All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (42 page)

I told him I would give him anything he wanted if …

He bristled. “You don’t have to give me anything. There’s nothing I need.”

He suddenly seemed annoyed. Once again I felt my chance slipping
away. I kicked myself for having offended him by trying to bribe him. But he decided to let it go. “I like doing favors,” he said. “So come with me to Pierre’s. I’ll phone you tomorrow morning and give you the go-ahead.” He spoke as if it were a military operation. Here we go again, a voice inside me whispered, but I silenced it. I wanted to show my gratitude, but before I could thank him adequately, he extended his injured hand (I never did figure out why he shook hands sometimes with the right and sometimes with the left), said goodbye, and limped away. When I realized he hadn’t said what time he would call the next morning, I ran after him. “You’ll see,” he muttered. I started to ask again, but I could see he was getting annoyed. So be it. I would wait all morning, all day if I had to.

Givon kept his word. If he was a liar, he was as anxious to be believed as an artist is to be admired. My notebook indicates that he phoned at precisely 11:38 a.m. “Be ready for an urgent communication,” he said. So he was still intent on playing the conspiracy game. “When?” I whispered. In an hour. Once again he kept his word. “I dropped in on Pierre this morning,” he said. “We had breakfast alone together.” In other words, the meeting had already taken place, without me. I tried hard to swallow my bitterness, but Givon explained, “I had to speak to him about you first. I couldn’t just show up with you in tow without warning, could I?” So the plan was still on. “Pierre told me he would be happy to meet you. I even translated some of your articles for him. He was touched by the one about his investiture.” So I would see him tomorrow? “Absolutely.” There was a long pause, and then: “I’ll call you tonight. Will you be in?” “What time?” I asked, but he had hung up.

I was supposed to write an article for
Yedioth
that evening, but it could wait. Givon’s call took precedence. A man on intimate terms with the masters of the Kremlin and Peking, who visited Mordechai Oren in prison and had been photographed in the midst of a throng of Soviet officers, was worth the sacrifice. I sat home and waited, annoyed when Leneman used the phone. I wished I could have kept the line open by telling him the truth, but Givon never would have forgiven me. So I invented a tale: A beautiful friend of mine, a girl I loved, had promised to meet me tomorrow. It would be a catastrophe if I missed her call. Leneman and his wife both smiled. They wanted to know who the girl was and where I had met her. They didn’t go so far as to ask if she was Jewish, but I felt myself blush. “Shyness becomes
you,” Madame Leneman said. Meanwhile, I bit my nails in anticipation. To keep him off the phone I got Leneman to talk about his wartime experiences in the Soviet Union. He succeeded in distracting me from Givon and his mysterious exploits as we discussed the stages of his interminable march to the depths of Siberia and Stalin’s insane anti-Semitism. Leneman had been first to speak of the Jewish tragedy in the Soviet Union. Actually, I listened with some skepticism. Labor camps in the USSR? Courts doing the bidding of the NKVD? Summary executions? It was like listening to Victor Kravchenko in Yiddish. It all seemed impossible, unthinkable. Yet Leneman was an eyewitness. Originally from Warsaw, he was a war refugee in Moscow, where he became the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He had known Solomon Mikhoels, the great theater director whose murder in Minsk in 1949 sounded the alarm. In Moscow Leneman had associated with Jewish novelists who were later shot on Stalin’s orders: Peretz Markish, Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister. Despite everything I already knew—the so-called Doctors’ Plot, the anti-Zionist and anti-cosmopolitan campaign that had swept through the Communist world—I still could not get used to the idea that so many intellectuals could have gone on worshiping and remained faithful all these years to a viscerally racist despot. And then there had been the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.… And yet, how could one forget the heroism and sacrifices of the Red Army and the Soviet partisans, the misery of an entire people? I didn’t challenge what Leneman said, but I did wonder about it.

Finally, it was almost eleven, and Madame Leneman went to bed. Leneman retired at midnight. I went to my room and stretched out on the bed, fully clothed. I tried to read but found it impossible to concentrate. I had never waited so anxiously for a phone call, even when I thought I was in love. I picked up the receiver to make sure the line was working. Everything was fine except me. Joseph was driving me crazy. It was already two in the morning, and I was facing another sleepless night. Okay, the important thing was to meet Mendès-France, but would the damn phone ever ring? I talked to it, harassed it, and finally it rang. In my excitement, I woke everyone up: “Joseph?” Givon waited an interminable moment before saying: “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at noon on the dot.” He hung up before I could say a word. I wondered whether to call Dov. An inner voice urged caution. With Givon you never knew. Tomorrow could mean next week or next year.
I had to get some sleep. If the meeting came off, I would have to be in good form. But I couldn’t sleep. I felt like talking to someone so I went downstairs to the corner café, which was still open.

I stood at the counter and drank a scalding café-crème. A muttering drunk was sipping wine. A woman looked at me invitingly. I smiled, thinking of Givon. She smiled back. The waiter gaped at me, incredulous. He often teased me for being too straitlaced, and here I was … The woman walked over to me. “Problems, honey? Something bothering you?” I told her that, on the contrary, everything was fabulous. “In that case,” she said, “why don’t you tell me all about it?” “Leave him alone,” the waiter broke in. “Can’t you see he’s not interested?” I ordered another café-crème, bought her one, and we chatted about this and that—in short, about life. The drunk joined in, for he knew a thing or two about life himself, and pretty soon the waiter put his two cents in as well. We philosophized until dawn. My throat was dry when I got home, but I felt good, at peace with the world. Madame Leneman, up earlier than usual, knocked on my door and invited me to breakfast. “How did it go?” she asked. I looked at her, uncomprehending. “You know, your beautiful friend …” I thanked her for her interest, assured her that the girl was still beautiful and that I loved her with all my heart. But we had decided to stop seeing each other. That made poor Madame Leneman very sad. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s just a lovers’ quarrel.” Her face brightened.

At noon a taxi pulled up. “Let’s go,” Givon said, as though the driver had known the way since childhood. We set out in silence. Givon was a great lover of silences. Perhaps he was a mystic. His meditative air made him seem present yet remote, as though he were listening to voices he alone was worthy of hearing. I was dying of curiosity. Were we going to see Mendès-France? The signs were good. We seemed to be on the way to the National Assembly. Place de la Concorde. Excellent. My heart pounded. But why were we turning onto the Champs-Élysées? This wasn’t the way. Where the hell was my silent torturer taking me? We turned off the main boulevard, drove along the Seine, passed several intersections, and turned into the Rue du Conseiller-Collignon, where the taxi came to a full stop in front of an austere but elegant building. A policeman standing guard at the door recognized Givon and saluted him amicably. Givon finally spoke as we waited for the elevator: “I thought it would be better to see him at home, in private. There are too many people at his office at
Matignon.” In other words, Givon, not the prime minister, had decided where the interview would be held. Mendès-France was at his beck and call! I had not yet recovered from my astonishment when Givon added, “I asked if we could have lunch. It’s better that way. More private.”

Givon rang the bell, and the maid who answered also recognized my friend the miracle-worker. She showed us into a salon where Givon obviously felt at home. The young woman was happy to see him. “I’ll tell Madame you’ve arrived,” she said, and a moment later there was Lily Mendès-France, the elegant, lovely, distinguished wife of the prime minister. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, kissing Givon on both cheeks. I felt like I was dreaming. “My husband will be here any minute now,” our hostess announced warmly. I prayed that there would be no hitch, that the French government would not be ousted by a no-confidence vote before lunch. “What would you like to drink while we wait?” Givon had an aperitif.

We were shown to comfortable chairs, but I couldn’t sit still. Two adolescents joined us. Our hostess looked at her sons proudly. Givon chatted with them about their studies. I nodded, agreeing with everything they said. A relaxed, intimate atmosphere was suddenly interrupted by the ringing of a telephone. Madame Mendès-France went out. My heart pounded. It was bad news. “My husband asks you to excuse him. He’s been detained at the National Assembly.” End of dream. I felt my stomach turn over but managed to conceal my disappointment. Oh well, I would write an article about how I almost met Mendès-France, a sort of interview in absentia.

Dov’s reaction: “Why give up? You’re a friend of the family now.” I intended to prevail once more upon Givon, who, after all, really was a friend of the family. Unfortunately, he had to leave Paris. International developments required his presence elsewhere. Ho Chi Minh? Khrushchev? I bombarded him with questions, but he merely shrugged. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not, but he had brought me to Mendès-France’s home, and if he knew the French prime minister, he might well be on speaking terms with other world leaders too. In any case, he vanished from Paris.

He reappeared at Orly Airport sometime later, when the Israeli ambassador and his entourage came to welcome General Moshe Dayan, who was on an official visit to Paris. The rest of us had to stand in a special waiting room, but there was Givon, limping out onto the tarmac and shaking hands with the illustrious visitor just as he came
down the ramp. Who had given him authorization? The ambassador was as puzzled as I was, and his advisers knew no more than he did.

I saw Givon again in Geneva in 1955, during the summit conference attended by Soviet marshals Zhukov and Bulganin (covered with medals), British prime minister Anthony Eden (more elegant than his colleagues), French prime minister Edgar Faure (the most intellectual of the group), and Eisenhower (godfather, if not father, to the meeting). I was most interested in Zhukov, conqueror of Berlin, the man who had vanquished Hitler. If only I could approach him, I would ask him to confirm Givon’s claim that they were friends.

Givon intrigued the press by accompanying the chief of East German intelligence everywhere. From that moment on we communicated only through the mail: cards and letters from Warsaw, Peking, Prague, and Moscow, where he became a movie producer. It was also in Moscow that he married the daughter of one of the physicians imprisoned on Stalin’s orders during the time of the so-called Doctors’ Plot. “I will never return to the West,” he wrote to me. “It’s too late to turn back now.”
Izvestia
(or was it
Pravda?)
published an article denouncing him for dealing in “contraband.” Arrested as a smuggler, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. “I’m innocent,” he told me in a pathetic letter. “The truth will out in the end.” The truth—the word seemed flexible coming from Givon. But he was right. He was released—“thanks to the intervention of several Western ambassadors”—with the court’s apologies. Disgusted with the Soviet system, he returned to Prague and then resurfaced in Paris, where he lived in my old room at the Lenemans’ home. After that, he settled in Israel, where he died of a heart attack.

Newspapers and magazines in Tel Aviv published many obituaries and articles about him and the many sides of his character. Haim Guri wrote a book called
Who Knows Joseph
G.? The public yearned for clarification of the Givon mystery, but received little satisfaction.

I often think of him with affection. I came close to sharing a few of his adventures, real or imaginary. Adventurers don’t always tell the truth; they prefer to invent it. But he did take me to lunch at the home of the Mendès-France family, didn’t he?

In those years Paris teemed with strange characters: genuine vagabonds and fake warriors, currency smugglers, impoverished princes, men intoxicated with holiness, others with debauchery, men of many
trades and of none. Listening to their real or fabricated memories, I gathered stories for my novels to come.

Like most of my foreign colleagues in search of the exotic, I spent a lot of time in the Latin Quarter (remembrance of existentialism past) and Montparnasse (hoping to encounter starving artists on leave from their garrets). I would sit at an outdoor table at La Coupole and jot down ideas and impressions. Looking up from the page, I hoped to discover the next Soutine or Modigliani, or even Chagall. Some had talent but no luck, while some of the lucky ones were sadly lacking in talent.

I liked to wander around with my friend Avigdor Arikha, the painter. Born in Romania, he had endured the ghettos and camps in the Romanian-occupied territory of Transnystria. He often accompanied me on midnight visits to Radio France to send my dispatches. I tried to get him to talk about Mogilev, for not enough is known of the history of that ghetto that became the site of massacre. Arikha, a great artist (delicate drawings, stunning portraits), evolved from abstract expressionism to a classicism of rare originality. He was a man of great esoteric erudition. A friend and confidant of Samuel Beckett, he was interested in everything: philosophy and literature, science and history. At once naïve and arrogant, sweet and rigid, he was capable of losing his temper over nothing. You had merely to disagree with something he said. I envied him for having taken part in the war of independence in 1948. He had arrived in Palestine with the Youth Aliyah. Naturally, we often talked about the situation in Israel. He would have liked to have been able to rewrite history and live in a Jewish kingdom. He imagined himself as “Prince of Jerusalem,” and, in his magnanimity, he crowned me “Prince of Galilee.”