Elie Wiesel (2 page)

“Tomorrow,” Malkiel said.

Hands in his pockets, his throat dry, Malkiel walked along the river. Night was about to invade the town.

Arriving there two weeks earlier, on a beautiful morning in August—or Elul, by the Hebrew calendar—Malkiel had planned to stay only a few days: inspect the cemetery, stroll about, visit his family’s old home, soak up the climate, the ambiance of the place, and find a trace of a certain woman whose name and address he did not know. Then he planned
to go back, see his father and reconcile with Tamar. He could not have foreseen that his visit would extend for weeks.

The weather was fine that Thursday. The day promised to be mild, almost warm, with a clear sky and an invigorating breeze. In the distance pines bowed as if listening to a story. The dewy fields smelled sweet, fresh and rich. The familiar sights and sounds were those of a village waking: a bucket clattering up from a well, livestock being led to the trough. Outwardly, it was just another one of the villages that the traveler passes through between the Dnieper and the Carpathians. Cockcrow at morning, shepherd’s flute at evening. Haughty horsemen, their hair flying; stooped and careworn laborers. Harsh-featured widows, old men with empty or suspicious glances.

Malkiel looked for someone to ask the village’s new name. He chose a humpbacked, toothless peasant. Unfortunately, the man did not understand the question. Malkiel tried German; nothing. A word of Romanian? The peasant shrugged, muttered an unintelligible phrase and departed. Malkiel went on his way. He passed by the railway station and discovered, with some emotion, a sign: B
OZHOI
. It was his great-grandfather’s village.

To one side the valley with its earthen cottages, to the other the shadowy mountain, at once shielding and shattering. They slept when the mountain slept, they lay awake, huddled, when the mountain set its wild beasts howling in the storm. Then, young and old, men and women, believers and infidels, all took on the same face, hunted, resigned; they waited for the lull, to close their eyes and dream until the next day came with its pains and its pleasures; they showed their faith in nature’s kindness.

Before leaving the village, Malkiel came upon a peasant
woman talking to her cow. Which answered her. Farther along, a schoolboy, half asleep, emerged from his cottage and walked along close to the walls. Seeing Malkiel in his fancy rented car, the boy fled without looking back. There you are, Malkiel thought, you frighten children.

Finally he saw the town. From afar it seemed drowsy. Nearer he was surprised by all the activity.

Malkiel reached his hotel and filled out the obligatory form. Profession: journalist. Purpose of trip: to study the inscriptions on old tombstones.

Grandfather Malkiel, if you can hear me, heed my words. They are meant to be an offering, a prayer. They come from far off, a message of faith from your son, who needs your intercession above.

Let his health be restored, let his past not slip away. Grant him the power to break his solitude, and me the power to bear it.

Your son is devoted to you; he told me that so I would know, so I would remember.

If you can see, look at me: my father’s memories are mingled with mine, his eyes are in my eyes. His silences, born of dread, frustration and despair, live in my words. My past has opened to his, and so to yours.

Your son is still alive, but can one call that living? He is walled into the instant, cut of from before and after. He no longer gazes at the heights, and his soul is a prisoner.

It would be indecent of me to feel pity for my father; but you, Grandfather Malkiel, take pity on your son.

That is what I have come to tell you. That is why I have come so far.

If I could gather a
minyan
I would happily say a prayer for your soul; but there is no
minyan.
So all I can do is beg you to come to his rescue.

“I waited for you,” Lidia said. “Then got tired of it. In this country we spend half our lives waiting.”

“How did you know where I was?”

“Ah, that’s my secret,” she said provocatively. “I have a right to secrets, too, haven’t I?”

Malkiel’s face clouded. She was trying to make herself interesting. Was she working for the secret police? Too bad if she was. That was a game they could play without him.

A languid breeze wafted spicy odors from the river. Malkiel caught a few and offered them, in spirit, to his distant lady friend. Tamar liked to say that she took in the world through her nostrils. Arriving in a new place, she sniffed the air before she even looked around.

“All right, I’ll explain,” Lidia said, taking his arm in a familiar gesture. “Obviously you’re overcomplicated. The simple things go right by you. And yet everything
is
simple. I knew you’d go to the cemetery just like every day. And I decided that one of these days you’d be fed up with talking to the dead, or listening to them. To relax, you’d take a stroll along the river. Everybody does that here.”

“I could have taken a stroll in the park.”

“Too crowded this time of day.”

“The garden behind the municipal auditorium?”

“Too near the police.”

“In a nearby village?”

“Too far. Logical, no?”

“Absolutely. Logical.”

They took a few steps in silence.

Behind them, in the little town with its gloomy streets and alleys, people were eating and drinking and laughing, stopping to scrutinize an unfamiliar doorway, to admire a
woman, to make sense of their longings. A pair of lovers, close by. Secret police, perhaps? The boy was pointing to a sky streaked with violent color; the girl turned to look at the impassive river. Lidia was calm. Malkiel was not. A dozen times a day he felt an anguish that stopped his breath: he couldn’t tell now if it was a weakness or an act of courage to call upon memory. Was it easy to let memory slip away? For his father it was not at all easy: he had watched it glide away inaudibly, smoothly, abandoning him to his emptiness, his heartbreak. Poor Father, wanting fiercely to pin time down, enclose it, tame it.

“You’ll tell me when you’re tired?” Lidia asked.

“I’ll tell you.” What an odd young woman, Malkiel thought. An odd interpreter, too: guardian angel or a shrewd policeman? Why does she follow me? What do I represent in her eyes? What does she want from me? A promotion at my expense? A pass? The chance of living some other way, dying somewhere else? I’m stupid; it can’t be that. Then what is it? I am daydreaming.

He checked his watch. After eight. The trees were dense around him, and so was the silence.

“What are you thinking about?”

A flirtation? Is that what she wants? I’m not much good at that. My mind wanders. And I’m a bit too old for it. And then, I didn’t come all this way to flirt, or even to dream, but to identify my father’s dreams. Time now to separate them from my own, before I scramble them all together. Head in the clouds on a sunny day, that doesn’t do the job.

But Malkiel could not help it. He was like that. A matter of character, of temperament. Of habit, too. There was a time when he fell in love quickly; he loved to love. A man in love, he thought, says “we” like a king. A man in love babbles of his childhood like an old man. But he spoke seldom
about his early days. He had few memories of childhood; he had mostly dreams. Vibrant and intense, but nowhere sharply etched. Now he needed to transform those very dreams into memories. Not easy. In the mountains he dreamed of mountains. On the bank of the river he dreamed of the river. And in this town buried in the Carpathians, he saw himself in an other town, buried in this one’s heart. He hastened toward someone calling him, he ran, when he was actually groping for his way, he ran until he was out of breath, and onlookers cheered him along, and the dead inspired him: Faster, go on, they’re waiting for you. And in truth just at the end, on a hill taller than the mountain, a young woman was waiting for him, beautiful and proud and anguished, not this one squeezing his arm, as if to remind him where they were, if not who they were.

“Lidia, who are you?”

“Oh, no! Don’t you know that yet? I’m your professor of Romanian. Your interpreter. Your guide. The woman in your life, you might say.”

Of course. Professor of Romanian to Malkiel Rosenbaum, reporter for
The New York Times
, on special assignment in Transylvania. The day after his arrival he had a visit from an official in the tourist bureau. The man welcomed him and put him through a courteous but searching interrogation. Did he speak Romanian? Hungarian? Not that either? But then how would he manage? “Well, don’t you worry about it. I have someone for you. Recommended by the public affairs division in the foreign ministry. And by a rabbi in the capital. Believe me, you won’t be able to do without her.” Lidia came to see him that same day. With a grammar textbook. “Thanks, but I don’t need it,” Malkiel said. “It would take too long.”

Was she disappointed? She gave no sign. “Whatever you
like,” she said, still polite. “We’ll study without a textbook.” He explained that he was not looking for a professor; he needed a guide, an interpreter. “I’m a professor of Romanian,” she said, “but that doesn’t stop me from working as a guide. And interpreter.” Further proof that she was working for special services.

“Lidia,” Malkiel said, “I didn’t ask you what you do, but who you are.”

She did not answer immediately. She thought it over. While she thought she ran her right hand through her hair. She seemed upset. Why this hesitation? What was she hiding?

“I don’t believe,” she said finally, in an artificially official tone, “that my private life can be of any interest to you.”

Malkiel detected a trace of spite in her voice. Was she married? Unhappy at home? What was her game? He was about to quiz her but changed his mind. “Let’s talk about something else, all right?”

Annoyed, she let go of his arm. The street stretched before them, empty and inhospitable. Low houses stood in rows like sand hills shot through with light and color.

“Why and how my life—”

He interrupted. “I’m a reporter, after all.”

“Didn’t you tell me you were in charge of obituaries?”

Malkiel bit his tongue. “You’ve got me there. I’m interested in the dead, that’s true enough.”

“Isn’t it too late?”

“Too late for whom?”

“For the dead,” Lidia said.

“Maybe. But when it’s too late for the living, that’s when things become serious.”

She took his arm again and squeezed it, but said nothing.

For two weeks now they had met every day. In the morning before he went to the cemetery, and in the afternoon when he came back. Sometimes they dined together. Sometimes they strolled about in the evening. They chatted in English, or in German when Lidia couldn’t find the proper word.

At first she tried to draw him out, make him talk about himself, his family, his work, his colleagues, his studies. With the real questions smuggled in: what was the true purpose of his stay in this insignificant village, shrouded more in legend than in history, with few tourists clamoring to discover its exotic charms? Why did he visit the cemetery every day? What was he looking for among graves the most recent of which was ten or fifteen years old? Malkiel knew how to avoid her questions; he wasn’t a reporter for nothing.

A strange young woman, all the same. When she smiled, she was radiant. When she turned inward she was disturbing. Was she trying to seduce him? To gain intimacy? And yet he’d leave tomorrow and they’d never see each other again. So much the better. Father is ill; have I the right to amuse myself with an unknown woman? I’m betraying him, just as I’m betraying Tamar. Ah yes, Tamar: will you hold it against me if I sleep with her? Will you break off? Equally important question: Am I capable of making love to a stranger? She has beautiful eyes: when I looked into them that first day, I saw depths that dizzied me. True, it lasted only a second. Will you hold the dizziness against me, Tamar? And yet you know how I live for the moment. I am fascinated by it. I open my arms to embrace a woman, and at that moment she may believe herself happy, and I know myself open to happiness, to love. I also know the poison
will take effect later, but I don’t regret offering my hand. I smile at a child playing on the beach and he smiles back, not yet aware that he is doomed to grow up in a lunatic world; but I don’t regret the smile. When I tell a beggar, Come on, I’ll buy you a meal, I’m only emphasizing his solitude, his exile, but I don’t regret speaking to him. Should I sacrifice the present on the pretext that it’s fleeting? What do you say, Tamar? No, I mustn’t think about you. You have no place here and now.