The Oath

by Elie Wiesel

  Offers abounded; I had but to choose. Some propositions were tempting: lodgings, a home, respectability. I was begged: Stay, we need you, for we tend to forget, become creatures of habit, lose sight of our sources. We no longer hear the call, please don’t abandon us. And everywhere I answered: No, thank you, thank you, no. Resisting temptation was easy; stability held no attraction for me. For a Na-venadnik belongs to the communities he visits and his role is precisely that: to visit them, not to settle in them. Once the flame has been kindled, the wanderer takes his candle and moves on.

  There was another reason, a personal one I could not discuss. I was haunted by Kolvillàg; it held me tightly in its grip.

  I remember one particular incident. It was Shabbat. The little town where I had ended up the day before had a tradition of inviting one of the wandering beggars to give a sermon. Even if the choice fell on a dunce or a madman, he was still given the honors due a celebrated scholar.

  So here I was in the midst of a packed synagogue. The entire congregation was crammed into it, eagerly waiting, ready to listen to me, to admire me and perhaps even to follow me. With words, nothing but words, I could have shaken them, renewed their bond with the living tree of Israel. I was on the verge of doing it, the sermon was all set in my head. Suddenly I realized that the hall was identical to that of Kolvillàg, only larger. The rapt faithful below; the women out of sight in the balcony. The children on the steps leading to the Holy Ark. A thought crossed my mind, petrifying me: I am still in my native town, I have left it only in my dreams, I have done nothing but changed dreams. To recover my senses, I studied the faces lifted toward me. The rabbi’s head was resting on his right hand, his arm leaning on the lectern. The beadle, practical and efficient, was making sure that the head of the community was seated comfortably. An emaciated young student was keeping his eyes lowered so as to hear better—or not hear at all. A speech delivered to this large an audience could not possibly be distinguished; important teaching can take place only in a limited circle. A taciturn old man was shoving a neighbor too noisy for his liking. The schoolteacher, combing his bushy beard with his fingers, was counting those of his pupils who were stealthily edging toward the exit.

  The more I looked, the more I doubted my sanity: What if I were indeed still at home?

  The beadle tapped me on the arm, pulling me out of my daydream: “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Well then, begin!”

  “Everything is getting mixed up in my head,” I muttered by way of excuse.

  “Start, the rest will follow.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Say anything,” the beadle insisted. “Say that the sanctity of the Shabbat must be observed; that’s not complicated and makes a good impression.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said stubbornly.

  “Say that we must praise the Lord for having given us his Law. All the preachers say it, you won’t be taking any chances!”

  Our whispered discussion could but intrigue the audience. The rabbi lifted his head and looked at us questioningly. The beadle rushed to inform him that fate had played them a nasty trick; this particular Saturday they had happened on an idiot. The distressed rabbi was about to rise and come to my aid, when I began to speak.

  “Morai verabotai, my revered teachers,” I said, rocking forward and backward. “I ask you to forgive me if my words are brief. I could lie to you. I could pretend feeling dizzy. I could feign ignorance. But one does not lie in the presence of the Torah. The truth is different: I am not here to speak but to hold my tongue.”

  And I returned to my seat.

  This happened time and time again, whenever I was about to speak in public. The speaker became speechless. Everywhere I saw the same faces, the same expressions; I moved in the same setting. How could I offend the good people of Kolvillàg by telling them their own story, the very one they had forbidden me to reveal?

  Yet sometimes it happened that I did useful work. In the small hamlets, mostly, far from the centers. There I brought back lost sheep to the fold, preaching repentance, showing the way. I jostled the self-righteous, the rich, the proprietors, the merchants. I encouraged the humble. As for the poor, I communicated to them the pride of calling Israel’s past their own. I made them sing after services, during services and even instead of services. On the side, I settled disagreements and quarrels between rabbis and notables, butchers and ritual slaughterers; I interpreted the Law so as to reconcile the minds it had divided. It would not have taken much for me to fall into the trap of vanity and consider myself important, indispensable, irreplaceable. People praised me, feared me. They saw in me one of the hidden Just Men whose mission it is to sanctify space with their ephemeral presence wherever man tries desperately and unsuccessfully to approach the Almighty. They took me for the prophet Elijah, who, like me, visited and consoled lonely beings. They whispered that I was a Master in disguise. Before revealing himself, the Tzaddik must undergo trials of renunciation in anonymity. By helping strangers, I became a stranger in my own eyes. Having convinced my fellow-men, having guided them, I persuaded myself that language was omnipotent as the link between man and his Creator.

  So as not to break my oath, I told all sorts of stories but my own. Inventing them, I gave my imagination free rein: to wit, the one about the pickpocket who decided to steal no more. And to stop living in fear and shame. Not so easy to rebuild a life, an image; not so easy to inspire respect after having aroused contempt: he becomes the community’s laughingstock; even the floor-sweeper at the synagogue guffaws: “You here? What are you doing among these honest people? Changing victims, are you? What brings you to this holy place? Say, is it God you are going to rob from now on?”

  “I want to repent,” says the thief weakly. And the faithful begin to sneer: “That’s a good one! Not so stupid, that fellow! Now that he’s getting old, he’s putting his affairs in order! Shrewd, that fellow!” The former thief, a sincere though naïve penitent, protests that his motives are pure and honorable: “I have truly decided to give up stealing; I truly wish to please heaven. I swear it. Trust me. I have but one wish—to be one of you.” And they all laugh and applaud: “Perfect, perfect! The thief has seen the light, bravo! He is retiring, bravo! Only he has neglected to settle his accounts! Let him return what he has pinched since the day of his birth. How many rings? How many snuffboxes? How many wallets …?” They tear at his clothes, first in jest, then in earnest. Bewildered, he thinks: And I wanted to deserve them, imitate them! How foolish I was! A spring inside him snaps. He distinctly feels it. And so he offers no resistance; too late to turn back, to open another door. A thought crosses his mind: I am going to die, in this very spot, a few steps from the Holy Ark. And he begins to run; he runs, he runs until he is out of breath, he runs toward the light, toward the darkness beyond the light, he is expected there, they are calling him. Then a shout: “He has stopped moving!” And a reply: “He is dead. The thief remains a thief to the end; he has just robbed us of our dignity!”

  Or the one about the sleeping man who awakes with a start. Standing in the wide-open doorway there is a stranger who asks him: “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes, I am afraid.”

  “Of me? You are afraid of me?”

  “Yes, of you.”

  “Do you wish me to go?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You’ll stop being afraid?”

  “Yes, if you leave me alone, I won’t be afraid.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “Not I,” says the visitor, withdrawing.

  And then the sleeper is overcome by panic. He realizes that he has just met, for the first time, the stranger who has always lived inside him.

  Or the one about the dreamy-eyed young man whose path I crossed one autumn morning on the embankment of the Vltava in Prague.

  “What do you want of me?” I asked him.

  “I know who you ar
e,” he said in a solemn voice. “I recognize you by the scar on your forehead.”

  “But I don’t have a scar on my forehead!” I protested.

  “That proves nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I recognized you. That is the best proof. I know who you are. Admit that I know.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and wanted to be on my way, but the dreamy-eyed young man blocked my path. “Don’t go away, I am hungry. Come and share my meal. I am poor, but surely you like the company of the poor. Don’t turn me down. If you go away, my curse will accompany you, do you hear?”

  One may not offend the insane; their voices rise to heaven, straight to the Throne. And then, they all remind me of my holy friend, my mad friend, Moshe. And so I sat down next to the young man, in the middle of the street, and was preparing myself to break bread by reciting the customary blessing, when suddenly he seized the pocketknife and with a swift move, wounded me, marking my forehead with a scar.

  “May I ask you a favor?”

  “Go ahead, try.”

  “Promise not to refuse.”

  “Oh no, I promise nothing. I am too old. I make no more promises; I couldn’t keep them. Past a certain age, man should no longer speak in the future tense.”

  “Too bad. You would have given me pleasure.”

  “By doing what?”

  “By marking my forehead with a scar.”

  Make him dream, that’s what I must do, the old man ponders. If I succeed, he is saved. One doesn’t kill oneself while dreaming, not even while dreaming to kill oneself. To dream is to invite a future, if not to justify it, and to deny death, which denies dreams. Not so simple. Today’s young people are choked by the sterile world that is theirs. For them, there are no more distances, everything is made easy; they no longer need their imagination, and so it atrophies. The past is too far removed, the future not far enough. What need is there to imagine distant places when they are within your reach? And how is one to worship a heaven splattered with mud? What is the good of prolonging a civilization wallowing in ashes?

  And a poor world it is, with little room for either the young or the old. The former are born old, the latter are forever dying; too slowly for some. All are to be pitied. This century is cursed.

  And why do you want to die? What mistake are you seeking to atone, to denounce? Oh, I know—everything disgusts you. The gilded altars and the false priests, the sullied sanctuaries and the corrupted sovereigns. Yes, I know, there are a few too many innocent men massacred in a few too many lands. And then, the cheating, the lying. Words lie, men kill and go on lying and go on killing. You want your death to be a genuine act in a world where all is fake.

  Oh yes, I understand, you are so young, so desperate. Born after the holocaust, you have inherited the burden but not the mystery. And you were told: Go ahead, do something with it. Only it is too enormous, too heavy, it eludes and transcends you. A treacherous situation, one cannot possibly disregard it, yet one cannot possibly continue without disregarding it. Dealing with it poses as many problems as turning away.

  And yet, and yet. I must speak to you. Convince you that death, on all levels, is not a solution but a question, the most human question of all.

  What if I told you about Kolvillàg? It contains a lesson that might benefit you, who are incapable of living simply, or simply of living. Kolvillàg: contagious hate, evil unleashed. The dire consequences of a commonplace, senseless episode. The importance of unimportant things. Breaking his chains, the Exterminating Angel has turned all men into victims. Moral: it is dangerous to use his services. Do you hear me? Despite the innumerable eyes that characterize him, he is blind; he will strike anywhere. In every family. Decimating every tribe. Filling every cemetery. And no one will know why he perishes or why he is spared. Kolvillàg: the culmination of fanaticism, of stupidity. The ultimate chastisement, affecting equally victims and executioners. Moral: whoever kills, kills himself; whoever preaches murder will be murdered. One may not accept any meaning imposed on death by the living. Just as every murder is a suicide, every suicide is a murder. Yes, the story must be told.

  “I saw him again,” said my sick mother.

  She had just awakened, covered with sweat, frighteningly pale. As every morning, glassy-eyed, her voice slow and faltering. As at all her awakenings, she had once again parted with a ghost.

  “I can’t go on,” she said in a toneless voice. “I have reached the end. Next time I’ll go with him.”

  We stood at her bedside, my father and I, and looked at one another in consternation. Lately the patient’s condition had worsened. These nightmares. These fits of remorse. Every night she plunged into the turmoil again.

  Her first husband. Their son. The war, the journey, the arrival at the camp. The selection. The refined and oh so cultured army doctor questioning the small boy: “How old are you? Five years already? Go and play over there, go quickly, like a big boy.” One tear, one shove later, my mother found herself separated from her husband and son. Forever.

  “I should have rushed forward, gone with him. He was so small, so far away.”

  “Try not to think about it any more,” said my father.

  “I can’t.”

  “Make the effort; you must. You can’t go on like this. You have no right to. What you did, others have done. By accusing yourself, you condemn all the mothers who did what you did. You are unfair to them.”

  Her head was tossing on the pillow. “No, no,” she said. “I did not behave well. I should have understood. And refused to be separated from my little boy.” Though awake, she was still following her ghost and her breath was halting. “He is five years old. He has not grown up. He will be five years old forever.”

  I should have liked to know this little brother, both younger and older than myself. Whom did he resemble? My mother? I should have liked to see her the way she must have looked that night, surrounded by barbed wire. But even while I listened, I could not help thinking: And I, where do I fit in? I suffered with her and for her, but I could not understand. Where do I fit in, where?

  Woe to those nameless orphans who believe in nothing but the brotherhood of the dead. Woe to those ghosts we keep expelling from our memories. Woe to this generation which sees everything and understands nothing. Woe to those who, like yourself, await death and expect nothing else. You have not yet lived and already you hate life. You have not yet confronted your fate and already you are bored. You want to die and you don’t know the reason. How can one help pitying you?

  At your age I went from wonder to wonder, despite the ghosts pursuing me relentlessly, despite the proximity of the abyss. I fought with life every morning and with darkness every dusk. I explored every direction and intercepted every call. I spoke and I listened, I taught and I learned, I received and I gave, I yielded and I stood fast, I laughed and I cried—often for the same reasons—and I regret nothing. I could have not lived any of these experiences; I am glad I did. I could have not met any of my companions; I am glad I did. People, events, discoveries; I could have arrived a year earlier, a year later, I could have chosen the path leading to the right rather than to the left and not have known them. I am glad I did.

  I remember: a winter night, a sleepy inn. Muffled up in my cape, stretched out behind the hearth in the spot reserved for impecunious travelers, I was reviewing, as I did every evening, the events of the day gone by: the people met, the words pronounced, the moments wasted. A balance sheet I imagined drawn up and inscribed in the Pinkas, the Book which never left my side.

  It was dark. And so I had not noticed my neighbor lying at the other end of the hearth. I could not tell whether he was young or old. I only knew that he was Na-venadnik like myself. Like myself, he was not asleep. Like myself, he barely moved. After a while we began to speak softly so as not to disturb the proprietor. We traded impressions and anecdotes, but no precise, personal information—such is the law of wanderers in exile.

  His was a warm voice, inv
iting trust and comradeship. He claimed this was his last year of wandering. Had he had his fill of dusty roads, barking dogs and criminals infesting the woods? I asked. Was that why he wished to return home?

  “No,” he said, “that’s not it. Some sinners prolong their penance because it links them to their sins a little longer. Penance can become a trap. I prefer to halt; I choose not to reach the goal.”

  He confided to me the origins of what he called his “offenses.” Forbidden readings, mystical projects. Exorcism through fasting, mortification of the soul and invocation of the Names. Frankly, he had not been mature enough or sufficiently prepared for the task. Of course he had had a Master, but he had turned out to be a clandestine Sabatean who aimed to redeem the world through sin. His Master spoke of the Messiah but was really referring to the imposter; he glorified the Shekinah but described her in terms of a sensual and vigorous woman, his own. While ostensibly initiating his disciple into the splendors of the secret tradition, he was in fact awakening him to forbidden lust and sensual play. “I who aspired to purity, I who saw my body as an obstacle, here I was, letting myself be lulled by sinful visions …” I told him I envied him. He had set a goal for himself, I had not. His exile was limited, mine was not. Every day brought him closer to deliverance.