All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (41 page)

We sailed from port to port, pariahs rejected everywhere. Since my cabin had been reassigned, I traveled with the others in the hold. For one hour a day we were allowed on deck to get some air. I envied the passengers with passports. What wouldn’t I have given to be granted Peruvian or Salvadoran nationality! Stateless persons were regarded not only as noncitizens but as somewhat subhuman as well.

Down in the hold, children cried and parents vented their anger. Some cried out at having let themselves be duped by the missionaries. Others might have felt a similar bitterness but dared not admit it. I was at a loss to understand them. How could they give up Israel for a little money, a visa, and a boat ticket? Were they that unhappy? How could Jews like them, with their past, have agreed to convert? Their ancestors chose death by sword and fire rather than renounce their faith. And they gave it all up for a trip to Brazil? They protested. “We never renounced our faith. The God of Israel is still our God.” But hadn’t they promised to convert? “Promised? So we promised. Don’t
we have the right to make promises?” Haim’ke the tailor remembered that it was the anniversary of his mother’s death. We formed a minyan so he could say Kaddish. Baruch the shoemaker tried to justify himself: “I spent two years in the ghetto and fourteen months underground with the partisans. I didn’t have what it takes to stay in Israel. Life’s too hard there.” Others joined in. “Too much hardship … Too much suffering … Don’t judge us too harshly.… We’re not traitors to our people.… We’re good Jews.…”

At the stopover in Montevideo I contacted a Jewish journalist and told him of my companions’ tragic odyssey. He promised to alert the community. In Buenos Aires my cousins Voïcsi and her husband Moishe-Hersh Genuth came to meet us. I gave them some articles for
Yedioth Ahronoth
, unaware that they would be reprinted or quoted in the American Jewish press.

Yehudit Moretzka, a Yiddish singer and friend of the Lenemans, came aboard with Mark Turkov, a Jewish book publisher. Having by then become a sort of spokesman for the exiles, I shared my concern with them: Someone would have to let them disembark somewhere; they couldn’t possibly go on like this. They were sick and exhausted. As we talked, Turkov noticed my manuscript, from which I was never separated. He wanted to know what it was and whether he could look at it. I showed it to him, explaining that it was unfinished. “That’s all right,” he said. “Let me take it anyway.” It was my only copy, but Turkov assured me that it would be safe with him. I still hesitated, but he promised not only to read it but “If it’s good, I’ll publish it.” Yehudit Moretzka encouraged me by telling me she would make sure the manuscript was returned to me in Paris—with or without a rejection slip. I was convinced Turkov wouldn’t publish it. I couldn’t see why any editor would be interested in the sad memoirs of a stranger he happened to meet on a ship, surrounded by refugees nobody wanted. “Don’t worry so much,” Yehudit Moretzka told me as she left. But I felt lost without my manuscript.

The South American Jewish communities proved equal to the task. The refugees were finally allowed to come ashore in Sao Paulo. But the priest who greeted them could not contain his anger when he learned they would be taken in charge by a Jewish charity. Baruch embraced me and asked me to come and visit him once he was settled. He would present me with a pair of handmade shoes. Haim’ke, too, embraced me and promised to make me a fine suit. A third passenger told me of a beautiful cousin who wanted to get married, suggesting
that—who knows?—I might make a good husband. They were all relieved and happy, and so was I.

In the meantime, Hanna’s letters, which had piled up at the American Express office in São Paulo, betrayed mounting unease. Because of my change in itinerary, I had not written to her. She wondered about my prolonged silence and whether I had changed my mind. Nearly six weeks had passed, and now I had to postpone my return. I wrote to her explaining why, but by a quirk of fate my letter was delivered after a serious delay. I had been away for two months when Dov recalled me to Paris to cover Pierre Mendès-France’s accession to power. I flew back, anxious to see Hanna. I would explain the exceptional circumstances, find a way to make her forgive me. She would understand, for I had missed her. I would tell her that I had been faithful to her, even in my thoughts.

As soon as I arrived, I hurried to Leneman’s office and asked whether there were any messages for me. He handed me a sheet of paper with a list of names. Nothing from Hanna. Then he gave me my mail. The first letter I opened was from her: “You didn’t write and didn’t come back when you said you would. I realize what that means; I’m not angry with you.” I rushed to her apartment, where the concierge told me she was sorry but Hanna had left. Where had she gone? “To Palestine, I think.” When? “Ten days ago.” I was both sad and relieved.

Fifteen years later I saw her in Jerusalem. She was still proud and beautiful, though a little subdued. She was married and had children. I wondered whether I should tell her that my delay and my silence had not been my fault, that I had come back to Paris ready to marry her. I decided to say nothing. There were two possibilities: Either she was happy, in which case there was no point in reopening old wounds, or she wasn’t, in which case there was no point in kindling regrets.

I never saw her again.

The last thing there is to say about my Brazilian expedition is that it ended on a comical note. Ever since my arrival, colleagues and acquaintances had been telling me about a man called Assis Chateaubriant: “If you’re writing about this country, you must meet him.” The name meant nothing to me, so they explained that he was a vivid and influential personality, the owner of several newspapers, radio stations, and art galleries; a friend and confidant of members of government and high society. I would have been delighted to meet him.
Unfortunately he wasn’t interested. I spoke to an army of secretaries but was unable to persuade them to put me through. I asked diplomats and clergymen for help, but to no avail. The great Chateaubriant was too busy. If he wasn’t traveling, he was in a meeting or delivering a speech or writing an editorial. In short, he was never there, and if, by chance, he dropped by his office, he was not to be disturbed.

But sometimes the good Lord has a wry sense of humor. On my way home to Paris, as I was waiting to board my plane, I noticed excited activity around a short, unimpressive-looking man. Obsequious assistants and secretaries trailed him all the way to the gate. As soon as he came aboard, the captain rushed out to greet him, and the stewardesses fell all over themselves to charm him. Curious, I discreetly asked one of them who he was. “Oh, didn’t you know? That’s Chateaubriant.” As he eased into the seat next to mine, I thought that I would get my interview after all. But then I had a better idea. I decided to pay him back for the time I had wasted pursuing him. With what I hoped was great nonchalance, I took out a French book and began to flip through it. Evidently, he was in the mood for conversation.

“Oh, are you French?”

“No,” I replied curtly.

“Algerian?”

I shook my head.

“But you read French?”

“It would seem so.” Realizing I was disinclined to chat, he fell silent. An hour went by. I took out an Israeli paper and began taking notes intently.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Hebrew.”

“Are you Israeli?”

“No,” I replied, not deigning to look at him. Another hour passed before he returned to the attack. “What brought you to Brazil? Business?”

“No.”

“Vacation?”

“No.”

“An official mission, perhaps?”

I shook my head, and then, after a silence, added, “I’m a journalist.”

He was delighted to hear it. “Really? In that case we’re colleagues. I’m a journalist too.”

My eyes widened. “Oh, what’s your name?”

He brightened. “Surely you’ve heard of me. Assis Chateaubriand.”

I pretended to search my memory. “Chateaubriant, Chateaubriand … Like the great writer, you mean?” Yes, he said, that’s it. “But with a
t
instead of a
d
. And not René. Assis.”

I looked at him more closely. “I’m sorry, sir. The name doesn’t register. No doubt it’s my fault, but I don’t think I know you.” Disbelief crept over his face. “I cannot believe that nobody mentioned my name,” he said. I pretended to search my memory. No … “I met with a lot of important people in Rio and São Paulo. Senators, industrialists, high officials. I visited the editorial offices of the great dailies, but …”

He seemed dejected. “And no one spoke of me?” I drove in the final nail. “No. No one.” He muttered something in Portuguese that I didn’t understand. Some of his certainties had crumbled. He was silent for several hours.

Just before we landed in Madrid, I took pity on him and confessed the truth. He was as famous as he had thought, after all. “Thank you,” he exclaimed, clasping my arm. “Thank you for the lesson. From now on I’ll meet with any foreign journalist who wants to see me.” Between Madrid and Paris he offered me a job with one of his papers. I promised I would think about it.

Perhaps I should have accepted. If I had married Hanna, as I was then ready to do, my meager
Yedioth Ahronoth
salary wouldn’t have paid for the wedding or anything else. Nor would there have been a shortage of articles to write for Chateaubriant, for in that year, 1954, Paris once again became important and newsworthy. Pierre Mendès-France—charismatic, popular, energetic, and imaginative—intrigued not only the French, but newspaper readers throughout the world.

Pierre Mendès-France: a magical, legendary name that aroused enthusiasm and hatred in equal measure. Was he too intellectual to serve as prime minister? Perhaps he had too much integrity. A man of obsessive honesty, determined to honor his ethical and political commitments, he attained his position thanks to his
Weltanschauung
and his philosophy of social justice. François Mauriac often spoke to me about him. He admired and loved him as he admired and loved De Gaulle, for each proved capable of ending the absurd violence of war, one in Indochina, the other in Algeria, and each succeeded in imposing his own concept of man’s destiny.

In Tel Aviv there was a sudden surge of interest in foreign news, especially from France. The war in Indochina had entered its final phase. Dien Bien Phu dominated international politics. There was speculation about its geopolitical and strategic implications, about what China and the Soviet Union would do. The atmosphere was supercharged, with stormy debates in the French National Assembly. Power was up for grabs, and Mendès-France declared himself a candidate. “What, another Jew?” howled anti-Semites who in the 1930s had shouted, “Better Hitler than Blum.” Their obvious hatred for the new prime minister, who put himself forward as a man of peace, provoked uneasiness in all political circles.

It was a busy time for me. I was happy, involved, and fully absorbed in my work. I had found my true vocation. I would finally complete my break out of the exclusive domain of Jewish or Israeli issues. I hurried from press conferences at the Quai d’Orsay to meetings at the Palais-Bourbon, sometimes skipping lunch, but never the papers. I devoured the dailies, scanned the weeklies. Dov, my employer and friend, asked me to interview Mendès-France. Naturally, I tried, and naturally I failed. And naturally Dov refused to give up. He sent me
daily cables urging me not to give up either. I laid siege to the press office of the Hôtel Matignon, bombarding them with written requests. Still no reply. Finally, I wrote Mendès-France a despairing, pathetically naïve letter. “Mr. Prime Minister,” I pleaded, “if you refuse me an interview, one of two things will happen: Either my newspaper—which is spending a fortune on cables—will go bankrupt and I will be unemployed, or I will be fired. In either case, the responsibility will be yours.” Evidently unconcerned with this burden of guilt, he answered with a hastily scribbled note assuring me that, although there would be no interview, if either of the predicted misfortunes befell me, he would personally help me find another job. Dov was encouraged. “See? You’re already in direct contact with him. Just keep trying.”

It was around this time that Givon reappeared. “I just got in from Geneva,” he announced with his usual phlegmatic intonation. I knew he wanted me to ask what he was doing there, so I did him the favor. “Oh, nothing,” he replied. I was, of course, meant to feign incredulity, and so I complied. “Well,” he said, “since you insist … I had to set something up for Pierre.” An alarm went off in my head. There was, of course, no dearth of Pierres in France, but by now I knew Givon’s style. He wanted me to keep asking questions, and I decided to oblige him. “Pierre who?” I asked. He stared at me as though I had just asked whether Paris was the capital of Togo. “What do you mean, Pierre who? Pierre Mendès-France. Who else?” Playing the game, I asked, “You know him?” Once again I was treated to a withering look, as if to say, Who do you think would know him if not I? He went on as if talking to himself. “In fact, I’m going to see him tomorrow—no, the day after.” In spite of myself, my imagination ran away with me. I pictured myself in the prime minister’s office asking probing questions and jotting down confidential replies that would make the front page of
Yedioth Ahronoth
and all the world’s press the next day. But my optimism failed me soon enough. Who was I to Joseph Givon that he would let me go with him? Hadn’t I disappointed him by refusing to go to Prague? He kept on talking. “Actually, if you feel like it, maybe I could take you with me.”