by Elie Wiesel
“I'll answer with a simplistic thought, I admit, which I read in a trashy novel,” she says, half amused, half serious. “Love doesn't take age into account.”
“But the body does, Liatt, the body does!”
“Well, the body's wrong.”
Is it a result of my madness again? I make a quick decision: I am going to marry Liatt. She's mine. Liatt belongs to Od. It must be written in the divine Book where the Creator inscribed the judgments and decrees that were to mark all individuals and all people forever. I'm convinced that on page 1031 at the start of this century, it is recorded that Od and Liatt will unite their lives and destinies.
Suddenly we are in front of my apartment building. Should I invite her to come upstairs with me? She might misunderstand it. Should I send her home? Out of the question.
“Listen, Liatt. I'm going to make a suggestion. You come home with me and we spend some time together. To think over what has just happened to us. Then we'll each decide what we want to do.”
Am I afraid of disappointing her? We spend the night not in my bedroom but in the living room. The hours go by. Relaxed, we chat, listen to music, drink coffee. Liatt inspects the kitchen, the closets, looks through the books, and admires the paintings.
Again and again, I feel like going up to her, but a little voice within me, always the same voice, holds me back: Don't, you idiot. You're attracted to her; what of it? Is she attracted to you? Yes, for conversation but nothing more. Don't forget everything that separates you. I let it speak on; I don't answer. It claims to be the voice of reason, but it is really the voice of madness, I say to myself. Isn't it time I freed myself from it? But it keeps talking: The two of you think you have eternity before you, but, poor fellow, what will you do when you're truly attached to her and she's tempted by other men, all more vigorous than you?
Once again, I ignore the little voice and its advice; eventually it will be exhausted, and then it will leave me in peace, free to live my life, or what's left of it, as I please. No one has the right to deprive me of the happiness I anticipate with the woman I've chosen.
However, it is Liatt who makes my will falter. She puts her cup of coffee down on the table and turns toward me.
“I think you ought to hear what I have to say before we make a decision that could bind us to each other,” she says.
“I'm listening.”
“I'd like you to understand my behavior. Were you surprised by it? I was. I already changed the course of my life once by following a stranger, and I let him involve me in an affair that could have shattered me forever. It was a mistake and I survived it. But I promised myself that it wouldn't happen to me again. Ever.”
Frankness, sincerity, honesty, morality: she uses all these words to explain why, even with the best will in the world, there's no chance “it” will turn out well between us. I don't interrupt. She tells me about her fickleness, her volcanic temperament, her mood swings. She is trying to discourage me; that's obvious. But why did she suddenly change her attitude? All those hours of complicity, tenderness, and quasi-amorous affection: Did they vanish into thin air? And those signs of consent and encouragement, her attentiveness and promises: Have they all gone up in smoke? At this point, as usual, I blame myself. Perhaps I said or did something that caused retreat if not an abrupt change of mind on Liatt's part, or at least a hesitation that I didn't foresee a minute ago.
“Then,” she continues, “I have to confess something else, something more serious perhaps. I owe you the truth. The reason I agreed to play along with you is that you appeared at the right time in my life. Should I go on?”
“Of course, go ahead, I'm listening.”
“It's a banal story. Another one. For, you see, I did it again. I've just been through a painful, demoralizing breakup. A man I loved, who loved me for a while but who no longer does. I know: these things happen, you cry for a while, and then you accept it. He left me because he was tired of me. That's what he told me: ‘I'm not blaming you for anything. But I've taken everything from you that you have to give me. That's all. Be happy, but without me. Farewell.’ “
I look at her while she's talking. She's ill at ease. It's as though she is forcing herself to speak. Sitting on the couch, she avoids my eyes. Her delivery is slow, fragmented. Does she know she is hurting me? Will I have to take refuge in my dybbuk again, in my familiar and salutary madness where no one can reach me?
“I followed you,” she continues in the same tone of voice, “pretending it was forever, not because I thought I could love you, but to punish my lover. So he would hear that a wealthy and kind man chose me. So he would suffer the way I suffer, so he would be unhappy, unhappier than I am.” She pauses. “Please accept my apologies. I used you, and I feel bad about it. I shouldn't have, I know. I couldn't help it.”
She pauses again; then she asks, “What are we going to do now?”
She gets up, stretches, goes to fetch her coat, and folds it over her arm. Should I help her slip it on? I feel beset by contradictory impulses. Should I put an end to a foredoomed adventure? That would be more prudent and wise. Or should I stop her from leaving, though she's still infatuated with someone else? What would I do if I were younger? Above all, I should remain calm.
“Listen to me, my little Liatt. I'll open the door for you. You'll go home. Think it over carefully. If you return tomorrow, you'll stay with me. And we'll live the few years ahead together. I'll see to it that they're mostly peaceful and never boring. You and I, we know what's what: it won't always be easy for an aging man like me to live with a beautiful, active young woman; or for you to share your days and nights with a man like me. For my part, I'm prepared to try. You'll tell me I'm mad; I'm sure you think it. But so do I. Except I've known it for a long time. I've always struggled with my dybbuk and my demons, without ever really wanting to get rid of them. Which is why I ask: Are you prepared to live with them and not make them yours? You'll tell me tomorrow, if you like. If you don't come back, I won't hold it against you. Whatever happens to us, I'll remember your name.”
She is moved. Moved to tears. In front of the door, with a forced smile, she asks me: “Why are you doing all this?”
“Why am I doing what?”
“Why do you want me to be close to you? Why do you want me to join my life with yours, when you've predicted how difficult and risky it will all be? Why this challenge to logic, if not nature?” No longer smiling, she adds: “Why are you so eager to love me?”
To this I know the answer. “It's because of your smile. I've always known that I would love a woman who had the smile of a frightened child.”
She thinks for a moment, then leaves without kissing me.
21
The next day I go to the cemetery to meditate on my uncle's grave: it is the anniversary of his death. When I have finished reciting the appropriate psalms, I suddenly notice that I am not alone. An old woman with a wrinkled face is standing next to me, wrapped in a black shawl.
“Oh, Avrohom, Avrohom. I knew him. I was close to his wife. Gittel. Also dead. Did you know them?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How so?”
“I grew up in their house.”
“Oh, so you're the nephew.”
“Yes, the nephew. You don't recognize me?”
“I don't like to lie, but …”
“I've changed a lot, I know.”
She looks at me for a long time. “I'm thinking of something else,” she says.
As for me, I am recalling my uncle Avrohom. I miss him. Deep down, he understood, without judging me, what was going on inside me. Convinced that faith was the answer to all predicaments, he suffered from the fact that mine was wounded. But don't hold it against me, Uncle Avrohom. I never betrayed you. Not even in my madness. Sometimes a wounded soul is more open to truth than the others.
“I'm thinking of another day, in another cemetery,” says the old lady. Her husky voice has become pensive. “Do you know that this isn't our first encounte
r? Our first encounter was at your parents’ funeral in Marseilles. I remember; you were silent. And also, though it was imperceptible, I saw it and I remember it as though it was yesterday. You were so unhappy that you were smiling. I saw your smile. It broke my heart. It was the smile of a frightened child.”
I would like to kiss her, but she shakes her head: no, I shouldn't.
That same evening, Liatt returns.
One year later, she tells me she is pregnant. As for me, I confess to her that during all this time, late at night and often at dawn, while she was asleep, I wrote letters to the two people to whom I owed everything. Indeed, I owed them my life and my survival. They were dead, but they never left me. These are all the things I told my father and mother.
I told them everything.
And now I know that these stories will have another reader: our child.
Then, like the traveler who reaches the top of the mountain, sees the abyss through the clouds, and is seized by a harrowing dizziness, the old man in me suddenly has a mad desire to dance.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elie Wiesel was fifteen years old when he was deported to Auschwitz. He became a journalist and writer in Paris after the war, and since then has written more than fifty books, fiction and nonfiction, including his masterwork, Night, a major best seller when it was republished recently in a new translation. He has been awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire, and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.
Translated from the French by Catherine Temerson
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
Translation copyright © 2009 by Catherine Temerson
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiesel, Elie, [date]
[Désir fou de danser. English]
A mad desire to dance : a novel / Elie Wiesel; translated from the French by
Catherine Temerson.
p. cm.
I. Temerson, Catherine. II. Title.
PQ2683.i32d4713 2009 843′.914 dc22 2008038951
eISBN: 978-0-307-27135-8
v3.0_r1
