The Testament (36 page)

One September morning, on my way to the office, I stopped in front of a shop window near the National Hotel. I planned to buy myself a winter overcoat. I hesitated. I am the perfect customer: sales clerks can sell me anything, I never protest, I never bargain, I take it and pay for it, knowing all the while I shall never wear it.

I had just decided not to go in when I saw, inside, a woman ordering salesgirls around. Amazed, I pushed open the door. “Yes, comrade?” asked a plump young woman. I took off my army cap and went over to Raissa. “What, it’s you?” she cried, and shook my hand warmly. “What’s happening to you, my macabre poet?” Ignoring employees and customers who looked at us askance, we went into a back office to be able to talk more freely. Raissa had changed. Without her uniform she seemed even more feminine, more sensual. Her blond hair done up in a bun, her eyes hard and glittering, she had that “special something,” as they say. She stood out in a crowd, no question
about that. We made an appointment to meet after the store closed. Dinner at the Writers’ Club, and then to the theater to see Mikhoels as King Lear. “If it’s sad, we’ll leave,” I promised her.

Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended. No doubt rightly so. Only I catch fire quickly. That’s how I am, I can’t do anything about it. It’s enough for a woman to lean toward me to start my blood racing. When a stranger smiles at me, I blush like a schoolboy and instantly endow her with every virtue. So aware am I of my shortcomings that I am grateful to the woman who is not discouraged by them; to thank her I would offer her the moon. Oh, I know it is just one complex among others I have been carrying around since Liyanov and Krasnograd: I am just a Talmudic student who refuses to liberate himself. As for Raissa, after our third meeting I was ready to propose marriage. And I did. She did not seem surprised. “Are you sure you love me?” “I’m sure, Raissa: a poet is sure of at least one thing—of his loves. And you? Do you love me a little?” Her answer was bizarre: “If only my poor parents could see me …” “Your parents?” Her eyes were veiled. She looked at me without seeing me: “Paltiel Kossover, Jewish poet,” she said. “When you don’t depress me you amuse me.” To prove that she was not indifferent to me, she went with me three times in a row to the Jewish theater, where that particular week they were performing a verbose but patriotic abomination. She begged me to read and reread my poems to her and offered intelligent comments on them while mocking my moroseness. She predicted a greater future for me as poet than as husband. Flattered, euphoric, I lived only for Raissa. As for her, though she had never said she loved me, she had accepted my proposal. We filled out a mass of forms and went to the marriage bureau with Mendelevich and his wife as witnesses. An official puffed out his chest and pronounced
us man and wife. The ceremony had not lasted five minutes. “If my poor parents could see me,” Raissa murmured. I was thinking of my own parents, but said nothing.

Mendelevich invited us to a restaurant. Raissa was smiling, though there was mockery in her smile. I found it difficult to overcome my melancholy. I thought of those who were absent: my father, my mother, my sisters, my uncles, my teachers, my friends. I thought of Liyanov; had the wedding taken place there … I imagined the ceremony, the blue-and-purple satin canopy, the candles, the rabbi, the fiddlers, the speech I would have made. Here, the celebration consisted of a meal at a restaurant frequented mostly by artists; the dinner was copious, washed down with vodka and—for the special occasion—Crimean champagne. Mendelevich entertained us with his theater stories; Raissa applauded.

I was silently remembering our old traditions: an orphaned groom is supposed to go to the cemetery to invite his deceased parents to the wedding. How could I have done that? Liyanov was far away, and, in any case, Raissa would not have understood. She would have said, “Why do you need a cemetery? Your heart is one; say your little prayer and let’s get it over with.” “Why are you sad?” Mendelevich’s wife asked me. “That’s the tradition,” her husband answered for me. “Couples are supposed to be sad on their wedding day: they break a glass and put ashes on their foreheads to recall the destruction of the Temple. It’s theatrical, of course, but so moving.” “What?” asked his wife. “Paltiel is sad because of the past?” “Of course not,” Raissa chimed in. “He’s sad because of the future … except that he doesn’t know it yet.” And suddenly I felt in an obscure way that we were not going to be happy.

Writing these lines today, in this place, where things seem clear and luminous, I realize that Raissa knew it too,
and even before me. Then why did she marry me? Attractive, educated, with a Communist past like hers, she did not lack suitors and certainly could have found a better husband. I learned later that she had, in fact, used me to exorcise her own demons.

She had been engaged before the war. But her father had opposed the marriage: Anatoly was not Jewish. The mother wept, Raissa became angry: “He’s not a Jew, he’s not a Jew, so what? I am, and I don’t give a damn!” “Raissa, remember,” her father implored. “Remember whom? What? Leave me alone with your memories, I want to live my life, not yours.” In the end she broke with her parents and moved in with Anatoly. The war separated them. Anatoly fell in Minsk, and Raissa’s pain turned into rage. She began hating her parents, then all Jews; without them she would have married her Anatoly; they would have had children; they would have lived happily.… In the army she could not tolerate being near Jews, and when she had to be with them, she bullied them to punish her parents. She changed when she learned of the massacres in Vitebsk: all the members of her family had been buried alive. From that time on, a new feeling—guilt?—drew her to Jews—and me. Was she thinking of appeasing her dead parents in this way? Did she know that by punishing herself she made me suffer? But—excuse me, Citizen Magistrate, let’s change the subject. My private life is my business.

Our wedding day passed quickly. In the evening we went to the theater to see Mendelevich in a play by Sholem Aleichem. Our friend and protector managed to insert into his text a line meant specially for us: “
Mazel tov
, good luck, best wishes for the young couple.” It had nothing to do with the play, but it gave us pleasure and the audience didn’t know the difference.

After the show we went to see Mendelevich in his dressing room. We thanked him. He laughed. “Did you see?
They didn’t notice a thing. I could say whatever I please. Luckily Sholem Aleichem is dead.”

We went home to Raissa’s apartment. And there, in her bed, in her habitat, among her objects, I failed on my wedding night. Absentminded, Raissa did not seem offended. She fell asleep, but I lay there with open eyes, making plans, dreaming incoherently of a thousand futures. I had to make decisions. Galperin, the rustic poet with the childlike voice, had suggested that I translate his war cantata into French, on condition that I officially join the Party. I had discussed this with Raissa, who strongly advised me to do so. In fact, why not? The USSR had beaten Hitler and paid the price. The Red Army had liberated Majdanek and Auschwitz. Why not show my gratitude? In addition, my oldest friendships came to mind: Inge, Traub, Ephraim.… Of course, there were also Yasha, Paul Hamburger, the purges and the disappearances; but history is made up of many chapters.

I decided to join the Party.

My collected poems came out at the end of 1946. The reception was qualified. Certain critics praised it, others demolished it, not having understood it at all. I must say I did everything to confuse them. The volume was called
I Saw My Father in a Dream
, and not a single poem mentioned my father. At the last minute I had decided to eliminate a sort of lyrical, mystical vision in which I described a funeral procession led by my father. I ask him where he is going, and he does not answer; I ask him whence he comes, he does not answer; I wait for the procession to pass and I follow it at a distance—we walk, we walk in silence, but I hear someone talking to me and I do not know who, he speaks to me and I know I am forbidden to know who it is; I look before me and see no one, then I lower my eyes and see a little boy growing, growing; he
motions to me, I recognize him; he questions me without saying a word—and I understand that it was his silence that had spoken to me earlier—he questions me without looking at me: “What have you made of me?” And behind him my father appears and he too motions to me and asks, “What have you made of me?” And my collection of poems is my answer.

Why did I withdraw this first poem? I was afraid of upsetting and shocking the Communist reader.

By and large I had no complaints. Markish generously arranged a party in my honor. A critic from
Izvestia
, invited by Mendelevich, wrote a short but laudatory column about me. It was even rumored that an account of the book and of the evening would appear in the
Literaturnaya Gazeta
. I therefore had every reason in the world to be happy, and I was, so far as possible. Our economic situation was improving. The foreign section of the State Publishing House commissioned me to do a French translation of Feffer and a Yiddish one of Zola. A second printing of my volume of poetry was in the works and I was asked to do another collection. An article of mine in
Pravda
on the poetic application of Lenin’s ideas aroused considerable interest. In short, I was becoming a celebrity.

And I rather liked the fame. Not only because of the material advantages it gave me—a more spacious apartment, readings to mass audiences, lectures on collective farms, invitations to official and private dinners for distinguished visitors—but also for the power it gave me; suddenly my judgment and my actions carried weight.

Promoted to chief reader of the foreign section of the State Publishing House, I wrote reports for the mighty Ideological Commission. Manuscripts, projects, proofs, lecture notes, professional opinions—I swam in paperwork. My superiors congratulated me on my literary taste and my political instinct, and they accepted my recommendations: in a word, I was doing what they wanted.

Outside my immediate circle I was less highly regarded. People flattered me, lied to me, complimented me, but did not like me; they were jealous. Arke Gelis was carrying on an underhanded campaign against me, delving into my religious childhood. For my part I opposed the publication of his frankly worthless novel on the civil war. He managed to get people more influential than I to intercede in his behalf and the Commission disregarded my opinion; his novel was published with great fanfare.

On the other hand, I was able to intercede in favor of old Avrohom Zalmen. He had been arrested for having recited, while drunk, a sort of litany dedicated to the memory of King Saul, the greatest and most charitable of all kings because he had had the courage not to have his enemies put to death. Denounced by Arke Gelis for his appropriately insulting remarks about our immortal Joseph Vissarionovich, Zalmen was in great danger. I rushed over to see Major Koriazin in person and told him, “Avrohom Zalmen may be a mediocre Communist but he’s a great poet.” It seems that the matter was brought to the attention of our beloved Chief, who, it was said, ever since his days as a seminarian, felt a special sympathy for the unfortunate King Saul. If the rumor is to be believed, it was he himself who gave the order to release my crazy old Biblical poet. Gelis’s defeat heightened my joy. “You see?” Raissa said to me. “The Party card brings more than material benefits.”

Mostly it entailed diverse activities and obligations: ideological sessions, political meetings, lectures and signing of petitions; listening, applauding, voting. It was easy—there was the line, and I conformed to it without difficulty: the Party was right always. For me, for so many others, it had become a sort of religious order. I had only to recall my youth and substitute the Party for the Law or for God. In that way I could accept everything without reservation or hesitation. Hidden, omniscient and transcendent,
the Party held the truth and the keys to the future: it knew where the most tortuous paths ended, it knew all the components of happiness. I studied its texts just as long ago I used to probe a passage of the Tractate on the Sanhedrin, that is, with the absolute conviction of finding there every question and every answer. I would even say that my religious education helped me orient myself in my new faith: more than the pure Marxists, I excelled in exegesis as well as in obedience.

Though a Communist himself, Mendelevich thought my neophyte fervor too contrived. “Don’t forget,” he once said, “that you’re a poet first, a Jewish poet.” He did not add that the Communist connection was secondary, but that was what he thought. As for me, I was too busy to think about it.

Der Nister had some reservations about me, I think: he considered me something of an opportunist. I was hurt and sought a way of explaining my attitude to him, but the opportunity never arose. I regret that. I respected the man and revered his work; his opinion of me was important to me. As a matter of fact, I often think about it: if we had had a private talk, what would I have said to him? Perhaps something like this:

“Having lost my family in cattle cars, having broken with the religion of my fathers and understood what Nazism was capable of, having escaped a thousand enemies and seen what I saw in the frozen eyes of corpses, I found in the Communist Revolution an ideal that suited me. I was doing useful work, and I was doing it as a Jew. I was fulfilling myself as a man and as a Jew. If, as in the beginning of the thirties in Germany, the Party had told me that in order to be a Communist I had to stop being a Jew I would have been conflicted: but in 1947, in Soviet Russia, that was not the case. The Party had created an Anti-Fascist Committee, organized Jewish writers and artists’
clubs, sent Jewish poets to America. Mikhoels was among the most honored artists of the USSR, Feffer had received the highest decorations, Markish was adulated by the intelligentsia, and my own writings appeared in the prestigious reviews of the Writers’ Union. Clearly one could be a Jew and a Communist at the same time. In foreign affairs, too, the signals were favorable. Moscow defended the claims of the Palestinian Jews and spoke in their behalf at the United Nations. Gromyko’s speeches were more Zionist than those of the Zionists. It was even said that we were sending arms to the underground Jewish army. Why then should I live on the periphery, uninvolved and ineffective?”