The Fifth Son

by Elie Wiesel

  “The Jewish community prided itself on the fact that I had refused to be baptized. People talked about me in shops, restaurants, Talmudic schools: if only I could be brought back into the fold! Eloquent and not so eloquent emissaries were dispatched to me. Some spoke to me of theology, others of politics. Some even offered me large sums of money. Or their daughters in marriage. Vain attempts. Courteously but firmly, I bade them all farewell without even bothering to explain to them the absurdity of their undertaking.

  “That is when Rabbi Aharon-Asher, grandson of the great preacher bearing the same name, invited me to come and see him: never had anyone been known to decline such a great honor. My refusal established a precedent which, as you can imagine, aroused general indignation. The butchers declared themselves willing and able to teach me a lesson; the carpenters agreed but suggested waiting until nightfall. Had it not been for the Rabbi’s intervention, I would have been treated to a nasty beating. Instead, accompanied by his assistant, he took the trouble to come and knock at my door. I did not realize then that by coming he had saved my life; even so, his action embarrassed me:

  “ ‘I must speak to you, Reuven Tamiroff. May I come in?’

  “I led him into my study and motioned him to a chair:

  “ ‘Please sit down, you’ll be comfortable there!’

  “ ‘Nonsense! Who wants to be comfortable!’

  “He stood, towering over me by a full head.

  “ ‘I am listening,’ I said.

  “The Rabbi was in his forties, heavyset, with an energetic face and a sharp gaze. He was authority incarnate. When he spoke one listened. Precise, irrefutable thoughts. Short, clipped sentences.

  “ ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that you persist in cutting yourself off from the community. Why?’

  “ ‘I don’t know.’

  “It was not a lie. I could not have lied in his presence. I had simply forgotten the arguments my converted friend had used in snaring me.

  “ ‘You must have listened to alien voices,’ said the Rabbi. ‘Why don’t you listen to your own? The memory I live with is not different from yours; the words that rush to my lips you could utter and just as well! Why do you seek to turn your back on yourself? Don’t give me excuses or alibis! Don’t tell me that it is easier, more comfortable! It is not, and you know it. For a Jew like yourself, it is more complicated, more cumbersome, more dangerous.… Do you know the anecdote of the Talmudic sage and the fish? At the time of the Roman persecutions, the governor of Judaea advised a Jewish sage to give up the Torah in order to survive. To which the sage responded with the following parable: “One day, the fox spoke to the fish and gave them this advice:— Look, you all fear the fishermen and their nets, why don’t you leave the sea for dry land? — How foolish you are, answered the fish; our only chance of survival is in the water.… It is the same for the Torah,” added the sage. And it is the same for you, Reuven Tamiroff. Your only chance of survival lies within the community; it needs you … you need it.’

  “He paused, out of breath, and moved his heavy head closer to mine with a movement I perceived as violent, devastating. I had hardly spoken and yet I too felt breathless.

  “ ‘I am afraid,’ I said almost reluctantly, ‘I am afraid of the fishermen.’

  “ ‘Then come back! Cling to me, to us, I shall help you! I shall help you defeat Death and even the fear of Death!’

  “He was launched, Rabbi Aharon-Asher, grandson of the great preacher of the same name, and there was no stopping him. He continued without a pause, quoting from Scriptures and evoking prophetic visions, Abraham’s trial and the sacrifice of Isaac, the Talmud and its Masters, their common sufferings, their agony, our ordeals and lamentations during the course of centuries. As though reluctant to stop for fear of losing his powers, he spoke for an hour or two, perhaps even longer:

  “ ‘Of course Death loves to ravage our ranks, of course we have endured too many persecutions in too many nations and for too many reasons, but what does that mean? It means that we live in spite of Death, that we survive Death! It means that our history, our prodigious history, is a permanent challenge to reason and fanaticism, to the executioners and their power! Would you really want to desert such a history?’

  “I don’t know who won that day. I only know that I nodded several times: yes, I understood; yes, I was aware of the deeper meaning of Jewish tradition, but … I made no promises, no commitments. It was not in my nature to act impulsively. I wanted to think, analyze, explore all options.

  “Having said this, I must admit: if I did not remain the second son of the Haggadah, it is thanks to my master and friend, the grandson of the great preacher Rabbi Aharon-Asher.”

  My father fell silent. The candlelight illuminated his lined, angular face. Shaken, I did not say a word. This was the first time he had spoken to me of his former life. I was about to thank him but Simha spoke first:

  “What about the fifth son, Reuven? When will you tell him about the fifth son?”

  His face ashen, my father bowed his head as though overcome by a remorse he dared not put into words.

  My son,

  That evening, you came to tell me … [illegible] … The words you pronounced were sad, but the way you said them made me smile.

  I like it when you make me smile.

  Your father

  Dear son,

  Your presence is essential to me. It is an integral part of me; I sense it in my sleep, I rediscover it when I open my eyes. And yet. You know what life has made of all of us.

  The last Passover in the ghetto.… It erupts suddenly into my consciousness, I wonder why. All those guests at the table. Faces, familiar and strange. Songs of joy mixed with anguish. Simha intones a most beautiful and solemn song: “Forever and everywhere, enemies rise, threatening to annihilate us, but forever and everywhere, the Lord, blessed-be-He, comes to our rescue.” We sing with him. Your mother is clenching her teeth, holding back her tears. I tell her: “Look, look at your son and your sadness will go away.” But when she does look at you she bursts into tears. And so I say to her … [illegible] … I was proud of you that evening, my son.

  I still am today.

  Your father

  P.S. I think of Simha’s song. Is it true that God always intervenes? Did he save our generation? He saved me. Is that reason enough for me to tell Him of my gratitude?

  I HAD TO COME to Germany, to this small gray town, to pierce the mystery that separated me from my father. I look at myself in this place and I understand at last. Like him, I do not wish to speak; like him, I am wary.

  Come to think of it, he was wary of me. Why? What had I ever done to him? How had I displeased him? I said it earlier; he rarely reached out, spoke little, hardly at all, that is to say, in spurts, in unpredictable and disconcerting ways, and then only of current events and trivia: “Did you read in the paper that …? You won’t forget to …?” Sometimes, when I urged him on, he would offer me a crumb from his childhood, a scrap from his adolescence, an episode from his student days. But as soon as we broached the forbidden topic of war, he would clear his throat and appear frightened and intensely weary: it’s late, he would say. Time to go to sleep. To eat. To go into the city for a lecture. To prepare a suddenly urgent file. And then, it was pointless to insist. He became withdrawn. Distant. Visibly overcome by a great sadness, an unspeakable anguish from long ago. I would give up immediately and change the subject, but vow to try again.

  Now I know what frightened him. I know that he felt guilty. And I also know that he was wrong. Who do I know this from? From myself, that’s who. From myself, his son. For we resemble one another. I carry within me his past and his secret. The ancient sages were right: everything is contained in the I and it is myself I question in order to understand my father.

  Only once did he speak to me seriously, I mean at length, directly, man to man, like two adults, two partners: on the eve of my Bar Mitzva. It was to be celebrated the following day, during Shabbat services, in a Has
idic House of Study of which we were, though unofficially, members in good standing. Other immigrants and refugees from Davarowsk also attended services there. As for the rabbi, he was the nephew of Rabbi Aharon-Asher of Davarowsk.

  The arrival of a new member into the community is a joyous and solemn event. Adolescent in the morning, adult in the evening, the boy quickly becomes aware of the duties that bind him to the collective fate of Israel. To encourage him, to congratulate him, to make his star shine in the blue sky of a people intoxicated with God and eternity, the community sings for him and drinks with him. But neither my father nor I was in the mood for drinking or singing. I was thinking of my poor mother and I felt my eyes growing heavy.…

  “Are you ready?” my father asked me.

  Of course I was, as much as any boy my age could be. Ready for the ceremony. Ready for the stages ahead.

  “The blessings?”

  “I know them by heart.”

  I had studied the sacred texts and various commentaries at the Yeshiva and I had also learned the melodies of the Biblical readings and the prophetic Haftara.

  “Did you prepare a speech?”

  “No.”

  “Long ago, in the old country, boys would seize this opportunity to expound a Khidush, an original idea, a striking concept linked to a Talmudic theme. The object was for the disciple to prove to his masters that their faith in him was justified.”

  “Not in America,” I said. “You know perfectly well, Father: in America the ceremony is incidental; what counts is the festivity. The eating. The drinking.”

  To be honest I had another reason for not wanting to make a speech: I was afraid that I might lose control, burst into tears. My father understood. He tried to smile:

  “Do you know what the great Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk said? The most beautiful speech is the speech one does not pronounce.”

  And so, on this particular Friday night, standing before the three lighted candles, I felt more oppressed than usual. In my mind I was drawing up my balance sheet and found it lacking: I had ruined my childhood. Worse, I had ruined my life. I thought of myself as a child lost in a haunted maze. At school I had remained aloof. Some of the parents felt sorry for me: “Poor child, growing up without a mother …” Others suspected me of being deliberately obtuse. While their children played football or baseball or were busy trading candy and presents, I concealed my shame as best I could: I feigned indifference. I turned my back on them, I daydreamed, I leafed through books. I pretended to be more mature, more conscientious, more serious than my older schoolmates. “That one,” they would say, pointing to me, “he is strange.” And so I was. Strange because different. I knew that I was punished, cursed. And the more I isolated myself, the more I sank into a precocious grief.

  There was no one to talk to. I became silent and gloomy, and seemed to bear a grudge against the entire world. Did I really? I judged myself, I condemned myself; I grew old fast. I knew hardly anything of the surprises, the mischief, the exploits, the complicities and adventures that enrich childhood. And yet, there was no lack of opportunities in Brooklyn: libraries and museums, swimming pools and amusement parks, ball games, bowling alleys and the warships, the tall sailing vessels or simply the drugstore next door. Coca-Cola and potato chips, Hershey bars and chewing gum. The street offered a thousand adventures for schoolboys. You meet somebody, you buy a pocketknife, you trade a balloon, you fight, you make up. There were constant battles between clans and tribes with elusive victories and defeats on all sides: I was never involved.

  “Oh, yes,” says my father, “nothing is as good as silence. But …”

  He pauses before he continues:

  “It is possible to overdo it, do you know that? Silence is a fragile thing.”

  No, I did not know that. I did not know anything: that was the end result of the most important period of my life. Could it be that I had learned nothing, had absorbed nothing in school?

  And where did faith come into all this, my faith in God?

  Attending, as I did, an Orthodox day school—inescapable in Brooklyn—I began to ask myself the questions that preoccupy children: Good and Evil, the finite and infinity, the purpose of life and of creation, the mystery of the suffering of Just Men. I had glanced at Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed without understanding it. “You are too young for philosophy,” my tutor had said. Poor fellow, he lacked perspective. “Wait till you’re forty,” he tried to tell me. “For the answers?” “No, for the questions.” I started looking for another tutor. One I turned up was an old bachelor who decided to initiate me into astrology. Another wanted to dispatch me to Nepal. Simha, my father’s friend, always managed to bring me back to the straight and narrow. One day, I confided my doubts to him: why would the Creator pay attention to this wretched human dust that worships and defies Him? God is God and the world is impoverished: the dividing line cuts through every being, every consciousness. “Simha, tell me, what is the meaning of all this?” Simha listened to me at length, patiently, his face shining with pride: “I like your questions,” he said. “What about the answers, Simha?” “They exist, and they have nothing to do with your questions.”

  And so, that particular Friday night I decided I should perhaps open myself to my father. Confide in him my panic in the face of the immutable and vexing laws of creation. Ask for his help. After all, the next day was going to be special. I deserved some consideration. But my father was even more somber than usual. I chose to wait, to remain silent.

  At the table, we sang the customary melodies in honor of Shabbat but our hearts were not in it. Our thoughts were drifting far away and we were anxious to follow them. From time to time I shook myself and stared at the candles whose flames flickered and danced and danced.

  “You’re thinking of your mother.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, surprised.

  My mother, my poor sick mother only rarely came up in our conversations. She was present but as in filigree, as through a screen.

  “That’s good,” said my father. “Tonight you do well to think of your mother.”

  “Not only tonight,” I said. “I often think of her. Almost all the time.”

  “That’s good,” said my father reflectively. “That’s very good.”

  “I also think of something else.”

  His mind elsewhere, he did not hear me the first time. I had to repeat:

  “I said that I also think of something else.”

  “I see,” he said. “What exactly are you thinking of?”

  “Oh, lots of things.”

  “Me too.”

  Were we thinking of the same things? One more question added to all those tormenting me that Friday night before my Bar Mitzva. Once again I realized how little I knew of my father, of his past. How many times had I asked him to tell me about my grandparents? About his own activities before the war? “You’re too young.” I was always too young. Well, now I no longer was: at thirteen it was my duty, therefore my right, to know.

  “Father …” I began.

  He had not heard me. He was off in a distant universe. And where did I fit in? I wanted to be part of it.

  “Father,” I repeated. “Speak to me.”

  “You are …”

  “Don’t tell me that I’m too young. Tomorrow I shall assume my responsibilities as a Jew before Israel and the God of Israel. I deserve your confidence, Father. Speak to me.”

  The candles continued their dance and so did the shadows and my thoughts: they all seemed reflected on my father’s pale ascetic face. Suddenly, his breathing became labored: I feared a heart attack. Already I regretted having had the audacity to provoke him, but how could I undo what I had done?

  “Sometimes I feel remorse,” said my father almost inaudibly.

  “Remorse?” I exclaimed. “For what?”

  “For many things,” he said.

  We were still seated at the table, we had not yet said grace. The candles were glimmering, the shadows were slowing down, a song
of Shabbat wafted in from a nearby apartment. And inside me anxiety was growing, overflowing. My mother’s place was here, she deserved to take part in the event, to share this Shabbat with her husband and her son. And my father, what was he thinking about?

  “Yes,” he repeated, “for many things.”

  “What things?” I asked point-blank.

  An iron fist was pounding inside my chest. My father was finally going to lift the veil, I felt it. And I no longer knew whether that was what I wanted. I could still stop the mechanism that would transport me to that awesome, timeless place. All I had to do was to begin clearing the table, to start singing the Birkat Hamazon, or to evoke the next day’s ceremony. But I wanted to know.

  “You are … you are too young to know,” my father said once again.

  He had been so very close. He had changed his mind at the last moment. When would the next opportunity arise?

  “You spoke of remorse,” I said.

  “So I did.”

  His breath had quickened again. He was closing and opening his eyes as if the light was hurting them. Then he resigned himself to keeping his lids half-closed. And softly, gravely, in short, staccato sentences, he began to recount to me his first years in the United States.