The Testament

by Elie Wiesel

  What will be done with the foreigners? Will they be imprisoned? Expelled? And what about the stateless, the political refugees from Germany? My case is simple. The inspector who late that afternoon makes me undergo an intense interrogation—less intense, though, than yours, Citizen Magistrate—comes straight to the point: I will be expelled from French territory. And where am I expected to go? Anywhere. To Belgium or Italy; or Germany, he adds, laughing discreetly. Germany, I repeat, laughing. Except, says he. Except what? Except if I agree to go home, to Romania. In which case I would be granted an additional delay of forty-eight hours to organize my departure. Having regained my wits somewhat, I bargain. Why not seventy-two hours? He agrees but specifies: You better be gone in seventy-two hours. Is that clear? It could not have been clearer.

  I leave the Préfecture and go straight to Pinsker, who puts me in touch with someone who knows someone. I end up meeting the comrade who takes care of cases like mine. He studies my papers in great detail, scrutinizes them, and suddenly his face lights up.

  “You didn’t tell me that you were born in Krasnograd!”

  “Krasnograd? Don’t know. I was born in Barassy.”

  “But that’s the same thing!”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Does it! You were born in Soviet Russia!”

  “So what? I am a Romanian citizen.”

  “A Romanian citizen of Russian origin. How old were you when you left Krasnograd?”

  “I was a kid.”

  “Good. Very good. Let’s go over the dossier again: You were born in Barassy, which has become Krasnograd. And Krasnograd now is part of the Soviet Union. In other words, you are a Soviet citizen. Meaning, you present yourself to your consulate, which will take care of your repatriation. Well, now, what do you think of that?”

  He is getting excited, the comrade. He has found a unique solution to a problem that is not. He is proud of his ingenuity. And I am staring at him as if he were some sort of magician. He went too fast for me; he opened too many doors in too few seconds. A Soviet citizen, me? And what about my Romanian passport? And my loyalty to His Majesty the King? My nationality? And my parents? Go to the Soviet Union when my family lives in Romania? How long would it last, this separation? I must get my bearings in this collection of cities that change their names. I must think this out calmly, carefully, but the comrade doesn’t give me a chance. Seventy-two hours is little. He is all excited, he cannot stand still.

  “Boy, are you lucky, comrade,” he says. “I am telling you, if all my cases were as beautiful as yours …”

  He knows my past, he is informed about everything: Berlin, Spain, my cultural activities in Paris.

  “Everything will go smoothly,” he promises. “New passport, plane or boat tickets. Don’t worry about these formalities; your consulate will see to it.”

  The days go by; I am agitated, feverish, every minute counts.

  Alerted by the “appropriate department,” the Soviet consulate welcomes me as a citizen anxious to return to his homeland. I am given a document drawn up in Russian, some advice, instructions and a boat ticket. I am to take the first Dutch ship leaving for Odessa. When? In two days. I scarcely have time to embrace Sheina—Will I see her again one day?—write a lengthy, confused letter to my parents, rush over to Pinsker—who promptly announces, on the front page, to his faithful readers, that “the poet Paltiel Kossover, notwithstanding the calumnies of the bourgeois press, is going home to Soviet Russia where, side by side with our friends, he will continue the struggle for peace.…” All that remains to be done is to pay my hotel, restaurant and laundry bills, buy myself a warm suit and underwear and … my time is up. Soon I am in Belgium, then in Holland. Rotterdam. The harbor. The ship. I am received on board, an officer checks the passenger list, examines my Romanian passport, my Russian document, and tells me the number of my cabin, which I am to share with a Japanese businessman. I take a breath. Farewell, exile.

  There is a knock at the door. A sailor wants to know whether I need anything. Something to drink? To eat? Nothing, thank you. Sure? Sure. He leaves and I have the odd feeling that he has not said all he came to say.

  I see him again several times during the crossing. He is watching me, spying on me. I tell myself that he probably works for the Dutch Secret Services. But no: he belongs to Soviet Security. He indicates that on the eve of our arrival in Odessa. He waits until I am alone in my cabin before he enters. He asks his usual question: Need anything? I give my usual response and expect him to go. To my great surprise, he remains standing there, staring at me. I invite him to sit down but he prefers not to be too familiar. Fine, whatever you wish. He asks me about my plans; I have none. Where shall I live? I don’t know. Acquaintances anywhere? Yes. I know quite a few people but I have no idea where they are—as a matter of fact, I don’t even know their real names. Paul, Yasha … the sailor is interested in them, in my relationships to them. I let myself go; I tell him about my work at Paul’s side, my years in Spain, Yasha who is important, Yasha who works for … I pause. I have talked too much. How can I be sure this steward is working for us? And what if he were informing for the other side? His French seems tentative; that doesn’t mean anything, of course, mine is no better, and yet … Could he be German? I bite my tongue; the sea has erased my underground experience all too quickly. I say no more. The sailor—friend? enemy?—takes his leave. A piece of advice, he says, poised on the threshold.

  “Yes?”

  “The less you talk, the better off you’ll be.”

  No, he is not from the Gestapo. No, he does not wish me harm. He urges me specifically not to speak of my former friends, not to reminisce about my past; under present circumstances, a past is only cumbersome. Instinctively I follow his advice.

  To the questions I am asked as soon as we arrive in Odessa, I answer that I do not know anyone in Soviet Russia: no brothers, no friends. Why have I chosen to come and live here? Simple: I was expelled from France and didn’t know where to go. To Romania? I am considered a deserter there. More than any impassioned pledge of loyalty, my frankness produces a positive effect. They offer me their welcome. They change my francs and Dutch crowns into rubles. And so, here I am, home, in the homeland of the homeless.

  I leave the harbor and walk toward the center of town, trailing Babel’s haunting, picturesque and lovable characters: sentimental scoundrels and wretches; a human river that flows, not seaward but toward death.

  I board a streetcar that brings me into a commercial district. I ask the conductor, Hotel? He answers in broken sentences. There, behind the shop, small square; hotel not expensive.

  Was I right to have come? Walking down the cold street, looking up at the buildings, I am aware that I have committed myself to a one-way street. The break with my former life has been too abrupt. What is to become of me? I am hungry, I am thirsty; I don’t know what the future holds for me, nor even whether I have a future. I wonder whether my repudiated past will have a chance to renew itself here. Also … I think of Liyanov and of my friends: Ephraim, I picture him in this setting, in this land of his dreams. I see Inge and Traub, they follow me down the street. My whole life unfolds in my mind. As though I were walking toward death. I cling to the past lest it escape me. I hold fast lest I fall into the black hole that becomes wider and wider under my very eyes and where I feel the mute presence of my friends of long ago. I know that one day I shall follow them, lose my footing and fall. I can’t help it; it is not my fault that I carry this suitcase; not my fault that I chose this path over another. Chance or fate? All the roads of my past end in Odessa. Is God happy in Odessa?

  I set my suitcase down for a moment. The hotel cannot be far. Go on! Be brave. What could there be inside this accursed suitcase to make it so heavy? Clothes. A few writings. Phylacteries in a small blue bag. A few poems. Words.

  My life.

  Covered up and turned in on itself, Moscow was in hiding, as if to catch its breath and conserve its heat. In icy paralysis, its st
reets were empty save for pedestrians going to work, or an occasional sled drawn by small Siberian horses. From my first-floor window I watched the snow falling from a low, gray sky.

  I had been living in Soviet Russia for several weeks and felt myself isolated, on the margin of my own existence. No letters came from parents or friends. Liyanov and Paris belonged to another world.

  I hardly went out. In my room I thought of my friends, whom I missed. I did not dare admit this to anyone: nostalgia was not a proletarian virtue, I would have been told. Besides, I still had no one in whom to confide.

  I had been given a friendly welcome at the Jewish Writers’ Club, where I enrolled soon after my arrival in the capital. Some of my poems published in Dos Blättel were known; some had even been translated in the monthly appearing in Piroshov. Kind things were said to me, countless questions asked about this person or that. I answered as best I could: Yes, Pinsker was fine; Yes, Schweber was doing good work; Yes, his praise of the Russian system commanded attention. As for myself, I had only one question: How could I find a job?

  “Wait,” I was told. “The first thing you have to learn here is how to wait. Patience.”

  “And I thought that in the fatherland of the Revolution people had learned to refuse to wait,” I said with a laugh.

  It was pointed out that I would be wrong to make fun of the Revolution. I took that at face value.

  My visit to the club had left me with a bad taste. I had seen from a distance the great Jewish artists and writers—Mikhoels, Markish, Der Nister; I had shaken hands with Kulbak, Kvitko, Hochstein. I knew and admired their work; I even felt affection, tenderness for them: they were my seniors, my big brothers. But I was sad. They were muzzled and seemed anxious not to show it. They smiled, exchanged a few words about some novel or essay, but their hearts were not in it.

  Heavy glances, lengthy silences, inexplicable head-waggings. These Jewish novelists and poets, among the greatest, feared clamor and the spotlight. Later I understood. Since the Hitler pact, a strange atmosphere prevailed in Moscow; of their own accord Jews lowered their voices, tried not to be noticed. They remained in the background, discreetly, not to embarrass Molotov. Litvinov’s departure from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs was interpreted in our club as a warning to Jews: let them suppress their hatred of Nazism. For reasons of state the devil was no longer an enemy but an ally. Heads downcast, the Jews—at all levels of power—were no longer supposed to be seen in public so as not to upset the distinguished visitors from Berlin. They were to melt into the shadows; they no longer counted. Their opinions, their fears, their feelings, their lives carried little weight. Had Hitler demanded the deportation of a million Jews to Siberia, his demand would have been studied with great seriousness, and would not have been rejected. My seniors in Moscow knew that better than I.

  No one spoke of these matters, not even in whispers, at the club, the Jewish theater, or in restaurants—at least, not in my presence.

  Among themselves, away from strangers, they might have felt freer—I don’t know. But I do know that politics were never mentioned. They took refuge in a burgeoning literature about collective farms, tilled fields, virgin forests. I questioned one of them (I shall not reveal his name, Citizen Magistrate, he is still alive) on this detached attitude of our famous intellectuals:

  “In Paris,” I said, “we fight; we denounce Nazism from morning to night in our reviews, our speeches, and we do so in the name of the Communist Revolution. Here you keep silent. I don’t understand.”

  My fellow writer, visibly frightened, whispered, “Change the subject, I beg of you!”

  “But why?”

  “You’ve just arrived, there’s no way you can understand.”

  Another colleague was more explicit.

  “You’re not at the yeshiva here, young man. We’re not studying the Talmud. Not everyone can speak up. Don’t force us to listen to things that mustn’t be heard.”

  A third went so far as to threaten me. “Grumbling means criticizing the Party and its glorious chief; you’ll pay for this.”

  And they all kept repeating that I did not understand. They were right: I did not understand. I thought of Inge and her underground struggle, of Paul and his team; they had been doing their utmost to mobilize the free world against Nazism. No, I did not understand: except for the Nazified countries the Russian press was the only one not fighting the Nazi menace. It made me ill. One day, unable to contain my confusion, I mentioned it to Granek, the foremost translator of Virgil. Reserved, gentle and exceedingly shy—even more so than I—he raised his arm as if to push me away.

  “You mustn’t, young man, you mustn’t.”

  “Granek—listen to me. I must speak to someone, or else I’ll explode, I’ll go mad.”

  We went out. In the street I told him of my disappointment. I told him of my years of fighting Hitler and his gang of murderers. I spoke to him of Paul, his influence, his moral impact on the intellectual milieu in France.

  “It hurts me to tell you this, Granek, my friend, but I was better off in Paris. There, at least, I could cry out, warn people, fight!”

  “You mustn’t, you mustn’t,” Granek murmured, hunching his shoulders painfully, fearfully.

  Granek is no longer alive. That is why I can mention that conversation. “Mustn’t …” What mustn’t I have done? Come to Moscow? Talked freely to a friend? Mobilized by the navy, he disappeared at sea in 1943. He was lucky enough to die a hero’s death; had he survived …

  “You mustn’t bring up the past,” Granek whispered as we walked slowly down the street where the club was situated.

  And, seeing my astonishment, he went on, “Don’t you know? Don’t you really know what’s been going on here for years? Your friends … are no longer.”

  “You mean they’ve left the country?”

  “Oh, no, my poor friend. They are no longer. Hamburger and …”

  At last I understood. Victims of the purges, they had disappeared without a trace. It was forbidden to remember them. Remembering them meant loving them, loving them meant being their accomplice.

  I reeled with shock. The earth trembled, the heavens fell. I recalled my final conversation with Paul. Had he suspected what was awaiting him here? Possibly. Then why did he return? And why was I here? But it was too late for such regrets. I had to find some justification—imitate the others, sing of steel mills, the splendor of factories and the new man building them under the wise, infallible guidance of the Party—well, you see what I mean.

  I got a modest job as a proofreader at the State Publishing House, French division. Lenin, Marx, Engels and, of course, Stalin: I read their works in French translation and corrected the proofs. I did my work conscientiously, as always, but without enthusiasm. After all, I am not a philosopher but a poet. There’s no need to understand in order to read, and vice versa.

  One day I was overcome by the desire to meet some real Jews. I went to the synagogue—a complete fiasco. A few frightened old men looked at me with distrust. A short hunchbacked fellow asked me bluntly, “What do you want?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You want to pray? Where are your phylacteries?”

  I left, humiliated. Yes, humiliated—what other word could describe my state of mind at the time? I began to prefer the company of writers—Russian, Tartar, Bashkir or Uzbek. Their support of a policy flattering Hitler exasperated me less than the pleas made by Jewish writers following the same orders. In fact I was seeing the Jewish writers less and less. I kept out of their sight in order not to explode, not wishing to bring disaster to the “great,” whom I respected in spite of everything. For their welfare as well as mine, it was better to keep my distance.

  I had rented a small room in the apartment of an old woman, who boasted of the advantages of her deafness. “In my place you’ll be able to snore, stamp your feet, break your neck, I’ll do nothing to stop you.”

  It was a three-story building on General Komarski Street. The quiet
made up for the lack of comfort. The room had neither running water nor heat, but it did have dust and dirt.

  Living at the other end of the apartment was a young girl, Anna, just arrived from Tiflis. She was studying at the Institute of Modern Languages. We ran into each other on the staircase or in the salon—that was what our landlady called her own bedroom—and exchanged short, polite Good mornings and Good evenings. In other circumstances I might have attempted an affair with Anna. Tall but delicate, she reminded me of the romantic princesses of ancient Russia. But I was feeling too low to see a woman’s body as a source of desire. I did not feel like attaching myself to anyone.

  Occasionally the landlady would shake her bony head disapprovingly; I would turn my eyes away. She would nag me: “Ah, what a generation! Incapable of grabbing hold of a woman and … You’re young, you’re healthy; she’s young, she’s healthy, and … nothing? Nothing at all? Woe to me, that my eyes should have to see such shame. Why is the good Lord punishing me like this?”

  I just had no head for that. It was a grim period, for Jews especially, and also for true Communists, that is, the men and women who set the Communist ideal above political considerations and diplomatic crises. We had no friends anywhere, no allies, no support. In the street we would slink rapidly along the walls.

  One day I felt the need to read something besides official speeches. I went to the club to leaf through the Communist newspapers published abroad. I expected to find some reflection in them of my anguish and confusion. I said to myself: Out there they are free to speak the truth, and no doubt they do. My disappointment was total. The Yiddish newspapers in New York and Paris, published and distributed by the Jewish sections of the Party, merely echoed our official press editorials. It was painful—yes, it really was. I read Pinsker’s columns and the blood rushed to my face; the smugness of Schweber’s analyses made me blush.