The Testament (34 page)

How fortunate, Grisha is thinking, how fortunate that I spent the night at home! He had almost stayed with Katya, but around two o’clock in the morning he had felt that he should go home. As though he had been waiting for an event, a message, a disaster.

He gets dressed, he feels unhappy. She is not coming, he tells himself. I shall never see her again. I shall never know the true role she played in my father’s life, nor the role my father played in hers. He was too discreet, my father. Though not quite as discreet as his wife. All those adventures and affairs alluded to in the
Testament
—were they real or imagined? I shall never know that either.
Never:
that word tears him apart. Why was it so important for him to see her again? Because he no longer loved her or because he still loved her and more than ever before? Scenes from his childhood, images from his adolescence appear in his mind’s eye, at first in sequence, then overlapping in time.… “Did you love him, tell me? My father, did you love him?” “Of course, Grisha, of course I loved him.” “But then, why was his heart broken?” “Who told you that his heart was broken?” “I know it. I read his poems. His heart was broken.” “But, my child, all poets have broken hearts.…” Another time: “Tell me how you met.” “Oh, that was during the war; I don’t like to talk about the war.” “What was he doing?” “He was fighting, like everybody else.” “And you? What were you doing?” “I was also fighting.” “Your first meeting, tell me about your first meeting.…” She refused. He asked again; in vain. She could not foresee that one day he would know more than she did about their first encounter. She did not know there was a
Testament
. He had concealed it from her on Zupanev’s advice: “I trust your mother, but as to that Dr. Mozliak, if he gets wind of our project, we’re done for. Be
careful, son. You are a Jewish poet’s messenger, it is your duty to be careful.”

That was the week of his departure. Grisha had memorized the last pages, the last verses. Just as many times before, the watchman, notebooks on his knees, was reading in a low, monotonous voice and Grisha was listening, committing every sentence, every comma to his memory, disciplining his mind, motionless, his lips half open, tensed to the breaking point. He listened, he listened gravely, intensely, barely breathing. Only his eyes mirrored life; he listened with his eyes, he listened, registering every word, every nuance, every hesitation. He owed it to himself to remember it all, to store it all, to let nothing slip by. Nobody listened the way he did; no other memory was equal to his. “What luck that you are mute,” said Zupanev, scratching his bald head. “They are letting you go. They do not suspect the power of the mute. Nor did they understand my power; for them a stenographer is just barely a living object. That’s how it is, my boy, the executioners lack imagination—otherwise they wouldn’t be executioners.”

Zupanev asked him for one last favor: “Tell me how you became mute.”

Grisha made a gesture of helplessness: If I could tell, I would not be mute.

“How stupid of me,” said Zupanev.

He opened a drawer, took out a pencil and a notebook and handed them to his young friend.

“Write,” he said, “and …” He thought for a moment, then went on with a smile: “This notebook, I shall keep it together with those of your father.”

And Grisha wrote.…

Dr. Mozliak may be working for the Security services. I have no proof. It is just an impression.

One day, coming home from school, I find him there, sitting on the sofa. My mother is standing, she seems frightened: he must be dangerous and powerful. I don’t like him. In fact, I hate him.

My mother seems fond of him. She says that he is an excellent physician. That’s all right with me; I am not sick. My mother is. She visits him often in his apartment above ours. As for me, even if I were down to my last breath, I would not seek his help. He frightens me.

Nevertheless, one day I was forced to ring his bell. My mother was not feeling well and she sent me to him for a prescription. I remember the white: dressed in a white coverall, Mozliak made me sit on a white chair as he himself sat down behind a white desk; it was blinding.

He wrote the prescription and said, “The pharmacy is closed at this hour. Until it opens, let’s have a talk, all right?”

It is not all right. He insists. He speaks of my mother’s illness. His cloying voice sticks to my skin; it makes me nauseous.

“Tell me about your father,” he says.

No, never!

He is interested in my father, not in me. He puts me through a regular interrogation; I withdraw into absolute silence. He is getting angry and tries not to let it show; I am getting nervous and it does show. My father’s life, my father’s death, my father’s poetry are not his business; in truth, I don’t know much about them, but that I refuse to admit. Before my encounter with Zupanev, his place in my memory is so modest, so obscure—a photograph, a few
poems—it is a personal, intimate thing. But he is obstinate. And so I stand up and go. Outside I breathe. Quickly, to the pharmacy. Thank God, it’s open.

In the evening, there he is again in our home. He peers at my mother. He sits down and starts all over with his questions. My father, always my father. I run away.

He comes back the next day and the next. My mother is better but he continues to stop by evenings, to examine her and interrogate me.

At last I understand: it is me he comes to see, not Mother. His purpose? To steal my father from me. To take him away a second time; the more he comes, the more convinced I am of that.

He undoubtedly belongs to a special service in charge of brainwashing people, of draining them, of erasing their memory as one wipes a blackboard at school.

And he knows how, the bastard. He throws me a question, he repeats it ten times with different variations until I feel empty, dispossessed.

The story of the cork, for instance. I had found that cork in a drawer when I was three or four years old. There was nothing special about it but I had invented a past for it. I told myself that my father had put it into that drawer so that I might find it one day. I told myself that this cork contained a secret, a secret it was my duty to uncover. Foolishness, I know. But for me the cork was an intimate link to my father. I had mentioned it to nobody, not even my mother. Unfortunately, Mozliak saw it fall from my pocket. He guessed everything. He took it between his fingers and broke it into pieces. “You see,” he said, “it’s nothing but a plain cork.” The bastard. He wanted to hurt me and he did. The cork he broke was
me
; I was no longer a living being, a schoolboy, but a broken cork. And it hurt, the way it does when one has a tooth pulled. It always hurts when you lose a secret.

Or the story of the sun. That, too, is a secret—only a real one. Do you remember my father’s poem on the sun of ashes? Well, since I have read it, I see a sun nobody else can see: my very own sun is neither red nor silvery, nor is it a disk of gold or copper; it is a ball of ashes. Whenever I see ashes in the hearth, I discover in it a sun, a sun that shines only for me, even in the middle of the night. Mozliak guessed it, I don’t know how. Yes, yes, I do know: as I answered his questions I avoided all words with any connection to the sun or to ashes; I had stricken them from my vocabulary. I said anything at all so as not to venture out on the treacherous subject of the sunny ashes. I expressed myself incoherently, I answered beside the point. And he just stared at me coldly, impassively, and bombarded me with seemingly unconnected words to gauge my reaction; I ended up betraying myself. Since then, I have lived in a world without sun.

Cautious, always on the alert, I watched over the rest of my treasures. But I was not smart enough to elude him. He was a specialist. He extracted words from me, sentences, shreds of silence; I became more and more impoverished. The more I spoke, the less I existed; he robbed me of what I cherished most. I no longer recognized myself; my curiosity was waning, I fell into a stupor. My movements and intentions were uncoordinated. I was losing my way in a dark tunnel; I felt stifled. I gave up hope, I gave up on myself. One more month and I would have forgotten everything. Then, the miracle occurred. Was it a miracle? Or perhaps an accident? Chance or conscious act? How is one to know? All I know is that, at one particular moment when I felt more cornered than ever, I clenched my teeth hard, I locked my jaws violently, opening them only to breathe and run the tip of my tongue over my parched lips. Suddenly, overcome by rage, an uncontrollable spasm made me close my jaws over my tongue.
And I cut it in two. I lost consciousness and from then on I have been incapable of pronouncing a word.

My poor mother, proud as always, confided her sorrow only to Dr. Mozliak. She could not accept that her only son would remain mute the rest of his life. “Grisha’s problem is more serious,” answered Mozliak. “It is mental.” As far as he was concerned, I was mad. I wasn’t. The proof: I was devising plans for vengeance and justice. Did that prove I was sane? Perhaps just the opposite, but then, what’s the difference?

Still, my watchman friend, there is one last thing: if I were not mute, our paths would not have crossed. And, without you, how would I have built my kingdom? Without you, I would have known nothing but silence and ashes.

Your mother is ill,” says his writer friend.

Grisha would like to ask, Is it serious? He doesn’t know how to say it with gestures. He takes a sheet of paper and writes the question. The answer is that he is not certain; the doctors have not pronounced themselves. She has had a heart attack; she will undergo an operation.

“Unfortunately you will not be able to go to her bedside. Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and there will be no flight to Vienna until Sunday.”

Wait, one must wait. And pray—why not? Yes, tonight he and his friend will go to the Wall, they will participate in the solemn Kol Nidre service. Tonight, up there, the verdicts will be sealed: recovery or death; forgiveness for some, reproof for others. And I? Grisha wonders. To forgive means to judge. And I don’t know how to judge. I would like to know.

The city emerges from darkness. A few islands of activity. The sound of the Shofar mingles with the shrill noises from the Arab market inside the ramparts, the whimpers of small children and their mothers’ shouts. Two men exchange greetings: May the year about to end take its curses along and may the one about to begin be generous with its blessings!

I shall never see her again, Grisha tells himself. Why this sadness? Since he began waiting for her, he had made so many plans. He was going to resolve all the enigmas of his past: his father’s melancholy and his mother’s silence. She too had secrets she had undoubtedly decided to reveal to him; that is why she had finally broken with Krasnograd—with Dr. Mozliak. That one, what exactly had his role been in all this? And Zupanev, had she seen Zupanev before leaving? Had he entrusted her with a message? Was he still alive?

Strange, Grisha thinks: I know my father better than I know my mother.

A scene flashes through his mind. On a winter evening he comes home from school and finds Raissa, graceful and regal, sitting on a chair, her hands on the table, her eyes staring into space. He drops his schoolbag and runs to console her. He takes her head into his small hands and wants to tell her so many things, sweet and gentle things, but he is moved, too moved to say a word.

She never knew—she will never know—what drove him toward her: a feeling whose name eluded him and still eludes him, a feeling both troubling and reassuring that had made his heart beat faster.

As it does now.

She was smiling at me, and that confused me. She had never smiled at me, not even ironically. Was it because of the victory? The entire Red Army was celebrating. The exultation was general: officers and aides were partying, getting drunk. Where we were, at the field hospital, even the patients seemed happy. I did not share their happiness.

Wounded once more, I had been hospitalized in Lublin where the 96th Division was resting at last. It had paid dearly for its glory; now it had to recover its health, and that takes time. The officers were complaining; their dream was to be the first to step on German soil, the first to hoist our flag over the ruins of Berlin. The soldiers, too, were impatient but they obeyed orders. It didn’t matter where—what mattered was to fight. And our boys had fought.

And so my war had come to an end in Lublin. I was carrying a young soldier toward the rear. He was beautiful, and light as a child. I spoke to him as I always did, repeating what I always said to my dead: Don’t worry, my little one, we are almost there. And he seemed to contradict me: No, we shall not get there. He advised caution: Watch out for the snipers, for the stray bullets; watch out for the mines. Watch out, watch out, easier said than done—as though the front were a street crossing. My guardian angel on my shoulders, I moved forward, tripping. Then I was
lifted off the ground. Violent red pain. I opened my eyes: the impact had thrown me into a trench. Torn to bits, the young soldier was no longer young or a soldier, he was nothing but a decapitated, legless corpse. He had saved my life: I was only wounded. Surgery, sleepless nights, difficult awakenings; my eyelids weighed tons.

The front was moving away and my body clung to Lublin and I to my body. I was transferred from one hospital to another for a specific reason or for no reason. Old and young surgeons leaned over me, shaking their heads, looking worried. They had forgotten my heart, so busy were they with my shattered bones. Their turn to reassure me: Don’t worry soldier, we are getting there.

As through a moist veil, I saw the doctors and nurses come and go, I heard their whispers. Was I still alive? If yes, why? If not, why was my father not at my side? What I did not know for certain was that gravediggers also die. That thought never left me. Sometimes, to distract myself, I wondered where it would happen: right here in Lublin? My head was filled with the magical and revered names of the Seer and of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin. The Yeshiva of the Sages of Lublin: my father had ardently wished me to be part of it. I called out to Borka, the Jewish medic from Odessa, who was the epitome of resourcefulness, and asked him a favor. Sure, he said, rubbing his hands. What is it: Would you like to be shipped to Moscow? Something else? A good meal? A girlfriend perhaps? He burst out laughing, slapping his thighs. “Listen,” I whispered. “If I should die …” “Are you nuts or what? You won’t die, you’re almost recovered.” “If I die, Borka, promise me that you will have them bury me in a Jewish cemetery.” “You are nuts, completely nuts,” he answered, his face falling. “Promise me, Borka.” “I promise to let you have one of those beatings if you don’t stop.” “Borka, I beg you! For me, nothing is more important than …” “Nothing doing,
my little idiot. You will not die, not in Lublin. Too many Jews have died in Lublin.”