Love and Exile

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  At that time the famed French ship the Normandie was scheduled to make her maiden voyage to New York. All the snobs of Europe strove to be aboard. My agent himself was booked to make this voyage. He had become so friendly with me that he suggested that I wait two weeks and share his cabin on the Normandie. But I declined the privilege. First of all, I feared an imminent Hitler invasion; but mainly I still hoped to get a private cabin aboard some other vessel. After a lengthy search, the agent located what I had been seeking—a cabin for one, without portholes and also without air, on a French ship.

  Everything was over—the frantic words, the kisses, the embraces, the fervent promises to bring over almost everyone I knew to America even though all I held was a six-month tourist visa. It was the month of April, 1935. The following day was the birthday of one of the most cruel murderers in world history, Hitler. I had to travel by train through Nazi Germany because it would have been too expensive to take a different route. I had heard that Jewish passengers were forced to get off the train and they were searched and subjected to other indignities. I would be proceeding directly into the hands of the evildoers. They could easily take away my passport and visa and send me to a concentration camp. I fully grasped the danger, but somehow fear with in me had gone into a kind of hibernation, to be replaced by a sense of fatalism.

  I stood by the window of the coach looking out at the lights of Warsaw, and what I saw appeared as strange to me as if I were seeing it for the first time. Soon the lights of the city faded and in the semidarkness emerged factories, and structures that were hard to identify. Only the glowing sky gave evidence that we weren’t far from a large city.

  This international train had sleeping cars and a diner. I traveled tourist-class, which was better lit than the usual third-class car and had more comfortable seats. Three Chinese men sat facing me and conversed in their language. Or maybe they were Koreans? This was the first time I had been that close to people of another race. I had seen several Orientals in Warsaw, and once a black man, but always from afar, perhaps through a streetcar window.

  Although we were still close to Warsaw and the train ran past little depots of familiar towns, I felt as if I were already abroad. I knew that I would never come this way again and that Warsaw, Poland, the Writers’ Club, my mother, my brother Moishe, and the women who were near to me had all passed over into the sphere of memory. The fact is that they had been ghosts even while I was still with them. Long before I ever heard of Berkeley and Kant, I felt that what we call reality had no substance other than that formed in our minds. I was, one might say, a solipsist long before I ever heard of the word; actually, from the day I commenced pondering the so-called eternal questions.

  There had been moments when I had assumed that once I got the visa to America I would be happy. But I felt no happiness now, not even a trace. I was glad somehow that the passengers on the other bench didn’t know my language so that I wouldn’t have to converse with them.

  I sat by the window looking out at the dense darkness, and from time to time, glanced up at the stars. I wasn’t leaving them. The universe rode along with me. I recognized the shapes of the constellations. Perhaps the universe accompanied us on our journey into eternity when we concluded the little incident we call life?

  I stretched out on the seat and from time to time I fingered the passport inside my breast pocket. “Up there, there are no borders, no passports,” the babbler within me babbled. “There are no Nazis. Could a star be a Nazi? Up there, there is no lack of living space. Up there—let us hope—you don’t have to fight for your existence if you exist.”

  I toyed with my thoughts like a child playing with knuckle-bones. By dawn, we had reached the border. There was a change of conductors. I saw a man wearing a swastika. He took my passport and turned its pages. He asked how much money I was carrying and I told him and showed him the bank notes. He said, “Not necessary,” and returned the passport. Another individual wearing a swastika came in and the two exchanged a salutation: “Heil Hitler!” Then they left.

  I saw through a window Jews being herded inside a building to be searched. I later heard that some had been stripped naked. We had entered the land of the Inquisition.

  As in all other inquisitions, the sun remained neutral. It rose and its light illuminated balconies decorated with Nazi banners. It was the Führer’s forty-seventh birthday. I forgot to mention that all this occurred during the intermediary days of Passover. Leon Treitler had invited me to the seder. Stefa had prepared matzohs, the bitter herbs, as well as fish, meat, and matzohballs. Leon Treitler had donned a white robe and recited the Haggada. I had asked the Four Questions. None of us took the ceremony too seriously. None of us believed the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. Stefa’s father had declined to attend the seder at his daughter’s home. He didn’t trust her kashruth. He probably didn’t want to see me either.

  I don’t recall if we rode the same train the whole way or if we changed trains at the border. In Berlin a young man came into the car and called my name. I became frightened. Had they come to arrest me? It turned out that the young man worked for (or was associated with) my travel agent and he brought me some matzohs and a Passover delicacy. At that time the persecutions of the Jews in Germany had just commenced. The other passengers looked on in amazement as I sat chewing the matzoh. The day was sunny and balmy, and outside of the flags with the swastikas, one couldn’t tell that the country was in the hands of a savage dictator. German families sat out on balconies eating lunch. Their faces appeared genial. The streets in the cities and towns that we rode through were clean and almost empty. Someone had left a German newspaper on the seat and I read an enthusiastic article about Hitler; about what he had already accomplished and what he would do for Germany in the future.

  Late at night the train stopped at the Belgian border and I had to show my passport again. This was my second sleepless night and I no longer had any curiosity about the country through which we were passing. I lay on the hard bench and stopped trying to straighten my limbs. My half-muffled ears heard conversations in French and Flemish.

  I had resolved not to become too excited over Paris, like all the others. Someone at the Writers’ Club had given me the address of a cheap hotel in a section called Belleville. I was scheduled to spend two or three days in Paris, then take the train to Cherbourg, where my ship was docked. In the thirty-six hours I had been traveling, I had accustomed myself to the enforced sleeplessness, to eating meals from a paper bag, to not exchanging a word with anyone, and not changing my clothes. I didn’t even glance at the stamps that the border officials affixed to my passport. I made no effort to study those who got on and off in the various countries. I had grown indifferent to the notion of traveling abroad, which had once been my dream.

  Day started breaking and rain was falling. We were already in France and the train was approaching Paris. I thought about the travelers of earlier days who had to endure long journeys in stagecoaches, carriages, even on horseback. Where did they gather the strength and the patience for so many hardships? Why hadn’t they chosen to stay home?

  I had dozed and yawned. The conductor prodded my shoulder. We had arrived in Paris. I felt my breast pocket, where I kept my passport and the ship’s ticket, and the trouser back pocket, where I kept my money, some fifty dollars in American and French bank notes. Then I seized the two valises, which seemed to have grown heavier. The taxi driver didn’t understand me and I handed him the slip of paper with the address written on it. He glanced at it and shook his head. Although I had told him that I understood no French, he began speaking the unfamiliar language, perhaps to himself. It seemed to me that he was saying, “Of all the respectable passengers, I had to catch such a piker as you.”

  He whistled and began driving the car recklessly fast. It was still raining and the people out in the streets were of the type that cruise cities at dawn simply to prove that they can overcome all hardships. They crossed the streets obliv
ious to all signs and warnings. They seemed to say mutely, “If you want to run me over, go to it.” The taxi driver blared his horn and abused them with what sounded like foul language in French. From time to time he turned to look back at me as if to make sure that I hadn’t jumped out during the ride.

  Despite all this, I was overcome with a strong affection for this city. It exuded a serenity I had never experienced before. I felt the mute presence of generations of inhabitants who were both dead and alive, remote and near, unearthly sad and also gay, full of ghostly wisdom and divine resignation. I sensed the very danger I had resolved to avoid—falling in love with Paris at first sight, as so many enthusiasts had done before me. Every street, every house had its individual allure—not one artificial or planned, but that originality that evolves by itself out of genuine talent, a harmony that no one can imitate. Every roof, chimney, balcony, window, shutter, door, and lamppost suited the complete image. Even the shabby pedestrians seemed oddly appropriate to the scene. The deceased who had left this rich inheritance were watching.

  We drove into a street and the taxi stopped. I took out the French bank notes and the driver peeled off the amount coming to him, or perhaps more. At the same time he mumbled to himself and winked, mocking my helplessness.

  A female concierge led me up five flights of stairs to a garret room with a wide brass bed and a sink. The rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Across the narrow street a girl stood and beat a worn rug with a stick. On the pavement nearby a pigeon hopped on its red feet, pecking at what looked to me like a pebble. The fact that the creature didn’t flee from someone waving a stick and making noise struck me as strange. Windows were thrown open by half-naked women and radios chattered, droned, whistled, played music, sang. I had never heard such sweet tones, such lighthearted melodies. Two prostitutes conversed from window to window and called down to men in the streets. I fell back onto the brass bed and sank into a deep sleep.

  Unbelievably, someone knew of my arrival in Paris and came to take me to breakfast and show me the city. Paris had its own Yiddish Writers’ Club. Someone at the Warsaw Writers’ Club had apparently alerted the local club members to my arrival. I couldn’t believe my sleepy eyes. No one had ever granted me such an honor. The small, dark youth addressed me in a tone one would employ toward an older writer. He had read my stories in The Literary Weekly and in Globus, he said. He knew that the PEN Club was issuing my book. He was five years younger than I, and he had already published several poems in the Yiddish newspapers in Paris. For a moment I thought he was confusing me with my brother, but it turned out he knew about both my brother and about myself. He proposed an interview with me for a Paris Yiddish newspaper.

  The weather had turned warm and my guide told me that I wouldn’t be needing my overcoat. We walked down the five flights of stairs and went outside. The street was crowded with people and they all spoke Yiddish. Many carried the local Communist Yiddish newspaper, others the paper of the Labor Zionist Party. I recognized several of the Communists who used to visit the Writers’ Club in Warsaw. The Yiddishist world was a small town. They came up to me and greeted me coldly. They asked, “What’s the fascist Pilsudski up to? Is he still alive?” They gathered in little cliques here just as they had in the Writers’ Club in Warsaw. Their eyes flowed with sly triumph. Mussolini had just attacked or seized Ethiopia. The worse conditions became, the better grew the chances for the world revolution. Each one of them was grooming himself to be not less than a commissar. I asked my guide how these Warsaw Communists survived in France, and he told me that there were wealthy Jews in Paris who supported them. They reckoned that this would save them when the day of revenge came.

  He took me to a restaurant and it smelled just the same as the Jewish restaurants in Warsaw, Cracow, Vilna, and Gdansk. Patrons ate chicken soup with noodles and conversed across the tables. A small man with a huge head scribbled figures on a tablecloth. A man in black-rimmed glasses went from table to table issuing cards attesting to the fact that he became crippled in a polish prison and was in need of financial aid. After a while he came back to collect the cards and any coins the guest might have donated. At almost every table they discussed the peace conference that the Communists were planning to convene, as well as the merits of a united front. A Yiddish writer from America, Zachariah Kammermacher, came up to me and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  I recognized him from the photograph that the editor of The Literary Weekly had published. He had been both for the Communists and against them. He agreed with them on certain points and disagreed on others. As he spoke to me he gestured with his thumb. One eye looked up, the other down. He had written a poem in which he compared Rosa Luxemburg to Mother Rachel. He considered himself a Zionist, but he was also against Zionism and sought a territory in Australia or South America where the Jews could settle. Essentially, he had confided to me, he was a religious anarchist. He had come to Paris now to arrange the peace conference and, at the same time, to organize a commission to study the Jewish question the world over. He was awaiting a meeting with Leon Blum. Some words he enunciated clearly, others he snorted through his nose. My guide remarked to me later, “One thing you can be sure—he didn’t come here at his own expense.”

  “Who pays for him then?”

  “Someone pays. He is so immersed in politics that he’s no longer a writer. I tried to read him once and I couldn’t make head or tail of a single sentence.”

  2

  I settled back in the train taking me from Paris to Cherbourg. The day was a sunny one, but my spirit was blighted by my own broodings and by everything I had seen and heard around me. My pious forebears called this world the world of lies, and the graveyard they called the world of truth. I was preparing to be a writer in that world of lies, eager to add my own portion of falsehood. But the trees bloomed, the birds sang, each with its own tune. Cool breezes wafted in from somewhere, carrying scents that intoxicated me. I had an urge (actually, a fantasy) to spring down from the train and lose myself in the green vegetation where every leaf, every blade of grass and fly and worm was a divine masterpiece. Even the peasant huts nearby appeared to be the product of some unique artistic instinct. I slept over in Cherbourg in a hotel arranged for me by the shipping line. That night is totally erased from my memory. All I can remember of this hotel is that it contained a sink with hot and cold running water; I had never before seen anything like this in Poland except in a public bath.

  The next day, I boarded the ship, they took my ticket, and my pockets felt empty. All I had there now was my passport. I had been left practically penniless. Thank God, I didn’t have to share my cabin with anyone. My two valises stood in the dark cabin, silent witnesses that I had lived nearly thirty years in Poland, which that day seemed to me more remote than it does now, forty years later. I was what the cabala calls a naked soul—a soul which has departed one body and awaits another. This trip made me forget so many facts and faces that I began to suspect that I was becoming senile. Or was it a temporary attack of amnesia? Was this what happened to the soul directly following death? Was Purah, the Angel of Forgetfulness, also the Angel of Death? I wanted to make a notation of this thought in my notebook but I had forgotten to take it along.

  The ship remained in the harbor for many hours, but I stayed in my windowless cabin, which was illuminated by a small electric lamp. I heard running in the passageway, talk. The other passengers had friends seeing them off. They drank, snapped pictures. People quickly struck up friendships. I heard foreign languages. I had dozed off, and when I opened my eyes, I sensed a vibration under the mattress upon which I was lying. I went out on the deck. Evening had fallen and the sun had gone down. Cherbourg faded in the distance. Those on deck gazed at me with a kind of surprise, as if asking themselves, “What’s be doing here?” A tall individual in a checkered suit, knickers, and a white cyclist’s cap, and with a camera hanging from his shoulder, paced to and fro, taking long strides. He greeted the ladies, addressing them
in English and French. Men of such height were rarely seen in Poland, and certainly not among the Jews. His square-jawed face seemed to say, This is my world, my ship, my women. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had forgotten the number of my cabin. I was supposed to have taken the key to my cabin with me but I had apparently left it inside. I had lost the stub of my ticket, too. I tried to locate my cabin without the help of others (who could have helped me?) but I only strayed through the passageways and climbed up and down countless stairs. I tried to seek someone’s assistance and I stopped a member of the crew, but he knew only French. I traveled in circles, like a jackass around a millstone. Every few minutes I saw the same faces. The passengers apparently divined my confusion, since they smiled and winked at each other. My demons had not abandoned me. They were accompanying me to America.

  I climbed a staircase to where a long line of passengers stood before a window where an official marked something down on cards for them. I heard a woman in the line speaking German and after some hesitation I asked her what the people were waiting for. She explained to me that this concerned seating arrangements. I told the woman that I had forgotten my cabin number and she said, “It’s easy enough to find out. Ask the purser.” I wanted to ask her where the “purser” could be located but at that moment a man came up and began talking to her. Was it possible that I would spend the entire eight days of the journey searching for my cabin? It’s but a single step from neurosis to insanity, I admonished myself. The woman had mentioned something about a first or second sitting but I didn’t understand what this meant. Still, I took a place in the line. If you won’t have a place to sleep, I said to myself, at least assure yourself of food. One could spend the night on the stairs. I knew full well that my nerves required suspense and I had to create it. Whenever I became overly excited, irritated, lonesome, the anxieties of my childhood returned to me with all their daydreams, false assumptions, ridiculous suspicions, superstitions. I lost my sense of direction completely. I stopped recognizing people, I made flagrant mistakes in speaking. Some mocking demon began to play games with me and even though I realized it was all sham and nonsense I had to cooperate.