One Generation After (8 page)

Feverishly, furiously, my hands claw the earth, impervious to cold, fatigue and pain. One scratch, then another. No matter. Continue. My nails inch ahead, my fingers dig in, I bear down, my every fiber participates in the task. Little by little the hole deepens. I must hurry. My forehead touches the ground. Almost. I break out in a cold sweat, I am drenched, delirious. Faster, faster. I shall rip the earth from end to end, but I must know. Nothing can stop or frighten me. I’ll go to the bottom of my fear, to the bottom of night, but I will know.

What time is it? How long have I been here? Five minutes, five hours? Twenty years. This night was defying time. I was laboring to exhume not an object but time itself, the soul and memory of that time. Nothing could be more urgent, more vital.

Suddenly a shiver goes through me. A sharp sensation, like a bite. My fingers touch something hard, metallic, rectangular. So I have not been digging in vain. The garden is spinning around me, over me. I stand up to catch my breath. A moment later, I’m on my knees again. Cautiously, gently I take the box from its tomb. Here it is, in the palm of my hand: the last relic, the only remaining symbol of everything I had loved, of everything I had been. A voice inside me warns: Don’t open it, it contains nothing but emptiness, throw it away and run. I cannot heed the warning; it is too late to turn back. I need to know, either way. A slight pressure of my thumb and the box opens. I stifle the cry rising in my throat: the watch is there. Quick, a match. And another. Fleetingly, I catch a glimpse of it. The pain is blinding: could this thing, this object, be my gift, my pride? My past? Covered with dirt and rust, crawling with worms, it
is unrecognizable, revolting. Unable to move, wondering what to do, I remain staring at it with the disgust one feels for love betrayed or a body debased. I am angry with myself for having yielded to curiosity. But disappointment gives way to profound pity: the watch too lived through war and holocaust, the kind reserved for watches perhaps. In its way, it too is a survivor, a ghost infested with humiliating sores and obsolete memories. Suddenly I feel the urge to carry it to my lips, dirty as it is, to kiss and console it with my tears, as one might console a living being, a sick friend returning from far away and requiring much kindness and rest, especially rest.

I touch it, I caress it. What I feel, besides compassion, is a strange kind of gratitude. You see, the men I had believed to be immortal had vanished into fiery clouds. My teachers, my friends, my guides had all deserted me. While this thing, this nameless, lifeless thing had survived for the sole purpose of welcoming me on my return and providing an epilogue to my childhood. And there awakens in me a desire to confide in it, to tell it my adventures, and in exchange, listen to its own. What had happened in my absence: who had first taken possession of my house, my bed? Or rather, no; our confidences could wait for another time, another place: Paris, New York, Jerusalem. But first I would entrust it to the best jeweler in the world, so that the watch might recover its luster, its memory of the past.

It is growing late. The horizon is turning a deep red. I must go. The tenants will soon be waking, they will come down to the well for water. No time to lose. I stuff the watch into my pocket and cross the garden. I enter the courtyard. From under the porch a dog barks. And stops at once: he knows I am not a
thief, anything but a thief. I open the gate. Halfway down the street I am overcome by violent remorse: I have just committed my first theft.

I turn around, retrace my steps through courtyard and garden. Again I find myself kneeling, as at Yom Kippur services, beneath the poplar. Holding my breath, my eyes refusing to cry, I place the watch back into its box, close the cover, and my first gift once more takes refuge deep inside the hole. Using both hands, I smoothly fill in the earth to remove all traces.

Breathless and with pounding heart, I reach the still deserted street. I stop and question the meaning of what I have just done. And find it inexplicable.

In retrospect, I tell myself that probably I simply wanted to leave behind me, underneath the silent soil, a reflection of my presence. Or that somehow I wanted to transform my watch into an instrument of delayed vengeance: one day, a child would play in the garden, dig near the tree and stumble upon a metal box. He would thus learn that his parents were usurpers, and that among the inhabitants of his town, once upon a time, there had been Jews and Jewish children, children robbed of their future.

The sun was rising and I was still walking through the empty streets and alleys. For a moment I thought I heard the chanting of schoolboys studying Talmud; I also thought I heard the invocations of Hasidim reciting morning prayers in thirty-three places at once. Yet above all these incantations, I heard distinctly, but as though coming from far away, the tick-tock of
the watch I had just buried in accordance with Jewish custom. It was, after all, the very first gift that a Jewish child had once been given for his very first celebration.

Since that day, the town of my childhood has ceased being just another town. It has become the face of a watch.

A disciple came to see Rebbe Pinhas of Koretz.

“Help me, Master,” he said. “My distress is great; make it disappear. The world is filled with anguish and sadness. Men are not men. I have no faith in them, or in myself. I have faith in nothing. What shall I do, Rebbe, what shall I do?”

“Go and study. It’s the only remedy I know.”

“Woe unto me, I cannot even study,” said the disciple. “So strong are my doubts, so all-pervasive, that they prevent me from studying. I open the Talmud and contemplate it. For weeks, months on end, I remain riveted to the same page. I cannot go further, not even by a step, not even by a line. What can I do, Rebbe, what can I do?”

When a Jew can provide no answer, he at least has a story to tell. And so Rebbe Pinhas of Koretz replied: “Know that what is happening to you also happened to me. When I was your age I stumbled over the same difficulties. I too was filled with questions and doubts. About the Creator and His creation. I too could not advance. I tried study, prayer, meditation. In vain. Fasting, penitence, silence. In vain. My doubts remained doubts, my questions remained open. Impossible to proceed.
Then, one day, I learned that Rebbe Israel Baal Shem-Tov would be coming to our town. Curiosity led me to the house where he was praying. When I entered he was finishing the
Amida
. He turned around and the intensity in his eyes overwhelmed me. I knew he was not looking at me alone, yet I knew that I was less alone. Suddenly, without a word, I was able to go home, open the Talmud and plunge into my studies once more.

“You see,” said Rebbe Pinhas of Koretz to his disciple, “the questions remained questions, my doubts were still as heavy with anguish, but I was able to continue.”

*

Like all Jewish children of my town, I had to prepare a speech for my bar mitzvah, the ceremony which at thirteen would mark my acceptance by the community as a full member.

A few days before the event, I went to see my Rebbe and pleaded with him not to attend: “Try to understand, I will not dare open my mouth in your presence. Whatever new insights I may have, I have from you. Whatever I could say, you already know. And better than I. To speak with you present would be like playing teacher in front of my teacher.”

He was a gentle man, fond of solitude. That is why it surprised me when he refused my request: “You want to exclude me from your celebration? I am sorry, but I shall be there.” But seeing my agitation, he quickly added: “Later you will teach, you will communicate what you are now acquiring from me and others like me. I shall no longer be here to listen. But remember: I don’t ask the storyteller to play the role of master; all I ask is that he fulfill his duty as messenger and witness.”

To the astonishment of my parents and friends, I went through the ceremony without a speech.

*

This is the story of a ghetto that stopped living, and of a beadle who lost his mind.

It was the beadle’s custom to rush to the synagogue each morning, to ascend the bimah and shout first with pride, and then with anger: “I have come to inform you, Master of the Universe, that we are here.”

Then came the first massacre, followed by many others. The beadle somehow always emerged unscathed. As soon as he could, he would run to the synagogue, and pounding his fist on the lectern, would shout at the top of his voice: “You see, Lord, we are still here.”

After the last massacre, he found himself all alone in the deserted synagogue. The last living Jew, he climbed the bimah one last time, stared at the Ark and whispered with infinite gentleness: “You see? I am still here.”

He stopped briefly before continuing in his sad, almost toneless voice: “But You, where are You?”

*

They called him the madman, the ghetto madman. The starving gave him a crust of bread, a few potato peels. He amused and distracted them. As for the killers, they seemed to spare him. The convoys came and went, but he was left behind. People asked:

“How do you manage to escape the roundups?”

“A very important person is protecting me.”

“And who is he?”

“The Council Chairman himself. I went to see him and told him that no community could survive without its madman. ‘If you kill me, or allow me to be killed, you will take my place; you will be me.’ ”

Then the argument became pointless: there was no more community.

*

In a macabre display of humor, the killers informed the ghetto dwellers that ten hostages were to be hanged in reprisal for the execution of Haman and his sons, two thousand years earlier, in the Kingdom of Ahasuerus, as related in the Book of Esther.

Among the hostages, all bearing the name of Mordecai, after Esther’s uncle, there was one poor man, a water-carrier by trade. He was the only one to go to the scaffold laughing. He was roaring with laughter.

“Have you gone crazy?”

“What an idea! Of course not!” he replied, shrieking with laughter.

“You are not afraid to die?”

“Afraid? Scared out of my wits!”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“One thing has nothing to do with the other.” And he explained to the executioners: “Today I am Mordecai, the water-carrier. But tomorrow! Tomorrow I’ll be Mordecai the Martyr, Mordecai the Saint; and him you’ll never hang, never.”

And he laughed. And there were no tears in his eyes.

*

Having concluded that human suffering was beyond endurance, a certain Rebbe went up to heaven and knocked at the Messiah’s gate.

“Why are you taking so long?” he asked him. “Don’t you know mankind is expecting you?”

“It’s not me they are expecting,” answered the Messiah. “Some are waiting for good health and riches. Others for serenity and knowledge. Or peace in the home and happiness. No, it’s not me they are awaiting.”

At this point, they say, the Rebbe lost patience and cried: “So be it! If you have but one face, may it remain in shadow! If you cannot help men, all men, resolve their problems, all their problems, even the most insignificant, then stay where you are, as you are. If you still have not guessed that you are bread for the hungry, a voice for the old man without heirs, sleep for those who dread night, if you have not understood all this and more: that every wait is a wait for you, then you are telling the truth: indeed, it is not you that mankind is waiting for.”

The Rebbe came back to earth, gathered his disciples and forbade them to despair:

“And now the true waiting begins.”

*

Yesterday a beautiful young girl of exemplary behavior saw twilight approaching through the window as if to take possession of her. Her heart began to pound. She turned to her father, who was quietly reading his paper.

“I love you very much, Father,” she said. “You know I do, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he answered, absorbed in his reading. “You’re adorable. I am proud of you.”

She turned to look at her mother, who was setting the table. “You, too, Mother, I love you very much. I haven’t said this very often; it wasn’t necessary. But know that it is true.”

Her mother looked at her, astonished. “I should hope so! A daughter should love her parents. We, too, we love you; you’re all we have.” And, looking pleased with herself, she went on arranging the plates and forks and knives, not to mention the napkins.

The young girl thought of the boy she was to marry and she was overcome by sorrow. “You, we. We will conquer evil, re-create the world, have children, and I will love them, I will love them with all my strength, as I will also love the children we shall never have.”

In the street below, cloaked in darkness, a stranger crossed the street, stared up at a house with tightly drawn curtains, and slowly walked away.

“You, too, stranger,” the young girl whispered. “I make you a gift of my love. May your steps lead you toward a desired destination and not toward exile. May your hope free you from the fear which gave it birth. May the love inside you not kill the joy, may the joy inside you become haven and not prison.”