by Elie Wiesel
It was time to go back.
Tamar. He would see Tamar again. He would love her; love her with his whole heart. Weeping, laughing like a child, she would take him back, he was sure. Or at least he hoped so. Was she angry? That was all in the past. Their quarrel? Ancient history. The incident? She held it against him, but given his past and even more his father’s past, could he have done otherwise? Tamar was unjust. With her chin in the air, she’d glared at him. “You’re lying. You’re lying, and you want me to lie, too!” Good thing it happened at his place and not at the newspaper. The foreign editor and the sage himself would have settled the matter for them: all real news must be published.
Israel was at the heart of it. And an article that might do Israel harm, might tarnish its image and harm its interests. Malkiel said, I love Israel. Tamar said, I love truth. They spent a sleepless night debating, shouting familiar arguments and old recriminations back and forth. Malkiel tried to bring her to the “right way of thinking,” as they say; it was no use. Proud, arrogant, sure of her knowledge and her right to pronounce judgment, she proved stubborn, determined, unyielding: she punctuated everything she said with, “Freedom of information comes first.” Malkiel replied, “And if your sacred freedom of information causes real harm? Harm to our people? Will you swear by it just the same?” Tangled in their maze of pride and loyalty, they forgot how to listen. So the couple broke up. Hurt, each saw in the other an obstacle.
Tamar had interviewed a young Palestinian from Bethlehem who was on a lecture tour in the United States. He was a professor of political science at Bir Zeit, and he accused Israel’s government, police and army of suppressing and torturing the Arabs of the West Bank. Even before she turned it in to the foreign desk she showed her piece to Malkiel, who blushed as he read it. “Come have a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Right now? It’s five o’clock—we’ll miss the first edition.” He insisted. “Please, Tamar. Come on.”
“Is it that urgent?”
“Yes.”
They went up to the cafeteria and took a small table in the corner. “What’s so urgent? Something about your father?”
“No.”
Tamar was short with him. “Come on. There’s not much time. If you have something to say, say it.”
“That article. Have you shown it to anyone?”
“No. I was going to give it to the sage once you’d gone over it.”
“You’d better not,” Malkiel said.
“What? But it’s explosive! It’ll be quoted all over television tomorrow.”
“That’s just it,” Malkiel said. “That’s why you’d better not.” Malkiel too had to go back to work. “Let me make a suggestion,” he said. “Wait one day. Nobody’s going to beat you to it. This guy is too eager to see the story in our paper.
We’ll talk about it tonight. If I don’t persuade you, run it tomorrow.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then rose suddenly and walked toward the door. “See you later,” she said hastily.
At seven o’clock, as usual, Malkiel went to visit his father. In his heart he had hoped to find Tamar there; she often arrived first; but she was surely in no mood to please him that evening. Loretta was all smiles.
“Everything all right today?” he asked.
“Just fine,” she said, “except he wouldn’t take his nap.”
Malkiel told his father, “You should rest in the afternoon. It’s good for you.”
“I can’t sleep. I don’t want to,” Elhanan said. “I’m afraid of not waking up. Or of not knowing I’ve awakened.”
To make him talk, Malkiel asked all kinds of questions, to which Elhanan replied distractedly. “Your mind’s somewhere else,” Malkiel said.
His father paused before answering. “Our sages teach us that two angels attach themselves to a man at birth and never leave him. One walks before and helps him climb mountains, the other follows in the shadows and pushes him toward his fall. I have a feeling that the second one is now stronger. I feel sorry for the first.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” Malkiel said. “He’s there to protect you; and God protects him.”
Elhanan thought that over, and his voice was full of anguish. “And who protects God?”
Malkiel was in a hurry to go home. Tamar was already there. Curled up on a sofa with a stubborn look on her face, she was sipping a whiskey-soda. “All right, let’s get right to it, Mr. Censor.” It was beginning badly. When Tamar wanted to be bitchy, she was unbeatable.
“You’ll allow me to sit down?”
“Yes.”
“On the sofa?”
“No. Take a chair. That one, so you face me. Okay. I’m listening. Start explaining. What right do you have to censor me, violating all my principles?” When Tamar uttered the word “principles,” nobody could stand up to her. They were sacred, those principles. Inviolable.
Malkiel tried his luck anyway. “You met with this Palestinian, right?”
“Of course I did. His facts were solid and specific.”
“Were they also true?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Did you verify them?”
“You read the piece—didn’t I report official Israeli reactions?”
“When you publish both versions—and don’t give much space to the Israelis—you leave room for doubt.”
“What’s wrong with shaking up the simpleminded reader?”
The argument degenerated. They both fell back on clichés and emotions.
“It’s a question of truth,” Tamar said. “Do you want me to suppress it?”
“You dare contradict the truth of Israel by any other truth?”
“If what this Palestinian says is true, then Israel is contradicting its own truth—its ethical calling, its prophetic mission!”
“Who are you and who am I to set ourselves up as judges of an ancient people, and furthermore our own?”
“Who are you and who am I not to help an ancient people, and furthermore our own, refrain from serious error? Their salvation may depend on it, and ours certainly does!”
“You call yourself Israel’s savior?”
“Your irony is misplaced. I’m neither a prophet nor a moralist. I’m a journalist. I intend to do my job as honestly as I can. And you’re only a sad little preacher trying to stop me with childish and sentimental arguments.”
“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 Isr
ael 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 amne
sia 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.
