by Elie Wiesel
That is what makes me tremble each time I think of him in Montevideo, where he awaits me, where he calls to me: I am afraid to plunge once more into his legend which condemns us both, me to doubt, and him to immortality.
11.
The Last Return
Somewhere in Transylvania, in the shadow of the Carpathians, very near the most capricious frontier of Eastern Europe, there is a dusty little town called Sighet. It is a town like many others, and yet it is not like any other. Quiet, withdrawn, resigned, it seems almost petrified in its own forgetfulness; and in the shame that springs from that forgetfulness. It has denied its past; it is condemned to live outside of time; it breathes only in the memory of those who have left it.
This was my town once; it is not my town now. And yet it has scarcely changed at all since I left it twenty years ago. The low, gray houses are still there. The church and the butcher shop are still facing each other. The synagogue, deserted now, still stands at the corner of the little market square.
It is this fidelity to its own image that makes the town seem strange to me. By looking like itself, it has betrayed itself. It has lost the right to its name and to its destiny. Sighet is not Sighet any more.
For a long time I had had a burning desire to go there. For a week, an hour, a minute—just long enough for a single look. To see it one last time and then to depart, never to see it again.
Nowadays, in spite of the Iron Curtain, distances no longer matter. Anyone at all may leave from anywhere at all and arrive at Sighet, by way of Bucharest, Cluj, and Baia-Mare, by airplane, by train, by car, in less than seventy-two hours. But not I. For me the journey was longer. It was to take me back to where everything began, where the world lost its innocence and God lost his mask. It was from Sighet that I started on my journey to Sighet.
For twenty years I had done nothing but prepare for this journey. Not with joy—on the contrary, with anguish. In a dim way I felt where the danger lay: this pilgrimage would be a watershed. From that time on there would be a “before” and an “after.” Or rather, there would no longer be a “before.” What would be waiting for me when I arrived? The dead past or the past revived? Total desolation or a city rebuilt again and a life once more become normal? For me, in either case, there would be despair. One cannot dig up a grave with impunity. The secret of the Maase-B’reshit, the beginning of all things, is guarded by the Angel of Death. One approaches it only at the risk of losing his last tie to the earth, his last illusion, his faith, or his reason.
After the liberation, at Buchenwald, the Americans wanted to repatriate me. I objected. I did not like the idea of living alone in an abandoned place. They insisted: “Do you mean to say you refuse to go home?” I no longer had a home, I said. “And you’re not curious to go back and see the place where you were born, where you spent your childhood?” No, I did not know what curiosity was anymore. And besides, that town they were talking about no longer existed. It had followed the Jew into deportation.
I preferred to exile myself to France. I began wandering all over the world. To Israel, to America, to the Far East. Far away, as far as possible. Unable to remain in any one place, I ran from one country to another, from one experience to another, never knowing whether it was in order to get away from Sighet, or to find it again. The town haunted me, I saw it everywhere, always the same as it had been. It invaded my dreams, it came between me and the world, between me and other people, between me and myself. By trying to free myself from it, I was becoming its prisoner.
The town fascinated me and frightened me. I wanted and did not want to see it again. Sometimes I told myself: “The war is nothing but a bad dream: soon, when I awake, the moment I return, I shall find the place just as I knew it, with its yeshivot, its stores, its Talmudists, its merchants, its beggars, and its madmen. And I shall feel guilty for having dreamed that they were dead.”
At other times I had the opposite vision: I would be the only one to return, I would walk through the streets, aimless, without seeing a familiar face, an open look. And I would go mad with loneliness.
More than once, I was on the verge of undertaking this journey; at the last moment I would invent some pretext for putting it off. Later. Next month, next year. I did not have the courage, the strength. I sometimes found myself thinking: “Who knows, perhaps I have never left it.” Or else: “Perhaps it never existed outside my own imagination.” Or again: “Perhaps the whole universe is nothing but a phantasmagorical projection of Sighet; perhaps the whole universe is turning into Sighet.”
Then, one day, I decided that twenty years was enough. I set out. I do not know whether I did right; no doubt I shall never know. I searched in Sighet for those who might have advised me or enlightened me, but I did not find them. They had not come back.
In 1944 Sighet was part of Hungary; today it belongs to Rumania. To get there, I took a plane from Bucharest as far as Baia-Mare. At Baia-Mare, I hired a taxi to cross the mountains. One hundred fifty kilometers: six hours, fifteen dollars. Although the driver was pleased to earn so much money so quickly—it is as much as a laborer makes in one week—he seemed sullen and taciturn. He did not like driving at night across the mountains. The roads were badly lit and in poor condition.
“Do you know Sighet?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Why, it’s just a town, a town like any other.”
“Tell me about it. What does it look like?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Are there still Jews living there?”
“Jews? I don’t know any.”
He was in no mood to chat, only to curse.
For my own part, I have a great deal to tell. It sometimes seems to me that ever since I left it, I have been spending all my time telling about this town which gave me everything and then took it all away. As a boy, I was a devoted Hasid of the Wizsnitzer Rebbe, but I frequented the other Rebbes too, listened to their stories, learned their chants, ready always to catch fire wherever the spark might be found. Later, I became the disciple of a kabbalist. Every night at midnight, he would arise to put a handful of ashes on his brow; in a low voice, seated on the ground, he would lament the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, as well as the suffering of the Shekhina, which was in exile like us, with us. I was young then and could not imagine that the Temple would soon be destroyed six million times, that the suffering of God could never—never—be compared to that of the Jewish children who were already being sent to the pyre while the world remained silent, as silent as he who is judged to be its creator.
“We’re coming near,” said the driver. Where were we? At the foot of the mountain, thank God. The danger was past, we were in the valley. Sighet: 40 kilometers. Sighet: 30 kilometers. A multitude of huts formed a hedge along the road. Villages sprang up before our headlights and were immediately swallowed again by the night. Far away, there were a few blinking lights. Sighet: 20 kilometers. The car, an old Volga, picked up speed. Sighet: 15 kilometers. “We’re coming near,” the driver repeated in a heavy voice. His words sounded like a threat. He was taking me to a rendezvous. With whom? With death? With myself? Sighet: 10 kilometers. Sighet: twenty years.
I entered the town as one enters a dream: gliding forward noiselessly, without resistance, accepting in advance the best and the worst. Holding my breath, I exploded in time, which was torn apart into a thousand fragments, a thousand faces. The dead on one side, I on the other. Spring, 1944—autumn, 1964. I had left by train, I was coming back by car. The only difference was that it had been warm on that day with the fragrant promise of summer; now it was cold, it was almost winter, it was night. Yet the beginning and the end came strangely together, tracing a circle of fire which became smaller and smaller: I was caught inside, too late to escape.
“Here we are,” said the driver. His hand open, he asked for his money; he was in a hurry, he had to return to Baia-Mare. I asked him: “Are you sure this is Sighet? The former capit
al of Maramures?” He said yes, but I did not trust him. The town looked like Sighet, but that did not prove anything. There was the main street, the movie theater, the hotel, the girls’ high school. Across from me was the street called the Jews’ Street. On the right, the stores; further on, on the left, the courthouse. Nothing had changed? Nothing. Then why did I feel like the victim of a ludicrous misunderstanding? Someone had deceived me: the driver, for his own amusement, had deposited me in a strange town. And if not he, then it was another driver, more powerful and more cruel, more cunning too, who was laughing at my expense. “Are you really sure? You’re not fooling me?” He grinned and reassured me, but I did not believe him, I did not believe myself. His voice was lying, my eyes were lying. This town was lying. It was called Sighet—well, what of it? That meant nothing: a false name, a false identity. Sighet, the real Sighet, was elsewhere, somewhere in Upper Silesia, near a peculiar little railroad station called Birkenau, near a great fire lighting up the sky; the real Sighet formed part of an immense city of ashes.
It was late, the townspeople were all asleep. Suitcase in hand, I stood on the sidewalk, with my back to the hotel, unable to move a step. Then I shook myself: start remembering. You came back here to remember—well, then, look and listen. The main square, do you remember it? When the Jews were taken to the railroad station, to the transports, the line wound all around that square. When the policemen set up the itinerary, they followed the instructions of a certain Adolf Eichmann, who had come in person to supervise the operation. Our neighbors had already descended like hungry vultures on the abandoned dwellings: there was loot free for the taking, enough for everybody, for all tastes. The police were busy elsewhere. The looters had an easy job. Observing a tacit agreement, the rich robbed the rich, while the poor took things only from the poor. After all, the natural order must prevail.
Now, there I was at the very center of the main square, standing alone like a conqueror. They had not known that I would come back, and I had come back. A supreme victory—a unique victory. Why, then, was I unable to feel any pride? It was too late. Too late for conquest, and too late for pride.
My eyes searched the house fronts with their indistinct outlines, the sightless windows, the roofs on which tall chimneys rose like specters. I was looking for a reference point, a familiar feature; there was nothing. The town hid from my glance as it hid from the light; it drew away, it shrank back. The meeting would not take place: one of the parties had failed to appear at the rendezvous.
I was no longer sure of anything. I began to doubt myself again. What had I in common with the unsophisticated little boy, in love with religion and with the Absolute, who had been driven away from this very spot more than twenty years earlier?
Silence. There had been silence on the day of our departure too. The military police, mad with rage, had run bellowing in all directions and struck at men, women, children, not so much to hurt them as to make them groan. But the crowd had been mute. Not one cry, not one complaint. An old man, wounded in the head, had risen to his feet again and bitten his lip. A woman, her face full of blood, had walked on without slowing her pace. The town had never before known such a silence. Not a sigh, not a sound. Silence: the perfect setting for the last scene of the last act. The Jews were retiring from the scene. Forever.
I remembered that walking with the crowd toward the railroad station, where the sealed trains were already waiting for us, it had come into my mind that the silence would triumph, that it was stronger than we, stronger than they; it was beyond language, beyond lies, beyond time; it drew its strength from the very struggle which pitted life against its negation, brutality against silent prayer. Or was I just imagining that I had thought this? I did not know: I did not even know whether that young boy turning his back on his childhood, his home, his chance for happiness, had really been myself. Somewhere along the way, between the synagogue and the railroad station, between the station and the unknown, he had been killed. It might even be that I had killed him myself.
It was almost midnight now: I had to hurry. I had dawdled too long, I had not accomplished anything yet. There was not another minute to lose. Do something quickly. But just what? Something that will measure up to the return, if not to the departure. Awake the dead, perhaps. Or else set fire to the town, send it to join those who were gone, and let the army of shadows be victorious. Or, again, simply start singing or laughing. Just like that, in the street, in the cold. Until morning comes.
I crossed over to the hotel. A shabby, dilapidated entrance, a stairway with no railing, a dim light. Could this be the famous Hotel Corona? With my Jewish child’s eyes I had seen it—from the outside, from afar—as a palace reserved for princes from distant lands: high officials on inspection trips, General Staff officers on special missions, fabulously rich American women visiting their families. The Hotel Corona had meant luxury, fulfilled desire, glory, light-heartedness, liberty, vice.
Today the hotel is all “people,” “working class,” “peace,” “socialism.” Like everything else, it had lied to the child I had been; it was without pomp, without comfort.
In his glass-enclosed cage on the second floor, muffled in a thick blanket, the night clerk saw me approaching. His face was ageless and expressionless, his eyes absent and indifferent. I asked for a room. Had I a reservation? No. That was a pity: no reservation, no room. Why not? Was the hotel full, perhaps? Not at all, it was empty. I did not understand, and he explained that it was the rule. I gave him a tip, which took care of the rule. Very well, now I had to fill out the police form, that was the law. Sighet was a frontier town, no one could stay there for four hours without advising the Militia. The clerk took out a large register and began writing. Family name, given name, family status, occupation, place of residence. “New York,” I said. He dropped his pen and stared at me. “You came from New York? To Sighet?” I answered, “Yes, from New York to Sighet.” His surprise grew when he learned that I had been born in Sighet. Bewildered, he looked me over curiously. What did I want here at Sighet, so late at night, in this mournful hotel? Finally, he gave me a room: if I did not like it, I could choose another. I asked for a towel, and again he stared at me. Quite definitely, he did not like my behavior, and he would not forget to mention this detail in his deport to the Militia; one never knew, it might be significant. I told him, “All right, don’t bother, I’ll do without the towel. Anyhow, I’m going right out again.” Convinced that I was making fun of him, he opened his mouth to ask me something, but I did not give him the chance. I was already on my way down the stairs, seeking the outside air, the deserted and silent main square. Once outside, I took a deep breath: and now where?
To my house, of course—home at last. Light the candles, set the table for the feast of reunion. The wandering son has returned. Will you find the way in the dark? Nothing simpler, my legs will take me there. My legs have a better memory than my eyes anyway; they never had to look upon those clouds of smoke, those clouds in which an entire people, bound together, rose up.
I stepped forward slowly, cautiously. The firehouse, where was the firehouse? It should be at the corner of the main street. Swallowed up. And the booth on the corner, at the entrance to the Jews’ Street? Old Semel used to sell his fruit there, summer and winter; now there was no booth, no fruit, no Semel. Further on, the church. That was still there, thank God. And the house, my house? I tried to calm myself, but I was afraid—of seeing it again, of not seeing it again. Don’t run, don’t run, neither forward nor back: what is the point of running anymore? But my legs refused to obey. They ran, they flew. And I flew—above the roofs, above the memories. Houses, trees, chimneys, clouds, windows, all flew with me toward a vanished town, toward a stolen house. As my legs were seized with flight, my throat was seized with an irresistible desire to shout, to tear the night apart, to make the earth tremble once and for all, to make the heavens fall. But I no longer had any control over my body. I shouted, but no sound came out. The town went on sleeping, with no fear
of the silence.
I ran, as a convict runs toward freedom, as a madman runs toward his madness; I ran even while I knew that no one and nothing was waiting for me over there, at the end of the run, over there in the building at the intersection of the two streets, facing the police station. If my house had survived the flames of madness, if it was still standing, a curse be upon it: strangers were living in it.
Here it was.
All at once, I had only one desire, to stretch out on the sidewalk, to rest, to catch my breath, no longer to run, no longer to think, no longer to play the phantom among men, no longer to play the man among men. The play was over. Curtain. The player was tired; the spectator was exhausted; go home to bed, we are closing, save your strength, tomorrow will be another day. But I remained on my feet, stretched tight like a bow with arrows pointed at myself. I looked and listened as I had never looked and listened in my life. The imperceptible noises, the wavering shadows, the secret vibrations—I captured them, I interrogated them, I imprisoned them, I made them mine.
The street, the house: there they were, mine again. More than before, better than ever. Total, irrevocable possession: more than when I had lived there. My walls, my neighbors, my garden, my trees, my witnesses, my murderers, my playmates, my classmates. For a long moment I wandered around the building with its drawn curtains. I asked myself whether I should not simply knock on the window and wake up the residents: “Let me in, I’ll go away tomorrow.” I knew that I would not do it, and I felt humiliated and defeated.
Like a blind man, I let my fingers wander over the fence that surrounded the garden, over the walls of the house, over the windows; I was waiting for them to return to me the things that had strayed, the images that had dissolved. I felt vulnerable and invincible at the same time: I could do everything, I could do nothing. I could evoke the past, I could not bring it to life again. Nothing had changed. The house was the same, the street was the same, the world was the same, God was the same. Only the Jews had disappeared.
