All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (54 page)

In the United States someone else had come into my life. Georges Borchardt, a New York literary agent whose reputation was on the rise, was desperately seeking an American publisher for my little book. Georges is a former teacher of French origin. He is a man of keen intelligence, deceptively cynical and sincerely skeptical, and, fortunately for his clients, totally discreet and reliable. To have him as an agent is lucky, to have him as a friend a pleasure. Reticent about his past, especially his childhood and adolescence during the war, he falls back on humor when the subject comes up.

When we first met he was living in a small two-room apartment on West Fifty-fifth Street. One of the rooms served as an office. Anne, a young Jewish girl from New Jersey, was his assistant and secretary. One day we were on the way to the airport and Georges offhandedly remarked, “Did I tell you that Anne has decided to change her name?” It was his way of telling me they were getting married.

As for
Night
, despite Mauriac’s preface and the favorable reviews in the French, Belgian, and Swiss press, the big publishers hesitated, debated, and ultimately sent their regrets. Some thought the book too slender (American readers seemed to prefer fatter volumes), others too depressing (American readers seemed to prefer optimistic books). Some felt its subject was too little known, others that it was too well known. In short, it was suggested over and over again that we try elsewhere. Refusing to lose heart, Georges kept trying. In the end Hill and Wang agreed to take the risk. Arthur Wang won me over with his lack of concern for things commercial. He still believed in literature as others believe in God. His zest for life deeply impressed me. Sensitive, he listened in depth the way some read in depth. If he didn’t like a work, he said so, but gently. “I can’t promise you millions,” he said, “but I’ll do a good job, meaning the best I can.” He kept that promise. The American edition sold a couple of thousand copies in its first two years, but it attracted a certain amount of attention. When other houses later offered us better terms for
Dawn
and
The Accident
, Georges and I decided to stay with Hill and Wang.

In Paris Paul Flamand, head of the publishing house Le Seuil, introduced me to George Steiner. Brilliant, incisive, blessed with writing gifts and fluent in several languages, he was the kind of intellectual who enjoys arousing hostility. At ease in both ancient and modern cultures, he upset the Israelis by hailing the Diaspora. “Man is not a tree,” he declared; ever in motion, he seeks the roots of knowledge in more than one place.

In Haifa, during a conference on the Holocaust, he managed to alienate the survivors in the audience. The Auschwitz experience, he said, could best be conveyed in German, and gave as example the work of the poet Paul Celan. While reaffirming my affection for him, I pointed out that German was also the language of the killers, and that the great documents on the tragedy had been written in Yiddish and Hebrew. That said, I admired his original way of treating the most complex subjects. George Steiner is a man with a restless soul whose search is never-ending.

Scoops are relatively rare in journalism, and in 1962 fortune smiled upon me, allowing me to outdo my colleagues. The story concerned a boy named Yossele Shuchmacher, whose grandfather, believing the parents were neglecting the boy’s religious education, kidnapped him “to save his soul.” The event turned Israel upside down. The residences of presumed suspects were searched, extremist sects were closely watched, but with no result. Not only was public opinion aroused, Yossele became a national obsession. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion ordered the Israeli secret services to conduct a worldwide search, exhaustively investigating all Jewish communities and infiltrating ultraorthodox circles. The operation was directed by Issar Harel, legendary chief of the Mossad, the man who supervised the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. But the most famous boy in Israel had disappeared, swallowed up by the guardians of fanaticism.

Dov phoned me every week. “Anything at your end?” There never was. “Rumor has it he’s in Brooklyn,” Dov told me. But Brooklyn is a big place. “Use your contacts with the Lubavitch Hasidim. I think they’re up to something.” My contacts laughed. They were conducting their own inquiry, for they were just as eager as Ben-Gurion to find the boy whose disappearance was an embarrassment to the moderate religious community. Then one Friday afternoon I got a more agitated call from Dov: “We’ve been told he’s definitely somewhere in the New York area. Check it out.” I called a friend, Israel Gur-Arye, an Israeli consul and a descendant of the Besht, of whom it was whispered that he
was
the Mossad’s man in New York. “Another false rumor,” he said. Was he sure? “Absolutely,” he replied. He promised to let me know if anything broke. I called Dov back and told him I trusted Gur-Arye. “If you’re not careful,” Dov insisted, “you’ll let the most sensational item of the last few years slip through your fingers.” I agreed to be on guard.
In any case, the next day was Shabbat, and ordinarily, nothing out of the ordinary happened in Brooklyn on Shabbat. But I forgot that many extraordinary things can happen at the end of Shabbat.

On Sunday morning Dov’s voice on the phone sounded more ironic than annoyed. “So, you still trust that friend of yours?” It took me a moment to figure out what he meant. “You haven’t heard?” He seemed surprised. “Mossad agents recovered the boy last night. In Brooklyn.” Stunned, I hung up. I had to get hold of Gur-Arye. It was five in the morning, and I hesitated to wake his wife, Shula. But never mind. I would apologize to her, though surely not to her lying husband. It was Shula who answered. “Israel’s not here,” she said, “but I know he wants to talk to you. Here’s the number where you can reach him.” I got through on the tenth try. Seething with indignation, I was about to tell my former friend what I thought of him when he cut me off. “Try to understand. The slightest indiscretion could have ruined the operation. The boy was not yet in our hands. We picked him up only two hours ago. We knew where he was hiding, but needed the consent of the American authorities. I was going to call you.…” I refused to forgive him. He had tricked me, embarrassed me. He said he was sorry, but I wasn’t interested in his excuses. You don’t lie to a friend, even if you are a Mossad agent. “Look,” he said, “you never know what line might be tapped or by whom.” He went on and on, but I rejected his explanations, and finally he grudgingly admitted my anger was justified. “Okay,” he said. “I owe you one. Let me find a way to pay you back.”

That afternoon he arranged an exclusive interview for me with the boy. The descendant of the Besht could not fail to honor this second promise. “But you have to swear you won’t reveal where he is.” I swore. “And that you won’t ask him about the kidnapping.” I swore that too. “And that you won’t say I was the one who …”I swore that too.

Yossele reminded me of the Jewish boys of my town, with kipa and side curls. He washed his hands before saying his morning and evening prayers, recited a blessing before drinking the glass of water I offered him. I liked his melancholy, innocent smile. I told him that when I was his age, I had been as pious as he. I asked how he had spent his days while hidden in Brooklyn. “I studied the
parsha,”
the weekly passage of the Bible. What else? “Rashi.” And? “The Talmud.” Which tractate? “Berakhot, the Benedictions.” There happened to be a complete
set of the Babylonian Talmud in the apartment, and the two of us, ignoring the Mossad and FBI agents in the room, pored over the texts that bound us to ancient times.

The interview caused quite a stir, though I didn’t reveal anything sensational. I never mentioned that it was an ex-nightclub dancer who had converted to Judaism who had been instrumental in getting Yossele out of the country illegally, nor that Yossele had been disguised as a girl, nor that a fanatical sect had organized the kidnapping. All I did was describe our Talmud lesson.

Dov was pleased, and Gur-Arye and I were friends again. You can’t hold a grudge against a descendant of the Besht, even if he is a Mossad agent.

(Some years later I read an article about Yossele in
Yedioth Ahronoth
. He was no longer fanatical; in fact, he had even stopped practicing.)

In France I was compelled to change publishers. Perhaps because he liked
Night
so much, Lindon didn’t like
Dawn
. He told me so straight out, adding that he published only works he wished he had written himself. I wasn’t at all offended by his directness. I was amused. He also advised me to change the novel’s ending.

During one of his trips to Paris, Georges Borchardt happened to spend a morning at Éditions du Seuil, where Monique Nathan told him she had read
Night
. She asked whether I had written anything else, and Georges told her I had. In fact, he just happened to have the manuscript with him. He gave it to Monique, who withdrew to her small office to read it. Fortunately for both of us, it was not a long book. Georges was still talking to Paul Flamand when Monique came out to say she couldn’t understand why Jérôme Lindon had rejected it. Still, she refused to steal an author from a rival house, so she phoned Lindon to tell him she thought he was making a mistake. But Jérôme stuck to his decision and Monique kept the manuscript.

Paul Flamand, who ran the house, was not only a wise and daring publisher but also a superbly intelligent and sensitive humanist, a man of vast culture capable of guiding and enlightening an author without offending him. An hour in his office or two hours at a restaurant alone with him was worth a trip to France. He had a way of soothing the heart while arousing the mind. It was impossible not to grow attached to him. The contracts he sent Georges were unusual: he let us fill in the amount of the advance ourselves.

Delivering a manuscript to Paul was a ritual that never changed: He would touch it, caress it, sniff it, put it down and pick it up, flip through it. Finally, he would stuff it into the bulging briefcase he carried home. A day, a week, or six months later, over dinner, he might suddenly refer to the book’s theme, construction, and characters, each of which he had thoroughly analyzed. If he failed to understand an episode, he would gently try to show me that I hadn’t understood it well enough myself.

I loved our discussions. A devout but enlightened Catholic, he was interested in Jewish tradition and culture as a means of gaining greater insight into his own. I liked the way he asked questions or commented on an author or a text: He would draw you out tactfully, delicately, muttering something like “Well, well,” which would force you to go into even greater detail. You could never be superficial with him.

I remember the time we visited the cathedral of Chartres. No one could talk about it or view it as he did. He made the stones tell their stories.

I remember Marguerite Flamand, solemn and contemplative, expressing herself deliberately, covering the essential in just a few words; I remember her as her health declined, as she battled her illness with a stoic strength that accentuated her feminine grace.

I remember Paul, when asked about his wife’s health, opening and closing his mouth without uttering a sound.

“What’s wrong? You look terrible.” I was talking to Saul Friedlander. We had last seen each other at the home of a friend in Manhattan in 1958 or 1959. He was working for Nahum Goldmann. I had never seen him so depressed.

As we sat at an outdoor café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he took a Valium and told me his troubles. In the course of preparing his thesis on the diplomacy of the Third Reich, he had come upon sensational documents about Pope Pius XII’s policy toward Nazi Germany. He was putting together a book on the subject. I immediately understood what the problem was, for I had lived it: Publishers were no longer interested in that period. I promised I would speak to someone about it.

The next day I brought Saul to Le Seuil and introduced him to Paul Flamand. It was a turning point for Saul, the beginning of a career.

•   •   •

For ten years, until her premature death, Monique was in charge of my manuscripts. A Jewish convert to Catholicism, peerless reader and talented editor, extraordinarily demanding but never obstinate, she was cultivated, frank, and extremely witty. She was either for or against, all the way. Not for her the golden road of Maimonides. She had an impeccable reputation in the publishing world, and she went over
Dawn
and
The Accident
scalpel in hand. She had me rework a chapter in
The Town Beyond the Wall
. She was right. She had me delete an entire chapter of
The Gates of the Forest
. Here again she was right. We were in perfect harmony. Three successive versions of
A Beggar in Jerusalem
failed to satisfy Monique. Mercifully, the fourth pleased her. She also worked on
Entre deux soleils
(whose American title,
One Generation After, I
preferred).

In her absence (few people knew that she was suffering from cancer), Claude Durand was my editor for
legends of Our Time
. Then Paul Flamands son Bruno took over. He became my editor, my ally. Serious, introspective, and meticulous, he could do what many editors cannot: identify with the book rather than its author. I don’t know how he managed to understand as well as he did my works on the Bible and its interpretations, the Talmud and its commentaries, Hasidism and its mysterious masters. In the end he assimilated Hebrew texts (in translation, of course) better than certain Jewish thinkers. We were bound by a creative complicity. Even when I felt compelled to leave Le Seuil (temporarily), our relationship endured.

It was the war in Lebanon that brought me into conflict with Le Seuil. Paul Flamand had retired and Michel Chodkiewicz, his successor, published an outrageous letter in
Le Monde
in which he accused Israel of genocide. It was the summer of 1982, early in the war. Since he identified himself as the director of Le Seuil, Chodkiewicz effectively committed the firm to his position, or at least that was my view of the matter. I asked him to issue not a retraction but a correction, one that would explain his thought in more detail, without altering his political or religious philosophy with regard to Israel and the Palestinians (a Catholic by birth, he had converted to Islam). Essentially, I asked for a few lines saying more or less that in the heat of passion he had used a word that offended certain people. Michel categorically refused, saying he believed in freedom of expression. I replied that the word “genocide” must be used with extreme caution. Did he really think that Israel’s aim was to exterminate the entire Palestinian people?
I was saddened by Michel’s obstinacy Our relations had always been excellent. We shared a love for mysticism, and I admired and respected his knowledge and integrity. Why was he suddenly so inflexible? François Wahl arranged for me to attend a meeting of Seuil’s editorial committee. I knew all its members and explained to them that I had been part of the house for more than twenty years and had never asked for anything. But this was a slur on the Jewish people’s honor. With the exception of a young woman—Jewish—they all agreed. They tried to persuade Michel, who remained inflexible. After seven months of painful discussions I decided to leave—but made no public statements. I was too attached to Le Seuil to wish to harm it.