Elie Wiesel (35 page)

“And you don’t give a damn for Israel’s welfare—admit it! You don’t give a damn about their security—go on, admit it! All that matters to you is your scoop, and the boss’s congratulations, and if that piece brought you a Pulitzer Prize you’d jump for joy, and if Israel had to suffer for it, what the hell! Do I overstate the case?”

“Yes, you overstate the case, damn right you overstate it! I love my work. I love it passionately, and not because of the rewards but because it’s my weapon! I like to think that because of me men and women will be a little happier and their lives a little easier.”

“You worry about everybody in the world except your own brothers and sisters in Israel!”

“That’s a lie!”

“Then prove it!”

“How do you want me to prove it? By concealing what happens there? By accepting injustice there and passing over it in silence?”

“And the injustices perpetrated against Israel? You don’t care about them? The terrorist raids? The assassination of children? The murder of innocent civilians?”

“The paper we work for talks about them all the time, and often on the front page. Don’t you think the Palestinians’ fate deserves a little attention too?”

“Ah, there it is—finally admitting it’s the Palestinians you care about.”

“No. It’s the truth I care about. And I love Israel as much as you do.”

“But you’re prepared to do them harm and put them at risk.”

“No! I’m prepared to keep them from doing harm to themselves!”

“Oh, magnificent, Tamar! You’re going to help Israel in spite of itself! Bravo!”

The battle raged all night. Malkiel demanded a “special” attitude toward the Jewish state because of its past sufferings. Tamar, too—but with this difference: Malkiel said they had to “understand” Israel’s shortcomings, that the world had to be more tolerant of a country traumatized by five or six wars, while Tamar held that precisely because of Israel’s past sufferings the world had to be more demanding; it was a community that should be helping its victims instead of oppressing them.

After that sleepless night Tamar filed her piece. The next day it got the front page and provoked an uproar. Jewish organizations issued protest after protest; the State Department refused to confirm charges that, in any case, Jerusalem hurriedly denied; and at the United Nations, five Arab delegates quoted the article in question to prove that Israel was violating the rights of Palestinians on the West Bank.

That night Malkiel found his father in tears. “I saw the article,” he said. “I read it three times, seven times.… I don’t understand.…”

“I don’t either, Father. I don’t understand either.”

Between Tamar and Malkiel, there were now the tears of Elhanan.

It’s unfair, Malkiel thought. It’s unfair for Israel to separate us while it should bring us closer. Help us, Father, as you have helped so many others.

I’ll go home soon, Malkiel thought. I’ll see Tamar again. I’ll tell her I love her with a love that we can make fruitful. Then I’ll see my father and tell him I love him with an unhappy love: I’ll confess my failure. I found nothing, Father. Nothing that could help you or us. Here you are on the brink of despair, you who’ve helped so many of the sick invent hope for themselves. Here you are on your knees, you who taught pride. You used to say, “The most miserable creature on the face of the earth can still make someone else happy.” You hadn’t thought about what might happen to you, what’s happening to you right now. There is an evil that contradicts all theories. When your mind was clear you admitted that yourself: you can’t help anyone, and no one can help you. Or is it
because
you can’t help anyone that no one can help you? What difference does it make? I am finishing my journey empty-handed.

But isn’t it your fault, too? Why did you wait so long to speak to me, to share your past with me? Why didn’t you tell me the true purpose of my trip? What did you want to see me accomplish in your town? To walk on its soil and curse it, to open the cemetery gate and bless it? Or simply to sleep in your house, to pray in your synagogue? The latter no longer stands, and the former is occupied by strangers.

You wanted me here? I am here. To see the widow? I have seen her. And now? How has my presence here been useful to you? I breathe the air you breathed, I see the sights that made you drunk, I take in fragments of memory that have been chipped away from yours: is that enough? I bring you a smile, the widow’s. Is that enough?

I’m afraid, Father. If you suddenly burst into speech as
you used to, to ask me questions as you used to, what would I answer? If you suddenly decided to reclaim what you’ve given me, how would I fill the void you’d leave in me? If you accused me of wanting to enrich my memory at the expense of yours, how would I justify myself?

Stop worrying, Malkiel, thought Malkiel. Father will say no such thing. Father will say nothing ever again. As ill as he is, he’ll let his thoughts disperse in a fog. His eyes open, his mouth half open, he will neither accuse nor complain. To the last moment, a father like yours will try to spare you, to protect you.

But now it’s up to me to protect him. If I only knew how. Does Tamar know? Truth is, I ought to consult a new specialist. My father was a specialist, in his own field. They came to consult him, and went away comforted. He knew how to listen. He knew how to console, too. Who in turn will console him? God?

And what if I began praying?

Malkiel surprised himself by meditating upon Job. Poor Job. God spoke to him, and Job was silent. God asked him questions, and Job did not answer. God spoke to him of the very origins of the universe, and Job said nothing. Had he, too, lost all links to the past? Did God make him lose it? Was there a more terrifying, more unjust suffering for him?

Rage, Job. Shout your anger, Father. That may be a cure. Cry out. Pound your fist, shatter the walls. He who suffers misfortune and submits to its laws has a slave’s heart, a slave’s soul and mind. Never submit, Job. Never resign yourself, Father. Show us all that your heart is bursting. Curse, break your silence, transform it to a conscious outcry. Rebel against unwilled oblivion, the most inhuman of evils. Banish the black-winged ravens with your anger.

Can you still help me to help you, Father?

Grandfather Malkiel, I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m on my way. I’m going home. Tamar is waiting for me: I need her love. Is my father waiting? Does he still need mine?

I’m leaving you, and I wonder: in coming here, did I find the answers to my questions?

Tomorrow I board a plane for Bucharest. There I board a plane for Israel. I want to visit my mother’s grave and to say a prayer. To restore my soul at the Wall in Jerusalem. To meditate beneath its sky, so laden with meaning.

I leave you the old woman and her wounded memory. Watch over her. Let her old age be more serene than her youth. May she live in the promise of renewal and not in the remorse of actions frozen in time.

Watch over Lidia, too, Grandfather. She’s a good honest woman, and alone, so alone. I trusted her and never regretted it. Let her be there for someone who will stand beside her; let no one do her harm.

And from afar, from up there in heaven, lend me your protection, too. I need it. Whatever happens, I will have to justify my father’s faith in me. He made me his messenger; I will have to prove myself worthy of his message.

My father, my poor father! It’s hard to talk that way about someone who was once the powerful embodiment of intelligence and eloquence. Disarmed and defenseless, he is presiding over his own disintegration: he pronounces words that crumble in midair, dead words; the sentences he speaks are dead sentences. He himself is dying. For him, the passing moment is gone forever. He is unquestionably still alive, but in him time is dead. My father is living a dead life: his time is dead time.

Can you see all this from where you are, Grandfather
Malkiel? Your son has suffered greatly. At first, when he was still lucid, he realized that he was slipping down a fatal slope and that there was nothing he could do to stop himself. A maniacal hand was tearing away the pages of his life one by one. Every morning he knew a little less, and every evening he felt diminished. Sometimes, watching him, I wept without tears: I could hardly bear his agony. He would search for a name, a word, and I saw his brain working, digging, digging; sweat beaded on his forehead; terror filled his eyes, empty of memory; I saw his lips move, his tongue groping, I saw his heart breaking, and because I could not help him without humiliating him I turned away, I went out, leaving Tamar to fight the battle alone.

And now?

Nothing can be done, the doctors say, nothing can be done.… It’s a disease, an incurable disease. Once the destructive process has begun, nothing can stop it.

Your poor son, Grandfather Malkiel, has become the poorest of human beings. He has nothing, and he is no one.

And now?

Is there still a now for him?

Will he recognize me? When I left, I was the only one he could identify. Tamar? He confused her with my mother. Loretta? He thought he’d met her somewhere in the Ukraine. Everybody else was a stranger to him. My father proceeds through a universe populated by strangers. Do they smile at him? Do they frighten him? Can he distinguish friend from foe?

“There’s nothing that can be done,” the great specialists declared. Too late for unknown cures. The brain is being dismantled. And miracles, Dr. Pasternak, what about miracles? There comes a moment when God Himself refuses to intervene.

I know: even the most eminent doctors are sometimes wrong. I sometimes wonder if the diagnosis is correct. I wonder if my father is suffering from amnesia or some other disease. He may know everything that’s happening to him, everything said in his presence, everything going on around him and within him, and he may want to react, to respond, but he may be incapable of it. Or he may not want to. He may be disappointed in mankind. And in its language. He may reject our worn and devalued words. He may need others altogether. And as there are no others, he may be choosing to feign forgetfulness so that he can remain speechless.

An improbable theory? So much the worse. What matters, Grandfather, is that your son is no longer in touch with the world of the living. Did he know what would strike him down? That might explain why he agreed to open up, why he undertook a kind of memory transfusion as one has a blood transfusion. Was it his wish that my memory substitute for his own? That I do the remembering for him? Is that even possible?

Grandfather Malkiel: I, Malkiel, your grandson, will fulfill his wishes, I promise you. What he has buried within himself, what he has entrusted to his extinguished memory, I will disclose. I will bear witness in his place; I will speak for him. It is the son’s duty not to let his father die.

At his grandfather’s grave, Malkiel imagined Tamar. Doubtless at Elhanan’s bedside. She would not punish the father for the sins of the son. We are going to be married, Tamar. I want my father to see us together again.

Don’t fight it, Tamar. Don’t say no just for revenge; no more revenge. No more games. Let’s take whatever comes along—the good and the less good alike—simply and in
harmony. Despite pain and sorrow, we’ll put our trust in what exalts us—my father’s relentless sufferings—and in what thwarts us, too—the ambiguities of life, most of all Jewish life in the diaspora. We’ll forge new links from which new sparks will rise. Spoken words will become signs, words unspoken will serve as warnings. And we’ll invent the rest. And my father’s memory will sing and weep in mine. And yours will blossom in our children’s. You win: we’ll have many children, Tamar. And one day, Grandfather, they’ll tell the story of your son, in their turn. Elhanan son of Malkiel. Malkiel son of Elhanan.

I
t comes back to me now … the well.… I’m afraid of the well; it’s always night in the well. Afraid I’ll answer its mysterious call … Before I was born, a peasant woman threw herself into that hole.… They said she was in love … pregnant … couldn’t resist the Tempter’s laughter.… Yes, it comes back to me: the Tempter sent for me at midnight.… Ah, but the rabbi had taken me under his wing.… I remember the rabbi.… I remember my bar mitzvah.… The synagogue crowded … people I knew, that I’ve forgotten now … My father, proud … My father, uneasy … The rabbi smiled upon him.… I love the rabbi, I love him greatly, but the image is hazy.… Vague features, a bushy white beard; I remember his bushy white beard.… He’s speaking; the rabbi’s talking about … I don’t know what he was talking about. Maybe the danger of the Tempter: he steals what is most precious to us. From some he steals the heart. From others, vision. He stole my tongue. For a joke … How to protect myself from him? The rabbi didn’t tell me. Perhaps he did, but I’ve forgotten.… He’s speaking.… Soon it’s my turn.… I’m afraid I’ll forget my speech, and yet I know it by heart. I’ve delivered it many times to a friend at the yeshiva.… I’m perspiring, I’m short of breath.… If I forget one sentence,
one quotation, it will all be lost.… One word, if I forget one word … I look at my father, I think of my mother.… The rabbi has finished.… I step up on the bimah, I kiss the velvet cloth that covers the holy ark.… I begin … my voice is feeble, too quiet.… Someone coughs, the rabbi gives me an encouraging glance, the Tempter’s laughing raucously, and I’m doing all I can to drown him out.… I raise my voice, or at least try to.… The words fight me, they won’t come, the Tempter’s holding them prisoner.… But the rabbi is stronger; he closes his eyes and murmurs an incantation, and the Tempter flees, releasing my words.… Now I can’t get them out fast enough.… I have no idea now what I said.… I recall one quotation, only one … from the Gaon, yes, the Gaon Reb Eliahu of Vilna: “The goal of redemption is the redemption of truth.” How did I use it? I can’t remember. Why does it linger like a lost soul in the ruins of my memory? Perhaps because my father had said it over and over from my earliest childhood: Truth, my son, truth, truth must not die.… All else matters less. Take care to be truthful always.… Truthful with your friends, truthful with God, truthful with yourself.… Most of all, he said, most of all, at the hour of your death you must know that you have not helped to kill the truth.… Truth dies every time a man turns away from it.… I’m thinking about it now, Malkiel my son. Oh, I know, I’m nowhere near death; but my reason is. At night, in the dark, I wonder: where is truth, in the light or in the shadow? In presence or in absence? And I wonder: was the life I lived the life I was destined to live? Did I never mistake the path? Have I been a good son, a good husband, a good father, a good Jew? I should have thought of that long ago … when I had all my faculties … when I still knew how to fit the pieces together.… No more, not now … Sometimes I tell
myself, God is cruel, as cruel as the Tempter.… Since He has not permitted me to know the answer, why did He reveal the question to me? Why does He insist that this old man die in remorse and doubt? What has He to gain by my loss? What is His goal? The goal of redemption … of which redemption? Why must it have a goal? Do I myself still have a goal? Is there anything tangible, durable, real left of me at all?… I have nothing, I am nothing … more than a shadow and less than a man … But what is man deprived of memory? Not even a shadow …