece. But one condition: make sure the subjects are all different. I hate repetition.”

This rhetorical game became an unforgettable experience. Bible,
Midrash, Zohar:
the questions fused together. Some students, to carry the test to the point of absurdity, questioned him on international politics, on the atomic bomb, and even on superstition in the Middle Ages. The lecturer took no notes whatsoever; his eyelids lowered, closed, he waited until everyone had a turn. Then, without making a move, without preliminary remarks, he attacked the topics head-on, discoursing on each individually and on all together. His voice sounded harsh and unpleasant, but no one took notice. Spellbound, we listened to him, our minds burning, holding our breath, transformed, transported into a strange universe where all beings and objects ripped off their veils, where everything held together and strained toward an Absolute, no matter which, and where—by force of words alone, of nuance, too—man discovered his power and obligation to dispel the chaos which precedes and often follows all creation, to impose on it a meaning, a future. Suddenly each of us realized that all these themes, brought up by chance, pell-mell, were in reality linked to a center, to the same core of clarity. Yes, Cain’s act contains within it that of Titus. Yes, the sacrifice of Isaac prefigures the holocaust, the song of David calls to that of Jeremiah:
hafoch ba vehafoch ba dekula ba
, the Torah is
a whole and everything is in the Torah. Why is the first letter of
Breshit
(the first book of the Pentateuch)
Bet
and not
Aleph
? Because man is too weak to begin: someone has already begun before him. Jacob had chosen exile in order to permit Moses to choose liberty. Whoever turns and looks at the summit of the mountain knows that the beginning prepares the end and that man can act upon his creator, who also studies Torah.