Elie Wiesel (25 page)

Talk to Talia about it? Of course. I had to tell her. I shared everything with her. But this time she refused to listen. “Underground activities are serious matters. The less you talk, the better.” I was offended: “Even to you?” She answered, “Exceptions to that rule can be dangerous.” I was going to reply, “Tell me how you know so much about these rules,” but the discussion was obviously over, and I didn’t argue.

A few days later, I found a scrap of paper in my coat pocket “Tomorrow afternoon at 5 outside the Eden Cinema.” Probably my colleague had put it there. I took him aside. “Tomorrow’s Friday, isn’t it?” “Yes, Friday.” “Don’t you think the time and place are a bad choice?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “But—” “I’ll say it again: I don’t know what you’re talking about.” All right, I understood, security regulations made him play dumb. All the same, a good Jew like me doesn’t go to the movies on a Friday night (the theater would be closed anyway); he stays home and prepares for the Sabbath. How was I going to explain my absence to Talia and her parents?

Next day I left the office at one in the afternoon. At four
I announced that I had a toothache. “I’m going to the dentist.” My mother-in-law made me promise to hurry back. Of course, of course. At five o’clock sharp I was in front of the Eden Cinema. Doors and ticket booth were shut. This is stupid, I thought, picking a place like this for a secret meeting. A voice jarred me from my thoughts. “Don’t turn around or attract attention. Just walk. The next street on the right.” A cold, neutral voice. Polish or Lithuanian accent. After a few steps I noted a dapper man beside me. Worked for a bank, maybe? He passed along some news: from now on I was part of Lehi. Caution and vigilance. For now, keep my eyes and ears open. Whatever I learned at the consulate or in consular circles, I would report back to him. He was my contact. I couldn’t hide my disappointment: “Is that all? I was a partisan! I’d hoped for action!” “It’s not up to you to determine where you can best serve,” answered this bank clerk, who was called Yiftah.

I met him two or three times a week and passed along news and impressions. Anything of importance? No. But it was not my place to judge. In January, Yiftah told me I was to attend classes in ideology. All right, go for ideology; what won’t a man do for his country? The courses were given at a dentist’s: the history of Zionism, the origins of anti-Semitism, geopolitical theory. The difference between Herzl and Jabotinsky; the breach between David Raziel’s Irgun and Avraham Stern’s Lehi; their common adversary, the Haganah.… The courses came to an end, thank God, and I repeated my wish to take part in real operations. “If I wanted a political education I could have enrolled at the university.” Yiftah didn’t dignify that with an answer.

But he must have relayed my request to his superiors, because shortly afterward I was taking a crash course in sabotage, followed quickly by my first mission. “I’m going out
tonight,” I told Talia. “Things to do at the office.” She smiled and kissed me. “Be careful.”

The mission was a disaster. Our intelligence was poor, and our group walked into a trap. The arms depot we were to burgle was under surveillance. We were lucky: the British soldiers fired before we moved in. “Disperse!” shouted our commander. We made our way to the Kerem Hatemanim, the “Yemenite Vineyard,” where underground patriots were always welcomed with enthusiasm and gratitude.

The second mission, in March, was more successful. We attacked another depot. A textbook operation. In no time we had the sentries bound and gagged. Wearing army uniforms, we walked around the camp unafraid and in no apparent hurry. The booty: two trucks piled high with machine guns, rifles and ammunition.

Back home again, I was itching to tell Talia. But she had more important news. She was pregnant. My head whirled. It was totally unexpected. “Are you disappointed?” Talia asked.

I took her face in my hands. “I’m happy, Talinka.” Happy and worried. “When is our child due?”

“Why? Are you in a hurry?” No, I was in no hurry. “Late August, early September,” Talia said.

“What shall we call it?”

“If it’s a girl, we’ll name her after your mother, all right? And if it’s a boy …”

I said nothing. I couldn’t speak. I had a vision of myself far off, with my parents.

On May 14, 1948, we were all gathered together at my in-laws’, where our neighbors had joined us. Hardly breathing,
we listened to David Ben-Gurion’s speech declaring the independence of the Jewish state, which would bear the name of Israel. Should I be ashamed to confess that I sat there dizzied, with tears in my eyes? Talia, too. And the neighbors. And my in-laws. When old Rabbi Fischman recited the
shehekheyanu
—“Blessed be Thou, O Lord, king of the universe, that Thou hast let us live to see this day”—we all hugged and kissed for a long time. “Our child will be born in a free Jewish state,” said Talia.

I went to the window. The past had seized me by the throat. I remembered my grandfather awaiting the Messiah, convinced that He was already on the way. I remembered my father asserting that the messianic promise dwells in each of us. I remembered my mother who—“Shabbat in a few minutes,” said Talia’s mother. “Let’s light the candles.” I thought of my mother most of all on the Sabbath. I’ll never forget her because I’ll never forget the Sabbath. (Forgive me. I know that in dictating these pages I say things I no longer believe; how can I say I’ll never forget when I’m plunging into forgetfulness? The day will come when I’ve forgotten everything. Even my mother? Even my mother. The Sabbath, too? Even the Sabbath. What can I do to preserve what keeps me alive? I don’t want to forget, do you hear me, Mother? I don’t want to.…)

“Don’t think sad thoughts,” Talia said, leaning against me. “Think of our child. It will be a boy. We’ll name him for your father.”

Across from our house a door opened. A Hasid appeared: he seemed to have stepped right out of my childhood. Suppose it was my grandfather? I called to him: “Where are you going?”

“What a question! Where do you suppose a Jew goes on Friday night? To services, of course!”

“Then you haven’t heard the news?”

“What news?”

“We have a Jewish state.”

“I heard it.”

“And you’re going off to pray?”

Grouchy, he pulled his beard and said, “If we have a Jewish state today, isn’t it because the Jews never stopped praying? And now that we have it, you want us to stop praying?”

I turned to be closer to Talia’s warmth. I saw other eyes looking at me through hers. And I wondered, Why us? What have we done to deserve this happiness from history, when for centuries history has given us everything but happiness? “Talia,” I said, “promise me I’ll always remember this hour, this minute.”

“I promise,” Talia said.

And yet a day would come …

(On this late afternoon Elhanan was happy. Malkiel, too. Elhanan was in a cheerful phase. His memories of Jerusalem had restored the vigor he seemed to have lost. He had been at it for two days. His voice was stronger. He rarely hesitated. His power and eloquence were renewed. The mist that had shrouded his past was dissipated; the altar of memory was brightly lit. Tamar teased her friend’s father: “You’re young again, Elhanan. If you go on like this, I’ll marry you and not your son.”

On the table, two recorders taped his account.

These restorations of memory were strange and unforeseeable. They came in the morning, or at night, and they lasted ten minutes or three hours. After which, weary, depleted, Elhanan relapsed into an apparent torpor, which, in fact, disguised increasing pain.

Everything went well today. Loretta hummed as she served dessert. Everything was happy today.)

Jerusalem, in those days: I remember it well. A blazing climate, stimulating and oppressive at the same time. The Old City was under seige by the Arab Legion. The Jewish quarter was still fighting but was succumbing to sheer exhaustion. They issued hourly calls for help to every staff headquarters in the Jewish city. They’d have to move fast if they wanted to preserve the honor of the city of David. Not easy. Officially Jerusalem was not part of Israel. This city’s memories were the most Jewish in the whole world—but it had been internationalized. Did that hurt? All we could do was grit our teeth, wait, be patient.

In Jerusalem the four underground movements maintained their independent ways. Each kept its own infrastructure, its cadres, its bases. They collaborated, often successfully, on important objectives. All four were represented in the Jewish quarter of the Old City. All four knew they had to reinforce the last combatants there, men and women who could take it no longer. “Out of ammunition … three cartridges per man … a lot of wounded … a lot of dead … it’s a matter of days—no, hours.” What could be done? The Israeli army was fighting on all fronts—to the north, to the south—and the survival of the fledging state hung on every shot fired. By what right did we sacrifice these rather than those? At all levels commanding officers were desperate: we have
got
to do something for the Old City, but what? Launch a counterattack? With what weapons? For the moment, the problem was to save the Jewish fighters in the Jewish quarter. Or at the very least to send in reinforcements.

On May 23 or so I attended an emergency war council in a Lehi camp. There were about fifty of us. Our commanding officer—was it Yiftah? I can’t remember anymore—told us how grave the situation was. If no help broke through, the Jewish fighters would have to surrender. We’d need somebody who knew the Old City, the Jewish quarter. Maybe somebody who remembered a secret entrance. One voice rose above the rest: “I’m your man.” I was startled, we were all startled: it was Absalom. I felt like laughing—this was a man? He was a boy. Not even bar mitzvah yet. “I used to live in the Jewish quarter,” Absalom said. “I know every crevice. I even remember an underground tunnel; my grandfather showed it to me. He was a great cabbalist, my grandfather. He said the Messiah would use that tunnel. If you want, I can find it for you.” Yiftah—was it Yiftah?—took a good look at the boy, called him closer, patted his head and thought it over in silence. Absalom stood easy, calm, sure of himself and his skills.

“All right,” Yiftah said, “find the tunnel. But—”

He broke off; we held our breath; had he changed his mind? “You’re not going in alone. I want somebody to go with you.”

Arms shot up; everybody volunteered. Everybody but me. And yet Yiftah chose me. “You have a precious ID. You’re practically part of the diplomatic corps. If anything happens to you, you’ll have a better chance of talking your way out of it.” Argue with him? It would have been unworthy. But … I thought of Talia, of her child, our child. Had I the right to run this risk? Had I the right to turn it down?

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Absalom told me. “We’ll do just fine. I promise.”

Yiftah added, “You’ll leave tonight. Two in the morning, all right?” Absalom said it was all right, and I looked at my
watch. Eight in the evening. I had time to go home, kiss Talia, hug her parents. “Is it all right?” Yiftah granted permission.

Talia suspected nothing and asked no questions. Nor did her parents. We made polite conversation: the situation on the various fronts, news from the United Nations, the glorious behavior of certain rabbis, openly violating the Sabbath to work on the city’s fortifications. Talia was paler than usual and her father less talkative. I wanted to be alone with Talia and to tell her, “Talia, Talinka, if I die, don’t wear mourning forever. Do it for our son. He’ll want his mother to be happy.” But I didn’t say a word. Was it because I had premonitions that matters would turn out otherwise? I don’t know. Our last evening together was punctuated by endless silences. Now and then I took her hand and squeezed it tightly. Or I looked into her eyes and smiled sadly. We said good-bye at midnight. I found myself back in the street, my heart heavy; I was thinking that I’d never see her again—meaning I was going to die. I never did see her again, and yet I am still alive.

Absalom took my hand as we moved toward the Old City. The ghetto in Stanislav came back to my mind. We slipped in and out of houses. I was totally confused by all the doors opening and closing. Were we in a cellar? An attic? We seemed to be walking across rooftops when we were actually crossing a narrow courtyard. Was fear doing this to me? I was sweating; it ran down my back. Absalom pulled me along, and I followed him meekly. Ask him to slow down? I’d have been ashamed. He might have told his grandfather, the cabbalist. “You won’t believe this, Grandpa, but the guy they gave me for a partner said he was tired.” No, Absalom, don’t say that. I am no coward.…

How long had we been walking in the dark? I had no idea.

Absalom stopped suddenly and whispered to me, “This is the Hurva, Rabbi Yehuda Hehassid’s synagogue.” Half demolished. He went as far as the ruins and came back: nobody there, he said. We continued on our way. Another stop. This was the prophet Elijah’s synagogue. We listened. We heard noises inside. Absalom knocked very gently. A voice asked, “Who is it?” Absalom answered. The door opened.

We were greeted like saviors. They shook hands with us, clapped us on the shoulder, offered us brandy, promised us paradise. Suddenly I realized that we’d stumbled into the Jewish quarter’s last line of defense. “Come over here,” said a voice. It was an officer who wished to debrief us. I couldn’t see his features in the darkness, but his voice seemed familiar. I couldn’t quite place it. He asked specific and incisive questions: Where were the reinforcements? Why the delay? And the medical supplies? And the ammunition? I heard the voice, it penetrated, it nagged at my soul; that voice must own a face. But it was still dark. Dawn was on the way. It arrived. I saw the face: impossible! Itzik, my wartime comrade, my close friend, my sworn enemy. Itzik, faithful companion, ruthless rapist. A hallucination? I shook myself: no, I was awake, all right. Itzik got over his surprise in a hurry. He was an officer and would complete his mission whatever the cost. He’d hold this position to the last man, but he wanted to know, he
had
to know, what was happening across the lines, in the new city. “Do they realize how bad it is here? Do they know the civilians are exhausted and want us to surrender unconditionally?” I forced myself to answer: they realized everything, they knew everything, they were doing their best.… Absalom said shyly, “I’ll go back the way I came and bring reinforcements in.” Itzik was incredulous and asked, “Do you really know a secret passage?”