by Elie Wiesel
Since life is made up not of years but of moments, some gloomy and others cheerful, perhaps these moments should be described, if only to identify some main thread, no matter how tenuous.
It comes. Correction: it explodes unexpectedly, in the middle of a therapy session. Absentminded, I am absentminded. I don't know exactly what I am talking about, but I know—and I knew it for a fact—that my thoughts have wandered miles away. I listen to myself hold forth while wondering what I am doing here, on the couch, staring at a crimson figure on the ceiling and thinking that someone must have forgotten it and left it as is, shapeless and useless, perhaps as a message of love or farewell to a tired mistress.
A faraway voice interrupts my observation: “So, Doriel?”
“So what?” I say, surprised.
“What happened next?”
“After what?”
I have already forgotten what secrets I just shared with the good and unbearable therapist.
“A minute ago you were telling me that when you were young, you used to have migraines. But then you quickly corrected yourself: no, not migraines, convulsions. I asked you to explain the difference. And you replied that human beings have migraines, whereas history undergoes convulsions. That's when you stopped talking.”
“I said ‘convulsions’? Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
I repeat the word, and all of a sudden I see myself as a little boy with my parents in Poland. My heart is pounding, hammering wildly in my chest. And my father, panic-stricken, cries out: “Look, look at the child! Look, he's shaking from head to toe!” So my mother touches my forehead and, to calm me, kisses it: “It looks like he's having convulsions!” That was the first time I heard the word.
The doctor jots something down in her notebook. I don't know if she looks at me. Maybe she just says: “Interesting, all this. We'll come back to it again the next time.”
In the street, I can't shake off the word convulsion. All alone, in turn clothed and naked, it lives inside me like a tyrant; it darts off, skips back, runs off again at the speed of wind; it laughs and barks as if to frighten the living and pacify the dead; it slaps me and caresses me, flatters and threatens me. It is as if I have become its plaything or, more ominously, its victim.
As soon as we begin the following session, in a voice that betrays her curiosity, the doctor suggests, “Let's go back to the convulsions, if you don't mind. The word isn't neutral, nor is it innocent. What does it suggest to you? Where does it take you? Let the word guide you.”
So the patient sees himself in a hospital, somewhere in California. Hypnotized, he is observing the patient in the bed next to his, a bearded adolescent who is moaning and shaking from head to toe. As though an electric current is going through his body and following a strict, continuous pathway, going from limb to limb, from forehead to neck, from right eye to left eye, from upper lip to lower lip; it is like watching a marionette in the nervous hands of an impassive man, completely engrossed in his experiences. “What's wrong with him?” he asks the examining physician.
“A massive dose of LSD. He's in another world, an unreal, dreamlike world. In his hallucination, he's watching the dramatic battle between life and death, angels and demons. At times, it's one side that's winning, at times, it's the other. Ergo his convulsive movements.”
In a refugee camp in Asia. A crowd of children in rags is surrounding an emaciated old man who, head thrown back, is dancing and spinning at a staggering rhythm. “What's wrong with him?” he asks his guide.
“He's a saint. He knows how to make the everyday sacred. His method? His soul goes into a trance; it will soon pick up his body and raise it to lofty heights.”
Extreme suffering, inexpressible joy, incandescent love—each is accompanied by convulsions in order to be better fulfilled in the instant preceding birth, death, or the final revelation.
Suddenly, without any transition or apparent connection, I see myself in our house in Poland again, on a beautiful spring Sunday. I am still a child. I am with my parents in the garden. I am basking in the joy of their reunion. It is quiet in the little city. Peace reigns over God's Creation. The spell is broken by Romek's sudden arrival. I already know that I dislike him and should distrust him as someone bringing misfortune and a curse. Yet Romek is all smiles and bearing an armful of gifts. I don't move; I want to listen to the adults. They talk about the war and the clandestine group Romek and my mother belonged to. “Do you remember?” Naturally, she remembers. “And what about … ?” Of course, how could he forget? My father barely intervenes. Why do I feel ill at ease? Is it because, like my father, I feel excluded from this exchange and these memories?
Eons later, I wonder why my heart starts beating wildly. Why my breath races until I am filled with a somber, baleful anguish.
It's because of Romek; I can swear to it. The memory of that man who … who what? Who managed to come between my father and my mother. As soon as he arrived, a wholesome equilibrium was broken, giving way to a heavy, silent, impalpable tension.
All of a sudden, unexpectedly again—or was it the magical effect of analysis?—I relive an episode that I haven't remembered since the war. Why has it remained hidden? Too painful perhaps. And unpleasant. And certainly annoying, like vague murmurs coming from a neighboring room preventing sleep and impeding one's thoughts.
It is just a furtive image from that same day. The sun is setting. My father leaves the garden for a few minutes. Did he go to get a glass from the kitchen or a book from his bookcase? Romek and my mother remain in the garden. I am standing a short distance from them. That's when I catch Romek's look as he leans toward my mother and speaks to her in a low voice. He is probably asking her a question, for my mother responds right away, shaking her head: “No, it's over.” The man insists, and my mother keeps saying: “I told you: it's over. You shouldn't try to break up a family, and certainly not mine.” Again, he perseveres. And my mother, in a reproachful tone of voice, replies, “The past is the past; if you keep doing this, you'll only make it ugly.”
His head lowered like a culprit, Romek whispers, “Once, just once, that's all I ask.” My mother is about to say something, but my father has already returned.
That night I ran a fever. Shivering, my vision blurry, I became delirious. The physician summoned to my bedside explained: “The child must have caught a cold or got a sunburn, causing convulsions.” My mother, wringing her hands, said, “Look at him. His whole body is shaking. It looks like he's having a nightmare. Does he sometimes think about Dina and Jacob and not want to tell us about it? Yet he looked happy until now. How could he not be with his parents by his side?”
Actually, I had been happy, but my happiness was shattered with just one look at my mother in the midst of her argument— for that's what it was—with Romek, who talked to her as though he had rights over her. Later on, one question plagued me incessantly, more or less consciously: What would have happened if my father had not turned up again at just that moment?
Could these images and this question have slyly crept into my brain and haunted me, so much so that they affected my behavior with women? Should I admit to this now, though my rational mental faculty has been advancing simpler arguments for ever so long? I was looking, it said, for the right woman, the one and only woman whom fate had picked out for me. But I hadn't found her yet. Or: Isn't it irresponsible of a couple to bring children into the world against their will, a world that isn't waiting for them and that won't love them?
But the real explanation, I discovered with amazement, may be this unavowed, never formulated suspicion that slowly, relentlessly, imprisoned me in the asceticism of celibacy, condemning me to solitude and restless, confused thoughts.
“It's possible,” says the doctor, when silence sets in.
I give a start, like someone caught red-handed: Has she read my mind? Have I been thinking out loud?
“What's possible?”
“When we think everything is lost in the abyss,
including the sense of orientation and purity, we sometimes cling to its walls. Without even knowing whether it serves a purpose.”
The doctor lowers her voice, as though she is talking to herself. “This helps us survive,” she says, “but it doesn't help us live.”
I don't answer. What's the point? A thought crosses my mind: perhaps we should imagine the gods driven insane by men.
18
EXCERPT FROM DR. THéRèSE GOLDSCHMIDT'S NOTES
Martin is reading the newspaper with such concentration that I have to force myself to interrupt him.
“Do you believe in mystical madness?” I ask.
“As much as in political madness,” he answers without raising his head.
He irritates me. Why didn't he marry a journalist? For years I've known that I have a rival on Sundays: the press. Both major and minor. The local dailies and the national ones. Weeklies, monthlies, he's interested in everything: current events, news and editorials, the literary pages, sports, cooking. I'm marginal, like a paragraph. “Explain,” I said.
“Both are murderous.” Since I'm silent, he adds: “The Crusades, the Inquisition, Nazism, Communism …”
“But Doriel isn't a murderer. I don't see the slightest hint of violence in him. Anger, yes, but that's it.”
A shrug by way of answer—that's Martin when he's reading his newspaper. Usually I keep busy so as not to ruin his pleasure. This morning, I'm too restless. Frustrated.
“I need a book on the dybbuk; I'm sure you have one in your library.”
My word, he raises his head. He looks at me. “No doubt,” he says. “You can find everything in our library. But why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Why are you suddenly interested in the subject?”
Biting my lips, I reply: “Doriel claims a dybbuk inhabits him.”
“You believe this?”
“What I believe hardly matters. He seems to believe it. He thinks this explains his behavior, his inadequacies, his illness.”
“What does he expect from you? Are you supposed to exorcise him? Only great mystics—and they're rare—could do it. Whereas you, you're …”
I don't like his tone of voice. It betrays his annoyance. Clearly this Doriel story and my involvement in it rub him the wrong way. “I'm sorry to have disturbed you, but please, tomorrow, bring me a couple of books on the subject.”
The next day I find a bulky file on my desk, assembled by the library's specialist in the occult: a film in Yiddish (with subtitles), a play translated into English, a few essays, and an explanatory note informing me that most of the works on the subject are in Hebrew or Yiddish.
The specialist added a few pages written especially for me. I learn that dybbuks are mentioned neither in the Bible nor in the Talmud. They are featured repeatedly in the literature of the Kabbala and in the popular folklore, especially central European Hasidic folklore. In these sources, the dybbuk is the soul of ungodly persons whose transgressions don't even deserve to be judged, for the greatest punishments would be inadequate. That's why dybbuks wander throughout the world in search of a fragile person whom they can penetrate by force. The Luri-anic Kabbalists such as Rabbi Hayyim Vital, Rabbi Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name, and some other masters had the power to heal a victim through exorcism. Actually, the expert explains, there is a kind of handbook that was used to drive a dybbuk out of a body and a life. The ritual is solemn and grave; it must instill fear. The room is lit with black candles. Everything is black. The cursed soul is summoned by a special rabbinical court and ordered to explain its conduct. Threatened with irreversible, eternal anathema, the dybbuk is compelled to leave its refuge and go into oblivion.
From the psychiatric point of view, this whole story calls to mind symptoms of schizophrenia and neurosis, but I know I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable to tackle the subject.
What should I do?
If this continues, I'll end up believing in dybbuks. Hasn't Doriel become mine?
19
A great teacher asks: “Who is the most tragic figure in the Bible?”
A disciple answers: “Abraham, the first believer who was given the order to sacrifice his beloved son to his God.”
“No,” the teacher replies. “Abraham sensed that in the last minute God would forbid him to carry out the sacrifice.”
“Isaac?” another disciple asks. “Bound up by his father and laid on the altar, his life about to be given as the supreme offering?”
“No again,” says the teacher. “An inner voice reassured Isaac: his father wouldn't see it through.”
“Could it be Moses?” a third disciple suggests. “The most solitary man in the world, forever torn between the commandments of heaven and the needs of the people?”
“No again: he knew his victories would affect the destiny of his people; how could his life be tragic?”
“But then, who is it?” all the disciples cry out in unison.
“It is the Lord, may He be blessed,” says their teacher. “From His throne on high, He contemplates what human beings are doing with His Creation. And it makes Him sad.”
Recalling this lesson, for some odd reason, as I stroll down the noisy streets of Manhattan after a particularly trying analytic session, I search my mind: Why this hammering racket and the constant need for silence that make my head spin? After all this time spent wandering on the roads of exile, when will I find some rest? And what about God in all this? Could man be the blunder of his Creator, his nightmare, perhaps even his grief, what humans call melancholy? Doomed to despair, whose prisoner or victim is man? Why is he punished and enslaved? How can he save himself? And as always when man comes up against an insurmountable obstacle, I wonder: What about me in all this? Suddenly I realize that I can't answer these questions. I know only that I have followed a path that appears to lead nowhere. Is it too late to turn back? To demand the right to define myself in a world haunted by so many strangers? At my age, it is time he faced the facts. He had been wrong to stay single. Wrong not to get married. Wrong not to start living again when he arrived in New York with his uncle. Wrong not to think about the future, of a life that produces life. Was it too late and irrevocable? Too late to form ties that would promise the possibility of another reality and happiness? Faces flash before my eyes as on a movie screen or as on a stage with changing sets. It's as if, without leaving the footlights, every once in a while, vibrant young girls and women with warm, promising smiles come to join me in my box. The pious young woman from Brooklyn. The singer with flaming red hair on the deck of the boat going from Marseilles to Haifa. The widow who sought to console herself in the arms of strangers. I could have married one of these women. Was it really too late to create an identity as a husband and father, or at least to create a place for myself in the colorful landscape of a community?
In those days, I often felt that everything that happened to me escaped me. Everything glided over my existence: I retained nothing.
As for our sessions, Doctor, I'm confused. I'm your patient and you're my only hope. All my real-life or imaginary stories, all these burdens full of remorse and guilt—it is to you that I show them. Tell me what I should do with them.
“I'd like you to explain something to me,” says Thérèse. “You're cultured, wealthy, and quite intelligent. How come you never married?”
“I could answer that I'm mad, but not so mad as to take a wife. But joking apart, I've already told you: I always believed that my past and the state it left me in don't allow me to beget life.”
“Be frank, Doriel. Is that the only reason?”
It's foolish, but I feel myself blushing.
“What's her name?”
“Ayala.”
“Pretty name. And her? Did you love her?”
Her name was, no, excuse me—I called her Ayala. She enriched my life for several days, and it is with her that I hoped— wrongly, of course—for a measure of serenity.
Ours was a chance enco
unter. I say chance because it might very well have never taken place; everything separated us. She was French, I was American. She came from a rich family, and I had almost no family. She was beautiful, whereas my body had long ago forgotten its vigor. She was twenty-two years old; I was almost three times that age.
We were sitting side by side on a Paris-New York flight. I was going there to spend the High Holy Days with the children and grandchildren of Aunt Gittel and Uncle Avrohom. And, while I was there, I also planned to meet a Yiddish poet, Yitzhok Gold-feld, little known but admired by those who have had the opportunity to read him and approach him. As for Ayala, she was going to join her fiancé, though she didn't know whether she would be marrying him.
She started the conversation.
“This is going to be a long trip,” she said. “I have difficulty sleeping in planes. I'll try to read and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't disturb me. Even when I stop reading. I have to take advantage of these few hours to think.” She paused. “Because I have decisions to make. Important ones. There, that's all.”
I nodded in agreement. Should I tell her that I also had decisions to make? Reveal to her the real reason for my trip? That my peace of mind was at stake, hence my health, my future? She didn't seem interested. With a brusque gesture she opened her book, and I opened mine. Coincidence? We were reading the same novel. Though badly conceived and poorly written, it was a story set during World War II, the period I'm most interested in reading about, and the book had been on the best-seller list for weeks.
