The Judges

by Elie Wiesel

  “OK,” said Bruce. “What’s the weather forecast? How long do you think we’ll be enjoying your hospitality? Does the crew know where we are? So that when—”

  He did not finish his sentence, but a gesture of his hand sufficed to express his meaning.

  “Is that all?” asked the Judge.

  “Yes. For the moment.”

  The Judge stiffened before continuing. “You speak as if your friends had chosen you as official spokesman. If that is the case you must inform me.”

  “Holy smoke, you’re crazy!”

  “Take care how you address the court. Contempt of court is a serious offense! I asked you a question. Please give me your answer.”

  “OK. The answer is negative. But as for my questions— they were my questions, and I should like you to answer them.”

  The Judge stared at him fiercely. “The news is not encouraging. The forecast is relatively pessimistic, I’m sorry to say. The weather is not expected to clear tonight. Or tomorrow.”

  “What are we going to do?” yelled Bruce, standing up abruptly.

  “Wait,” said the Judge, stroking his brow as if to erase a doubt. His voice became harsh. “Sit down!”

  “I have no desire to sit.”

  “I order you to sit down,” repeated the Judge. There was a hint of a threat in his hoarse voice.

  Four pairs of eyes watched a confrontation from which the Judge emerged the victor. His calm was stronger than Bruce’s anger. The latter finally obeyed.

  “I’d like to make a telephone call,” said Claudia.

  Bruce echoed her. “Me too.”

  “It’s essential for me to notify someone of what’s happened to us,” explained Claudia.

  Me too, I should be warning someone who’s waiting for me, thought Razziel. I totally depend on him. But how can I reach him? Actually, he should know how to find me. Like in the old days. He always knew where I was heading and why. He knew things about me that I’m still unaware of.

  “The people expecting you are doubtless informed about what’s going on. This storm will be headline news in all the papers.”

  “I still need to make a call,” said Claudia.

  “I am afraid that is impossible. The lines are down. The telephone is dead. Not only mine; everybody else’s too. Practically speaking, we are isolated, cut off from the outside world.”

  Bruce banged his fist on the table, making the cups and saucers dance. “What a mess! Why did we have to land in this filthy little hole? Why did I take that flight? What have I ever done to God that I should end up with this idiot?”

  Claudia tried to calm him.

  “Why get annoyed? Instead of insulting this village and our kind host, you’d do better to thank him for having taken us in.”

  There was no love lost between the playboy and the young redhead, that much was plain. Temperamentally they seemed bound to clash; the two of them were seething. Too bad for them, thought Razziel. They’ll end up exhausting themselves.

  Neither more nor less interested than before, a scrupulous and neutral examiner, his right index finger in his vest, the Judge was observing them, sizing up each word, each intonation, as if to probe them, to compare them with the reactions of other people he had had in his power, whether long ago or only yesterday. His voice, full of authority, called them to order.

  “I have studied your biographical notes. Since we have some time ahead of us, I propose to go into them in more detail.”

  No, thought Razziel, he’s neither an undertaker nor a priest. He seems to think he’s a police chief or a desk officer; he’s read too much Kafka or Borges.

  “There are questions here that it behooves us to clarify. What has brought you together under my roof, mere chance? That would be too facile a conclusion. I don’t believe it. Behind mere chance there must be something else. A design? A conspiracy? A strategy conceived by some higher power? Which one, God? That too is too facile. Who is hiding behind him?”

  “Don’t you think you’re taking things a bit too far?” cried Bruce, showing off.

  “Don’t you see our host is being theatrical?” Claudia reprimanded him. “Let him have his fun.”

  It’s true, thought Razziel, he thinks he’s onstage. But what role is he playing? These biographical statements extorted from us, these ridiculous interrogations, what is their point? And how can one explain the ominous sense of disquiet that has been growing ever since we set foot in this house?

  “I must ask both of you not to interrupt me,” said the Judge, without looking up.

  And so the mechanism was triggered for a sequence of events that provoked in each of the participants first incredulity, then panic, as at the approach of some catastrophe.

  Alone in a room next door from which he could observe the five travelers, the Hunchback reflected on his own situation, referring to himself, the Judge’s servant, his slave, as if to a stranger.

  Some beings are watched over by God, others are watched by a man who believes he is the emissary of Death and the embodiment of its derision. But why does this man need a slave at his side?

  Who shall live? Who shall die? Who shall judge the Judge?

  For the moment everything is still possible. But at what stage does a man become the hostage of someone he believes to be his savior? This woman, still young; will she catch Fate’s eye? And why has the slave fallen in love with her? If she will only love me, he says to himself, I will take the place of the Lord and cure men of the ills that overcome them. Did he utter these words out loud or only in his head? He cannot recall. But the fact is that for a variety of reasons he does not dare intervene, at least not right away. Perhaps he hesitates to reveal the truth about the man who holds him shackled. For during the many years he has lived in this man’s shadow he has learned things about his master that still, today, leave him perplexed and filled with doubt.

  What are these forces that the Judge seeks to tame or to defy? Guardian angel one day and tempter the next, he delights in inspiring fear. Fear is the meaning he gives to his own life. But just to his life?

  And the wretched slave who despairs of his liberty, what meaning does his life have? When did he discover himself capable of love? Just a moment ago, as he secretly watched that still-youthful woman whose lower lip has started to tremble.

  It was the first time he had felt such an emotion in the presence of a woman—no, his mother had inspired it in him too. As soon as he caught sight of her, he would run to meet her, sweating, his heart beating fit to burst, ready to give his life for a caress. But that was in the old days, before the accident. Since then women (even the pharmacist’s wife) have left him indifferent, cold; compared to his mother, they seemed pale, distant. But not this evening. The red-haired woman: He had stared at her open-mouthed, his throat constricted, gasping for breath. Why do people call this a coup de foudre? He would prefer words like illumination or vision.

  It had seemed to him as if the young woman were addressing him in a murmur. Was it a prayer? A cry for help? Or was she simply talking to herself, seeking to understand what was happening to her?

  It’s for you to judge; it’s your move, the Hunchback tells himself.

  PAST MIDNIGHT.

  Is the snow going to swallow up the whole world? And finally even time itself?

  Snow is like money, or like love. Some people use it for their amusement, even to cleanse themselves; others become tainted by it. Children play with it, as do sportsmen. Snowballs, snowmen, victories on the snow, gold medals and world fame.

  And yet. . . .

  As he studied the documents on the table, the Judge was talking to himself. “Who to begin with? Why not Mr. Schwarz? Since he’s so talkative, perhaps he can enlighten us about the anger he seems to be bursting with.”

  And he began to interrogate Bruce, as if he had been held for questioning or even charged: Why did he adopt such a coarse, perverse, and hostile manner? Was it his intention to challenge the authority of the court and its president? As
for his profession, why did he make such a mystery of it? He claimed to be a playboy. What exactly did that mean? A spoiled child? A “boy” who seeks only pleasure and enjoyment in life? A gigolo, perhaps? Is this a way for a decent man to make a living? Is it an ideal to be celebrated and taught?

  The Judge asked these questions in a neutral professional monotone. Even as he accused Bruce of refusing to abide by the Law, he raised it as a technicality, speaking in sober tones, devoid of all personal animosity. He was simply doing his job as a judge, his duty as a citizen, conscious of his obligations. If the accused persisted in sabotaging the investigation, too bad for him. “Sabotaging” was possibly an extreme word, but the said Bruce Schwarz was doing nothing to facilitate the Judge’s task, and this made him all the more suspect. He simply responded to every question with an insult or an evasive gesture. Sometimes the Judge was obliged to repeat himself in the same harsh, dry voice, as if to emphasize the seriousness of the matter, which irritated Bruce but no more than that. It was only when the Judge came to his relationships with women that he burst into loud laughter.

  “Aha! Now we’re coming to it, you dirty little pervert! Porn stories, that’s what you want, isn’t it? So you want to be aroused, you dirty little skunk, is that it?”

  Without responding to these personal attacks, the Judge waited for him to calm down before continuing his interrogation, which proved quite fruitless.

  Maybe because she wanted to distance herself from her fellow traveler, Claudia adopted a more conciliatory, almost friendly, attitude.

  “Parlor games can sometimes be a useful distraction. What can I contribute?”

  “You describe yourself as a press agent. You work for a theater. Which one?”

  “A small company but one with a good reputation. Off-Broadway, of course.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “The Stage Mirror. It’s a charming little auditorium. It seats four hundred. It’s intimate and cozy. Experimental. The actors are all very young, like their audience; they are very young too.”

  “What is playing there right now?”

  “A first play by a blind writer. The parents of the hero— who is blind—have given him an unreal picture of the world, so he won’t feel deprived of its riches. But his fiancée won’t be a party to this deception. She loves him and believes her love should be enough for him. He has to choose.”

  A brief argument ensued. Casting himself in the role of theater critic, Bruce pronounced the plot too abstract. With some irony, Claudia offered him a lesson in dramatic theory: It all depends on the performers, she said. Some actors can recite a page from the telephone directory and make an audience laugh or weep. “Last year,” she recalled, “our company created an original drama, a monologue. Believing himself to be dead in the midst of a healthy society, the character upsets everybody. At a certain moment he stares at the audience with his demented eyes and cries out, ‘In a novel by Axel Munthe, the great Swedish writer who adored kings and birds, a man declares that he is dead but does not know it. Well, I am dead and I do know it. You are the ones who don’t know it. That’s why you don’t understand me. You’re afraid, afraid of understanding the dead. . . .’ I just wish I could describe the shudder that ran through the audience.”

  She spoke so passionately that no one dared to interrupt her. Razziel congratulated her. Bruce, clearly miffed, snorted. Yoav was miles away. George smiled.

  “What’s your opinion, George?” asked the Judge.

  “I rarely go to the theater.”

  “Never?”

  “Rarely.”

  “So you don’t care for the theater?”

  “Not at all. It’s just that I live in a world in which only the written or printed word exists. Words have their own secrets, which I try to fathom without harming them. Sometimes I see them dancing or catching fire. That’s when I really come alive.”

  The Judge repeated his last words in cold tones: “That’s how you really come alive. Hmm.” Suddenly irritated, he turned to Yoav, still as distracted as ever. “And how about you, general, what do you think?”

  Yoav did not reply at once.

  “I asked what you are thinking about.”

  “About the first play that was mentioned. I’ve seen blind men in my war-torn country often enough. Soldiers with damaged eyes. Tank crews who miraculously escaped from their burning tanks, their bodies half burned, their eyelids torn off.”

  “What do you think of Claudia’s play?”

  “Hold it! Let’s not get carried away,” exclaimed Claudia. “I didn’t write it.”

  “I don’t know the play,” said Yoav. “All I know is I won’t go to see it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have no desire to watch seeing actors pretending to be blind.”

  “How about you, Razziel?”

  “In the school of which I’m the principal, the theater is not a subject of study. Unlike ancient Greece, in the world of the Talmud the theater doesn’t exist.”

  “But the theme of the blind man?”

  “I find blind people fascinating. They see a world that is not mine. But one world interests me as much as the other.”

  “Mr. Kirsten? What does the archivist think of this debate?”

  George smiled. Should he reply that he found Claudia attractive? She reminded him of a younger Pamela, though she did not look like her. Everything about her pleased him: the way she held herself, the way she expressed herself, her ironic manner toward the playboy, her deep breathing, her half-open lips. She was the type of woman he liked to be attracted to. Like Pamela.

  “I imagine that in the theater all subjects are good,” he said.

  “Coward,” said Bruce.

  “Diplomat,” corrected Claudia.

  She winked at George; they were accomplices now. They shared a secret that had just been born but as yet had no name—or future. Was it because she seemed to have sensed his vulnerability and decided to protect him? Or was her smile for all those who fell under the spell of theater?

  “Mr. Kirsten!” said the Judge.

  George did not react. Was he daydreaming?

  “Mr. Kirsten! I am addressing you. I am speaking to you, and you are not listening. Does what we are engaged in here not interest you?”

  “Excuse me. The journey has exhausted me. I don’t seem able to concentrate.”

  The Judge pretended to consult his papers. “Your biographical notice is somewhat brief.”

  “That’s inevitable; there’s nothing special about my life.”

  “You’re an archivist.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you looking for in your archives?”

  George blinked; he did not understand the question. It was the first time anyone had put it to him. What can an archivist look for in the documents under his care, precise answers to vague questions? The truth of man’s attraction to lies? The secrets of the genetic code? The origins of time? This line of questioning irritated him.

  “Long ago,” he said finally, “I dreamed of becoming a scientist. But that’s a very special area where sometimes what you find is the thing you weren’t looking for. Luckily, I didn’t have an aptitude for science. So I turned to the study of archives. There, you do know what you’re looking for and how to find it.”

  “All that is very interesting, but you have not answered my question. What are you looking for in your archives? What do you seek to conserve?”

  George thought deeply. “Memory,” he said.

  “Whose?”

  “That of the dead and that of the living.”

  “In other words,” Razziel intervened, “your ambition is to be the memory of memory.”

  George’s thoughtful look reflected a mixture of surprise and gratitude.

  “Wonderful!” exclaimed Claudia. “For me, memory evokes the theater. For what is a performance if not a fragment of memory in the art of being born? It lives only for an instant in eternity, a powerful human appeal to the bea
uty of an existence that is nevertheless inevitably committed to the ugliness and decrepitude of death.”

  “Nonsense!” remarked Bruce, just to annoy her.

  Their conversation sounded, for the moment, like a debate between intellectuals on a café terrace on a summer’s day or around an open fire on a winter’s evening.

  “That’s enough, all of you!” the Judge declared. “We’re not here to listen to your rhetorical debates.”

  “But why are we here?” asked Claudia innocently.

  “You will learn in due course.”

  All of them still believed this was a harmless whim on the part of their host: He was amusing himself by amusing them. To pass the time. To make their waiting more tolerable. Perhaps it was his way of offering his guests a little entertainment.

  The Judge turned to George. “You are very quiet, too quiet. What lies behind your silence?”

  “Perhaps another silence.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s difficult to explain. I prefer written material. When I have to speak, I imagine I’m reading. In silence.”

  “Is it asking too much of you to make an effort?”

  When George said nothing, Razziel came to the rescue.

  “With your permission, I believe I understand. . . . How can I put it? People are mistaken if they believe that the only choice is between silence and speech. One silence can hide another. In a moment of grace sometimes we are able to lift one of these layers of silence. But at once others arise and confuse us.”

  “And what of the present?” the Judge persisted. “Does it have no importance for you, Mr. Archivist?”

  “No. I feel its impact but I try to resist it.”

  “In other words, only the past attracts you. What about your own contemporaries? Don’t they exist for you?”

  “Yesterday I helped a painter finish his canvas.”

  “And the day before yesterday?”

  “The day before yesterday I told stories to an old man who was afraid of dying.”

  “And the day before that?”

  “I listened to the singing of a woman in love.”

  The Judge is dangerous, George thought. How can I put him off the scent? He did not know why, but he knew it was essential to hide from him the burden that weighed on him, the secret document on which depended a man’s future— and perhaps his very life.