by Elie Wiesel
I told him about the evening when, weakened, my body aching from IVs, I woke up in a psychiatric clinic. I had just been rescued from a botched suicide attempt. Voices came to me, some muffled, others deafening. In his delirium the man in the neighboring bed was taking heaven to task. I grasped only one word in three, but they managed to put me to sleep. The next day, I tried to start a conversation with him. Why was he so mad at God? The allusion immediately cut him to the quick. He went through all his criticisms, all his laments, all his accusations: starting with the exodus from Egypt and the Sinai desert to Auschwitz, and including the Babylonian, Persian, and Roman persecutions, the Crusades and the ghettos; there has never been any respite for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he said in angry indignation—and why? Why the death of a million and a half children during the great and terrible upheaval? At one point, he stopped and cried out: “We know that for a man born blind, God is blind, but what about a man born mad? Could his God be … ? May God forgive me.” Strange fellow; he wanted to die because he no longer believed in God—
“Stop. That's enough,” said Reb Yitzhak, obviously hurt. “Change the subject. Quickly. Earlier, I thought of using your stories and integrating them into my poems. I give up on this; blasphemers put me off.”
“Listen to me for a few more minutes,” I implored him. “I have one very recent last story I need to tell you.”
I told him about my one and only meeting with Ayala, the young fiancée on the airplane. About the nostalgia that gripped me when I thought of her, a strange feeling, for I couldn't grasp its meaning. I didn't know anything about her, or about how I would react to her; I didn't know if my body would awaken under her gaze and give me long-vanished sensations and joys. And yet she occupied my thoughts; even in this room, she was present, as if she wanted to take part in our conversation.
“Ayala,” Reb Yitzhok repeated, his hand on his forehead. “That's a beautiful name for a Jewish woman …”
“It's only a name,” I said.
“But it is beautiful. I've never met a woman by that name.”
“The woman by that name matches her name; she is strange.”
“Do you feel guilty about her?”
“No. At least, not yet.”
“Because she told you she wanted to break off her engagement?”
“Perhaps.”
“But what if she hasn't yet?”
“She has. I'm certain of it.”
“Well, then, what do you plan to do? Marry her? Isn't she too young for you?”
I didn't answer. I hadn't come to ask his advice, but … actually, why had I come? So he would help me lighten the burden on my shoulders by chasing away the demons determined to possess me and then destroy me? Did I really want him to heal me?
“So,” resumed the poet, “do you plan to marry her? If so, is it a challenge to your past or an appeal to what is left of your future?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I haven't thought about it. All of this has nothing to do with—how shall I put it?—my problem. I felt the need to come and see you well before meeting Ayala.”
“And what was the original reason for your visit?”
“I don't know what to answer at this point. Can a reason change along the way?”
“I imagine you expected me to rescue you, didn't you?”
“Yes, in a certain sense.”
“But rescue you from whom, from what, exactly? From yourself? From fear? From the fear of death perhaps? Or of love?”
“I expected you to lead me to the path that would bring me back to myself,” I said to him hesitantly.
He looked at me for a long time without saying a word. Then, lowering his head, in a barely audible whisper, he gave me what I thought was a benediction.
Ayala? I never saw her again. She must have married her fiancé.
Nor did I ever see the Yiddish poet again. But one week later, very early in the morning, while drinking my coffee, the curtain suddenly ripped open. Was it the result of that meeting?
And the young woman with the smile of a frightened child whom I searched for all my life?
Today, when I finish telling my story, I say to myself that the failure was actually my fault, not Thérèse's; she has done her work conscientiously, but I have done everything to put obstacles in her path. She has lived up to her commitment, whereas I haven't. Didn't I agree to let her explore the murkiest corners of my unconscious? Yet I never spoke to her about Samek. She has questioned me several times, without ever being insistent, on how I support myself. But whenever she seemed surprised by my generous gifts (“Goodness, you seem to have unlimited funds. Could you be an Arab prince disguised as an unhappy Jew?”) I've dodged the issue with a shrug.
In the end, I don't know if the doctor has helped me very much. My migraines keep coming around, my sleep is still troubled, and my dreams are still haunted. Night is merely an endless wait before the savoring of dawn. My head and soul are at war. I always feel uncomfortable about myself and about my life, dragging around a somber melancholy that has become a kind of second nature.
My therapy has been interrupted. I didn't make the decision; my therapist did. Surprised and offended, I protested: I had come to enjoy our sessions, even when she talked on and on about the libido and its strange but logical designs, or the unconscious and its mysterious but rational power; even when she shocked me by insinuating that I saw my mother in every woman, and that this explained my consistently ambiguous and fearful relationships with women. I felt at home on her couch, looking up at her ceiling, drawing on images from my earliest childhood. I wanted to continue. Seeing my insistence, contrary to her habit, the doctor agreed to explain her decision.
“I have many reasons,” she said. “Professional and not. First of all, there's the undeniable fact that I'm of no help to you anymore. Admittedly, in helping you to remember your convulsions, we made an important breakthrough. But it was the last one. Your preposterous story about a dybbuk left me feeling helpless and depressed. I'm not an exorcist by profession. I don't believe in superstitions; they're for fanatics or simpletons. Not for someone like me, who doubts everything. Whereas you, Doriel … For some time now, we haven't been making progress anymore. Earlier, we were moving forward, step by step, with sudden, astonishing glimmers of light. Not anymore. I listen to you, I observe you; you're still living your life badly. An unspeakable suffering is undermining you. You can't understand what you're doing on this earth. And it isn't just a memory problem, whether a failing memory or an overactive one: in either case, it is possible to live a more or less normal life. But in both cases, we could also talk about mental illness. Some have made their choice so as to continue living in society. Only with you, there's something else as well—there's an element that keeps slipping away and scoffing at me. Your illness, in no way pathological, and not necessarily linked to memory, which is inevitably selective, comes from an impenetrable area that you call mystical. Persecuted by the gods, you flee from human beings. But when God is the enemy, I refuse to take part in the fight.”
“I thought you were more courageous.”
“It's not that I don't have courage,” she said, “but faith isn't my field. Appalling situation. It makes me suffer. I don't trust my judgment anymore. We're not getting ahead. Your compartmentalized areas remain obscure; no light, no warmth gets inside them.”
The doctor stopped talking, no doubt to reflect before resuming a monologue that could make her admit to shameful things.
“In the beginning, I hoped, though with trepidation, that the Freudian theory would apply in your case. You know, according to the well-known principle of transference, the patient ends up falling in love with his or her therapist. At one point, I came to think that, in order to speed that process up, I should, on the contrary, perhaps adopt an affectionate, indeed amorous, attitude toward you. God is my witness that I tried everything and even risked everything. My husband noticed it before I did, and that led us as a couple to t
he edge of disaster. Fortunately, we were able to avoid it. But as far as you're concerned I admit defeat. And that's why it's time for us to separate.”
There was such sadness in her that I found myself feeling sorry for her, as though she was suffering and not I. How could I help her? Should I have tried to convince her that, lost in my labyrinth, I needed her more than ever—her attentiveness, her knowledge, her way of guiding me and arousing my memories of those I loved, and especially her silence?
Thereupon, she handed me a thick envelope.
“What I'm doing isn't very orthodox,” she said. “What I mean is, I'm violating the rules analysts follow. I'm giving you some notes that concern you. Don't ask me why I'm doing this; I don't know myself. Maybe because of the special quality of our relationship. In my office, this is usually not the way things happen. It may be that I also feel guilty about you; I didn't give you the support and help you were entitled to. Now it's your turn. With a bit of luck, you'll cure yourself on your own. Here, take these notebooks and try not to judge me.”
At a loss for words that would be convincing and truthful enough, I remained silent. And, contrary to habit, she was nonplussed by my silence.
“Besides,” she resumed in a tense voice, “you've overpaid me. I still don't know where your money comes from, and this bothers me. I feel I should give it back to you. Are you a banker? The principal stockholder of a multinational? A Russian spy? An arms dealer?”
I almost burst out laughing but restrained myself. “You have quite an imagination, my dear doctor,” I said.
“Perhaps. But I've learned to be wary of people who have too much money to hand out, especially when I don't know how they earn it.”
I jumped up and sat down facing her. I asked, “How much time do you have left this afternoon?”
“You're my last patient.”
“Very good. Let me tell you a story.”
For the first time since I'd known her, she lit a cigarette.
Once again, it's a crazy story. But a beautiful one because it's a tribute to generosity. And it will answer the questions you have about my wealth.
It takes place in Brooklyn, before my trip to Israel, which is still only in the planning stage. I am job hunting. I have to keep busy and pay the cost of my trip. Aunt Gittel has died. My uncle is getting old and is easily tired. I can't count on his help anymore, and I have no profession. In my circle, young men find work easily in business or in the rapidly expanding field of computer science. Computers, neutral in matters of religion, seem to attract them and talk to them—but I'm the exception. I have no understanding whatsoever of computers, and the feeling is mutual. I could become a taxi driver, except I have no sense of direction, and besides, I've never learned to drive. Should I count on a miracle? I've stopped believing in them ages ago. I was wrong.
I was twenty years old. One fine winter morning, my uncle asked me if I knew someone called Samek Ternover; he had phoned several times and was trying to reach me. No, the name wasn't familiar. His Yiddish was good and he had left his telephone number, my uncle added. Why not call him back? Well, I'd gladly do that favor for the man who almost considered me a son.
My good uncle was right. Samek's Yiddish was melodious and delightful. And he wanted to meet me. As soon as possible. It was rather urgent. Curious, I asked him why. “Not over the phone,” he replied.
I felt a vague anxiety come over me. “Why this secrecy?”
“When we see each other, you'll understand.”
“Will it take long?”
“Perhaps. That depends,” he said, still enigmatic.
Fine, let him come to Brooklyn. No, he preferred to meet me in Manhattan, in his hotel on Sixty-fourth Street between Second and Third Avenues. “When? Right away?”
“Yes, right away.”
“Can't it wait until tomorrow?”
“When we see each other, you'll understand.”
“There will be no problem? I'll understand in the twinkling of an eye?”
“Perhaps, though a twinkling can be long. In fact,” he added, “how can it be measured and with what? Do you know? I don't.”
My uncle advised me to go there right away. By subway, it would be quick. He was right. One hour later, I was knocking at Samek's door.
In his sixties, tall and thin, wearing a well-cut suit, he had a hard, burning gaze that shone with a glimmer of gentleness. Ascetic or sick, he gave a strange impression of expectation mixed with resignation. In welcoming me, he held my hand in his for a long time before inviting me to take a seat. He remained standing.
“I've been waiting for this meeting for a long time,” he said.
I was going to ask him why, but he beat me to it: “I've been looking for you for years; did you know that?”
I hesitated to reply no, I didn't know he was looking for me, I didn't know anyone was interested enough in me to be looking for me, but something in his behavior made me understand that I had better hold my tongue. His face became clouded.
“And do you know that, aside from me, you're the last living person from a world that has been swallowed up?”
My brain became feverish. Who was he? What did he expect from me? How would I be useful to him? Who was I to him? Why didn't he sit down to talk to me?
“In earlier times,” Samek went on, “I had a large family. A brother, four sisters, uncles, aunts, countless cousins of both sexes. I don't have anyone anymore. Nearly all my relatives died in the tempest of fire and ashes. Most of them don't even have a grave.”
“I know the story,” I said.
“I know you do.”
Should I ask him how he knew I knew?
“My brother is the only one who was entitled to a funeral according to Jewish ritual.”
“Like my parents.”
“That too, I know. You'll be surprised, but I know a lot about you. I know you're alone, like me. But your solitude is different. You have an uncle, first cousins, close friends, whereas I don't have anyone anymore.”
He broke off, walked a few paces, stopped to gaze at a photo of an urban landscape hanging on the wall, then turned back and stared at me.
“I don't have anyone from that past anymore, except you.”
The familiar “you” startled me. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
He started to pace the room again, from the table to the door, from the door to the bedroom, and finally he came back and sat down opposite me. Then he began telling me about his past. I listened to him, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't understand why he had chosen me as his interlocutor. Did he want me to record his testimony? Answer the questions it would raise? I wasn't qualified for that task. But then why? So I just listened.
Suffering, hunger, disease, fear, death; those are the chapter headings. Harassment. Prohibitions. Decrees. Homes abandoned. Families broken apart. The overpopulated ghetto. Fatigue, uncertainty, heartbreak, impotent tears. The first victims, the mass graves. The first nightly convoys to the east through a sleeping countryside. To avoid seeing the disgrace heaped on His Creation, God must have hidden His face.
“My father, the most lucid among us, cited the example of the patriarch Jacob and decided to separate the family in two. My brother joined a clandestine movement of Jewish Resistance fighters. My older sisters and I were supposed to join them several weeks later. But by then it was too late. The Germans invaded the ghetto and chased us to the freight station, where cattle cars were waiting for us.”
Should I tell him that I knew? I was too moved to deliver myself of the burden weighing on my chest. How long had I been there? Only since noon? No matter, he resumed his narration. Nightmarish nights, scenes drawn from hell. As if the executioners had been born to kill, and the victims to die from their blows. Oh, what times those were: in those days, under the sign of curses, under the reign of absolute evil, it was human to be inhuman.
One hour had gone by, slowly, filled with the emptiness of dead souls. Samek didn't break off. “My
brother spent the war underground while I spent it in different camps. After the liberation of Poland, he went into politics and I went into business. But we remained close. He lost everything, whereas I earned a great deal. So I gave him half my fortune. But the gods are jealous. Just when my brother was about to leave the country, he fell gravely ill. As for me, I wasn't attracted by marriage. I was leading a merry existence with no duties or attachments. I didn't have to report to anyone. What was I seeking? Everyday, immediate happiness. I said to myself: Humanity doesn't deserve that I give it children. I don't trust it. Let everything disappear with me; I don't care. My solitude, I wanted it undivided, unlimited, made of anger and protest against the solitude of the Lord, may He be blessed.”
If he hoped his blasphemy would shock me, he must have been sorely disappointed. On the contrary, I felt closer to him; like him, I sometimes had doubts about both the justice and the kindness of heaven. But I still didn't understand why he had been so eager to meet me. While he held forth, I couldn't help wondering: What did I have to do with all this? Nevertheless, I listened intently when he again spoke of his experience in the camps.
“I won't tell you what I suffered and lived through there. Human beings became unrecognizable, stripped of everything, beyond everything. For us, the city narrowed to the size of a street, the street to a building, the building to a room, the room to a cattle car; wealth shrank to a bundle of belongings, the bundle to a mess kit, and happiness to one miserable potato. And man, whose destiny is incommensurable, became nothing but a number, and the number became ash. In a word, I'll tell you what I learned there. I learned that it is possible to live with the dead, and even beyond; it is possible to live in death. Can you understand this at your young age?”
I didn't answer—what can you say to a man who is so tormented? What words can be used to console him, to turn his bare, icy words into a fertile and warm language?
