The Oath (6 page)

The nomad life did me good. Rebbe Zusia had been right. Not being tied to any place or person modifies your relationship with others and with yourself. You are the former prisoner who constantly turns around to look at the prison, and in that way, knows he is free. Master of your body and your imagination, you answer to no one. With no landscape of your own, all landscapes are yours. In your search for time, you conquer space. You are at home everywhere and your house has no doors, open as it is to the four winds and the stars. With your every move, you shift the center of the universe.

Roaming from town to town, from country to country, the
Na-venadnik
gives of himself and becomes the richer for it; the more he gives, the more he extends his powers. By helping strangers live, he himself lives more fully, more intensely. He speaks with his eyes, listens with his lips. For him every word is a call and every call is an adventure; his purpose is to discover not the world but the soul of that world. His feet, at the touch of the earth, reveal to him its incandescent riches. They warn him to flee a particular hamlet or, on the contrary, to set down his walking stick and bundle and take the time to breathe. Indeed, the
Na-venadnik
needs but sniff the air in the marketplace and look over the first person to cross his path, in order to guess whether the locality is friendly or hostile, poor or prosperous. That is one of the privileges of the
Na-venadnik
. Because he constantly moves from place to place, he knows these towns and hamlets better than their own inhabitants.

And yes, all these hamlets seen from the outside resemble one another.
Sadna d’araa had hu
, states the Talmud: all cities come out of the same workshop. The same cottages everywhere—some of them sad, others friendly and streaming with
light. The same peasants and woodcutters, framed by the same trees: huge ones reaching into the clouds, frail ones burrowing in the grass. Fields of wheat, rye, corn. The sap rises. Everything blooms. Meadows, fords, haystacks. In the distance, a mountain covered with pine trees. Villages and hamlets, large and small, animated by the same pulsation. Every village has its own church and pointed steeple—pass by quickly and avert your gaze lest you get into trouble for visual blasphemy. Every little town prides itself on its fair, where the same sellers shout themselves hoarse to overcome the same suspicious surliness of the same buyers. Offers fly back and forth; people yell, quarrel, make up, kiss and curse in Russian, Ruthenian, Hungarian, Romanian—and Yiddish. The language of the fair is universal. One horse is traded for another, a bolt of cloth for a calf, cheese for candles. The boys woo the young peasant girls, who in turn provoke them, laughing and rolling their hips. Their benevolent parents do not interfere. Sometimes they even set the example. Here and there couples lie down in the grass. Others, to save time, cling to each other standing up behind the barn. Frequently tempers run high: a lovers’ quarrel, an offended father, a jealous husband. Too daring a young man, too reticent a girl, and lo and behold, participants and spectators brandish their daggers, and the blood flows. An hour later they all meet again in the tavern, where Itzik or Sender or Yoske becomes their referee. Or scapegoat. One downs a few glasses, one beats up a Jew—and everybody feels better.

Every village has its taverns, and in every tavern you will find, in front of the wine cask, an Itzik or a Sender or a Yoske for whom pain has become a matter of habit, of livelihood. These innkeepers resemble one another the way the Jewish communities dispersed between the Dniepr and the Carpathian Mountains resemble one another.

Cut off from the outside world, these timeless Jewish kingdoms are private worlds, with their own princes and minstrels, fools and beggars, poets and workers, celebrations and mournings. They do not communicate with one another, or rarely, yet all observe the same ritual and all fashion for themselves the same tomorrow. On Friday nights, before the arrival of Shabbat, they all intone the same melody to invite the angels, carriers of the same peace. In my daydreams it sometimes was not I but the village—always the same one—that was roaming the roads in search of help and redemption, and I was but a link.

With the years, I became a hyphen between countless communities. News was gathered from my lips. Intrigues at the Hasidic courts, clashes with the Mitnagdim. Being well-informed myself, I informed others. The schemes of the clergy and the politicians, the rates for so-called official protection: I was up-to-date. I knew who was trying to intercede with whom on which family’s behalf—and at what price. I was newsmonger as well as messenger.

Of course, I occasionally would travel through large cities. Thus I visited Lemberg, pushed as far as Prague, spent a night in Kiev. I even lived an unforgettable Shabbat in Vienna, where a rich merchant, a friend of the governor, offered me hospitality. He resided in a building crammed with rooms and stairways, enough to make one lose one’s way. It was teeming with servants who all looked alike. To reach the top floor, one had to take a train that traveled upward. I refused to board it, as I found even ordinary trains not too reassuring. Why do people insist on making themselves the slaves of machines? I wondered. In their eagerness to arrive quickly, they forget where they are going. But the vertical train, in my opinion, was infinitely more dangerous. How could one be sure that it would
actually halt at the ceiling? And what if suddenly it felt like continuing, higher and higher, to the very stars? Can you imagine me suddenly appearing before the celestial tribunal in a train? I fled that capital as quickly as I could, running faster than the train, thus deeply distressing my host. Poor benefactor, he was seeking a tutor for his children, and had hoped to impress me. I thought: He’ll manage. Surely he will ferret out a tutor who likes machines; as for me, I prefer the stars.

Offers abounded; I had but to choose. Some propositions were tempting: lodgings, a home, respectability. I was begged: Stay, we need you, for we tend to forget, become creatures of habit, lose sight of our sources. We no longer hear the call, please don’t abandon us. And everywhere I answered: No, thank you, thank you, no. Resisting temptation was easy; stability held no attraction for me. For a
Na-venadnik
belongs to the communities he visits and his role is precisely that: to visit them, not to settle in them. Once the flame has been kindled, the wanderer takes his candle and moves on.

There was another reason, a personal one I could not discuss. I was haunted by Kolvillàg; it held me tightly in its grip.

I remember one particular incident. It was Shabbat. The little town where I had ended up the day before had a tradition of inviting one of the wandering beggars to give a sermon. Even if the choice fell on a dunce or a madman, he was still given the honors due a celebrated scholar.

So here I was in the midst of a packed synagogue. The entire congregation was crammed into it, eagerly waiting, ready to listen to me, to admire me and perhaps even to follow me. With words, nothing but words, I could have shaken them, renewed their bond with the living tree of Israel. I was on the verge of doing it, the sermon was all set in my head. Suddenly I
realized that the hall was identical to that of Kolvillàg, only larger. The rapt faithful below; the women out of sight in the balcony. The children on the steps leading to the Holy Ark. A thought crossed my mind, petrifying me: I am still in my native town, I have left it only in my dreams, I have done nothing but changed dreams. To recover my senses, I studied the faces lifted toward me. The rabbi’s head was resting on his right hand, his arm leaning on the lectern. The beadle, practical and efficient, was making sure that the head of the community was seated comfortably. An emaciated young student was keeping his eyes lowered so as to hear better—or not hear at all. A speech delivered to this large an audience could not possibly be distinguished; important teaching can take place only in a limited circle. A taciturn old man was shoving a neighbor too noisy for his liking. The schoolteacher, combing his bushy beard with his fingers, was counting those of his pupils who were stealthily edging toward the exit.

The more I looked, the more I doubted my sanity: What if I were indeed still at home?

The beadle tapped me on the arm, pulling me out of my daydream: “What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know …”

“Well then, begin!”

“Everything is getting mixed up in my head,” I muttered by way of excuse.

“Start, the rest will follow.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Say anything,” the beadle insisted. “Say that the sanctity of the Shabbat must be observed; that’s not complicated and makes a good impression.”

“I don’t know how,” I said stubbornly.

“Say that we must praise the Lord for having given us his Law. All the preachers say it, you won’t be taking any chances!”

Our whispered discussion could but intrigue the audience. The rabbi lifted his head and looked at us questioningly. The beadle rushed to inform him that fate had played them a nasty trick; this particular Saturday they had happened on an idiot. The distressed rabbi was about to rise and come to my aid, when I began to speak.

“
Morai verabotai
, my revered teachers,” I said, rocking forward and backward. “I ask you to forgive me if my words are brief. I could lie to you. I could pretend feeling dizzy. I could feign ignorance. But one does not lie in the presence of the Torah. The truth is different: I am not here to speak but to hold my tongue.”

And I returned to my seat.

This happened time and time again, whenever I was about to speak in public. The speaker became speechless. Everywhere I saw the same faces, the same expressions; I moved in the same setting. How could I offend the good people of Kolvillàg by telling them their own story, the very one they had forbidden me to reveal?

Yet sometimes it happened that I did useful work. In the small hamlets, mostly, far from the centers. There I brought back lost sheep to the fold, preaching repentance, showing the way. I jostled the self-righteous, the rich, the proprietors, the merchants. I encouraged the humble. As for the poor, I communicated to them the pride of calling Israel’s past their own. I made them sing after services, during services and even instead of services. On the side, I settled disagreements and quarrels between rabbis and notables, butchers and ritual slaughterers; I
interpreted the Law so as to reconcile the minds it had divided. It would not have taken much for me to fall into the trap of vanity and consider myself important, indispensable, irreplaceable. People praised me, feared me. They saw in me one of the hidden Just Men whose mission it is to sanctify space with their ephemeral presence wherever man tries desperately and unsuccessfully to approach the Almighty. They took me for the prophet Elijah, who, like me, visited and consoled lonely beings. They whispered that I was a Master in disguise. Before revealing himself, the Tzaddik must undergo trials of renunciation in anonymity. By helping strangers, I became a stranger in my own eyes. Having convinced my fellow-men, having guided them, I persuaded myself that language was omnipotent as the link between man and his Creator.

So as not to break my oath, I told all sorts of stories but my own. Inventing them, I gave my imagination free rein: to wit, the one about the pickpocket who decided to steal no more. And to stop living in fear and shame. Not so easy to rebuild a life, an image; not so easy to inspire respect after having aroused contempt: he becomes the community’s laughingstock; even the floor-sweeper at the synagogue guffaws: “You here? What are you doing among these honest people? Changing victims, are you? What brings you to this holy place? Say, is it God you are going to rob from now on?”

“I want to repent,” says the thief weakly. And the faithful begin to sneer: “That’s a good one! Not so stupid, that fellow! Now that he’s getting old, he’s putting his affairs in order! Shrewd, that fellow!” The former thief, a sincere though naïve penitent, protests that his motives are pure and honorable: “I have truly decided to give up stealing; I truly wish to please heaven. I swear it. Trust me. I have but one wish—to be one of you.” And they all laugh and applaud: “Perfect, perfect! The
thief has seen the light, bravo! He is retiring, bravo! Only he has neglected to settle his accounts! Let him return what he has pinched since the day of his birth. How many rings? How many snuffboxes? How many wallets …?” They tear at his clothes, first in jest, then in earnest. Bewildered, he thinks: And I wanted to deserve them, imitate them! How foolish I was! A spring inside him snaps. He distinctly feels it. And so he offers no resistance; too late to turn back, to open another door. A thought crosses his mind: I am going to die, in this very spot, a few steps from the Holy Ark. And he begins to run; he runs, he runs until he is out of breath, he runs toward the light, toward the darkness beyond the light, he is expected there, they are calling him. Then a shout: “He has stopped moving!” And a reply: “He is dead. The thief remains a thief to the end; he has just robbed us of our dignity!”

Or the one about the sleeping man who awakes with a start. Standing in the wide-open doorway there is a stranger who asks him: “Are you afraid?”

“Yes, I am afraid.”

“Of me? You are afraid of me?”

“Yes, of you.”

“Do you wish me to go?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’ll stop being afraid?”

“Yes, if you leave me alone, I won’t be afraid.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“Not I,” says the visitor, withdrawing.

And then the sleeper is overcome by panic. He realizes that he has just met, for the first time, the stranger who has always lived inside him.

Or the one about the dreamy-eyed young man whose path I
crossed one autumn morning on the embankment of the Vltava in Prague.

“What do you want of me?” I asked him.

“I know who you are,” he said in a solemn voice. “I recognize you by the scar on your forehead.”

“But I don’t have a scar on my forehead!” I protested.