The Testament (38 page)

In prison I yielded to panic only once. Under torture? Oh, no. The beatings hurt me, but I stood up surprisingly well. My body experienced the pain, but that was not I, I was not in my body. The tears flowed from my eyes and they were not mine. I saw the olive trees and the almond trees, and not the torturers; I listened to my masters and not to yours, Citizen Magistrate. David Aboulesia was reporting the results of his messianic endeavors, Ephraim was distracting me with his underground adventures. Inge was slipping through the streets of Berlin, and I was following in order to snatch her from our enemies. Ahuva was offering me the exotic attraction of her Oriental beauty. All of them were giving me strong support; they were helping me to resist more than one temptation, and, above all, resignation.

The torturers were tearing away at my body but my imagination remained free. I screamed, but revealed nothing. The moral tortures were harder. People kept repeating that I was the enemy of everything that was pure and just, that my gods were in the service of devils, that my love of Jews masked a detestable hatred of man, that my idealism
was false and hypocritical, good was bad, bad was good, and I had devoted my life to a single cause: treason. I was made to read depositions and forced to confront their authors—wretched, unhappy witnesses who denounced themselves while denouncing me, and vice versa. Oh, all those suspicions, all those allusions to my “criminal” relations with Paul Hamburger, Yasha and their friends—excuse me, their accomplices. So—I never knew anyone but traitors, informers, two-faced friends. I never would have belonged to the Party except to destroy it from within, to corrupt it in league with the agents of imperialism. I would not have gone to Berlin except to deliver Communists to the Gestapo, or to Spain except to help the Trotskyites. I was offered a chance to go free if I were to bring Bergelson and Der Nister into it.… Whenever I weakened and felt I was about to yield, my father appeared in a dream and saved me. As for my son …

I was taken home for a so-called search. Going up the stairs in handcuffs, I prepared myself for the ordeal. Breathlessly I prayed for death. Like a romantic schoolboy I asked my ailing heart to break. Before the door, I shivered with fear. I was pushed into the room, where the light, dim as it was, blinded me.

Terrified—or shattered?—Raissa, uncharacteristically, moved back to let me pass. Grisha, on the floor, looked startled: he did not recognize the bearded, stooped man who was clenching his jaw, swallowing his saliva, grinding his teeth like a senile old man. Luckily I heard a voice I alone could hear. It whispered in my ear to look up, and I did; to smile, and I did; to look carefree, and I tried that too—though I know I did not succeed. Thanks to that voice, I was able to control my muscles, my tics. “The images you take away are those you’ll leave behind,” the same voice told me. I paid attention to every movement of my eyelids and mouth. “Hey there, my poet friend,” said
David Aboulesia, “be strong.” “I’m trying,” I said. Grisha was watching me, as were Raissa and my guards, and there I was chatting with David Aboulesia about our encounters all over the world!

Returned to my cell, I collapse. Finally alone, I become the child I never was, the orphan I shall cease to be. I weep for my father and I weep for my son, I weep for my life and for my death. Who will be my gravedigger? It is my destiny to end in failure. Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past. Besides, I am not going to die, not yet: when the Angel of Death approaches, I shall feel his breath, I’ll capture the black light from his countless eyes. I am forty-two years old, with so many things to discover, without and within. The weight of dust, the burden of light. Until this confession is completed I have nothing to fear; that I know. I still have to describe the interrogations and to explain my choices past and present. What time is it? It is late. I should stop writing and talking to myself, especially since I am not alone. Someone is watching me with a smile. Sitting in the opposite corner, under the skylight, his hands folded under his knees, David Aboulesia—or is it my father?—is gazing at me dreamily. How did he manage to enter? Nothing surprises me. I find his presence natural and accept it. And what if the guard opens the peephole and punishes us? I repress that fear: the guard will open the peephole and will see nothing. That too I find quite natural, as I find natural my need to talk. Usually so reticent, so withdrawn, I feel like pouring out my heart. And that seems normal to me. And what if this is really an enemy, an informer, with familiar features and disguised as a protector? I trust him, and perhaps I am wrong. I should not understand, and yet I understand everything. I understand that David Aboulesia—or my father?—has come from far away—is it far, the other world?—to keep
me company. I also understand that his presence signifies something essential, unique, something that ought to alarm me; but I feel no fear. I feel only profound sadness, a fundamental but soothing sadness, that of Creation accepting its Creator.

I am not going to die, not yet, but I shall no longer live. I shall no longer see the passing clouds, I shall no longer breathe in the freshness of the wind, no longer smile at my son. And yet I feel no bitterness, no regret; I bear no grudges. I experience a strange sensation of compassion, as if I were sick, dying. I love all the persons I see in the distance, moving in joy and melancholy; I feel sorry for them. They are all mortal and behave as if they were not. I should like to comfort them, help them, save them. I should like to tell them the story of my life.

My cellmate stands up and leans against the damp, dirty wall. I remain huddled on the floor. I go on talking to him and I know it is useless; he knows in advance what I am going to say. I speak to him anyhow because later I shall not be able to speak. If I keep silent now, no one will understand what I have seen and heard, no one will know my final poems, my final prayers; no one will read what I have written at this very moment.

Strange: I am not thinking of death, but I see the Angel covered with eyes; he closes his countless eyelids and darkness invades the cell. Tomorrow I shall try to understand all this.

Tomorrow I shall go on writing the
Testament of Paltiel Kossover
, filling it with details, turning it into a document of the times—in which the experiences of the past will serve as signs for the future.

I shall tell Grisha what I have never yet revealed to anyone; I shall tell him that …

I remember, says Zupanev, scratching his head, I remember that night more clearly than all the others spent spying on him and transcribing his every word. Fact is I had become fond of your big child of a father. I was going to miss him. His voice, the way he had of frowning, his short staccato sighs, his pages covered with barely legible writing: how was I going to detach myself from him? He was a part of my life, that fool; he was a part of me. I had read his tales for so long that I had created a place for myself in them. I waited impatiently to read the continuation of certain chapters in order to learn of my own future. And now … Oh, well
.

Your father did not know that he was living his last night. He could not have guessed. Not even the magistrate had any inkling. Like the rest of us, the magistrate was surprised by the telephone call from Moscow. With one brief sentence, Abakumov transmitted a clear and irrevocable order: The Jewish poet Paltiel Gershonovich Kossover was to be executed before dawn. In my presence, the magistrate tried to argue: “But the file is not ready, Comrade Minister; the accused is writing his confession. He has already admitted certain crimes, opened several breaches; I could widen those and incriminate other suspects. Could we not wait a week or two?” “No,” replied Abakumov drily. “But there has not even been a trial, not even on the administrative level …” “Before dawn,” repeated Abakumov and hung up
.

We did not know it, but the same order had been transmitted that same night to all the magistrates who, in Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev and Leningrad, were in charge of extorting confessions from Bergelson, Kvitko, Markish,
Feffer and all the other Jewish writers, poets and artists of the Soviet Union
.

The order came from Stalin. In a fit of madness—was he afraid that he might die before them?—he had decided to have them all liquidated that very night at the same hour and in the same way
.

Let me tell you about that night, Grisha. And your turn will come to tell it. You are mute? Never mind! We shall give a meaning to your silence. Since they cannot make you talk, you shall be the ideal messenger, just as I was. Nobody will suspect you, just as nobody suspected me. One does not suspect a fountain pen, a table, a lamp; one does not worry about a stenographer. The judges and the investigators have all been eliminated by their successors, but we stenographers were overlooked. Nobody thought that we had a life of our own, an independent memory, attachments, remorse, projects of our own. And nobody will see in you the trustee and the witness of a life that enriched mine, ours
.

And so you will read and reread this document and try to remember it all. And later, far from this land, you will write it down and you in turn will assume your role: you will speak on behalf of your dead father
.

That is a decision I made before I met you, my boy. I made it one summer night in 1952 when you were scarcely three years old; you were asleep in your mother’s room, unaware that you had become an orphan
.

That night I was so disturbed that I did something I rarely do: I went out for a walk. Krasnograd at night is not so inviting. The streets are deserted, the lights are dead. Like a prison, only bigger, with invisible jailers behind the dismal facades. Every window is a peephole, every noise a moan, a cry of horror. The inmates hold their breath just as on the morning of an execution
.

I stroll through the park in the direction of the river
which divides the main street in two. I come to a halt. Motionless, I listen. The river is noisy tonight. I turn my head in all directions and end up making myself look suspicious. A militiaman accosts me: “This is no place for vagabonds and loafers like you. Go home! Go on, scram, or I’ll put you in jail!” He gets excited, annoyed; I do nothing to appease him. “Have you lost your tongue? Go on, you wretched drunk, get out of here!” The fellow is furious. And that is when, very quietly, without any hurry, savoring every second that increases his rage, I pull out my card and show it to him. No need to draw him a picture. The fellow has understood. He stiffens, stands at attention and starts sputtering apologies and servile formulas, enough to make you sick: “At your service, I didn’t know who, how could I have guessed that …” I leave him without bothering to interrupt him. Even as I reach the main square, near the movie theater, I can still hear him make his apologies. Ridiculous. That’s what they all are: ludicrous wretches—but I am not laughing; I cannot. That terrible awareness brings me back to your father: poor devil, nothing funny about his life! I wonder whether he ever had the opportunity to have a good time, to laugh with all his heart. Strange: I know his life yet I do not know the essential fact: Did he or did he not learn the art of laughter? I am tempted to go to him, just like that, a surprise visit, and tell him: “Listen, my dear poet, you shall be executed tomorrow morning. I am telling it to you so that you may be ready. Ivan, the ‘gentleman of the fourth cellar,’ already has his instructions. Say, do you mind if I ask you a question that has been gnawing me for quite some time? It concerns you: have you ever laughed, I mean, really laughed? Body and soul? What I mean is, with your whole being? For you see, in your confessions you do not speak of it and that could mean two things: either you don’t speak of it because you have never
laughed, or because you have laughed so much that it does not occur to you to mention it. And so, you see, I’d like to …”

That would be outrageous, right? I return to my solitary wanderings. Because. You understand
.

The breeze rustling through the trees is mild, but I am shivering. First of all, I am sensitive to cold. And then, the idea of seeing your father again and for the last time is not one that pleases me. Does he realize that I was present at the interrogations? That I have read his
Testament?
That I know all about his loves, his struggles, his doubts? Does he know that I exist?

Another militiaman comes up to me; he is called to order by the first, who no doubt is following me in order to spare me unpleasant encounters. I would do better to go home and go to bed but I shall not be able to close my eyes; I know myself. I am afraid, I am afraid of, you know what I mean. I let myself fall onto a bench; I contemplate Krasnograd and I see it through your father’s eyes and then through the eyes of the Angel of Death, whom your father describes so well. A man will die, tomorrow
.

Today, soon. My heart beats faster. My heart is heavy, for—did you know this, men and women of Krasnograd?—stenographers do have a heart and mine is flowing over. Your father, my boy, will cost me nights of sleeplessness, I feel it. For yes, I do love him, my boy, and because of him I love you too. I decided to change your life because he changed mine. And the incredible thing is: he was never to know it
.