The Testament (22 page)

That meeting had left its mark on him. I envied him. I was about to confess this to him, but he stopped me.

“And once,” he went on, “I also had the honor of making the acquaintance of Comrade Stalin—who was not yet our beloved leader and father. One commissar among others, that’s all he was. If my memory serves me, he was in charge of national minorities, not of the services to which I was attached. But, I no longer know why, the two of us at the head of our class, before going on our mission, were received by certain top leaders. Puffing on his pipe, Stalin watched me without a word. There I stood, trying to hide my uneasiness, sweating, afraid of fainting, when finally he spoke to me. ‘Comrade Petya! What’s your real name?’ I guessed it was a test: he had my dossier spread out on his desk. ‘Wolfe Isakovich Goldstein, Comrade Commissar,’ I answered, stiff as a telegraph pole. ‘Good,’ he said, exhaling smoke. ‘Good, so Petya is Wolfe Isakovich. Tell me something—do you know the Bible?’ That question dumbfounded me even more than Trotsky’s about the novel. ‘No, Comrade Commissar. I have no desire to read the Bible. I am not interested in stories that the rich use to oppress and trick the poor.’ ‘Well, well,’ said Stalin, starting to clean out his pipe. ‘You’re a Jew, your name is Wolfe Isakovich Goldstein, and you’ve never opened the Jewish Bible. I studied it at the seminary.…’ ‘But I did open it, Comrade Commissar, a long time ago.’ ‘You opened the Bible without reading it?’ ‘Yes, without reading it.’ Stalin was savoring my embarrassment; entangled in my responses, I did not know how to extricate
myself. ‘One might think you’re afraid of confessing,’ said Stalin, letting a fresh puff of smoke escape. ‘You must never be afraid, not under a Socialist regime. Comrade Wolfe Isakovich. The innocent have nothing to fear, right, comrade?…’ That was true, and how! In the Soviet Union, only the criminals, the White Guard assassins, those nostalgic for the White terror had to be afraid—not their victims nor their conquerors. I believed that, Paltiel, I believed that. I still believe it, but … there are … there are, you know what there are. Trials … deviation, opposition, sabotage: those words are knives. Lenin’s companions—traitors to the fatherland of the Revolution? Double or triple agents? Is that conceivable? If it’s true, we’re done for; and if it’s not …”

Paul was speaking—and becoming a different man before my eyes. Once again he was Wolfe.

Finally, it was I who began to drink one glass after another. I emptied the bottle, and for the first time in my life I collapsed like the last of the drunkards at the Liyanov fair.

So I plead guilty, Citizen Magistrate, to having caroused in a capitalist city in the company of a former friend turned enemy of the people, and to having succumbed to intoxication in his presence.

By tacit agreement, during the weeks that followed, neither Paul nor I ever referred to that night. Paul became more and more taciturn; he was being recalled to Moscow. He was not the only one: the Komintern was recalling its agents by the hundreds throughout the world. We could not have guessed it was in order to liquidate them. Yet Paul’s intuition told him something was amiss. He could have refused and sought shelter with influential friends in France, but that was not his style. Besides, to trick him, they had not summoned him to report immediately, but had allowed him six weeks to prepare himself.
That reassured him. I spent those weeks almost constantly in his company. He was calm; so was I, and even more than he. I thought he would go to Moscow, meet his superiors, gather some explanations, and return; and then I too would understand. Nevertheless, from the very depths of my being, the old question kept surfacing:
Will I see him again?

Could I have guessed that the moment he arrived in the Soviet Union he would fall into the hands of your people, Citizen Magistrate? That they would fling him into prison? Which one? This one perhaps.

I remember our final evening. A dinner for two in a Latin Quarter bistro. We spoke of one thing and another, activities suspended, contacts to renew, German comrades to rescue and hide. We were taking stock; we were satisfied with each other. I asked him about his return to France. Would he stay on in the same section? Would he keep me on his staff?

He did not answer right away. He scanned the room, glanced at the street to make sure we were not being observed, and said to me in a toneless voice, “I’ve got some advice for you. Follow it and don’t ask too many questions.”

“What’s that, Paul?”

“Don’t wait for my return.”

“What? But …”

“You heard me. Leave Paris. Do something else. Go away.”

I pretended not to understand. “Why do you want me to go away? And leave the comrades? And who will do the work, tell me?”

“I hate repeating myself. I have given you my advice. If you choose to disregard it, that’s your problem.”

“But … where do you want me to go?”

“Far away. As far as you can go.”

“But why? Why, Paul?”

My lack of maturity angered him. I should have understood.… He stared at me. Could he trust me? He made a decision.

“You’re too well known,” he went on. “People know that we’re close, that we’re friends.”

Like an idiot I went on arguing. “We’re friends, so what? I am proud of our friendship!”

“Don’t shout. Do me the favor of controlling yourself. The things I know, it’s better you don’t know; I hope for your sake you’ll never learn them. You have the luck not to belong—officially—to the services I represent. You can travel freely, you can go anywhere. Get out!”

His words pained and confused me: Leave? Again? When? To do what? To flee whom? And that fist inside my chest:
Will I see him again?

“You are surely mistaken, Paul. You’re imagining things. You’re overworked, exhausted. So am I.…”

He lowered his head to prevent me from seeing his defeat. “Follow my advice, Paltiel,” he repeated. He paused to swallow.

“Listen,” he went on, “go to Spain. If I can, I’ll meet you there first chance I get. It’s a fight I don’t want to miss.”

He gave me the name of a liaison agent who would help get me into the Brigades and across the border.
Will we see each other again?
I murmured to myself. God willing we would.

“What are you saying?”

“That we’ll see each other again.”

“God willing,” said Paul, after a silence.

Wolfe, Petya, Paul: pseudonyms and passwords learned by heart; that’s what my friend transmitted to me as a farewell present, together with those few images of his youth and his blessing.

Here, Zupanev was muttering as he blew his nose, here are some words. Not mine, but yours, what I mean is: they belong to you; they were meant for you. And I think that’s funny. These words, snatched from a dead man, from death itself, in order to be repeated, transmitted and kept alive, I am entrusting to a mute! Will this farce never end?

Read these tales, Grisha, and you will learn about the life and death of a Jewish poet, your father
.

He was somebody, your father. Difficult to get on with. In the beginning, during the first interrogation, he annoyed us to the point of exasperation
.

I was only a clerk, you understand. Nothing more. A stenographer. I took notes. From my corner, I observed the prosecutor, the colonel, the magistrate—to hell with all these titles, anyway, they all added up to the same thing—and I observed the accused without being seen by them
.

I was a piece of furniture. An instrument. Part of the scenery. The invisible man from whose attention nothing escaped. So you can believe me, son, when I tell you that he was somebody, your father
.

Now don’t jump to conclusions: he did not succeed in resisting all the way: the one who will has not been born yet. Oh, yes, we broke him, as we broke those before him and those after him. The fact remains that he was, forgive the expression, a rare bird, a unique case. He held out longer than anticipated, he took punishment better than the most hardened politicians. Do you know why? Because he was not afraid of death. And that, my little one, is what is referred to in our circle as “foolish and hypocritical behavior”; everybody is afraid of death, let me tell you.
Man is meant to live and meant to want to live. Only your father was different. You may be proud of him, my boy
.

I remember as though it happened yesterday. That night, they had really let him have it. He could no longer stand on his feet, his body was swollen and bloody—and yet, he resisted. I don’t even remember now what the particular charge was. He simply, stubbornly, refused to sign the official minutes of the session. The examining magistrate offered him a cigarette—they all do that. Your father declined; anyway he could not have put it in his mouth, which was a gaping wound
.

The magistrate addressed him with a semblance of pity: “Why are you so foolish, Kossover? Why are you so obstinate? There is nothing to be gained that way. Why are you determined to suffer? I’d like you to explain.”

The magistrate seemed truly, sincerely interested. Sensing this, your father made an effort to stand straight
.

“Very well,” he said, “I shall explain.”

He spoke with difficulty: the words scorched his tongue. He swallowed his saliva, his blood
.

“I am a poet, Citizen Magistrate. And it behooves a Jewish poet to safeguard his dignity.”

And you know what, Grisha? For a moment I was flabbergasted—I don’t mind telling you—and so was the judge
.

From that moment on, I began respecting poets. Because of your oddball of a father. And I began reading his poems and even transcribing them, for you. Yes indeed. Your father helped me discover poetry
.

You see, before that, I had no use for scribblers. How can one live with words alone, I wondered, with nothing but words? Now I know that one can
.

Another discovery. Because of your father I began asking myself questions which triggered more questions: How
can a man spend a lifetime hurting other men, in the midst of cries and screams of horror? How can he lie down to sleep at night, rise in the morning, knowing that he is living from one death rattle to the next? You may laugh, son. I was working for a magistrate whose function it was to ask questions; but as far as I am concerned, it was your father who taught me how to ask them
.

Why does one man inflict suffering on another—do you know why? I have seen executioners panting with pleasure, I have seen wretches becoming excited every time their prisoner moaned, and worse: I have seen officials to whom all this represented nothing but a job, a duty. Told to strike, they struck. Told to whip, they bludgeoned their victim and drove him into madness. They were just doing their job, approved and rewarded by the law. And yet, my boy, for the life of me, I don’t understand: How can one man hurt another? I mean, how can one man hurt another who is without defense, senselessly, without reason, I mean without personal reason? I don’t know what makes some people try to overcome suffering while others give in to it. In truth I never understood either the victims or the torturers, I never felt close to either. But, yes, I did feel close to your father. I’ll explain that to you another time. He made me care, and, listen to this: in the end, he even made me laugh, me, who had never laughed in all my life
.

You listen to me, you look at me and you resent me, admit it. You are wrong. I have never struck a prisoner, I have done nothing but take notes. And I feel guilty, that’s normal. Guilty of having
seen
evil, of having lived with it, side by side. Sure, I could have protested, resigned. For example, I could have pretended to be ill. But I would have been liquidated the following day: I knew too much. And I wanted to live; I clung to life. That’s how I am, like everybody else. I still haven’t found a good substitute for life. Like everybody else, I am afraid to die
.

As for your father—you won’t believe this—in the very beginning, he seemed happy, yes, happy to find himself there, facing the magistrate, poised on the threshold of pain and death. Poets are a queer lot. Could it be that they wish to endure and know all there is to endure and know?

As I said, in the beginning, he amused me. He was still in good health. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, yes, he was a little pale, but that was all. He stood erect and answered routine questions in a calm voice: name, first name, father’s name, profession. He amused me because … Listen. The magistrate asks him whether he knows why he has been arrested. Your father responds that yes, he knows. “Why?” asks the magistrate. “Because I have written a poem.” The judge almost chokes with laughter. Your father, you understand, was about to be accused of sabotage, of conspiracy, of treason. They were getting ready to attempt to have him implicate the most illustrious names in Jewish literature and he comes out with his poem. “And this poem,” says the judge, “where is it? May one read it?” “No,” says your father, “you cannot read it.” “Why not?” “Because it’s in my head, only in my head.…”

He often referred to it, to this poem he had written in his head
.

Oh yes, that father of yours was quite a character, he was somebody all right
.

I remember the first question he asked the judge: “Where am I?” Did you notice, my boy? Not “Why am I here?” which is what all the prisoners ask when they arrive, but
“Where
am I?” Later he explained. “Some people define themselves in relation to what they do—not me. I define myself in relation to the place where I happen to be.”

I had been struck by this because he could not know, none of the prisoners knew where he was. In what prison,
in what section. They didn’t even know the name of the city. They were blindfolded and disoriented, like beaten blind men
.

In fact, your father was languishing in an old fortress of our charming city of Krasnograd; but that was kept from him. He was variously led to believe he was in Leningrad, in Kharkov or even in Tashkent. One day they stuffed him into one of those vans popularly referred to as “black marias.” He was driven around and around for hours, with many stops. Taken back to his cell, your father did not recognize it. Sometimes the examining magistrate was replaced by a colleague who pretended to be him. All these games, designed to shake and unsettle the prisoner’s mind, to disgust him with himself, I duly recorded, at first for
them,
later for your father. The hunger pangs, the agonies of thirst, the wounds of memory: I have recorded them all. Which was the worst? Silence. There, your father recorded it all. Wait, let me find it. Here it is, do you see?