The Time of the Uprooted (25 page)

I didn’t fight. Gamaliel has been thinking this for a long time. I didn’t say no to destiny. I bowed to my fate and returned to my solitude, which, after all, is my natural condition. After my parents, after Ilonka, after Colette—I remain alone. A writer once said that God alone is alone; a human being is not alone and should not be. But I interpret that thought in my own fashion: If man is created in God’s image, then he is as unique as God, and therefore alone, like God. Not necessarily in death, but alone in life. In happiness as in despair. Excuse me, did I say
happiness
? Since Budapest, that word has no meaning for me. It’s as if happiness is seeking out someone far away to touch on the lips, in the heart. As for me, it flees or ignores me.

Was I happy with Eve? Let’s say that I learned the taste of happiness. Suddenly, a crazy idea came over me: Suppose that unknown patient is Eve? No, Eve would be younger than she. But how can one tell, since the fire so destroyed her features? No! Eve would have recognized me, and I would have recognized her. . . . How silly I am! Eve didn’t know a word of Hungarian.

Eve. Straightforward and plain-speaking. Her vision reached beyond time, without overlooking the present.

It was she who made known to me the change in our relationship, indeed its ending, and therefore my return to solitude.

It was a winter afternoon. The city was snowed in. Life was slowed down, as in a state of siege. The airports were paralyzed, most offices closed. Only one in ten taxis was out negotiating icy avenues. Ambulances had a clear path. Their sirens taunted drivers mired in the unreal, phantasmagoric landscape. Most of the news on the radio was about the weather. Nature was inclement—no hope of a thaw. Eve was late. I was growing more worried.

“Nasty weather out,” she said as she shook the snow off her boots. She hung up her coat and came into the living room, where I was waiting for her. Usually, I would ask about her lunch with one or another of her friends. This time, I remained silent. She was returning from a rendezvous with Samaël. It was up to her to speak. She sat in her favorite armchair across the table from me and fixed her gaze on me.

“I believe the time has come for us to talk,” she said.

It felt as if she had struck me: The time has come. The solemn proclamation of a disaster. I nodded and said, “All right, let’s talk.” I could guess what she was going to say. She was going to tell me it was all over between us. The time had come for us to part. Farewell, all the lovely promises, if promises there had been.

I was stunned; there was something in this situation I could not grasp. Eve, who could read what she called “the inner face” and could decipher the best-kept of secrets, the deepest reaches of a person—why had she not seen through Samaël? What had happened to her intuition, to what she had learned from life over the years? Why had her insight not enabled her to see Samaël for what he really was: a genius of a liar, a genius also in his cruelty, a jealous egotist unable to admit that there could be any goodness or any purity in the human heart?

“The time has come,” Eve said again, unhesitating. “It’s never been my style to play the fool. We were too close not to tell each other the truth.”

She said “we were,” I thought, trying not to show how distraught I was. I was right: All that remains to us is the past.

“And the truth is,” Eve continued, “that I’m going to marry him. I must.”

“Is it because you love him?”

“If there’s one man in this world who shouldn’t ask me that question, it’s you. Anyone else can use that word, but not you. You know perfectly well what I think about it.”

“But then . . .”

“Then nothing. I have to marry him to help Bolek and to save Leah. It’s as simple as that.”

There again, I could have debated, argued, reminded her of what she herself had said about marriage. But I remained silent. So did she. I got to my feet, opened a few drawers, put my books and bathroom articles in a bag, set the keys on a table. Hardly an hour had passed since Eve’s return. Without a useless gesture, without a word too many, I closed the door behind me.

I never saw Eve again.

From the
Book of Secrets

Big Mendel’s apprehension proved to be well-founded. The Rebbe and he did not return to Székesváros that day. It was obvious that they were being detained by Archbishop Báranyi. “We still have many things to say to each other,” he had explained to them.

“Just what does that mean?” Mendel shouted angrily, after they had been confined for three days, alone in a room at the far end of the hall. “What is this Christian talking about? Me, they tortured. Are they also going to torture the Rebbe? I beg the Rebbe to perform a miracle, and the sooner the better! The Rebbe must use his powers, for the love of God! We mustn’t stay in this Christian prison. Let’s leave. The community is waiting for us. Let’s go right away, even on foot!”

The young Master, standing at the window, which gave onto a huge garden, was absorbed in his thoughts and did not reply. Mendel knew his nagging was in vain, but he went on nonetheless. At last, Hananèl, still gazing out at the garden as it emerged slowly from the night, advised his friend and servant not to persist. “What happens on earth is decided in heaven. We are here to accomplish some purpose. It may be that the Archbishop is right. He and I have things to say to each other.”

There was a knock at the door. The monk who had come to get them in Székesváros entered with two cups of hot tea. Mendel dismissed him. “Leave us. We must say our morning prayers.”

The priest left. Hananèl, still standing at the window, gave a sigh and said, “You see, Mendel, we were right to bring our tallith and our tephillin. We already knew we would not return so soon.”

Mendel thanked him for the compliment. “It was the Rebbe who knew, not I. I would have preferred it had the Rebbe been mistaken.” He started to take the prayer shawls and phylacteries out of their bags, then stopped in the middle and said, “Rebbe, I forgot— I should have asked you the first day: Do we have the right to pray in a house ruled by the cross?”

“Close your eyes and face Jerusalem,” the Rebbe replied.

Mendel prayed faster than usual, Hananèl more slowly. Neither touched the tea.

“We will fast today,” Hananèl said finally. “Remember this, Mendel: In the old days, each time a Sage had to confront a representative of Christianity, all the members of the community accompanied him in their thoughts and they purified body and soul by prayer and fasting. How could we swallow anything at all when the lives of our brothers and sisters are at stake? In this most grave of times, we must abstain.”

The two friends spent the day meditating and reciting psalms. Hananèl was standing, lost in his thoughts. Mendel was pacing back and forth, wringing his hands; now and then he would stop and sigh, as if in pain. The young Master, deep in concentration, was breathing soundlessly. The church chimes sounded the hours without disturbing them. That evening, the Archbishop came to get Hananèl and took him to his office. Hananèl remained standing, as before, while the Archbishop sat in his armchair. “Shall we continue?” he asked.

Hananèl nodded assent.

“What do you want of me?”

Hananèl had his answer ready. “Save us,” he said.

“You think you are all in mortal danger?”

“I do.”

“How do you know it?”

“I know it.”

“Heaven told you, is that it? Well then, if heaven wants your death, why should I save you?”

“Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian, said the same when he destroyed the Temple, and God punished him for it.”

The Archbishop started. “You compare me to that pagan Babylonian?” he shouted, red with anger. “Perhaps the Jews were innocent at that time, but they are not now. God sent them His Son as their Savior and they denied Him. And you still do, every day you treat him as an impostor, a renegade. How can you expect God the Father to continue to love you?” Then a daring idea came to him and he continued. “You want me to save your life? I’ll do it.” He paused; when he resumed, his voice was harsh and he spoke as if to an inferior. “Yes, I’ll save your life and your family’s. But on one condition: You must let me save your soul. Understand? I’m offering you salvation in exchange for your sinful faith. The others matter less; they can remain in sin. But you’re different. Your soul belongs with the Savior.”

Hananèl leaned toward the Archbishop. “Look at me,” he said very softly. “No, not like that. Look at me closer.”

The Archbishop felt a mysterious, irresistible force take hold of him and lift him to his feet. “Are you trying to frighten me, Jew?” he said. “You cannot defy . . . you cannot threaten the Lord’s most Holy Catholic Church, certainly not without punishment. Who are you to defy me? In whose name are you speaking? Who sent you?” Suddenly, his voice caught in his throat. “You look like . . . you resemble . . .”

Without losing his calm or looking away, Hananèl replied, “You know perfectly well who I am. You’ve known it since the first morning.” Then, after a silence that was heavy with meaning, he said, “With every Jew you kill, you put your Lord back on the cross. Does that not frighten you? Tell me, man of the Church, do you know what you are doing to your Lord when you allow these murderers to massacre the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? And you dare to speak of saving my soul when it is your own that is in perdition?”

The Archbishop sat down, took his head in his hands, and, without looking at the other man, conceded defeat. “I’m prepared to keep you here. Your servant also. Under my protection you’ll be safe.”

“No,” Hananèl replied.

The Archbishop looked up in amazement. “I don’t understand you. Did you not say—”

“What I require from you has nothing to do with me or my own survival. I demand that you save my entire community.”

“You’re mad! Where would I put this community of yours?”

“It’s everyone or no one.”

“But there isn’t enough room here.” Seeing Hananèl’s determination, he spoke more gently. “How many souls are there in your community?”

“A few hundred.”

“Including children?”

“Yes, counting the children.”

In despair, the Archbishop began thinking about how and by what means he could comply with this absurd demand.

As for Hananèl, he was wondering where he had found the strength and the will, the audacity even, to face up to a man who incarnated the power of the Church. Then he recalled the failure of his mystical undertaking. I owe this to the community, he reflected. Yes, I owe them at least this much.

10

IN AN HOUR OR TWO, I’LL BE BACK WITH THE tormented old woman in the hospital.

All these beings doomed by a cruel fate . . . I no longer know where I stand in the face of their overpowering reality. The people of my
Book of Secrets,
the people of my childhood. All these men, all these women, all these children, victims of the Angel of Death and Punishment.

Why lie to myself? I wander around, sorrowful, beaten down. Why do the wicked win so many battles? I recall what the Rebbe of Kotsk said: “This world is rotten.” Yes, it’s a loathsome place, this world that men have made, unreliable and unstable. Enough to break your heart. So what should I do? Give up on it, leave it? Go back to my apartment and take an overdose of sleeping pills, the way I did once before? Say good-bye to a humanity that permits a Samaël to do so much harm? Is that the response to Eve’s farewell of so long ago?

So long ago? It seems like yesterday.

I feel empty. I am wandering, briefcase in hand, along streets that now seem as if they, too, are hostile. By an entry-way, I stumble upon some blankets piled up in a mound. This is a human being, a homeless man. He is sleeping, detached from his surroundings; nothing disturbs his stupor. What have we in common, he and I? If I touch him on the arm, will he answer me? Will he see me as friend or foe? What is he hiding from? As for me, I’m dragging myself around like an old vagabond in search of shelter that is nowhere to be found.

I reach the railroad station. Travelers dash in all directions, as if fleeing an enemy. I sit down on a bench, pick up a crumpled newspaper. Plane crash, a dozen killed. Political cover-up. Sexy photos. Articles about the end of the century. King Solomon foresaw it all: One generation passes away, and another generation comes, but the earth abides forever. Woe to a generation that knew how to discover absolute Evil but not absolute Truth: so a philosopher said of the dictators whose triumphs debased humanity in the twentieth century. But can we overlook the achievements of science? The conquest of space, the miracles of medicine and communications, and the hope they give us? How does it add up? Evil and Good are racing side by side. In my head, images and ideas intermingle and become confused. No longer can things be clearly identified. And where am I in all this? And Eve? What did I do wrong that caused her to leave me? What am I doing among these strangers this hostile or indifferent world has rejected? I could almost feel sorry for myself. Above all, not that, I tell myself. What right have I to complain? No one owes me anything. Surely not Eve. Nor Colette, nor our daughters gone astray on the lost roads of the planet. I’m unhappy. So what? Aren’t others unhappy, too? Happiness is a rare gift in this cursed and dreadful century. Faces haunt my feverish mind: a starving child in Africa, eyes bulging, in its mother’s arms; another child, in tears, in Asia. In Rwanda, a man stands dazed over the bodies of his slaughtered sons. Corpses piled in a ditch in Bosnia. A universe of smoke and barbed wire under a bloodred sky. When one of our little group of eccentrics dared to mention happiness as a goal, an obligation, or a possibility, Diego burst out laughing and shouted, “Hey, you guys, listen to him! At last we find someone who believes in happiness! Give the man a prize—the world’s grand prize for fools.” And yet with Eve, I felt at home, at peace. I may not have known it then, but I do now: Even when I was with Colette, I was waiting for Eve. Even when I recalled Esther and her mysterious body, which I often saw in my dreams, even when I remembered Ilonka and her limitless generosity, even when I thought of my parents, whose faces were engraved in my memory, if I just embraced Eve, I was glad to be alive and to have lips to kiss her. I would stroke her hips, her shoulders, and be grateful for an appetite that could still be aroused.

Parted now from Eve, I see myself long ago in Budapest. The station, the trains whistling. The stores, the pastry shops . . . The century was young and I was a child. Snow, thick and soft, on the bridges of Budapest. The snow was pure. Then in Paris, a lot of rain, not much snow. Very little was pure.

LATER, MUCH LATER, BOLEK GAVE ME NEWS OF Eve. Though he was grateful to her for what she had done for Leah, now restored to a normal life, he saw Eve less and less often. It was still the same enemy: Samaël. Bolek hated him more than ever; he couldn’t mention his name without getting angry. “Poor Eve,” he would say. “I knew Samaël would hurt her. It was inevitable. She may have known it, but she was determined to rescue Leah, to sacrifice herself for Leah.”

But suppose all that was just a pretext? I came to think that perhaps Eve really did love Samaël. Was she happy? Was she still living with him? Bolek did not know, but he had heard she had left New York, and that Samaël had put his destructive talent to work driving her out of her mind. He was unfaithful. He mocked and humiliated her, had even gotten her started on drugs.

The bastard.

I’M NOT SURE WHY, BUT ONE DAY I TOLD THE whole story to Rebbe Zusya. We were talking of time and its passage. Does a man fulfill himself in a single moment, or over the course of a lifetime? Then we turned to the role of Evil in the search for Truth. I said that if Evil could be incarnated in a single person, I thought I had met him. I told him the beautiful, the exhilarating story of Eve, of my love for Eve. I had told it to no one, for fear of diluting it, making it commonplace. In any case, no one would have understood our story. Except perhaps a mystic like the Rebbe, who would be the first to see that some love stories can only be conceived in the most esoteric of terms. I thought that perhaps, with a word or a glance, he could even restore her to me. It was very late, of course, but surely the Rebbe was more powerful than Samaël.

“Samaël? You did say Samaël!” the old Sage exclaimed, and a hint of fear crossed his face. “I sense that this is a dangerous person, and you enter into relations with Evil personified at your own peril, unless you can immediately disarm him.” He stroked the beard that hung down to his chest. “Tell me what happened. Tell me the whole story—don’t leave anything out. I must know every detail if I’m to help and protect you.”

I made a full report, though, to avoid offending him, I omitted the intimacy of our relations. I just said we were very close.

He approved, saying, “You told me she lost her husband and only daughter, is that right? God considers Himself the protector of widows. He who comes to their aid is the messenger of God. . . .” I expected him to question me further about Eve’s life, about her character and personality, but he just scrutinized me a moment, then resumed. “And anyone who does them harm is the envoy of Satan.”

I accepted that, though I’m not sure I believe in a power that can be identified by the name of Satan. Evil is to be found in every person who allows himself to be dominated by it. But Rebbe Zusya believed in Satan, and that was enough for me. I thought, If Satan exists, it is surely someone like Samaël, or indeed Samaël himself.

“What do you know about him?” Rebbe Zusya asked.

“Not much, Rebbe. Very little. Next to nothing.”

“Where is he from? What’s his background? What is his business? What does or did his father do? You don’t know? Is he miserly? Does he speak deliberately, thinking over every word, or rapidly? Does he move his head while speaking? Does he stammer? His hands—what does he do with his hands while speaking?”

How could I reply? My recollections were too vague. “All I know, Rebbe, is that there’s something fascinating about him, but also something repellent, and I don’t say that lightly. You listen to him, you try to pay attention, and at the same time you want to get him out of your presence, out of your sight, for fear of being infected by contact with him.”

The old Rebbe nodded in concern. “There is Evil in many things. It can find a place anywhere.”

“Even in the Good?”

“Even in the Good. That is where it’s most pernicious, most dangerous. It steals in behind a mask, pretending it wishes to serve the Lord and come to the rescue of those He created. Oh, how difficult it is to unmask him, to make him reveal himself. To do it, you must have
siata dishmaya,
the grace of God. . . .” I was silent, straining not to miss a word the Rebbe was saying. “Sometimes Satan wears the mask of one of the Just. He speaks like him, behaves like him, recites the prayers as he does, and he does it so well that naïve and pious Jews may be duped into becoming his adepts and disciples. Then, once he dominates and leads them, he suggests they help him to hasten the coming of the Messiah. He tells them how to go about it: The Talmud declares that Redemption will come only when humanity is either entirely innocent or entirely guilty. Now, many Sages and Teachers have chosen the first option, and everyone knows they failed. So why not try the second way? And how is that done? Simply by violating the commandments of the holy Torah. Break the Sabbath, insult your father and your mother, steal, covet your neighbor’s wife, lie about your neighbor, commit adultery and incest, preach violence, kill. In short, call pure what is impure, and impure what is pure—and all supposedly for the well-being of our people and of all peoples, in the name, that is, of the ultimate Deliverance. . . . Is that the goal that this Samaël is trying to achieve?”

The Rebbe’s eyes never left me, as if he were afraid he would lose me forever if my attention were to stray even for a moment from his words and his vision. He kept rocking back and forth as he spoke.

“This Samaël you’ve told me about is dangerous because he resembles Satan himself in all he undertakes. His evil is contagious. He is corrupt, so he seeks to corrupt others. His poisoned soul is never satisfied unless it can poison others. Are you afraid for your own soul?”

“No, Rebbe, not for mine, but for Eve’s.”

The Rebbe’s gaze was severe and piercing. “You’re a widower. You’re alone, aren’t you? Why didn’t you marry her? Is it because of your first wife?”

“Perhaps, Rebbe. Colette made me suffer too much, especially after her death. She took my two daughters away from me. For years, I was afraid of making the same mistake again.”

“God is present in every union of two people.”

“Not in mine with Colette.”

“What do you know about it? Some philosophers hold that man was God’s mistake. I don’t accept that. It’s just that at times a man has to make his own mistake before he can find his way with more self-respect and humility.”

What could I say to that?

“And Esther?”

There again, I did not answer, but the Rebbe persisted. “Are you still searching for her?”

“No, Rebbe. Excuse me, that’s not right. Yes, I am searching for her, but as you would for an old melody, a forgotten word, a flavor, a moment, a feeling you once had. Esther has nothing to do with Eve.”

“Well then,” the Rebbe asked once more, “why didn’t you marry her?”

“She chose someone else.”

“Samaël?”

“Yes, Rebbe.”

The old Teacher heaved a sigh. “Let us hope she hasn’t fallen so low that she cannot be rescued.”

“I don’t know, Rebbe. When I think about her, I no longer understand anything.”

Our eyes met. His were sadder than ever.

On my way out, I met Shalom. Seeing my dejected mien, he took my arm and gave it a squeeze. “You’re having another problem with a woman? Don’t let it get you down. The Rebbe is on your side; that’s all that matters.”

All that matters? Easy to say.

AN ETERNITY LATER, I HALTED A MOMENT BEFORE the door in the hallway, whose gray walls were stained with humidity. I was shivering in spite of the heat. I was cold in the depth of my being. I knew I must turn the knob, but I could not bring myself to take that simple action. What was holding me back? In truth, I knew perfectly well what it was. Old Rebbe Zusya, who had once again urgently summoned me, was sick and perhaps dying. He would die, and his life’s work—like that of the hero of my novel, the Blessed Madman—would remain unfulfilled: He would not witness the coming of the Messiah. I was afraid to face him in his despair. Should I knock, or leave? I wondered. As always, I decided, it was too late to back out. There, in the room, one of the Just awaited me, one of the thirty-six men to whom the world owed its continued existence. He was waiting for me. Was it so he could die in peace after entrusting me with the reply to unanswerable questions, the secrets whose meaning I had been forever seeking? Perhaps the future of others besides me depended on my last meeting with this man who understood everything. The curtain was up; I was facing those others. I could not leave the stage before the end.

Still I hesitated. Was I looking for an alibi, an excuse for my fear? So that one day I could say, In the hour before the death of Rebbe Zusya of blessed memory, my hand trembled and my heart beat fast?

It was beating very hard indeed. A frightened small voice inside me said, Suppose he is already dead? You did wrong to wait so long. When one who is dying summons you, you must hurry to him and, above all, waste no time. . . .

My fingers felt damp and sticky. I was sweating. I was breathing slowly, noisily. I was hot, or was I cold? I was freezing.

I pushed the door open abruptly, as if in panic. The pale, dusty light made me still more uneasy. I glanced around the room. It looked abandoned. Stains here and there marked the walls like black geometric frescoes. On the table lay books, a prayer shawl, phylacteries. The bed was in a corner. Was Rebbe Zusya asleep? No, he was watching me. I felt impure, unworthy, as if I were covered with mud. The same small inner voice rebuked me: Is this any way to bid farewell to your Teacher? I saw my shadow on the wall to my right, an elongated caricature. It had parted from me, as if to dissociate itself from what was to happen. Shadows also need alibis.

“Come closer,” said the old Rebbe in an astonishingly strong voice.

I took a step toward his bed.

“No doubt you’re thinking my life is going to end in defeat. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“I no longer know what to think, Rebbe.”

Now, at what was to be our last meeting, he repeated, “Come here.” But this time I did not move. “So what are you waiting for? Come here! Are you afraid? Afraid of seeing me beaten, defeated by death?”