The Testament (2 page)

I think of Paltiel Kossover, whose poems I discovered by accident.

Arrested a few weeks after the more illustrious Moscow writers, he was executed at the same time in the NKVD dungeons in Krasnograd. The rumor of his death made its way slowly, cautiously, through the Soviet Union until it reached the free world. It aroused neither anger nor consternation, for his work was unknown. Less famous than Dovid Bergelson, less gifted than Peretz Markish, he had so few readers that they all knew one another.

Was he a “great” poet? Frankly, no. He lacked scope and vision, also ambition and luck. Who knows? If he had lived longer … His only published work—
I Saw My Father in a Dream
—is quite modest: memories of childhood and war, parables, poems and nightmares. His voice is but a murmur, yet his prose seems gently lit from within. There are but few of us who savor his taste for austerity; we like his nostalgia, his melancholy. Forever uprooted, he remained a refugee to the end. His life and his death: discarded drafts.

Our memorial evenings in his honor draw only a limited
audience. But while our circle is small, its enthusiasm is great. We had eight of his poems translated into French, five into Dutch, two into Spanish. We are diehards. I comment on his work in my courses and refer to it on every possible occasion. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to see one of my students turning into a Kossover devotee.

And here I am, facing a task a thousand times more arduous: getting his mute son to talk. But I manage without difficulty. Actually it has nothing to do with me. The credit belongs entirely to his father.

Barely settled in my place, Grisha pulls a book from his pocket. Without a word I go to my room and return with my own copy of
I Saw My Father in a Dream
. Yes, it is the same book. Astounded, Grisha takes it, examines the binding, reads a notation or two, and gives it back to me. I think he is just as shaken as I.

“For a long time I thought I had the only copy,” I say to him. “As you did, no doubt.”

Grisha then takes out his pen and scribbles a few words on my memo pad: “There is a third copy. It belongs to a certain Viktor Zupanev, a night watchman in Krasnograd.”

From my window I show him Jerusalem. I evoke its past, and explain the passion that binds me to this city, whose every stone and cloud is familiar. I offer some practical advice for tomorrow and the weeks to come: where to go, where to buy what, and when. I describe our neighbors—government clerks, new immigrants, soldiers. And opposite us, on the ground floor, a war widow.

“Grisha, you’re tired. Go to bed.”

He shakes his head. Tonight, he wants to stay up.

“Alone?”

Yes, alone. He corrects himself: no, not completely alone.

“I don’t understand.”

Then he makes another gesture to indicate that he would like to write.

“Are you a writer? Like your father?”

No, not like his father. In place of his father.

E.W.

Grisha, my son,

I am interrupting my
Testament
to write you this letter. When you read it, you will be old enough to understand it and me. But will you read it? Will you receive it? I fear not. Like all the writings of prisoners it will rot in the secret archives. And yet … something in me tells me that a testament is never lost. Even if nobody reads it, its content is transmitted. The call of the dying will be heard; if not today, then tomorrow. All our actions are inscribed in the great Book of Creation: that is the very essence of the noble tradition of Judaism, and I entrust it to you.

I am writing you because I’m about to die. When? I don’t know. One month from now, perhaps six. As soon as I shall have finished this
Testament
? I cannot answer that question.

It’s night, but I don’t know whether the darkness is in myself or outside. The naked bulb blinds me. The jailer will soon open the peephole. I recognize his step. I’m not afraid of him. I enjoy certain privileges: I can write as much as I like, and whenever I like. And what I like. I’m a free man.

I try to imagine you in five or ten years. What kind of man will you be when you reach my age? What will you know of the interrogations and tortures that have haunted your father?

I see you, my son, as I see my father. I see you both as in a dream, and the dream is real. My voice calls yours and his, even if only to tell the world of its ugliness, even if only to cry out together for help, to mourn together the death of hope and sing together the death of Death.

I am your father, Grisha. It is my duty to give you instruction and counsel. Where can I draw them from? I haven’t made such a success of my life that I can arrogate to myself the right to guide yours. In spite of my experience with people I don’t know how to save them or awaken them; I even wonder whether they wish to be saved or awakened. In spite of everything I was able to learn—and I’ve learned a lot—I don’t know the answers that will have to be given to the grave, fundamental questions that concern human beings. The individual facing the future, facing his fellow man, has no chance whatsoever of survival. All that remains is faith. God. As a source of questioning I would gladly accept Him; but what He requires is affirmation, and there I draw the line. And yet. My father and his father believed in God; I envy them. I tell you so you will know: I envy them their pure faith, I who have never envied anyone anything.

Perhaps you will find a way to read my poems; they are a kind of spiritual biography. No, that’s too pretentious. A poetic biography? It’s not that either. Songs—they’re simply songs offered to my father, whom I had seen in a dream. Among the most recent is one I intend to revise in my mind. Its title is both naive and ironic: “Life Is a Poem.” Life is not a poem. I do not know what life is, and I shall die without knowing.

My father, whose name you bear, knew. But he is dead. That is why I can only say to you—remember that he knew what his son does not.

I have tried. If I have time, I’ll tell you how. Let me at least tell you this: Don’t follow the path I took, it doesn’t lead to truth. Truth, for a Jew, is to dwell among his brothers. Link your destiny to that of your people; otherwise you will surely reach an impasse.

Not that I am ashamed of having believed in the Revolution. It did give hope to the hungry, persecuted masses.
But seeing what it has become, I no longer believe in it. The great upheavals of history, its dramatic accelerations … all things considered, I prefer mystics to politicians.

I am going to die within a month, a year, and I should like to go on living. With you and for you. To have you meet the characters who are sharing my wait in this cell of mine.

I must tell you that in my
Testament
I did plead guilty. Yes, guilty. But not to what I take to be the meaning of the charge. On the contrary: guilty of not having lived as my father did. That, my son, is the irony: I lived a Communist and I die a Jew.

The tempest has swept over us and people are no longer what they were. I have grown up, matured. I walked through the forest and lost my way. It’s too late to go back. Life is like that—going back is impossible.

Y
OUR FATHER

Outside, the dusk falls abruptly over the hills around Jerusalem. Nothing remains of the coppery sun but a handful of sparks firing the window panes. This is the hour when Grisha likes to stand near the window, to gaze at the city reaching out for night. Not now: he’s too absorbed in reading and rereading his father’s
Testament
. As he turns the pages he hears the hoarse, staccato voice, unlike anyone else’s, of Viktor Zupanev—the man who could not laugh—who passes on to him the story of the story of the Jewish poet slain far away.

Suddenly he tenses as he tries in vain to visualize Zupanev. Faces parade in his head—delicate or vulgar, calm or nervous, surly or happy faces—but not one of them bears the features of the old watchman of Krasnograd. He does hear his voice: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Grisha? Wasn’t I your guide, your protector? Would you have gone to Jerusalem if I hadn’t sent you? Why have you forgotten me?” Tomorrow, Grisha says to himself. Tomorrow I’ll know. She is arriving tomorrow. My first question will be: “Have you seen Zupanev? Describe him to me.” And only then will he question her about his father: “Did you love him, Mother? Did you really love him?” Tomorrow …

For the moment Grisha plunges back into his reading.

“… I awoke with a start, panting. The running, the strangled cries—all that was in my dream. The little girl
about to fall from the tower, and the same little girl about to drown: a nightmare! As a child I used to recite the morning prayer:
I thank you, O living God, for giving me back my life
. Why did I suddenly hear this as an echo? I listened to the beating of my heart as though it were ticking away outside myself. Instinctively, I stopped breathing, became all ears. Silence … a black, evil silence rising … I never knew silence could move. Was I still dreaming? A glance at the window—it was still night, I was home in my bed. To the right, the cradle. Grisha was sleeping a peaceful sleep; I heard his steady, confident breathing. Raissa was moving restlessly. What demons were besetting her? Perhaps I should wake her, tell her: They’re coming, Raissa. They’re at Kozlowski’s, do you hear me? Good old one-armed Kozlowski, such a nuisance, with his foolish, useless smiles. Did he smile as he welcomed them? No, that’s not where they were. At Dr. Mozliak’s, perhaps? That mysterious character I sometimes see on the staircase—he gives me the creeps. Was it his turn?

“All this lasted no more than a second—a second since my awakening—and a fist of steel was already pounding my temples. They’re very close! Take care of the little one, Raissa. He mustn’t forget me, promise he won’t forget me. I start shaking her gently, but I’m petrified. There’s a knock on the door. No use clinging to foamy waves. Listen, Paltiel. The knocks are discreet, polite, persistent. One, two, three, four. Pause. One, two, three, four. Raissa nudges me with her elbow. The knocking begins again. I panic: Should I wake the little one? Talk to him, embrace him one last time? I take a deep breath—no sentimentality, Paltiel! A pain in my left arm, near the chest. Funny if I had a heart attack now! One, two, three, four. They’re getting impatient. A mad notion flashes through my mind. What if I don’t get up? If I don’t open the door? If I feign sickness, or death? What if it’s only an
extension of my dream? A little blond girl is going to throw herself from the top of the tower, and that same little blond girl is going to drown; she cries out, I cry out, but the people are sleeping, nobody hears, nobody sees; people don’t want to wake up.…

“No, it’s all over. It’s my turn. Raissa squeezes my arm. I tell her softly, This is it, Raissa. I’d like to see her expression, but it’s still dark. Never mind: I look at her without seeing her, I touch her. She shakes her head; her hair falls over my shoulder; I feel warm. It’s all over, I whisper. Will you watch over our son? She says nothing, but—oddly—I hear, I receive her answer. And I realize that my fear has left me. Not a trace of panic any more. I don’t have to save the little girl with the golden hair, she’s already dead. The anguish oppressing me for months lifts. I feel strangely relieved.

“And liberated.”

The plane from Vienna is due tomorrow, in the late morning. In his room in Jerusalem, Grisha has one night to get ready. His mind is made up. He will go to meet his mother at Lod and bring her home with him. She’ll sleep in the room, he’ll sleep on a cot in the foyer for a week or two. Just time enough for her to read her husband’s
Testament
. Then she’ll go to stay at the Ministry’s Reception Center. Perhaps then, she too will feel relieved.

A year has passed since Grisha left Krasnograd. He remembers his mother’s pale, distraught face: “Are you leaving because of me?” When Grisha did not respond at once, she lowered her voice and asked again, “Because of me? Tell me.” In shame, she covered her mouth with her hand:
she knew well enough that her son could not speak his answer. But Grisha had learned to make himself understood by moving his lips, his hands, his shoulders, or simply with his eyes. “No, not only because of you,” he answered. Reassured, she said, “Because of the doctor?” “I’m going because of my father.”