by Elie Wiesel
And with my patient Doriel Waldman, among others.
On this day I invite him to go far back in time and describe for me, impromptu, a childhood memory, any memory, dark or bright, happy or painful, or even stupid and insignificant. I suggest he shut his eyes and let his thoughts wander freely, with or without me.
“A real memory or a dream memory?” he asks, dead serious.
“A real dream can easily turn into a memory,” I say.
“Would a snippet of memory or a dream fragment satisfy you?”
“I'd even settle for a fragment of a fragment.”
I can watch him from an angle. He hasn't obeyed me: he keeps his eyes wide open. He talks in a low voice, a murmur, as though he wants to make me lean toward him, over him, very close. I repress a start, for he suddenly starts speaking in the third person.
“He sees himself as tiny, still a child, in the arms of a woman, no doubt his mother. He wants to sleep but can't. He is aching somewhere, he doesn't know where; it may be a stomachache or a headache. He's begging for the light touch of a warm hand to remove the weight on his chest; he prays to heaven to send it quickly, right away, for he can't bear it anymore. And his prayer is answered. Here it is, the hand he needed. He sees it with an unusual dazzling clarity. He calls to it, but it is floating in the air. He seeks it with his mouth, tries to seize it; it's close, very close, but then it crawls on the wall and higher up to the ceiling. Cursed be the fear that grips the child and separates him from the blessed hand: he will have to get up to catch it; too bad, he does it, he gets out of bed, he's afraid of falling, he falls. He is going to yell, cry for help. ‘Come on, hurry up, help, can't you see I'm falling, the child is going to crash into the dark, gaping abyss’—but he's no longer a child: he has grown up and aged; he's collected a thousand offerings and a thousand miracles to give to the frenzied vagabonds lost in the forest where magic spells threaten, and he's composed a thousand songs to sow them in the sand and ash. He's become intoxicated on a thousand flowers and the magic of a thousand stupid and glorious words. He has received a thousand kisses as rewards or warnings, but he abandoned the dreaming child somewhere: forgot him, repudiated him. Then a new wave of anxiety overwhelms and oppresses him, denser than the previous one. An unknown hand slaps over his lips as if to stifle his cry. It is the hand of an old man, his father perhaps: he too seeks a hand to rescue him. The hand of the child who has grown old is too weak. He's ashamed of his weakness. And his helplessness.”
Doriel stops, exhausted. Absorbed by the rhythm of his voice, I have stopped taking notes for a few minutes: anyway, the discreet tape recorder is still going. Should I ask the question that crosses my mind? Can it be to run away from shame that he has taken refuge in illness? Can it really be to escape his fear of madness that he hides inside madness? But I say nothing. My question would imply that his illness is real, and I'm not yet convinced of that. I know he's suffering, but I don't know from what.
Traces of schizophrenia?
“Doriel,” I say. “What you were just telling me, what was it? A dream? A hallucination? Try to remember; it could be useful. For me and for you. Try.”
“Very well, to please you, since you seem to like these kinds of fantasy tales. I'll start again. No, I can't anymore. I know; madmen repeat themselves, but I don't like to. One famous scholar doesn't like the Bible—he criticizes it for lacking the unpredictable. Well, when I talk, nothing is predictable. For example, the mother and child: I no longer remember whether I was the child, or whether the mother was my mother. You're going to laugh, but for all I know, I was my mother.”
He pauses, then is about to continue but changes his mind suddenly.
“Continue, Doriel.”
“Clearly you haven't understood a thing,” he answers, rising from the couch. His voice has changed. It has lost its gentleness, its melancholy. It has become hoarse.
Yes, I expressed myself in the third person. That's normal. There's a word I rarely use. It's easier to describe another person's melancholy and sorrow. Even in addressing a doctor. To talk about oneself could easily turn into exhibitionism. It's only with you that I can discard masks and my many inhibitions. Including the mask of madness? Yes, that one too. If I don't show myself to you truthfully and guilelessly, how can we expect Sisy-phus's dybbuk to be happy?
6
EXCERPTS FROM DR. THéRèSE GOLDSCHMIDT'S NOTES
He arrives, his face drawn, as if he's just had a coughing fit or been running a high temperature.
“Power,” he begins breathlessly, as though he has an urgent message for me. “I want to talk to you about power, Doctor. Contrary to what you may think, your patient's power, mine, is greater, stronger, and more dynamic than yours. More destructive, you'll say? I'll answer: more varied and changeable. Yours is confined and rigid; not mine. It moves. Yes, Doctor, the power of a man like me enables him to ignore time and abolish distances. You live in the present, whereas a man like me lives both in what he leaves behind and in what he anticipates. You live only your life, whereas I inhabit the lives of others. Like a novelist, a madman is embodied in several characters simultaneously. He is Caesar and Cicero, Socrates and Plato, Moses and Joshua. True, you have to allow for consciousness and the imaginary. Don't bring it up, please. I have both. But between yours and mine, there is an abyss. Mine bring me closer to reality; yours do not. Tell me the truth, Doctor: Could you be what you aren't? I can be. I could be you, whereas you could never be me. And God? Which of us could be God? In the Orient, at the edge of a magical forest, I asked my ascetic friend that question. He merely smiled at me. In Jerusalem, a beggar stared at me with a sad look and started singing to himself; I asked him the same question. He didn't tell me I was foolish or blasphemous but that I was crazy, like the sage Shimon ben Zoma, who broke into the Garden of Forbidden Knowledge, looked where he wasn't supposed to look, and lost his mind. And, by way of explanation, the beggar asked me: ‘Since you were born, you're doomed to be. But God, our God, the God of Israel, the Creator of all living things and all worlds, could He not be? What would we do in a world from which He would be absent? We would feel miserable and unhappy. And so would He.’ “
Thereupon, perhaps in order to show his secular knowledge, Doriel launches into a long philosophical discourse. Has he had his fill of Nietzsche? Now he cites Spinoza and his excommunication, Schopenhauer and his unrelenting opposition to Hegel, Heidegger and Nazism. He breaks off in the middle of a sentence and leaves me, repressing a smile that I can only describe as mocking.
I know he's suffering; I've said so. I also know he goes around with a secret hidden inside him that may be the cause of his suffering.
That evening, at the dinner table, Martin remarks: “You've been more and more distracted for some time now. Will this analysis take much longer?”
I reply that I have no idea. “What can I do? My work is sometimes a bit more complicated than yours.”
“I know.”
Of course he does. But does he know anything about the things that I myself know nothing about, in their essentials?
“You ask me how I live and from what? With whom and where, in what kind of housing? Or how I pay for my food? Is that what you're interested in today? Sometimes I think your questions have more to do with you than with me. Are you having problems in your married life? Are you having financial difficulties? If so, tell me, and I'll double your fees.
“I'm getting no response? Good, I'll do likewise. You know, Doctor, you don't have to be a psychiatrist or politician to blabber on and say nothing.
“Do you know how I earn my living? Please note, I didn't say ‘live’ but ‘earn my living.’ Funny word, earn. As though you win something by living. But in my case, that's almost true. I didn't gamble, but I won. Games of chance—that's what you probably think. Poker, roulette. You think I have the occult power not of guiding the tiny magical ball on the desired numbers and foreseeing its trajectory but of predicting the slot on which it will land and come to a
stop? If you like to think that, be my guest. I know it as well as you: with their calculations, mathematical geniuses can obtain the same result. But math isn't to my taste. I don't understand it at all. Did I tell you about my occult power? About the mischievous demon who whispers, barely audibly, precise instructions in my gambler's ears: it's the eighteen, or it's the twenty-four. This demon is never wrong. Had the great Fyodor Dostoyevsky been lucky enough to be loved by him, he would have lined his perpetually empty pockets instead of making his family unhappy.
“If you really think I'm a gambler, you're going to ask me why the managers haven't collared me yet, for they're always on the lookout for dangerous intruders like me in casinos all over the world. Eh, I know you; you're dying to ask the question, right?
“Well, it's simple. I could answer that I know how to control myself. I'm content with little; I take only what I need for two or three months at a time. Not an extra cent. It's an infallible system. Every day, casinos handle astronomical sums of money. Modest gains don't attract the croupiers’ attention. Besides, I refrain from going regularly to the same gambling rooms. Yes, this is what I could say, except it isn't true. I'm not a gambler. Gambling doesn't interest me; besides, I don't need to gamble. However, Doctor, I'm prepared to take risks to help you out. One word from you and the biggest casino in Las Vegas will wind up on the verge of bankruptcy. Okay, that's the end of my fantasies; I've never set foot in a gaming room.”
“Too bad. I was about to ask you when you discovered your gift, at what age? Under what circumstances?”
“That's a gratuitous question. And it's insulting. I'm not a gambler; I've told you as much. I can be accused of many faults, but not that one.”
“In that case, here's another question: Why did you invent that lie?”
“To hide the truth from you, of course.”
“Why are you so eager to hide it?” I ask.
“Because I prefer to keep it for later. But … let's elaborate a bit more on the gambling hypothesis, which you seem to like. I remember when I first discovered I had a gift. I remember I was still young, and in a train; I remember it was a mountainous region; several adults were playing cards. At one point I tried to guess the numbers the neighbor on my right was being dealt. And I guessed right. I started to smile. The plump and cheerful woman sitting next to me asked me why I was smiling. I told her, whispering in her ear. So she wanted to know if I could guess the numbers of the player facing her, a skinny, taciturn fellow, and I could. This could have been the start of a promising career.”
I suggest he stop talking about his gift for gambling and instead concentrate on the plump woman on the train. Who was she? How was she dressed? Had he looked at her face? Her bust? How had he felt?
“You're annoying me, Doctor. I told you, I was young, just a boy. You have nothing but sexuality on the brain. As though at that age I was playing not with cold and lifeless numbers but with torrid, erotic fantasies.”
“Did she caress you, in a simple, completely natural way, the way an adult woman sometimes caresses a child's hand, cheek, or hair?”
He replies vehemently: “No! She didn't touch me. I … She—” He breaks off. As though he is trying through pure fabrication to understand what I am driving at.
“Why did you stop talking? The plump woman …”
“Well, I can see her now. After an hour, she realized that something was fishy: the man to my right was winning all the time. And this was thanks to me. So, she burst out laughing, got up, and wanted me to sit on her left. But since there wasn't enough room, she put me on her knees. And suddenly, I felt like laughing and crying at the same time; I was in another world.”
“And then what?”
“I've told you everything there is to tell.”
“Everything?”
“Everything about my gifts as an inventor of cock-and-bull stories.”
“And what about the rest?” I ask.
“The rest, Doctor, has nothing to do with cards.”
“And how about letting me be the judge of that?”
“And what if you got off the train?”
“Personally, I'd like to stay on board a bit longer.”
“The train has left …” I wait for him to continue, hoping to find out more.
“… with me inside.” He pauses, then continues. “Let's change the topic, if you don't mind? Yes, change the topic. Except for people like me, the topic always stays the same, since the cards and the numbers never change. But I see you have nothing more to say to me, Doctor. Is it because you think you know everything? Things have suddenly become transparently clear to you? You say to yourself: My patient is a magician, and that explains everything. Magicians are usually a bit weird. In manipulating reality, they see and go too far. But remember, Doctor, I'm not a magician who guesses what numbers will turn up. Personally, I only know words. I try to control them and say, Hurry up, or else, Go back, let the next one through, for I need it. Sometimes they listen to me and obey, but more often they rebel and run away. Why? I have no idea. Go ask the dictionary if you want an explanation, not me. I can tell you what I do, but not how I do it. If I knew, if I understood the meaning of the strange power I go around with and that opens all closets—a power that could make me the most erudite man in the world, and the most lucid—do you think I would reveal it to you? These special gifts, whom did I get them from? I owe these donors, whoever they are, more than I owe you, Doctor. But you, you owe me a lot.”
“What do I owe you?”
“The truth.”
“Which one?”
“The one that shakes me out of myself and at the same time buries me more deeply inside, while urging me to surpass myself toward fear, in fear.”
“You mention fear often,” I say.
“Yes, fear of not recognizing myself anymore, Doctor.”
“Aren't you being too hard on yourself?”
“Let's say not hard enough. The fact is, I wasted my life, Doctor. Yes, this life left me all alone too often, and I betrayed my solitude. I betrayed everyone.”
I suggest to Doriel that he talk about love. He asks with feigned seriousness: “Love as a philosophical concept? Would you like me to comment on Plato's Symposium, whose aim was to praise Eros, the god of love? Sensible love or passionate love? Petrarch's love for Laura or Dante's for Beatrice? And what about David's for Bathsheba or Amnon's for Tamar? Lovers rarely talk about love, and when they do, they talk badly, more often in the past than in the present. The moral is, philosophers are everything except lovestruck.”
After a momentary pause, I tell him my area is medicine, psychiatry, and not metaphysics. If I'm asking him to talk about love or his love affairs, it's because of my calling: I'm paid to be curious, that's all. True, I prefer the classics to the moderns, until the latter become classics themselves: Shakespeare and Musset, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka; so I know that there's romantic and redemptive love, and the other kind, born of romanticism, that inevitably ends in debauchery and decadence. Which of the two played a dominant role in his life?
Doriel adopts a light tone to tell me the fable of the woman whom he knew nothing about, except that he loved her in his own way but not in the way she wanted to be loved, which explains their separation.
“Love, very well, I'll talk to you about love. I was young, not wealthy—not yet—and fully pubescent. You're picturing the blue-eyed Maya, Maya of the missed opportunity? No. Rina or Lilith? Ayala? No again. I'm talking about Nora, who was twenty-four and divorced. But … what if it was Lilith, disguised as Nora? With these women, anything is possible. They know how to seduce and trap you. I can still visualize Nora. And I can still visualize myself. A lovely summer day in Manhattan. I'm coming out of the big Forty-second Street library; I've just spent hours there going through newspapers and books to find the least costly universities where qualified professors could supervise my research on the interconnections between politics and religion among Jewish scholars in Spain prior to the expulsio
n decree. I'm going home to my uncle's house in Brooklyn and heading for the bus stop, for I like buses more than the subway. I'm wondering if my uncle will wait for me for dinner. I hope not. I love him, but he's too inquisitive. He'll no doubt ask me the same old questions about my immediate future plans. Did I find the information I needed at the library? Did I investigate things thoroughly? Have I really decided to go to the university instead of studying the Talmud and Rabbi Bahya ibn Pakuda's Duties of the Heart? Who'll pay my tuition? Who'll cover my expenses: book purchases, lodgings, clothing? And really, why, oh why, couldn't I be satisfied with religious studies, like him? And get married? Too attached to my well-being and me, my dear uncle! Should I confess to him, in strict confidence, of course, that I already don't feel good about myself—that my faith is faltering? Will he leave me alone? Or does he actually want me to move out? But then with whom will he discuss the day's events? And to whom will he describe his memories of the past and of the Old World?
“The bus arrives, and, lost in my thoughts, I see it pass right by me. Bah, I'll take the next one. Here it is. I rush toward it and almost knock over a woman passenger who succeeds in climbing in ahead of me. There are two empty seats for us at the back of the bus. One glance at the woman by my side and my heart skips a beat. I forget all about my landlord and try to decipher the strange expression lighting up this woman's face, a woman bursting with vitality and sensuality. I feel myself blushing. Why is she smiling at me? What should I do? Look away and make believe I don't see her, as if she didn't exist? Fortunately, she takes the initiative. She must have a gift! ‘Do you know you hurt me just then?’ she says in a low voice. ‘What?’ I say, frightened. ‘I hurt you? Me?’ ‘Yes, you. When you rushed toward the bus like a roughneck, you stepped on my left foot.’ ‘Oh, how can I make up for it?’ I exclaim, dying of shame. ‘I'll teach you,’ she says, taking my hand in hers. I don't know what I'm feeling, but I know I've never felt it before; this is the first time.
