The Sonderberg Case (6 page)

“No,” the professor replied, looking solemn. “That’s not my advice to you.”

“Then …”

“My advice to you is to never stray from the theater. It’s your world, your universe; I’m even tempted to say your salvation. It will justify your life and give it meaning.”

“But how am I to achieve this?”

He paused for a long time before replying, “I’ll give it some thought. When I come up with the answer, I’ll let you know.”

A few weeks later, he summoned me to his office again. On that day, he sat at his desk as he welcomed me in.

“You’ll become a drama critic.”

“But I’m not qualified! I’ve never written a thing. I’ll never be able to! I’m not a journalist!”

“You’re knowledgeable about theater, you love it, you live and breathe theater with all your heart and intellect. That’s all that matters.”

And that’s how, to Alika’s astonishment and the joy of all my relatives, including my grandfather, I became a journalist in spite of myself.

As drama critic for the
Morning Post
, a respectable daily, I worked with Bernard Colliers, head of the cultural pages, under the orders of Paul Adler, the all-powerful, respected editor in chief, my bearded professor’s former student. When I went to see him in his office, cluttered with newspapers, books, magazines, and other papers, Paul went on correcting a story without giving me so much as a glance. I couldn’t
help being wary of the man: he had a piercing look and his face was thin and bony; the first impression he gave was of great severity. Later I learned to deal with his mood swings, his impatience, and his tantrums.

“So, young man, it seems you’re dying to become a journalist?”

“No. Not a journalist. I wanted to be an actor.”

“And like so many others, since you can’t do anything else, you’re falling back on the glorious profession of journalist.”

“No again. It was my professor’s idea, not mine.”

“I know. He told me.”

I kept silent, thinking: nothing is going to come of this. It’s a waste of time. A failure from the very start. Why should I have any illusions? This man doesn’t like me; it’s as clear as daylight. He’ll never like me. He’s not going to hire me just to please a professor, even if he’s the best, most prominent professor around. He’s going to dismiss me, promising to get back to me in a few days or a few years.

However, he continued our conversation. “What play have you seen recently, and where? I don’t mean a show put on by your friends. I mean real theater, with professionals. On Broadway or Off Broadway.”

In a faint voice I replied, “Eugene O’Neill’s
The Iceman Cometh.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes. A lot.”

“Why?”

How could I avoid banalities? I told him that I had
admired the dramatic intensity of the play, the actors’ sober performance, the austere direction …

“Fine,” he said. “Go into the next office. Tell me all this in writing.”

How can you write something intelligent and worthwhile under such pressure, when words are buzzing around in your head and your heart is pounding wildly?

I tried, God is my witness, I tried. But I knew it would serve no purpose. It was a losing battle.

Bah, I said to myself, never mind. It’s bound to be a slapdash job. What does it matter what I say and how I say it? Let’s be quick and move on. A poor student, I stuffed into my “assignment” everything I knew about the author, including the writers he was influenced by: Chekhov, Gogol, Joyce, Kafka—and why not?—the Midrash, and so on. I never wrote anything as mediocre.

A good hour later, I knocked on the boss’s door and handed him three typewritten pages, which I hadn’t bothered to reread.

He glanced at them and called out to me, “I’m busy right now. I’ll get back to you with my opinion tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Leave me your phone number.”

I shared an anxious twenty-four hours with Alika. She was more nervous than I, and more agitated. I knew the response would be negative. She was more optimistic. She tried to calm me and help me pass the time, by drinking, eating, making love with me—I got that out of it at least. But I expected the worst. I was annoyed at myself for
having listened to my professor. I shouldn’t have gone and disturbed that editor in chief, who was so full of himself; it had been a mistake to expose myself to the ridiculous humiliation he inflicted on me; I’d never forgive myself for it …

There was no word from him all day.

A second sleepless night. Alika was fed up and so was I.

You stupid idiot, I said to myself for the tenth time. You let a stranger make a fool of you. Shame on you.

The following morning, Alika popped out to the corner grocery. She reappeared after a few minutes, out of breath.

“Look, Yedi. I bought the newspaper. Look at the first page.”

There they were, the opening lines of my piece. And then: “Continued in the Culture pages.” A little paragraph announced that the author of this review was the paper’s new drama critic and included a rather flattering biographical notice mentioning my bearded professor.

I was just dying to grab a cab to go share my joy with my parents. Alika stopped me.

“They’re still asleep.”

“They won’t mind being woken up.”

“Later. First, make love to me.”

I would have liked to call my grandfather. He slept very little and rose early. But Alika’s desire had priority.

Then I called Itzhak and Orli, Méir and Drora. I pictured their happiness. It was sincere and warmed my heart. Then I went to see my parents.

My father made the following comment: “Do you know the difference between a writer and a journalist? The journalist defines himself by what he says, and the writer by what he doesn’t say.” Was he happy about my success? I had no idea.

My mother hugged me.

“I’m proud of you, son,” she said. “Of course, I still wish you’d been a lawyer.”

“A journalist is also a lawyer,” my father cut in. “He’ll stand up for the defenseless, the poor, the starving, for abused children and unlucky writers: isn’t that the lawyer’s finest mission? As well as the journalist’s?”

In response, I felt I should set him straight.

“That’s not the kind of journalist I’m going to be, Father. I’ll be writing about theater.”

My mother put coffee and cookies on the table. We had a warm, protracted conversation on the role of the press in contemporary society. My father believed that it is impossible to separate the areas of activity of individual men or communities. From the ethical point of view—the only truly significant one—everything is interrelated. Mom chose to see lawyers everywhere. As for me, I pleaded for the sovereignty of theater, its virtues but also its obligations.

Before I left them, my father gave me some advice that
he attributed to an obscure author dating from the time of the Apocrypha whom the mysterious One-Eyed Paritus often claimed as a source of inspiration.

“The person who wants to serve his fellow men, hence the community, hence the individuals who comprise it, must observe the following rules: never flatter powerful men, and never submit to their whims. In other words, my son, never let anyone buy you or frighten you. And then this: if you wish to criticize, start by criticizing yourself; try not to disparage anyone, ever. When your opinion is negative, choose your words carefully so as not to humiliate the person you’re criticizing or put him to shame.”

My new boss gave me advice that was more or less the same. For on that very day, Paul Adler personally informed me that I was now a member of his staff, with the rights and duties this implied.

My apprenticeship years were sometimes arduous but always stimulating.

I never could have imagined that I’d be able to write a straightforward sentence in the hellish noise of a newsroom, where every journalist thinks he’s the only person the reader is waiting for.

Important columnists, breathless reporters who can’t waste a minute before writing up the latest news, editorial writers tirelessly pleading with the boss not to cut sentences out of their articles. Shouts to the proofreaders: Check those
names! Check those figures! Such was the tantrum-prone little world open to the universe at large that fascinated and infuriated me as a beginner.

The first year, I trembled before handing in my reviews to Bernard Colliers, an oafish, surly, taciturn man; irascible. Never self-confident, rarely satisfied, I feared authority and disapproval. When there was no urgency—in other words, when my piece was to appear in the Saturday or Sunday edition—I wrote at home. Alika helped me. She was my first reader; her reaction was vital to me. However, my editor—or the tyrant, as we called him—usually demanded that my article come out in the next day’s early edition. So I would start writing it inside the theater, during intermission, and complete it back in the office.

With time, I became accustomed to the rhythm of newspaper life, both regular and chaotic. A hastily and sloppily written item of political news, a misquote, a paragraph verging on plagiarism, triggered furors—fortunately, nipped in the bud by Paul. Was this the sign and secret of his power? As for me, though I rarely get angry, my temper tantrums don’t die down easily. Is it because I never aspired to the tiniest particle of power, except the power every man should exert over himself?

As a general rule, I kept aloof from the jealousies and internal quarrels that plague any business, and even more so in an editorial office whose end product is both essential and ephemeral: its truth lasts only as long as it takes the ink to dry.

Having become close to the boss, I went to great lengths never to overshadow anyone.

True, occasionally some more influential colleague tried to convince me that a play or production, or, more specifically, a friend or girlfriend’s performance, was marvelous and deserved to be warmly recommended. I listened patiently and answered that of course I would take his or her opinion into account, but that professional deontology—the word was fashionable at the time—didn’t really give me the right or the power to indulge him. All private matters, I said, were beyond my aegis.

Usually, the colleague didn’t resent me all that much. If he insisted, I would turn to Paul and discreetly seek his advice. I could rely on his support.

What was most important to me about my profession? The fact that it made my relatives proud. My uncle Méir, my aunt Drora, my grandfather, my parents. Itzhak, too, I hoped. Did my brother envy me? It would have been understandable to me. We’d always had a complicated relationship. I’m never sure my happiness contributes to his. I think that Orli, my sister-in-law, is partly to blame. She tries to be liked by everyone, but I don’t get caught up in her game. Is that what irritates her husband?

As for my father, he remains an enigma to me. Is he thinking about those who are absent? Sometimes I look at him and I feel like crying.

When I was studying theater and contemplating devoting my life to it, like Alika and by her side, my father read me
the following text (ancient? By a precursor of the medieval thinker One-Eyed Paritus?). To my ears, even today, it still sounds like a premonitory echo of Paul Valéry’s beautiful words engraved on the frontispiece of the Palais de Chaillot: “For God, man is Creation’s triumph and challenge; he is both worried about him and proud of him. From the cradle to the tomb, life is a path that man alone can brighten or render arid. Life is a laboratory of ideas, dreams, experiences, and it depends entirely on man himself whether he will draw the lessons that will let him rise to the heavens or those that will hurl him into the throes of hell. Hence, life is everything but a theater where the possibility of choosing remains forever limited.”

Was my father seeking to discourage me? Make me aware of the trials awaiting me?

It matters little. I have a boundless love for my father. There is a reason: his own father was what we now call a “survivor.” He had been wealthy, and in the last year of the war he still had sufficient means to convince three former clients living in different villages to hide his wife and sons. Grandfather alone, victim of a denunciation, was arrested and deported. Miraculously, he survived and, as soon as he could, he emigrated to New York with his family. My mother, who was in America, had a sunny childhood.

And my own childhood? My earliest memories go back to when I was four years old. Before that, nothing. I’m like so many other Jewish children and adolescents in Brooklyn or Manhattan: Jewish school, high school. Sabbath meals.
Holidays. Hanukkah gifts. Summer sun, winter snow. Childhood friends.

The Tragedy? A taboo, forbidden memories. Directly or indirectly, it had affected all our families. Even on my mother’s side: so many uncles, aunts, cousins, other relatives had disappeared. We understood obscurely that they were all part of our collective memory. When a man has an arm or a leg amputated, his “phantom limb” still hurts him. This can be applied to the Jewish people; as the great Yiddish poet Chaim Grade said: each of us feels pain for the limbs that are no longer. But what did I know of the concrete experience of that time? Of the denunciations? Of life in the ghetto? Of hunger and crowding? Of the “actions” prior to the deportations? Of the hunting down of children? Of the constant fear of being suddenly separated from one’s loved ones? Of the sealed trains bound for the unknown? Of unspeakable suffering? On those rare occasions when my father alluded to it, you had the impression he was recounting events described in his medieval manuscripts, or even more ancient than those. After all, we still commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the victims of the Crusades on specific dates in the calendar. But is the Tragedy, which we so inadequately call the Holocaust, similar to these dramatic episodes? Would a single day, just one day of the year, be sufficient to honor its memory?

One Saturday afternoon, my father and I found my grandfather at home, sitting at the table, his head in his hands. It was a short time after my grandmother’s death.
He was lonely, in deep mourning, and I used to stop by to see him as often as possible. As soon as he saw me, he raised his head and tried to smile at me.