The Oath (21 page)

It was Wednesday, market day. The town was swarming with peasants whose eyes gleamed as they stared at the Jewish merchants and paid without haggling over prices. They stifled their sneers whenever a Jewish woman of proud bearing strolled
by. There was something in the air, a kind of foreboding. The woodcutters with their axes, the farm hands with their pitchforks, the forest wardens with their rifles—one would have had to be blind not to catch their significance. Old peasant women crossed themselves at the sight of an old Hasid with the face of an ancient prophet. A bloodbath was in the making, a celebration of death.

“What do you think of it, friend Meltzer?” asked Davidov.

The man he thus addressed, a
shtadlan
, a middleman by profession, had arrived the night before from Raibaram, the town where he lived. He had a reputation for dealing with the most diverse authorities, and so Davidov had entrusted him with an eleventh-hour rescue mission.

“What I think of it?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Not much good. In fact, I have decided to go home. I feel that there is nothing I can do. A wall—I feel I am up against a wall. This is the first time this has ever happened to me. I contacted some of my most reliable people. Some owe me their fortune, others their career, others still consider me their intimate friend. Make them talk, I tried to make them talk. They all dodged my questions and reacted with nothing but surprise, skepticism and outrage. Nobody knew what I was talking about. Protestations of loyalty, of comradeship. Each assured me of his devotion. Comedians, the lot. I tried my luck with some of the underlings, I sneaked them a few bills; they gave them back. I insisted, I doubled the sums; nothing helped. And yet they certainly do need money, I am in a good position to know. Wasted effort. Mouths are clamped shut, palms are closed. Their way of being honest, of serving me notice, warning? Their way of telling me that things are bad? That since they cannot be of service to me, they do not deserve a fee? How is one to know. I can only
repeat: it looks bad, bad. I am going home with a heavy heart.”

The chronicler stopped writing. His head was bent over the Book, his right hand was rubbing his temples; his migraine was giving him no respite. Outside, the wind was rasping in the trees, sweeping the windowpanes. Dumbfounded by Meltzer’s report, the councillors were staring into space. The only sounds to be heard were the agitated, jerky breathing of old Gimpel on the verge of an asthma attack and the irritating tick-tock of the old clock.

“Thank you for your trouble, friend Meitzer,” said Davidov. “In your opinion, what should be our next step?”

“To prepare yourselves, prepare yourselves for the worst.”

He stood up and walked around the table, shaking hands.

“Go in peace, friend Meitzer,” said Davidov. “Our wishes accompany you.”

With Meltzer gone and Davidov seated again, the session resumed.

“Do any of you have contacts with the underworld?” Davidov asked with mock amusement. And more seriously: “It is sometimes easier to find an honest man among horse thieves, in taverns of ill-repute, among hardened criminals than in so-called respectable circles.”

Somebody forced a laugh, and my father, without a word, scrupulously recorded it in his thick notebook. His heart was pounding hard, harder than during the
Kol Nidre
service. And strangely, he heard an obscure voice ordering him to record that too.

At the other end of town an eternally bereaved widow, Shifra the Mourner, opened the black gates of the cemetery and headed straight for her husband’s grave. In spite of the
strong wind, she succeeded in lighting a funeral candle. She set it down on the ground, then burst into sobs.

“You there, up above, come to our rescue. Move the heavens and those who dwell in them. Appeal to our ancestors, to the Just Men you have known and to the saints you have served. Tell them in your own words that we have been left to our fate. Tell them of our anguish. Let them be our interpreters with God, blessed be He, so that He may receive our prayers. Let them ask Him if He will be proud, if He will be happy to learn that the Jewish community of Kolvillàg—yours, theirs—no longer exists. Let them ask Him if it is His will, His glory to reign over a town without Jews, a world without Jews, a world peopled with killers …”

Stretched out on the grave, the old woman was weeping with even greater sorrow than at the funeral of her husband, the
dayan
who had had the good fortune, the saintly man, of dying in his bed.

Within the walls of the House of Study, lit by a row of candles, the faithful gathered behind Rebbe Levi-Yitzhak, a nephew of Rebbe Zusia of Kolomey by marriage and a great-grandson of the Great Maggid of Premishlan. The Rebbe was concluding the
Minhah
service. It was still early.

Ordinarily people met at dusk and in lesser numbers. But this was a special occasion; the new scrolls of the Law, whose transcription had been commissioned by Reb Sholem, the richest Hasid at the Rebbe’s court, were arriving that very evening. Decided upon a long time ago, the celebration had excited the congregation. This kind of inaugural festivity was stimulating and rare. And yet, the times being what they were,
would it not be advisable to announce a postponement of a few days?

After services Reb Sholem could be seen whispering, consulting the Rebbe, who, looking concerned but determined, was shaking his head no.

“The celebration will take place as planned,” proclaimed Reb Sholem. “We may not offend the Torah. We shall keep the appointment but we will advance it by two hours.”

When the Rebbe opened the door to return to his private quarters, the wind swept in and blew out all the candles but one.

For Shaike, leader of the militant youth, there was no question of preparing for a religious “wedding,” but for a battle. He had gathered fifty or so members in the school hall that served as their meeting place. This is what he had to say: “Our leaders’ policies are bankrupt and they admit it. The authorities no longer sell indulgences, they can no longer be bought, they no longer play at being benefactors. I say it’s for the best. Gone the era of hypocrisy, gone the era of illusions. Now we know the score. And so does Davidov.”

He was employed by the president, who loved to tease him about his revolutionary ideas. Gone, the time for teasing.

Shaike, a dynamic and muscular young man with fiery eyes, had gone through an apprenticeship in a vacation colony and had come back stuffed with ideology. A certain segment of the youth followed him. They liked the meetings, the singing, the dancing, the dreaming. They loved to recall the splendor of Galilee and of Jerusalem.

“We are going to fight,” said Shaike, who was not adverse to
grandiloquence. “The hour of truth has struck. The time for self-defense has come. It will be a difficult, heroic struggle. The chances of victory are slim, but history commands us to try, not to win.”

“Pure suicide,” someone in the last row was heard to mumble.

“Possibly,” Shaike retorted. “No, probably. No, certainly. What are the alternatives? To let ourselves be slaughtered like sheep, or to die with weapons in our hands. Perish as martyrs, or fall as heroes. Two categories, two extreme points of view in which our history abounds. With nothing in between.”

Sitting on benches, the boys and girls, the latter a minority, looked more like well-behaved, interested schoolchildren than like warriors. An algebra problem covered the blackboard. Through dirty, dusty windowpanes one could see three poplars, a tall one and two small ones, their stiff branches stretched over the empty playground as if to watch over it.

“Davidov and his colleagues consider us scatterbrains,” said Shaike. “They had better keep quiet now; their methods have failed. Let’s try ours. No more bargaining. No more servility. Gone, all ambiguity. Since the enemy is sharpening his sword, we shall forge our own. This pogrom will be unlike any other!”

Words—the impotence of words. Inadequate but indispensable to fight a battle. Shaike used them not so much to win as to win over. Many of the members present had once occupied these very same benches. This was where they had studied history, grammar, geography. Now they were listening to him talking of pogroms.

“But we are not armed,” a voice objected. “This sword you mentioned—where will you find it?”

Many objections were raised: they lacked training, they were too few. If only we had more time, thought Shaike. We could
learn to manufacture bombs in the manner of anarchists. But they lacked everything, including time. They had nothing but words:

“We have nothing? Never mind. We are not soldiers? Never mind. And what about Jewish honor? And Jewish history? And Jewish dignity? Do they count for nothing? We have no weapons? We shall fight without weapons. With planks and clubs, hatchets and iron bars, stones and bricks. We lack training? We shall acquire it in battle. We shall resist the attack, we shall not submit. We shall no longer be passive onlookers. If die we must, let us die standing, in the open air, not in cellars with the rats. With dignity, not resignation!”

Was it the speaker’s enthusiasm or his listeners’ naïveté? The atmosphere had changed. The ambivalence of words: helpless against the enemy, all-powerful for us. These boys and girls were transfigured; they saw themselves as disciples of the young General Bar-Kochba, occupying the Judean mountains, erupting into the legend of their people.

Then Shaike confronted them with this superb biblical challenge: “If among you there is one who is afraid, let him go home.”

They were all afraid, but none dared to admit it. Their first victory was over fear. Tasting his first triumph, Shaike gave orders: pass the word, be on the ready, close the shutters, lock the doors, erect barricades, transform every dwelling into a fortress, make the assassins’ task both difficult and costly.

“Now go. Give the alarm. Tell your friends and neighbors. We shall fight for them, for them too. Let them lend their support. Tell them what we expect from them. Let them open their eyes, let them stay awake. Let them be prepared. Go, tell your community that it is about to live an extraordinary moment—it has an appointment with history.”

They all obeyed. They were afraid, but they obeyed. They dispersed, alone and in groups of two or three. Projected length of the operation: an hour, or two. Family, neighbors, friends to inform, to forewarn. These heralds of rebellion descended on the community, spreading dismay—delivered their message and withdrew. People listened to them without understanding, without really hearing them. Some were petrified, speechless; others began to weep. A pogrom? In the twentieth century? Here? What exactly did that mean? A massacre? Like in the Middle Ages? Had nothing changed then since Chmelnitzki? But then what was the use of defending oneself?

Shaike was the last to go out into the courtyard. He went down the street toward his parents’ house. After a few steps he stopped, turned back and went to the Kreiners’, where his fiancée Piroshka was staying.

He had the odd sensation of walking in an unfamiliar street where all the footsteps were his own.

The cell was dark. Airless. A streak of blue light filtered through the bars in the skylight, glided over a large pail of water in the corner, played with the dust in the twilight shadows.

Moshe was sitting on the floor. He seemed feverish, his shoulders shaking with every breath he took.

“Peace be with you,” said my father, placing a bowl of hot soup and a paper bag bulging with fruit on the wet ground.

The prisoner lifted his head in my direction. “So you thought it right to bring along my young companion? You did well.”

“He insisted.”

“He did well.”

The man who stirred me more than anyone in the world was unrecognizable. His clothes were rags, his body seemed dislocated,
patched, his arms and legs disconnected. His eyes and lips only by chance part of the same face, which itself was nothing but a mask shattered into a thousand fragments where nothing moved, nothing indicated life. A chilling thought crossed my mind: This was not Moshe, this was an imposter! How could I be sure? Ask him for a sign? We would have to be alone.

My father cleared his throat and went about his duties as chronicler. “Aren’t you afraid people will say that Jews are murderers?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“To understand you. And then to write it down.”

“And what if you don’t understand?”

“I’ll write it, anyway. It is my duty to record everything, to transmit everything. Even that which lies beyond my understanding.”

Moshe thought for a moment. I tried to intercept his gaze. In vain. Noises from the outside were distracting me: the sentry’s steps marching back and forth, a horse neighing, a drunkard’s cry. Life was continuing on the other side but not at the same rhythm. Was it the same life?

“No, people will not say that Jews are murderers. They will say that one Jew, mad to boot, turned murderer. They will blame the act on my insanity and you will all be cleared.”

He had spoken with impressive calm. In my mind I had not yet resolved the problem of his identity. He could be anyone.

“What about me?” I asked. “What is my role in all this?”

He stiffened. The mask fell apart around his lips. He was about to answer, changed his mind. He opened his mouth several times, but said nothing. I felt the weight of his gaze.

“What about me, your disciple?” I continued. “Am I to follow you? To the end? Am I to succeed you? Or perhaps repudiate you? Forget you?”

Torn between discretion and his duties—as a father, as a chronicler—my father coughed into the palm of his hand, as he did whenever he was confused, undecided, embarrassed.

“In prison the Master is no longer free to teach by example. Therefore, he is no longer Master,” said Moshe, his voice almost severe.

This is someone else, I thought, this is not his voice. This harshness, this certainty are not his.

“And Rabbi Akiba?” I asked with a touch of disrespect, if not anger.

Akiba, one of the martyrs in Roman times, taught till the end of his life. While he was in jail his students would wander back and forth outside, pretending to converse among themselves, and they would ask him questions on Talmudic law, thus outwitting the guards. And the Master would answer.