by Elie Wiesel
“She had just arrived. I did not yet know who she was, I did not even know her name, but I knew everything about her, everything about her life, even the one she has not yet lived. I knew she both revealed and concealed herself in the reflection of her yearning. I knew I loved her. I understood it when I saw her lower lip tremble. What words was she murmuring? Was she uttering a plea? I loved her. That was all. That was enough. I never wanted to know anything else. There was nothing more to know.
“Why did she lean her head on her left shoulder? What was it about this shoulder that the other one, the right, didn’t have? A crazy idea took hold of my imagination and projected it toward her. It was as if I myself were splitting in two. I saw myself getting up, leaving my place, and taking several steps toward her: I had to say something, something urgent, something true, something that could not wait. I had to say to her that nobody has the right to transform a stranger’s life simply by daydreaming like that, with one’s head resting on one’s left shoulder. I had to tell her. . . . No, I would tell her nothing. Now I can see myself in front of her. I’m about to take her arm. I take it, I squeeze it very tightly, and I make her get up and follow me. It’s a strange thing: No one pays any attention to us. We walk slowly, without a word; we walk toward the door, toward the life that awaits us on the other side, that awaits us within ourselves and . . . a terrible pain transfixed me. I was still sitting in my place, watching all of you; you talked and talked, and she talked too, but less than the rest of you. The dream had faded. Yet I still seek it and I shall find it. It is a part of me, it’s in the reflection of that elusive and invasive me that you call consciousness. And there is consciousness in rejection.”
The Hunchback broke off. He had spoken without pausing. His head bowed, he avoided the prisoners’ eyes. Was he going to continue his monologue?
It was past six o’clock. Evidently indifferent to what the Hunchback was saying, Yoav had taken out his penknife to scrape away the hoarfrost that encrusted the windows. He could see nothing. Snow, two feet deep, covered the landscape. He was still wondering what mission the Judge had entrusted to the Hunchback. Who had been chosen to die? And how was the Hunchback going to go about it? Whatever his plan, Yoav had decided to stop him. If he invited him or one of the others to follow him outside, he would oppose it. Whatever happened, Yoav knew how to defend himself.
Bruce went over to Claudia but she ignored him. Like Yoav, she had her eyes fixed on the Hunchback.
And now the Hunchback began speaking again.
“The Judge was always a madman. Out of his mind. You must believe me. I have known him better than anybody. Didn’t I tell you? I owe my life to him, but also my shame. He should have let me die, but he needed a humble and obedient slave. I was his thing. Thanks to me, he felt superior to God. He hid the sun from me and forbade me to dream; he was afraid I might escape.
“Year after year, he subjected me to torture he believed to be without precedent in the world. Sometimes he poured wine into me until I was crawling around on the ground like a pig. Or he would leave me out in the cold, half naked, so he could watch me shaking like a desiccated tree in the depths of winter. Or he would show me pictures of naked women to bring home to me what I would always be deprived of. Above all, he liked to talk to me about death— not about the death that awaited me but the one already within me. ‘You’re dead,’ he kept telling me, ‘but you don’t know it.’
“Then, for a day or a week, I had to behave like a dead man among the dead, while he acted out the Resurrection and the departure from the tomb. He was Christ and I was one of the thieves crucified with him. Except that the Judge did not put the teachings of Jesus into practice, no way; he wanted to be a corrupted, malevolent Christ.
“One day I was a Roman soldier forcing the condemned men to climb onto their crosses before being torn apart by an angry crowd. Another day he said, ‘I’m your father; you must get ready to kill me.’ The next minute he accused me of being a parricide and beat me until I bled.
“Why did he commit all these cruel acts? He was mad, I tell you. Mad with black hatred, mad with unsated violence. Yesterday, during the storm, he was preparing for your arrival. He guessed that an airplane would land near here. He knew that its passengers would come and occupy this room. He was ready. And so was I.
“He told me about a command he had received in a dream, a divine command. You’ve heard it already. In order to save humanity from the ultimate punishment, heaven demanded a human sacrifice. ‘You understand, my little hunchback,’ he said, ‘the only reason for this storm was to allow this sacrifice to take place. I shall take care of the trial and the verdict; you will execute the sentence.’
“This latest folly seemed to me more hideous—no, more real—than any before. He explained his plan to me in a calm, deliberate voice. Almost serene. He spoke in the name of bloodthirsty gods, he said, but he was not one of them. He was simply obeying orders. Their will must be done. Since they wanted the death of a human being, their representative’s duty was to offer it to them. But—and he repeated this to me again, when he was briefing me just now—the scapegoat must not be burdened with sins. On the contrary, on this particular night, the chosen victim must be pure and innocent, no more deserving of death than anyone else. That is why my master was eager for you to make the choice yourselves. You were to become judges in your turn, judges of innocence, of the most innocent one among you.
“He said to me, ‘Do you understand the honor that will fall to you? You will be the sacrificial priest, who brings the gods the offering they need in order to hold sway over the world of men. You will be their chosen one, their benefactor.’
“He sounded like a perfectly sane man, speaking in measured tones, but it was beyond my comprehension. What did he want, what did he expect of me? For me to kill someone? I, who hate death, having seen it from too close at hand? As in a trance, I fired rapid questions at him: How or with what did he want me to kill this someone? With a revolver? A rifle? Should I throw him or her into the flames of a burning building? Should I run over him or her in a car? Should I put him or her outside naked, to turn into a statue of ice?
“But at the same time I knew who it would have to be: the person who first caught my eye, the one among you who had filled me with yearning.
“And now the Judge handed me a huge knife. Heaven knows where he unearthed it; at a butcher’s shop in the village, no doubt. I’ve never seen one as big or as sharp in my whole life. He was holding it in his hands as if he were following some primitive ritual. ‘Here’s what you’ll use to carry out the will of the gods,’ he says to me. ‘You’ll go into the room, and you’ll ask which of our guests has been chosen. If they refuse to reply, then you will choose: the first one to catch your eye. You will go up to this person and do what you have to do. Remember, you survived. And it was for this moment, in order to perform this act, that I saved you.’
“I have never heard him express himself with such icy sobriety. He had a clear vision of his purpose, I did not. Within me there was only disorder and chaos. Big words and little ones, gentle ones and terrible ones, swirled around in my brain, tearing it into a thousand pieces. The Judge, who was he really? Who was speaking through his mouth? And who was I? And where were we? Who was responsible for what was happening to us? And for the assassin I was about to become?
“Involuntarily, my head began moving, turning from right to left, from left to right, faster and faster. My head was saying no, and my heart too. My whole body was trembling and saying no. No to this madness, no to this idea, no to this order, coming from Death, which lurked beneath the mask of the Judge.
“But the Judge rejected my no. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘It’s only a game, but a different game, a divine game, one commanded by the gods. It’s their will you are opposing, don’t you see? Who authorized you to disobey the gods who rule over men? Do you not fear their wrath, they who can overturn the laws of nature, and whose punishment can be terrible?’
“Suddenly I felt a violent need to do something I had never before had the courage to do. Whether in order to appease the gods or to defy them, whether to utter a shout of submission or one of blasphemy, I played with the idea that I might sacrifice myself there and then, become immortal, so that my blood would flow and the heavens might blush at the dawning of the day. But it was beyond my strength. I remained stock-still. I felt abandoned, useless, powerless.
“Meanwhile the Judge kept taunting me. Madness had seized him now. Like the air, the sea, or the breath of God, it became an all-enveloping tide that engulfed him. ‘But it’s so easy!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s so easy to take a man’s life. Or a woman’s, the most beautiful of women. Look, you take the knife. You lay it against the throat, so. You press gently, very gently, then harder, a bit harder. . . .’
“Was it I who unwittingly applied pressure?
“Was it he who unconsciously made one move too many?
“His cry, like that of a beast being slaughtered, brought me back to reality.
“Yes, the Judge’s prediction was correct. He was right in telling you that a verdict would be brought in. What was it he said? That beneath this roof someone would die after day had dawned? Well, someone has died. Was it a game? For you, perhaps, but not for him.
“And not for me.
“The Judge has judged himself. And I was his executioner.”
The teller of this tale is Razziel, who has woven into it the testimonies of his companions, who were all saved. After the Judge’s death, the snowstorm abated. In the morning, taking advantage of the calm, cars hired by the airline plowed their way through the country roads, gathering up the dispersed passengers. No one was missing. The continuation of the flight took place without incident. The five survivors from the Judge’s house exchanged addresses and promised to remain in contact. Claudia was reunited with David. George met “Boaz,” who helped him hand over the document to the competent authorities. Yoav enjoyed another eighteen months of fragile happiness with Carmela. Bruce lost his cherished scarf. And the Hunchback? He went on living in the house of the Judge, whose death was recorded as “suicide.”
As soon as the plane touched down at Lod Airport, Razziel took a taxi. He was in a hurry to get to Jerusalem. Even before leaving his things at the hotel, he made his way to the Old City with a thumping heart.
Naturally, old Paritus was not at the rendezvous. Razziel looked for him among the beggars who spend their days and nights beside the Wall. He questioned them, offering them money in exchange for information. He questioned the pupils of the Talmudic schools, the disciples of the visionary masters. None of them knew who he was talking about.
At the hotel, a letter from Paritus was waiting for him. He asked Razziel to excuse him, but he could not stay any longer. He had left the country on the eve of Razziel’s arrival. The old mystic wrote:
You are searching for your past, and you will continue to search for it. No one, not even God, can restore it to you. Sometimes it hides in the present, sometimes even in the future. But you should know that it, too, is searching for you, otherwise our meeting would never have taken place. Look around you: Every face you see offers an element that in some way attaches you to your past.
Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain caused by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.
The rift within such a man, Razziel, is a grave one for, going beyond the limits of time, he too yearns for completeness. The prophet is a person who desires to be whole but is torn between God and man. The artist is whole, and yet, recognizing that time is at once his ally and his enemy, he can neither live nor create outside his own boundaries. The madman is whole, and yet it is the rift within his very being that renders him mad.
Searching for the past, and for its meaning, leads a man to discover distant worlds, perfectly organized, well structured, and often indecipherable, worlds where saints violate pregnant women; where children ridicule their parents; where you witness an occult transfusion of meaning from word to word, from brain to brain, all linked to a cosmic design imagined by God. But can one person’s past take the place of another’s? This is a question that will always fascinate the madman and the artist.
Like the madman, the artist substitutes one logic for another, invents characters, establishes new systems of values. The difference between them? The artist questions himself; the madman does not. The madman believes he is someone else. But each of them suffers from the same emotional distress; each feels cramped inside his own skin; each strives to escape his past in order to reinvent it in the prophet’s agonizing silence.
And where does this leave you, Razziel?
Razziel rereads the letter several times. He is searching it for coded signals, the message within the message.
He thinks: Paritus is alive, that must suffice for now. Is he the reincarnation of the medieval writer mentioned by George Kirsten? God, give me some of his wisdom.
Later he will change that to: God, leave him his wisdom. Let him pursue his quest and I will continue mine. Will it help me to live my future, since I am incapable of living my past? Will it lead me to discover the shadowy events of my amputated life? Will I one day know what is hidden from me today?
The beginning will forever remain rooted in its own mystery.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books, including his unforgettable international best-sellers Night and A Beggar in Jerusalem, winner of the Prix Médicis. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and the French Legion of Honor with the rank of Grand Cross. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University. He lives with his wife, Marion, in New York City.
ALSO BY ELIE WIESEL
Translation copyright © 2002 by Elirion Associates, Inc.
Schocken Books and the colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiesel, Elie, 1928–
[Juges. English]
The judges: a novel / Elie Wiesel.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Knopf, 2002.
I. Title.
PQ2683.I32J’.914—dc22 2004042770
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eISBN: 978-0-307-42879-0
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