by Elie Wiesel
“At a downtown stop, the young woman gets up and so do I. We get off the bus together, holding hands, and walk to Greenwich Village. We've gone just a short distance when we come to an imposing building in the middle of the block. My guide presses a button and a wrought-iron gate opens. The elevator takes us to the fifth floor. Without letting go of my hand, she takes a key out of her handbag and opens the door. As in a dream, I follow her inside. I don't understand what is happening to me or what it all means. What am I doing in this sunlit, luxuriously furnished apartment, with this woman who is so self-confident, who gazes at me as though I am someone else, someone who belonged to her? Besides, who am I for her? She releases my hand to draw the curtains and take off her shoes. ‘It's too hot in here,’ she says, helping me take off my jacket. ‘Don't you think?’
“All of a sudden, I'm ashamed. Ashamed of being too hot, of wearing a wrinkled shirt, ashamed of my poverty and awkwardness. Ashamed of breathing, ashamed of feeling so foolish and distraught, ashamed of not being able to blurt out the words and sighs that are suffocating me. She sits down on the couch and says; ‘Come closer; let me look at you.’ In her gentle and cool hands, my head is going to burst at any minute. Her burning desire spreads to my body. Her lips open mine and murmur something like: ‘I don't know who you are and I don't care to know; don't tell me your name; I'll just lie about mine. Let's say it's Nora. The important thing is that moment when you'll be in paradise; I promise you a great surge of desire and happiness.’ Once again, it's a first time. I discover I have unspoken sensations.
“But, at the last minute, I resist her. I'm still too repressed, tyrannized by taboos. Kissing, possibly. Going further, no. Clearly frustrated and unsatisfied, Nora asks: ‘What are you thinking about?’
“ ‘My mother,’ I say foolishly.
“ ‘Where is she?’
“ ‘Dead.’
“ ‘And your father?’
“ ‘Dead.’
“ ‘Your brothers and sisters?’
“ ‘Dead.’
“I fear her continuing to question me, but she has something else in mind: galvanizing my senses. All my bones and arteries, all the cells in my body long to respond with vigor and jubilation, but a voice within me calls me to chastity. ‘I can't tell you why,’ Nora says, ‘but on the bus, as soon as I saw you, I guessed you were an orphan.’
“An image gives me a start: my uncle must be waiting for me for dinner! ‘Can I make a phone call?’
“She points to the phone next to the bed. ‘Tell him you're going to spend the night with a friend.’
“I hear the familiar voice: ‘Where are you?’
“My uncle seems more frightened than angry. I lie badly; I stammer: ‘I met … at the library … I met a friend … a lot of things to discuss … He invited me to spend the night at his house.’
“My uncle pauses for a minute to take in the meaning of my words. ‘Okay, but you'll tell me all about it tomorrow … when you return. And don't forget your tefillin … did you take them? If not, take your friend's; don't forget.’
“Of course, I say to myself, smiling; I won't forget. I won't forget anything about this day or night.
“Nora waits for me to join her and then questions me. ‘What language were you speaking?’
“ ‘Yiddish.’
“Outside, dusk is falling like a silent shadow. We say nothing, each locked in the past. I feel I've crossed a threshold into a new stage of life; even without going too far, I know that I've committed a major transgression in the eyes of God. From now on, nothing will ever be the same. But what about Nora, why is she anxious? I don't dare ask her. She draws me close to her and says: ‘You're like a series of discoveries for me. I've never known anyone so young and innocent. And I've never heard anyone speak Yiddish.’
“I ask her: ‘Why did you choose me?’
“She thinks before answering: ‘Actually, I have no idea. Instinct, intuition. I could have taken another bus, and you too, you could have accompanied someone somewhere else. But … when I saw you, I suddenly started thinking about my life: I'm rich and still young, twenty-four; I can buy anything and ditch anything without it changing my life or my conception of life, except … except that my husband left me. He left me and laughed.’
“She falls silent abruptly, and since it's already dark, I don't know if she's crying, if her tears are making a noise she alone can hear. Then, just as suddenly, she stiffens. ‘I have an idea. You'll think it's crazy, but listen to it anyhow, okay?’ Okay. What surprise will she come up with next? With a serious expression, she starts talking, almost lecturing: ‘You're young, younger than me. At my age, a woman can be proud or desperate; I'm both. But since you're here, I say to myself that I should forget my pride. So …’ I wait for her to continue. ‘Here's my idea,’ she says. ‘It's a heavy proposition. Stay with me.’
“What does she mean, stay with her? All day? All night? I hear myself stammering: ‘To do what?’
“She bursts out laughing: ‘You're so naïve; I love it. To do what, he asks. To live and be happy. Today and tomorrow and next month. Forgive me; I'm stupid. I'm just running off at the mouth. It's because I'm lonely … and sad.’
“Should I explain to her that the story of my solitude is much sadder? No. The Book of Job taught me that the sadness of one group of people doesn't alleviate the sadness of others. On the contrary: it adds to it.
“At dawn, she stares at me.
“She is still in bed; I'm dressed. She asks me: ‘You won't forget?’
“ ‘No, I won't.’
“ ‘What will you think of me when you remember this night?’
“ ‘I'll think that I knew a generous, solitary woman.’
“ ‘And what did I teach you?’
“ ‘I don't know yet. Do you? If you do, tell me.’
“ ‘I taught you that two people can come together without loving each other. You're leaving, and what you've left me with is remorse.’ The young woman's voice turns melancholy. ‘Yes, my little Yiddish friend. This night will remain a moment of great sadness for me because nothing was accomplished.’
“A thought stirs my mind: If it's Lilith, she didn't defeat me. Yet she speaks well.
“I never saw Nora again.
“I have to confess, Doctor, that I missed her sometimes, especially during the first weeks. I could less have become accustomed to her luxurious lifestyle than to the easy, kind tenderness she showed me. Especially since—I'm ashamed to admit it—my uncle was beginning to weigh on me. Had he guessed what I had done on that frivolous, promising night? Was he going to rebuke me for having spent the night away from home? In the morning, he saw me put on the phylacteries. So I hadn't borrowed them from ‘my friend.’ Had he detected a sign, a trace of sin on my face or in my behavior? Too interested in my activities, too demanding, too religious, and above all, too indiscreet, he liked his multiple roles of godfather, protector, guardian, and supervisor. He wanted to be informed of everything I was up to, every minute of the day and night. He wasn't a petty person, but his obsession with religious practice spurred him to pry relentlessly into my private life, for which—I don't know why—he felt responsible as much as for everything else. Had I recited my morning prayers and studied the Talmud? Had I had lunch and dinner, and with whom? Had I made sure that the food was kosher? In my personal dictionary, he was listed as a harmless little inquisitor, charitable but demanding. The fate of my soul worried him as much as his own. Sometimes when I would point out to him that the concept of soul was meaningless to scientists, he used to get mad: ‘So what does that prove? That supposedly intelligent people are rather stupid, for their knowledge is based on ignorance.’
“In his own way he also contributed to my immoderate attraction to both irony and the irrational. It was a winter evening. My aunt Gittel was already asleep, but we were drinking hot tea to warm up. My uncle loved to be in the warm indoors while it was ice cold in the city. ‘Oh,’ he said with a sigh, ‘I feel sorry
for scientists for glorifying the rational and atheists for being mad about cold, frosty reason. What attracts us, what elevates us to God, is what sets the brain on fire and lights up the soul.’ I asked him if too much heat might not harm the soul he was so concerned about. He nodded in agreement: ‘Yes, too many flames might destroy the soul.’
“ ‘In that case,’ I cried out happily, ‘long live the soul!’
“He looked worried: ‘You're playing with words whose meaning escapes you, you're making fun of the sacred, you're wrong! Be careful, otherwise madness—you hear me, madness—is waiting to trip you up. It strikes and bites voraciously; it will eventually make you fall to your knees so your wild, unworthy soul can be whipped by a thousand unsatisfied demons who won't even kill you!’
“I was probably wrong to contradict him, but I couldn't help replying: ‘Are you implying that the soul itself can go mad?’ He glared at me and left the room to go to bed.
“Which leads me to ask you the same question, Doctor: Do you believe in the soul? And if you do, do you find it plausible that, pushed to the limit, it can sink into madness?”
7
“You're annoyed, Doctor, disappointed maybe; I can guess as much from your silences—they crop up intermittently You listen to me; that's natural—you have no choice; it's your job. However, you feel I don't open up enough: I'm hiding things that you might need in order to figure me out, analyze me, and even cure me. Am I mistaken, Doctor?”
“No, Doriel. You're perspicacious. You express yourself well, too well. You steer your thoughts and sentences efficiently, with a logic that appears sound and flawless, whereas it's those flaws, those slips, that I'd like to focus on in your ideas, your memories, and your words. Try to understand: it's the obscure part of your words that can enlighten me. It's inside your private labyrinth that I can best find my bearings. Whereas you're preventing me from doing so. You're very eloquent, but most of the time, even when you're talking, you skirt around the most important things.”
She's right. I'm too attached to logic sometimes. I wouldn't mind being cerebral. So my self-control works to perfection. Should I let it be disrupted? And then: To what extent am I really conscious of what I'm trying to hide from her? Let's play for time.
“You claim I'm not talking about the most important things. Give me an example, Doctor.”
“Your parents.”
“What do you want to know about my parents? They're dead, I told you.”
“Yes. But you didn't tell me anything else about them.”
“Probably because there's nothing to add.”
“That's not true.”
This makes me angry. “Are you accusing me of lying? Or of cheating?”
“My profession doesn't allow me to judge anyone.”
“But you just—”
“I just pointed out to you that my words don't concern the truth. I simply think that you're trying to escape reality. Is it your fault? Your weakness, maybe? I'd say it's your problem, a problem that's part of what is troubling you, sufficiently so that you came to solicit my help.”
“I appreciate your frankness, Doctor,” I say politely, but with harshness in my voice.
She doesn't reply. She is waiting in vain for me to regain my calm. As soon as I recall my parents, I'm overwhelmed by a paralyzing anxiety.
“Some other time,” I say. “We're not in a rush.”
I know she has limitless patience. I don't. Why make her unhappy? I decide to tell her a few little odds and ends about my parents—and then, behold, I can't stop: “My parents died young. I didn't really know them. I'm the second of their three children. Very devoted to tradition but open to the world—they mastered several languages—my parents were always busy, always smiling. I was born in 1936 in a small town in the heart of Poland, but where there was a mixed population of Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians. After the First World War, the deadliest war in our country up until then, people had confidence in the future. We lived in a small house in the shopping district. My father was the secretary of the community, and my mother … my mother … I don't recall what she did exactly. I think she just did everything she was expected to do. We used to see one another only in the evening. During the day, I used to go to the heder—there was a clandestine one in the ghetto. My sister, Dina, the eldest, had attended high school many years before. Little Jacob, or Yankele, had a tutor. For the Sabbath and holiday meals, we all ‘helped’ our mother in the kitchen. Though busy with his many obligations—helping the needy and orphans, visiting the sick—my father never gave up studying. I never saw him without a scholarly book tucked under his arm. I think I inherited my passion for reading from him. They can take everything away from us, he often said, but not knowledge. Or the thirst for knowledge. Loving the Torah is deepening it.
“I remember the Sabbath of my childhood. Many years later, even when I was tormented by my illness and tried to forget everything else, the lights of ‘the seventh day’ still flickered and beckoned in the depths of my memory. The beginning of the Sabbath. The celebration of its peaceful holiness. Time erected into a temple. The child within me remembers nostalgically: I used to sing as I returned from the house of prayer with my father, and when I became older, we both sang ‘Shalom aleichem, malachei ha-sharet, malachei ha-shalom’—’Peace be with you, servant angels, angels of peace’—and my child's heart used to burst with happiness.
“The following day, after the morning prayer and the meal, my father made all of us fulfill our charitable duties. Dina organized cultural get-togethers. My mother visited hospitals. As for me, my father used to take me to the edge of a forest to visit the Jewish patients in the insane asylum. Yes, Doctor. Though he was not at all wealthy and worked hard to earn a living, he took an interest in the insane, for according to him, they were more defenseless than the poor. At first, he used to leave me outside, in the courtyard or garden, while he went and brought ‘his’ patients sweets and fruits. During the Pesach holiday, he gave them matzoh.
“One day, suffering from pneumonia, he got up in spite of a fever and went to visit them. I accompanied him to the door. ‘If I have to stay awhile and you're afraid of being alone,’ he said, ‘you can come inside, but make sure you don't speak to any of them.’ This was my first direct contact with this deranged world. All of them were old, or at least seemed so, even those who had not yet reached adolescence. Some of them stared into space with a vacant look; others fidgeted restlessly as if they were being bitten by insects. A redhead sat on the floor by the window, his head in his hands, roaring with laughter. Two steps away from him, to his left, a man beat his breast and mumbled incoherently. Two mustached midgets were dancing the czardas. At the other end of the room, which had windows with bars on them, a giant with the shoulders of a boxer and the head of a child signaled to me to come closer; from his jerky movements I understood that he wanted to know who I was. I didn't want to appear impolite, so in spite of my father's instructions, I answered him. He held out his hand and I took it, which was a dreadful mistake: he refused to let go of it. Terrified, I begged him: ‘Let go, let go, my father is waiting for me.’
“ ‘One never leaves this place,’ he said. ‘And here your father is me. Do you hear, you little idiot? Each one of us here is your father, get it?’
“I felt overwhelmed with panic. I cried out: ‘No, no!’ Nodding his small head on his ox-like neck, he merely laughed louder and louder as if to say, ‘Too late, too late!’ And several madmen applauded. At that moment, Doctor, I myself probably came within a hair's breadth of madness. Is it the madness that would reappear later in my life? Fortunately, my father rescued me.
“Who can rescue me today?
“There's also religion, Doctor. Let's not forget the position it occupied in my life. By clashing with reason, it can prevent you from living in reality. The devotion, compassion, generosity it advocates: sublime words drawn from the dustbins of history, as Marx and Lenin would say, the most famous doctors in the field of s
ocieties-in-evolution. The rigidity of the laws, the bewitchment of the mystics: these I knew and even liked. The lyrical beauty of the lamentations was something I was steeped in. Doctor, you who belong to another world and another time, you can't understand. Jewish life in small towns—and Brooklyn was a small town, a shtetl—which, in spite of poverty, became lively spiritual centers attuned to the slightest flutter of the Lord's eyelid. Are you able to grasp the moving grace of this life nourished by an absurd hope—absurd because timeless? My childhood years in a secret hiding place, and my adolescence in the yeshiva, all those days, all those twilight hours spent turning the pages of dusty books in flickering candlelight, far from the noise and neon of the twentieth century. Should I tell you about this so that you can come to my rescue? Brought up by my uncle, I was initially the most religious, the most devout boy. Then there was a break. And the Leah episode is part of it. Okay, not too fast, Doctor. Each lapse in its own time. But I have a question for you that can't be put off: In order to cure me and relieve the burden of my dizzy spells and the excesses I'm driven to by my crises, will you follow me to that time and place? Will you be able to? Will you have enough strength?
“In my tradition, man is supposed to believe that Satan chooses as his favorite prey the just man, not the sinner. Satan is brave. And ambitious. Cunning. He deals with minor everyday sinners out of habit, between two yawns, almost without giving it a thought. He prefers to go where he isn't expected. Where the challenge means a struggle. Where victory, always uncertain, will create a sensation even in the loftiest spheres. Parenthetically, Doctor, do you believe in this theory? In fact, do you believe in the celestial figure called Satan? Well, he exists and I've met him. At first, I succeeded in disarming him through fear. Fear of punishment, in other words, of Satan himself? No: fear of God. Yet isn't He a charitable and good father? In those days, I still knew, or knew already, that God too is to be feared.”
