by Elie Wiesel
Two sound engineers busied themselves behind a screen. And suddenly the tape recorder refused to cooperate. As it happened, Jacques Attali was present—a fact that later on, in 1993, will cause me much sadness and a huge headache. But during this first session for the book I was pleased that he was there, for he made himself useful: It was decided he would take notes on the president’s remarks, but not on mine. Anyway, my memory is good. And for our subsequent talks, the tape recorder was repaired.
Our conversations, each from one hour to an hour and a half long, are carried on in an atmosphere of friendship. I ask questions and Mitterrand responds. Only rarely does he ask me questions. I don’t feel at ease in my role of interviewer; I gave that up a long time ago.
To be sure, I could be more confrontational, but that’s not in my nature. And then, too, I am respectful of the man sitting across from me. I don’t dare push him on the points he seeks to avoid. I steer clear of minefields. I don’t touch upon embarrassing subjects. Not yet. I tell myself that, in any event, this is just a draft. I’ll have a chance to rework it, as he will, too. That will be the time to urge him to review his positions. There’s no hurry. His mandate has just been renewed. Seven years is a long time.
In his replies, Mitterrand is open. I like what he says about his childhood: “I had no friends my own age.” About his adolescence: “I went from wonder to wonder.” About his parents: “They were very available. They hardly spoke. My father would say you don’t learn anything from words, only from deeds.” About his mother, traveling in a train with people making anti-Dreyfus, anti-Semitic remarks: “My mother’s eyes opened wider and wider with surprise.” About his discovery of the stranger, who is “welcomed into a closed circle like a thief.” He is severe with De Gaulle, skeptical about Mendès-France. His favorite writers: Barrès, Chardonne.
He has a talent for quickly finding answers that suit him. Sometimes he asks me to repeat my questions, saying that he doesn’t understand. Then, rather than launch into explanations, I change the subject. The major problem is time—his own, of course, but also mine, since I live in New York and teach in Boston. Months go by between appointments and more than once I consider abandoning the project. But we go back to it again and again. Seven topics have been dealt with; there are three left. Then we’ll review the entire text. We have time.
These talks require an effort of concentration on my part. I believe not as much on his. We are rarely disturbed by the telephone. He seems attentive but relaxed, and when he escorts me to the door he asks about Elisha’s studies, sends his regards to Marion, and asks me to come back every time I’m in Paris: “You are always welcome in this house, which is yours.” I come back, but we speak less and less about the book. Have both of us lost interest? Or perhaps he simply wishes to wait for the end of his second term.
But neither he nor I could foresee an incident provoked by our mutual friend Jacques Attali.
When I think of Attali, I feel sad. I regret the years of our friendship. I thought it beautiful, productive. Adroit, endowed with countless talents, he loved his position at the nerve center of French and international political life. How did he manage to be in so many places at once? And to be part of so many projects? He knew so many things about so many subjects. My trust in him was total. I thought it was mutual: He would tell me about his life and his experiences at the Élysée, the challenges he had met, his struggles, his personal dreams, and his ambitions as a writer. He had no qualms about telling me of the complexity of his relationship with Mitterrand. He understood that I could keep a secret. What spoiled our friendship?
I was familiar with his project for a journal covering the years 1981 to 1986, whose title I did not yet know. And he knew that I was writing a volume of memoirs. I had even mentioned to him on the telephone (he was by then head of the BERD bank in London) that I planned to describe in it my conversations with Mitterrand and the difficulties they presented. The idea that Attali might make use of these same conversations—and quite extensively—never crossed my mind, especially since the first volume of his journal was to end with 1986, long before Mitterrand and I began our “dialogues.”
When his journal, Verbatim, appears with great fanfare, Marion and I happen to be in Europe. Stopping off in Paris we meet the publisher Odile Jacob, who asks if we have read the article devoted to Attali in Le Nouvel Observateur. “You’re mentioned,” she adds. So we read it and find a rather appealing portrait of Jacques. The article also reproduces, in italics, certain excerpts attributed to Mitterrand that seem familiar. Oh well—I’ll read the book to clear up the mystery.
We are in Venice attending the closing session of a meeting of the International Press Institute when, from New York, we learn that Odile Jacob has been desperately trying to find us. She is beside herself: “I’ve just read Verbatim…. Your conversations with the president are there in print…. It’s mind-boggling … scandalous … unforgivable….” By special courier she sends us a segment of ninety-five pages—photocopies of Verbatim excerpts side-by-side with photocopies of our manuscript.
For there does in fact exist a manuscript of my seven conversations with Mitterrand. It is based on the transcript made by the Élysée staff, and notably by Attali’s office, of the still-unfinished seven chapters. One copy is in the hands of Odile Jacob, whom Mitterrand had chosen as publisher of the Nobel conference papers and whom he has now also chosen to publish our dialogues. I had, in fact, thought that he would wish to be published by Claude Durand of Fayard, since he was Attali’s friend, while I, personally, had leaned toward either Le Seuil or Grasset. But Mitterrand had decided in favor of Odile Jacob, and it had been with his blessing that I had given her a copy of the manuscript. Evidently, Attali must have not known or forgotten this fact.
Minutely prepared by Odile Jacob, the document is devastating. Marion and I, dumbfounded and hurt, study the file at length. We take it along to Oslo, where, as guests of the president of the Parliament, we attend the official celebration of Norway’s national holiday, the most beautiful in the world because it is the children who celebrate it, and are celebrated in turn. On Sunday, May 16, I place a call to Attali in Paris. By chance he’s at home. I say to him: “I must show you something…. This is urgent, superurgent…. If I could jump into a plane now I’d do it, but I cannot. Please come here. I’m at the Grand Hotel. It’s something important that concerns you….” He doesn’t understand, or pretends not to. He wants to know what it’s all about: the president’s health, national security? I insist: “This is not something we can discuss on the phone…. Believe me: It justifies your coming.” I still think that if he had come, we could have settled matters between us. I’m profoundly convinced of it. But for whatever reason, he does not accept my invitation. Subsequently he told me he had no recollection of it.
This incident was painful for me and for him as well. I shall come back to it in another context.
I no longer believe in this book of dialogues. For that matter, I have not seen Mitterrand since the Bousquet affair. Odile Jacob does everything in her power and more, as only she can do, to keep the project alive; but for my part, since the president chooses not to answer my written questions about Bousquet and Vichy, I am less eager. Undeniably, between Mitterrand and myself things are no longer what they were.
People in his entourage now tell me he is displeased with me because I dared criticize him on television about the Bousquet affair. According to him, the laws of friendship required me to be his defender. But in opting for friendship with Bousquet, had he not violated and sacrificed ours, and much more? Did he not make his choice by receiving Bousquet at home, perhaps the same day that he saw me? I thus may have shaken the hand that had shaken that of the SS murderers’ accomplice.
In short, my enthusiasm is gone. And happily, our book seems to be deferred to messianic times. So I am surprised when Odile Jacob calls me in March 1995 to tell me that Mitterrand’s illness is getting worse, and that he now wishes the book to come out.
I can’t hold back a cry of astonishment. “He wants it to come out? As it is? But it’s not finished! We were supposed to rework it! It’s nothing but a draft! Moreover, he hasn’t answered my questions about Vichy and Bousquet! Do you really think that I could cosign a book with him without raising these questions?” Odile understands. She will speak to Mitterrand. She calls me back soon after: he also understands. He’s asking me to send the questions again. I make up a new list and fax it to Odile. In time he sends his responses directly to her. They express “neither regrets nor remorse” on the subject of his past. Even in September, during our last encounter, he locks himself into this pose of infallibility, too proud, too sure of himself to recognize that to err is human. His aides had often told me that he was incapable of saying “I should not have done this.”
So how can I reach him? How can I speak to him without wounding him, listen to him without showing him my disagreement and my disappointment? I am in Paris several times and don’t call him; I no longer wish to see him, nor evidently does he want to see me. Looming large between us, the dark ghost of Bousquet eliminates any possibility of direct contact. We had been too close not to seek refuge now in distance. From now on everything goes through Odile Jacob, who is determined to publish the book before the elections. She succeeds in getting it printed in less than a week. She is equally successful, several days after the publication of the book, in getting us to exchange a few courteous trivialities on the telephone. I tell Mitterrand he has done good work—meaning he, not I. For I am not proud of my contribution. I would have required at least a month to correct and flesh out my own text. And I would have liked to respond to his responses.
The title for the dialogues was chosen by Mitterrand. I should have preferred something more sober, more discreet—and truer. A memoir in two voices? Mine can hardly be heard. For that matter, I have the impression that Mitterrand, too, considers the book not a work by two authors, but something he alone has written. Otherwise would he have dedicated it to a certain Lucia without advising me beforehand, if only out of politeness?
Journalists keep calling me. I manage to elude most of them. But I do respond to Annette Lévy-Willard of Libération and to Info-Matin. My tone is cautious, respectful; I don’t wish to hurt a sick man. But at the same time I want people to know that I have decided to keep my distance from a work I no longer consider mine.
The situation worsens as a result of an interview Mitterrand gives to Bernard Pivot. When the latter questions him on what I say in the book about his, Mitterrand’s, relations with the former chief of police, he practically cuts him short: “Take note that it was I who insisted…. I said to Elie Wiesel: ‘If you don’t question me about Bousquet, there will be no book!’”
We are in Israel for Passover and watch Pivot’s program at a friend’s home. As we listen to Mitterrand, we turn to each other in shock and disbelief. When we return to New York we see a rebroadcast of the program. Marion then records it, and I admit to watching it five or six times. I am stunned by Mitterrand’s statement. Rarely have I had so much difficulty in restraining my disappointment and anger. I want to send him a letter and write draft after draft, but all are too harsh, and so they all wind up in a drawer of my desk.
On April 23, 1995, I fax Mitterrand—still via Anne Lauvergeon—a more temperate version:
Mr. President,
I have finally seen the “Bouillon de Culture” of 14 April, which has been broadcast by TV5 on an American station this evening. I don’t like to cause you pain. But in your presentation, in all other aspects moving and brilliant, the part concerning our conversations troubled and grieved me. You say that it was you who had insisted, personally, with me that questions regarding Bousquet be included in the book and that otherwise you would never have consented to its publication. Yet since last September until the very day the book was published, we have not spoken.
The impression given by your words is that you had to force my hand for me to ask you questions about Bousquet. And yet. Did I not come specially from New York, precisely in September, to speak to you about this subject? And above all to listen to you? Did I not send you, as agreed, a few days after our meeting, my questions—two pages of questions—which you did not see fit to answer? Do you think, Mr. President, that I would have agreed to have this book published without our exchange on Bousquet? I have asked Anne Lauvergeon to tell you: This is a subject that, for me, is painful and grave. I would like to understand. I ask you, Mr. President, to clarify it for me.
I receive no answer from Mitterrand. I ask Anne Lauvergeon whether I should expect one. She checks. Her reply is negative. I take my pen and write:
Mr. President,
This letter is the last you will receive from me. I am writing with regret and sadness. It marks the end of a friendship that for fourteen years was a part of my life.
You are ill, you are suffering. It may be wrong of me to add to your pain. But out of respect for the man I admired, and because I believe that lying to him would betray you, I feel it incumbent on me to clarify the reasons for my decision.
This is followed by three pages of explanation … that I do not send. Other drafts meet the same fate. Then the New York Times asks me for a piece on Mitterrand and how he went wrong. I take up my pen again: “I regret to have to write these lines. I regret above all to have to write them now, at a time when the man in question is old, seriously ill, and at the end of his political career. Yet I cannot, I can no longer be silent. Silence, in my tradition, means approval.”
A four-page article follows … to be buried in my desk. To the editor of the Times, I write that I cannot hurt a man so seriously ill. I give the same response to the editor in chief of an important Paris magazine. I do not say that I don’t feel like writing such a piece. The fact that Mitterrand does not see fit to answer me upsets me, but I prefer to swallow the pill, and I wait for the present volume to say what is in my heart.
Still, this time Anne was mistaken. I finally do get an answer, two months later. To say it stunned me would be an understatement. In essence, this is what Mitterrand offers in explanation: He acknowledges having received the questions concerning René Bousquet that I wished to see dealt with in the “still possible” book we were to write together and that he, alone, had edited. But when submitted to him “ready to print,” our “dialogue on Bousquet” was not in the book. This omission had to be corrected—and that was what he had explained to Pivot.
Well, now there is no longer any ambiguity. There is only contradiction and, I am sorry to note, a distortion of the facts. To Pivot he had said that he had ordered me, personally, to include questions on Bousquet. In his letter it is no longer to me but to Odile Jacob to whom he gives the instructions. And then there was the tone, the facial expressions, the body language on the screen. His letter is dry, abrupt. I do not respond to his reply. What’s the use of restating my position? He obviously refuses to understand. He may, in fact, be incapable of it.
So is this then the end, the break? I’m afraid so. Especially since there was yet another event, in May, that I and others close to me considered an affront: his speech in Berlin. On that occasion, Mitterrand praises not only the Germany of today, but Germany throughout history—hence the Third Reich as well. Standing before Helmut Kohl, who is beaming with pride, he sings the glory of the German army of today and yesterday—thus of Hitler’s army. He says that the German soldiers’ uniform meant little to him, nor did the ideas that inhabited their minds; “they were brave,” that was what mattered then, that is what matters to him today. (The next day, in Moscow, he compares the courage of the Russian soldier with that of the German soldier, and the suffering of the Russian people with that of the German people.)
How is one to explain this kind of reductionism? So the uniform means so little to him? Has he forgotten that the Gestapo too wore that uniform? And that they too harbored certain ideas? What possessed him to whitewash the German military in this way, in this, his next-to-last off
icial speech? A desire to be provocative? To please his hosts, to emphasize the importance of reconciliation in his political philosophy? His plea for peace and reconciliation won him the enthusiasm of some and shocked others. A cartoon in Le Monde is terrifying, showing a hefty Yeltsin towering over a tiny Mitterrand, begging him to say something nice about the Russian soldier’s courage in Chechnya.
As it happened, I might well have been at his side in both capitals. He had invited me to accompany him. A seat had been reserved for me in his Concorde, and a room in the hotels. I refused. I don’t regret it. On the contrary, I believe I made the right decision. Had I been present in Berlin, I would have left the hall in the middle of his speech.
Still, even though I’ve distanced myself from him and his universe, I feel sad. This was not how I had imagined his exit from my life.
• • •
On January 8, 1996, I am in the South to lecture at a small college. The phone rings in my room at 6 o’clock in the morning. “I have sad news for you,” Elisha says. “Your friend Mitterrand is dead.” Elisha had been awakened by journalists calling from Paris.
I feel the silence slowly descending on me, leaving a familiar feeling. A whole chapter of my life is ended. The place Mitterrand occupied in my book of friendship covers many pages. There were journeys, discoveries, reunions, luminous moments, glowing images, picturesque episodes. I knew my friend in his glory, I knew him in sickness. How did he enter into death? I imagine him in his small, monastic room alone with his physician, alone with his past. Did he choose the asceticism of solitude before sinking into it for all eternity? Did he finally become reconciled with God at the moment of leaving His creation? The religion he rejected had, in fact, always interested him. The sacred fascinated him both as challenge and as shelter. And what if, in his own way, he had been a lover of God as he followed his fervent desire to conquer history?
