The Time of the Uprooted: A Novel

by Elie Wiesel

  After a long silence, Diego, a romantic when he was in the mood, asked, “Did you ever see her again, that young journalist? After you left the Mossad, did you try to look her up? Tell us, did you make love to her?” Gad said nothing, but Diego persisted: “Come on, amigo, you want me to go to my grave without knowing the rest of the story?”

  “There’s no more to the story.”

  “You didn’t go back to Paris?”

  “Yes. In fact, I took a plane to France the day after I resigned from the Mossad. I called the magazine where she worked and asked to speak to her. I was told it was impossible. I explained that it was urgent; then an editor came on and said, ‘She cannot be reached.’ When I insisted, he said, ‘Where have you been, my dear sir? Don’t you know that our colleague is dead?’ I didn’t know. ‘Did she die on assignment, in the Middle East perhaps?’ I asked. ‘No. It was just cancer.’ Yes, that editor did use the word just.” Gad wiped his brow. “What hurts the most is that she died without knowing who I was.”

  Gamaliel tried to reassure him. “Someday you’ll tell her.”

  “Are you making fun of me? I just told you she’s dead.”

  “And I’m telling you you’ll see her again, in the next world. I believe in it. I don’t know if God’s there, but I know my parents are, waiting for me. And that journalist is there, too, waiting for you.”

  Yasha was straddling his chair, as he always did when he was keyed up. He came back to the topic of hatred. “The enemy’s not the one we hate the most; it’s someone close to us. It’s the friend who lets us down, the brother who betrays us, the neighbor who turns us in.”

  LATER ON, GAMALIEL WOULD RECALL, AS AN echo to what Yasha had said, Gide’s line: “Families, I hate you.” Had his wife, Colette, adopted the famous curse as her own? She’d loved her husband only when she thought he didn’t love her, in order to make him the guilty one. Yet he had never hated her, nor their two daughters, either. Their estrangement remained a sorrow to him. Yes, only sorrow endured.

  Sometimes he felt he could take no more. His cup of silent tears was overflowing. When he was younger, he’d been strong enough to pull himself together, but now that he had used up his strength, he could no longer manage it. Too much, it was too much. Too many times he’d fled, too many disappointments, too often exiled, and too much remorse, as well. Too often doubted or not understood. Too many barriers that would not go away. Too many times he’d felt powerless, as if facing a dark mass that was coming at him, sometimes to toss him in the air, at others to crush him to the ground. Too much remorse when he thought about his two daughters. To this day, they cursed him. He was sure of it.

  And yet.

  Sometimes the words of Rebbe Zusya would come to his mind, like lessons in solace: “The High Priest Aaron lost his two sons, Nadab and Abihu, and he remained silent.

  “Job’s children died, but he waited in silence seven days and seven nights before he spoke.”

  Or the old Sage would quote the great Rebbe Menahem Mendel of Kotsk: “ ‘It is when you feel that you want to cry out that you must suppress the cry.’ ”

  Or else these words from a survivor of the camps: “To be silent is forbidden; to speak is impossible.”

  Another memory plagued Gamaliel. “Papa?” Sophie had asked when she was still a little girl.

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you sad?”

  Gamaliel did not feel sad, but she was very perceptive. “How could I be sad when I have you in my lap?”

  “That’s just it. I’m with you, and you’re sad.”

  “How could I be sad when you love me?”

  “That’s just it, Papa. I love you, and still you’re sad.” She stopped and put her tiny right hand on her forehead as she always did when she wanted to indicate that she was thinking. “I think I know why. You’re sad because I love you.”

  He leaned over and kissed her eyes.

  Just when did the break happen? He couldn’t tell exactly. It was the outcome of a slow process, one that was imperceptible but inexorable. Sophie, by then a teenager, had given him a strange look one overcast fall day when she was getting ready to go to school. That was when it began. He’d wanted to hug her, but she muttered, “I’m late,” and hurried out the door. It was raining. He thought she might catch cold, but it was too late to call her back. Without knowing why, he felt a pain unlike any he had known. And a fear.

  He’d been trying to hide it for some time. He told himself he shouldn’t read too much into it, shouldn’t torment himself. Why worry over a shrug of the shoulders? It’s ridiculous, he thought. I’m too thin-skinned, too quick to see a symptom of unhappiness or betrayal in the merest trifle. On the surface, everything seemed as usual. They went about their daily routines, exchanged everyday conversations, left home and came back, at ease with each other. Little Sophie—now no longer so little—would smile at him. As always, or almost so. But deep down, Gamaliel was no longer sure of it. Something had changed between them. Sometimes she treated him as an enemy; or worse, a stranger. Should he talk to her? Ask her to explain her hostility? He vacillated for a while, waiting for the right moment. It came on a June evening. They were at home alone. Sophie was in her room doing homework, some tedious paper on the Jansenists, while Gamaliel was sitting at the big dining room table, trying to work on a manuscript but getting nowhere. Unusual for him, he couldn’t seem to concentrate. Suddenly, he froze. He heard the sound of sobbing from Sophie’s room. He hastened to her door, opened it as furtively as a burglar, then hesitated a moment before pushing it all the way with infinite precaution. Was that really his beloved little girl, collapsed in tears at her desk, books in front of her, head on her arms? He had never seen her in such a state. He touched her shoulder and said softly, “What’s happened to you, my little duckling? You’re hurting? Tell me about it. When you’re suffering, I feel like dying. Who did this to you?” She went on sobbing. He stroked her neck. “Why these tears? Where does it hurt?” And then more urgently, he asked, “Who made you cry? A boyfriend? A pal who turned against you? Tell me.” At once, she stopped sobbing. The silence in the room grew heavy. Sophie took a deep breath and buried her head in her arms. “It’s you,” she said in a low voice. “You’re the one who’s making me unhappy. Me and Katya and Mother—you’re making us all unhappy. You’re sacrificing us all. Don’t you understand that?” Gamaliel staggered, as if he had been clubbed over the head. He felt as if he were suffocating. He opened his mouth to try to breathe, to stay alive. But he no longer wanted to live. To what end? he wondered. I was blind. I lied to myself. Sophie detests me. I love her and she pushes me away. So does her sister. And so does everybody. What have I been doing with my days and nights to make those I love the most in the world hate me so? Was there something lacking in my love? A more trenchant question followed: Was I the one who was first to hate, and is their hatred the bitter rotted fruit of my own? Why didn’t I know enough to pay attention to what was going on around me?

  ONE DAY, OUT OF PURE CURIOSITY, GAMALIEL asked Gad about the significance of his favorite saying, “Be careful.” They were alone at the cafeteria, waiting for their friends. “You’d think those two words express all your philosophy of life,” Gamaliel said.

  “Why all of it? Isn’t part enough for you?” That day, the Israeli was in an expansive mood. “It’s because of my violin. If I’m not careful, it’s likely to do all sorts of crazy things. Sometimes it wants to go galloping off after who knows what ears and what hearts. You see, my violin has a life of its own. Sometimes it wants to weep and cry and mourn, while I’m in a mood to sing the happiness of children and get them dancing.”

  Gamaliel was about to comment that Gad had all the makings of a ventriloquist, but he refrained, for fear of offending him. In any case, Gad continued: “Do you know why I come to this place?”

  “For the food?” Gamaliel said, hoping to get a laugh.

  “Don’t be silly. It’s for the people who come here. I like to hear them speakin
g Yiddish. I like to listen in on their conversations. They help me see into a world that for a long time was impenetrable to me—the world of my parents and grandparents.” On the surface, his seemed a simple everyday story. Gad Lichtenstein, whose name was later made into the Hebrew Even-Ezer, was the only son of German emigrants, quiet, reserved people who never spoke of their past. His father worked in high finance; his mother was a doctor. He was brought up as a Zionist, did his military service, was a commando officer, and then was recruited by the Mossad. “All my life, all day long, it was drilled into me: ‘Be careful. Watch out.’ One wrong move in Baghdad could get you killed; one word too many in Damascus could mean prison and torture.”

  “You must have some great stories.”

  “Like everyone else. But that’s just it: It’s better to keep them to yourself.”

  “You don’t mean to say you don’t trust us?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well then?”

  “Then nothing. It’s better to listen.” When he saw Bolek at the entrance, he quickly concluded: “I’m speaking from experience.”

  Bolek joined them, and it was the one time Gamaliel was sorry to see him.

  THE DOCTOR IS TRYING TO CONSOLE ME, AND I’M grateful, but I’m barely listening to her. Can we let our minds dwell on two subjects at the same time? Yes, we can. My thoughts are still with my children and my parents, but she is reminding me of the sick woman upstairs. My intuition tells me there is some unknown connection between us, and that disturbs me. I think of the men and women whose paths have crossed my own. Some of them showed me the mystery of knowledge, others that of suffering. Whether they carried light or darkness, whether they were drawn to the service of good or attracted by evil, they all left their mark on me. It is because of them that I am who I am. The desire to share love was what inspired some, while others were determined to destroy it in favor of anger. Rebbe Zusya fascinated me with his faith in faith. But before him came the friendship of Bolek, Gad and his violin, Diego and his battles, Yasha and his regrets. . . .

  Yasha was from Kiev. He came from a Jewish family that had been secretly Orthodox. His father had attended the yeshiva at Navarodok. They spoke Yiddish at home. At sixteen, Yasha enlisted in the Red Army. He was wounded and decorated; he mourned the fallen. When at war’s end he returned to the city of his birth, he discovered how alone he was, and how consumed he was by hate: hatred for the enemy’s occupying army, hatred for those who collaborated with them, hatred for the onlookers who let them have their way. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, soon after the Germans arrived, his entire family was massacred at Babi Yar. Where could he turn? He joined the Communist party. He did his university studies, was appointed a teacher in a secondary school, married Nina, an energetic and doctrinaire young Muscovite who had found work in an office that was part of the “organs”—that is, the internal security services. One day in early 1949, she told Yasha that her boss wanted to see him. His first reaction was to ask, “Should I be worried about this?” She assured him that it had nothing to do with him personally. She was right. Interrogator Pavel Borisovich questioned him about his knowledge of languages, particularly about his mastery of Yiddish. Simple questions, easy answers. Thus began an ordeal that would stay with Yasha for the rest of his life.

  This was the time in the Soviet Union of Stalin’s anti-Semitic mania. The killing of the great actor and director Shlomo Mikhoels was followed by the arrest of well-known Jewish writers and poets who wrote in Yiddish: Dovid Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Itzhak Feffer, Der Nister, Leib Kvitko, and Dovid Hofstein, among many others. While in Moscow the police were arresting the big names, in the provincial cities they had to make do with lesser prey. In Kiev, destiny’s choice was Fishel Kleinman. Yasha knew him: They had fought in the same unit near Kharkov. He was a short, brave, quick-witted man, whose cheeriness made him popular; he had a funny story for every occasion. Kleinman called himself a poet, a writer, a journalist, and he swore with a laugh that the world would recognize his genius once victory was achieved. Not the world, in fact—that would be saying too much—but several journals had published articles and poems in which he sang his love for Stalin, of course, and for Russian Jews, loyal citizens of the Soviet Union and devoted admirers of their immortal leader. Did he know that the organs kept everything he wrote in their files? Kleinman had not yet been questioned when Yasha was asked to translate his writings from Yiddish into Russian. The meaning was clear: A case was being prepared at a higher level. “There is surely anti-Soviet material in there,” said Pavel Borisovich. “Be sure to highlight it.” And he added more sharply, “Be careful. This is a matter of national security! Not a word to anyone! Not even Nina, understand?” Yes, Yasha understood: You don’t fool around with the organs. That same evening, Nina asked him how the meeting had gone. “Just fine,” he said. “Can you tell me something about it?” “No.” “Then forget I asked.”

  Yasha’s school granted him a leave of absence. He went to the office every morning, never knowing whether he would leave it. By dint of translating Kleinman’s articles and poems, he became in a sense his most faithful reader. There appeared to be nothing compromising in his writings. Denunciation of the fascist Germans, recitation of the martyrdom of Russian Jews under the occupation, fervent eulogies of the victorious Red Army, lyrical poems to the glories of the Russian countryside, the Russian character, the Communist sky, the Communist soul, the Communist gods. Pavel Borisovich, obviously dissatisfied, was getting exasperated. “You haven’t found anything that reveals the author’s secret intentions, his subversive thoughts? Nowhere a deviationist word, an implied criticism of our policies? Not even an example of holding back, of hesitating?” he asked. Both his voice and his face gradually grew threatening. “I’m warning you! Don’t try to protect him! Think about the risk you’re running!” Yasha was indeed thinking about it. But in whom could he confide? Nina? Why implicate her in a case with unforeseeable consequences? He tried to avoid Kleinman. The latter telephoned several times to invite him to some commemorative gathering or to a dinner in honor of a visiting Jewish writer, but he always told Nina to say he was sick or not home. Yasha felt vaguely guilty: What would the prosecutor read into his Russian translations of Kleinman’s Yiddish texts? All the more so since on rereading certain poems, he discovered an expression here or a misplaced comma there that could easily be misinterpreted. Then he came upon an unpublished prayer—or rather, a lament— addressed to the memory of the victims of Babi Yar, written the day after the liberation of Kiev in 1943. The author blamed the massacre on the silence of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the city, its Ukrainian Communists among them. Tears came to Yasha’s eyes the first time he read the poem. Then he caught himself; a signal went off in his head. This cry from the heart might seem like a criticism of the Party! It would become a deadly weapon in the hands of the prosecutor! What should he do? How could he protect his old comrade-in-arms? The prayer was already listed in the prosecution’s catalog of Kleinman’s writings.

  “So,” Yasha told us one day when our group was recalling Stalin’s poisonous hatred of the Jewish writers, “like a fool, I decided I’d trick that temperamental investigator in order to protect the unlucky poet, who was guilty only of being naïve. I didn’t destroy the poem; I just set it aside without translating it.

  “Of course I expected a violent reaction from Pavel Borisovich, but not the earthquake that shook the whole office. He accused me of conspiring with a traitor, of trying to sabotage Communist justice. He banged on the table with both fists and yelled, ‘Where did Prosecution Exhibit One twenty-two disappear to? Don’t tell me you ate it, or that it flew out the window!’ I replied that it was there, in the dossier. He demanded to see it. I showed it to him. ‘But it’s not where it belongs! Why did you put it at the end, out of order, hidden under the other documents? And why didn’t you translate it?’I had my answer ready: ‘I only translated his published writings. Weren’t those your instructions?’
‘No, those were not my instructions! My orders to you were perfectly clear: Translate everything that the traitor Fishel Yakobovich Kleinman wrote!’ I answered that I’d misunderstood him, and that I was ready to translate the unpublished poem on the spot. ‘Never mind!’ he shouted. ‘I already have a translation! Here it is.’ That’s how I learned that he hadn’t put his confidence in me, but had obtained another translator, one who either didn’t share my scruples or else wasn’t afraid of the consequences if he deceived the prosecutor. Now it was I who feared those consequences. I was sure I’d never see my home again. Surely some notorious troika was waiting in the next room to pass judgment on me. How many years would I get? And Nina, what would become of her? Now the prosecutor changed tack: ‘You’re going to translate that poem anyway. I intend to compare your two translations. So go ahead, get to work.’ I finished the three pages in less than an hour. Later on, I was able to read the anonymous translator’s version, and I was stupefied to find that, thanks to a few minor changes, his was less compromising than mine. In the end, it was because of my blunder— I, who thought I was such a hero—that the brave warrior Fishel Kleinman, wordsmith in his spare time, was sentenced to death. . . . I got seven years in prison. Nina left me; maybe they made her do it. . . . What saved me was Nikita Khrushchev coming to power . . . but ever since, I’ve hated poetry.”