The Time of the Uprooted (26 page)

“Yes, I’m afraid.”

“But I’m not beaten! I’m still alive. With my last gasp, I can change the course of events. Don’t you know that yet? Haven’t I taught you anything?”

Actually, my fear was different. Vague and undefinable, it did not grow out of any premonition, nor was it connected to any particular event. It had seeped into my soul and now weighed on my life and my thoughts as if to paralyze them. I was afraid I had omitted something. A deed—but which? A word? Perhaps I should have recited a prayer. The dying man was saying a prayer. Should not his companion do as much? Did not the dying man and his witness feel the same need to bring God into their last moment together?

“Come closer,” said the Rebbe.

I was standing right at his bedside. Did he not see me? Or did he mean something else? Was I to interpret his command as purely symbolic? Perhaps mystical?
“Ta khazzi”
—“Come look”—is an invitation that is often found in the Zohar, the Book of Splendor. Was he preparing to give me his secret as testament?

And I, to whom would I leave mine? When I die, I thought, I will leave nothing behind, no trace of me on this earth. My daughters? If they had given birth in their turn, surely that too put me even further out of their thoughts. Why had I never told Rebbe Zusya about this? He whose vision encompassed the universe might at least have been able to tell me where they were living.

I remained silent. Was the Rebbe expecting me to question him? I felt vaguely disappointed. I was hoping for a revelation, perhaps about Esther. I had never forgotten Esther; I never would. Even when I’d loved Eve, and I’d loved her with all my heart, Esther had been strangely present in my love. Esther was beginning and promise; Eve was parting and loss. Should I speak of it to the Rebbe now? I wondered. It would be my last chance. There would surely be no more, for old Rebbe Zusya, descendant of the great Master by the same name, a pillar of the Hasidic movement, was at death’s door.

I would have liked also to have told him more about Colette and our unhappy marriage. The Rebbe liked to quote the Talmud, which says all marriages are arranged by God. Then ours, stormy and ridden by our inner demons, had surely been a blunder on God’s part. I had mentioned it in an earlier discussion, no point bringing it up now. Besides, this was no time to make the dying old Master unhappy.

“Come closer,” he said in a suddenly feverish tone.

“I’m here right by you, Rebbe.”

I could draw no closer than I was to his bedside.

“Tell me the truth: You think I summoned you because I’m going to die, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Rebbe, that’s what I think.”

“Well, you’re mistaken. If I wanted to see you today, it was to talk about this heretic acquaintance of yours, Samaël. Are you still in touch with him?”

“No, Rebbe, I’ve completely lost track of him.”

“But you know how to reach him?”

“No, Rebbe, I don’t.”

The sick man was sweating. He closed his eyes and sighed. “Too bad. I want to see him, and I need to talk to him. It’s important. You must find him and bring him to me. Go, my son. May the Lord guide you to him. But watch out: Don’t let him involve you in any long conversation, or you may be lost. Just tell him that you have a message for him: I wish to speak with him. That’s all. Do you understand me?”

Rebbe Zusya sat up to extend his hand to me. To bid me farewell? Perhaps to bless me?

“Know this, my son: I will go on fighting. I will fight to my last breath, to the end and far beyond.”

Exhausted, his eyes closed and his head fell back on the pillow.

I backed out of the room.

AFTER HIS ENCOUNTER WITH THE REBBE, GAMALIEL spent long hours reflecting on the subject of lies. The word buzzed around in his head like a bee trapped in a bottle.

Gamaliel knew that Samaël’s lies carried deadly poison. But what about his own lies? Wasn’t his whole life a series of deceptions? He had married Colette without truly loving her. He had not invested enough energy and determination in restoring his relationship with his two daughters. He had to admit that Esther had vanished from his life because he lacked the strength and intelligence to hold on to her. As for his work—all those pages filled with symbols, those ideas, those plots, those conflicts that he invented and that others appropriated—was this not still another perversion of the truth? And in that case, what was the difference between him and Samaël? Was it conceivable that a Samaël exists in each human being, and therefore in himself, too? But then how could he destroy that Samaël in himself without dying in the act? Paritus the One-Eyed, in his earliest text, wrote that life consists of nothing but appearances, temporary interchangeable illusions; only death is real.

Gamaliel told himself that one day, God willing, he would revise Calderón’s play
La vida es sueño
—life is not just a dream. If a dream is a lie, then is life a lie? he wondered. But what does that make death? The truth, reality, perhaps the only one? Unless there are many realities? Mine is not necessarily Bolek’s, which, in turn, isn’t Diego’s. Rebbe Zusya himself recognized how difficult it is to distinguish what is true from what is not. So my truth could be Samaël’s lie. God alone knows how to quarantine one and liberate the other, even though the truth is fleeting, as is everything that concerns human beings. A great Hasidic Sage wrote that even the Just have different time spans during which their spiritual qualities are manifest: Some are just throughout their lives, others for only an hour. Is that how it is for truth and those in whom it reveals itself?

One day . . . but when? Gamaliel at times was painfully aware of his age. Once past sixty, the knees gave way more easily; the back was stooped. The body that had once been a source of surprise and pleasure now threatened to become his fearsome, invincible enemy, receptacle of a life that was proceeding inexorably toward its end. Philosophers say that the meaning of life is life itself, he mused. Preachers go further, saying that to be true to himself, man must transcend that self. But how can I achieve that? Doesn’t going beyond mean going against oneself? God is capable of that, but is man?

Inevitably, Gamaliel found himself thinking about death, more specifically his own. He didn’t fear death itself; its approach was what distressed him. Bearing the burden of his years. Growing old too fast. Sickness, debilitating disease, his powers ebbing. Decrepitude. Fading intelligence. The slow, implacable loss of dignity, then of memory. Words getting confused and sticking in the throat. Awkward, clumsy gestures. Always dropping things. If he could choose, he knew that he would prefer a quick, unexpected stroke of the sword from the Angel of Death. This in the ancient texts is called
Mitat neshika,
the kiss of God. Thus did Moses die: God kissed him on the mouth and received his last sigh.

But that was Moses, the only prophet to speak to the Lord face-to-face. No one else could claim to have changed the course of History by teaching a system of ethics that would endure as long as human awareness. What trace would he, Gamaliel, leave behind? He thought bitterly that with his daughters gone, his line would end with his death. He regretted to the point of despair that he had not married Esther or Eve. Sometimes he would imagine the son one of them could have given him. Once, he’d made the mistake of speaking of it to Eve.

“You’re beautiful, but pregnant you’d be still more beautiful. Did you know that according to Jewish tradition we must show our respect to any pregnant woman by giving her our seat? Normal courtesy, you’d say? No, Eve. I must stand for a pregnant woman because—who knows?—she may be carrying the Messiah in her belly.”

Eve had flared up. “The Messiah in my belly? Please, stop talking nonsense!”

“That’s not what I meant to say. . . .”

He’d wanted to explain that he would have loved her as the mother of his son, but Eve’s offended expression told him he would do better to hold his tongue.

Nonetheless, he often dreamed of a child to whom he would leave his name and his memories, since that was all he possessed. Now it was too late. At his death, all he had been would be buried with him.

Like the old woman in the hospital?

11

THIS UNKNOWN WOMAN HAUNTS ME. WHO IS SHE? How much does she know about her condition? This will be the third time I’ve come to see her. It’s late; night is falling, sooner than I’d expected. Usually, I interrupt my work or my reading to greet the twilight, so moved am I by its solemn or shining beauty. Not this evening. It is heavy, pallid, hostile.

I no longer need anyone to show me to the patient’s room. Here is the garden, with its formal paths. Hanging over it are dark gray clouds. The trees look as if they’re girding themselves to ward off an attacker.

Here is the building, the ward. A wan, almost dusty light accentuates the shadows on the walls. A glance at her bed and I start: The bed is empty. I’m about to panic. Is she . . . dead? Away for some emergency treatment? No, there she is, sitting crouched on the floor, hair undone, staring emptily into space. Who helped her out of bed? I go to her, kneel to speak to her, without knowing what to say. Does she hear me? I doubt it. She seems even further away in her thoughts than she did earlier. If only I could see what she sees, touch what she touches, feel what she feels. If only I could go with her, follow her, keep her company. I am ever more certain that she could answer many of my questions. But I don’t know which to ask, nor how to frame them—and that, too, is part of the mystery that draws me to the old Hungarian woman even as her muteness keeps me far from her. A harsh voice rouses me from my reverie. “What are you doing here?”

A nurse. I hadn’t heard her come in. She seems sure of her power and of my culpability. “Who gave you permission to enter? And to move the patient? Who gave you the right to disturb her?”

I get to my feet and start to say, “Excuse me, but—”

She doesn’t let me finish. “Do you know her?”

“That’s just it: I don’t know her, but—”

“But what?”

She towers over me. Strangely, her face is not as severe as her voice. I hardly know what to say. I’m rescued by the doctor’s arrival. She doesn’t seem surprised to find me there, nor to see the patient sitting on the floor. To the nurse, she says calmly, “That’s all, Marie. Everything’s all right. I’ll take care of it. Let’s get her back in bed.”

I make a move to help, but one look from the nurse stops me. The patient, back in bed, opens her mouth as if to cry out, then immediately closes it. The doctor draws the covers over her with hands that are confident but gentle, while murmuring, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here. There’s nothing to fear.”

Again the patient opens her mouth but does not speak.

In the hall, I ask the doctor, “Why do you think she’s afraid?”

“Because she knows.”

“She knows what?”

“That she’s going to cross the threshold.”

“She told you that?”

“I know it without her telling me. It’s my job to know.”

We walk out to the garden. Night has fallen. Seated on the same bench as before, we look up at the stormy sky. It’s going to rain.

“Why did you come back here? It’s quite unusual for someone to visit a patient he doesn’t know three times in a single day.”

“Indeed. But there are moments when I have this curious, almost painful feeling that she isn’t a stranger to me.”

“You think you met her before?”

I look at the doctor in the shadowy light. Does she think I might once have had an affair with this woman? Might she be right? Anxiously, I search my memory. I haven’t had many women. One-night stands, yes, quickly entered into and even more quickly, by mutual consent, forgotten. One night in Brussels, I was initiated into novel byways of love by a tourist who was several years older than I. Her name? She refused to tell me, saying only, “Just call me Désirée.” Désirée vanished the next day. A journalist, in a hotel somewhere east of Suez, while we were making love, kept asking me about celebrities featured on page one in the newspapers. She left on assignment that same day. Which among them might have ended up in this hospital? None of them spoke Hungarian. So then, who is this old woman? What part might she have played in my life? Meanwhile, the doctor was evidently mulling over the same questions.

“The first time I saw you with her,” she said, “I had a sense that you knew her.”

“So did I.”

“You have to admit it’s bizarre.”

“I still have that feeling.”

“You’ll have to search your memory.”

“I am searching.”

“Would you like me to help? I’m a psychiatrist, after all.”

“I don’t know where to begin. Her face is disfigured, her memory is gone, and she’s oblivious to what’s around her. How, therefore, am I to find the clues that will lead my thoughts to a known place?”

“Yet, from a strictly medical viewpoint, there’s no indication of mental illness. No senility or Parkinson’s. It was her body that was so injured. You must have been told about it.”

“No, they just said it was an accident.”

“Yes, an automobile accident.”

Again I notice, as I did earlier in the day, that there is something poignant, something attractive, in the solemnity with which this woman expresses herself. Yes, if I were younger, I’d know what to say to her. Indeed, the next novel I sell to Georges Lebrun could be about the many challenges an old man faces; about all the ways he is doomed to failure. I would rage against his inevitable defeats: all those women he will no longer be able to seduce; all the voyages he will no longer undertake; all these projects that will fail or be abandoned. I’d recount his sterile dreams, the ways he’s found wanting, his complexes—in a word, his impotence. The famous French novelist would know how to make it a best seller. But where would I find the time for it?

“And you?” the doctor asks me. “What are you afraid of?”

“Who says I’m afraid?”

“Again, it’s my job to know such things.”

“I’m not your patient.”

“That doesn’t keep me from noticing,” she says, then adds after a moment’s silence, “and wanting to help you.”

The first raindrops fall, heralding the storm.

“I fear for the woman up there,” I say.

“Is that all?”

“No. I’m also afraid of her.”

“Although you don’t even know her?”

“Maybe I knew her. And maybe she knows things about me that I myself don’t know. Things about me or that concern me. That’s what scares . . . but . . . that’s not all.”

“What else is there? Go ahead. You can trust me.”

“I’m also afraid of you.”

“Of me? Afraid of me? How can I be a menace to you?”

“You threaten my freedom.”

She smiles, and I like her smile. “I take that as a compliment. Am I mistaken?”

“It’s a compliment.”

I take her hand; she does not withdraw it. I love the warmth that comes over me. At once I feel blessed.

“I want to ask something of you,” she says suddenly.

“Just say the word.”

“I’d like you to tell me another story.”

I look at her in surprise. Odd request, a story, at this time, when an old woman nearby is about to meet her death.

“How do you know that I like stories?”

“You tell them so well, and your life is full of stories. Besides, your being here is part of a story, isn’t it?”

“Would you prefer a beautiful story or a sad one?”

“Sad stories are the loveliest.”

I feel like saying, The stories that happen to us are sad, but what’s lovely about them? A woman—maybe it’s Ilonka—is going to die up there; isn’t her story enough for you? I close my eyes, as I always do when troubled by doubt, and once more I see my father leaning over my bed. I hear his grave voice saying, “Happiness is waiting for you in your dreams.” He wants to put me to sleep, but I stay awake because I want to know what happens next.

I owe my love of stories to my father. He used to say that a man without a story is poorer than the poorest of men. Ever since, when I meet anyone new, a foreigner, a madman, I want to ask him to tell me a story. Somewhere, I remember a beggar answering me by saying, “Congratulations. Do you know why God created us? So we could tell one another stories.” But suppose the beggar was wrong?

“Lili,” I say, “someone should write the story of a man who has no story. It has neither beginning nor end; it is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither sad nor joyful—it’s just empty. Empty of life? Inconceivable. Nothing ever happens? Impossible. Since this man does exist, Death is waiting for him, so he must have a story, even though it’s of no importance. It doesn’t matter whether or not he remembers it. Even if he forgets it all, he’ll have lived his life. But suppose his story is that of a life forgotten, lost on the byways of dreams void of hope? Oh well, maybe one day we’ll know it. But one day—when is that? That question is a story in itself. It’s neither new nor old. It’s just a story.”

Lili looks serious as she thinks over what she has just heard. She’s not satisfied. She still wants a story. But from what well of memory shall I draw it? This story, did I hear it from my father?

“This is what happened to Jeremy, an intelligent, sensible boy, maybe a bit precocious. He was convinced he could never break out of the silence that enveloped him inside and out. He first realized this when, at the fair, he saw a woman, young and sprightly, who was a member of a troupe of acrobats who flew through the air under the great tent like angels defying the laws of gravity. The children clung to their parents, ecstatic and terrified. The adults cried out joyfully each time the trapeze artist, about to fall to earth, at the last second would catch the hand or foot of her partner, who appeared out of nowhere.

“Jeremy, in his excitement, remembered what he had read in a book of ancient wisdom: Man must always think of himself, morally and mentally, as an acrobat. If he doesn’t pay attention, he’s likely to fall to the ground. But in another volume, or another dream, Jeremy learned a different lesson drawn from the same acrobats: Remember that your life depends on others. If one of them is absentminded, it is you who will die.

“The acrobats stayed in town for a full week. They gave two shows a day. Jeremy went a second time, to their last performance. Again, the spectators cried out, but this time in horror. Whether due to an instant’s loss of concentration or a stroke of fate, the young woman reached out too early or too late. She fell from very high up. A moment later, her slender body was writhing in agony down below.

“She didn’t die right away. Nurses and doctors took her to a hospital. Jeremy was near the exit. He got a good look at her bloody face, and he heard her last words: ‘We die alone.’ ”

I fall silent. The story is my father’s, but the words are not. And now I clearly remember that his story ended differently. The young acrobat did not die.

“That’s it,” I say. “The end.”

“That’s not it.” She looks at me stubbornly. “Perhaps it’s over for my dying patient, but not for . . .” She pauses. I search her face for the words she dares not say. “You’re not an acrobat,” she resumes. “Nor am I.”

I want to tell her that we’re all more or less acrobats, each in our own way, but it’s begun to rain. The doctor gets to her feet.

“Let’s go in to the patient. Since she has spoken occasionally, perhaps she will be able to satisfy our curiosity. I told you: Here, for better or for worse, all things are possible.”

A voice inside me says: Not everything is possible, even here.

SUPPOSE IT REALLY IS ILONKA?

The thought cuts me like a knife. Perhaps fate isn’t blind after all. Perhaps it’s capable of fantasy, even compassion. Don’t all these chance encounters prove its good intentions, its determination to accomplish what cannot be imagined? Ilonka here, unknown and unknowable, in this hospital ward? It would be against all the odds. It’s a long way to go, this exile’s route from a Budapest apartment to a New York hospital. And yet, anything can happen. Even in the white immensity of the Siberian Gulag, couples who had been separated would glimpse each other when two trains halted; friends would meet while being transferred from one prison to another. Twenty, even fifty years after the most cruel of wars, friends and relatives who had survived Auschwitz or Treblinka found one another in Europe, in Israel, in America. Is the moment now propitious for the unfortunate victims of fate and the madness of man? On occasion, events lose their way, make no sense, contradict themselves. The great Israeli writer Samuel Joseph Agnon quotes a passage in the Sephardic Kabbalah. According to this passage, History sometimes goes insane: Then a day will last a month, a month a day or just an hour. . . . Is destiny toying with Ilonka? And has she found a way to triumph over madness? The doctor is speaking; I’m listening with half an ear. Should I tell her what I’ve discovered? She wouldn’t understand. Did I say
discovered
? To tell the truth, that was the wrong word to use. As I think it over, I realize that on my first visit this morning, I imagined I would see the beautiful singer who saved my life. Somewhere inside me I’ve kept on anticipating it. A small voice within me keeps badgering me: If fate has brought you here, to this land so far from your own, it’s because it insists on reuniting you with the woman to whom you owe your life.

Ilonka, marvelous Ilonka. I owe her everything. I think of her more often than I do of my mother. Thinking of my mother would be too painful. Afraid of imagining her in that cattle car, then at Birkenau. Afraid of seeing her last moments. I prefer to remember Ilonka. I had assumed she was dead. Otherwise, why did she never answer my letters from Paris and New York? If it’s really she, I’ll ask her. She’ll answer me with a smile or a nod. What matters is that she be able to see me and touch me and feel me. The rest will follow. She will get well. We’ll spend our days and nights reminiscing.

Memories are flooding in.

JANUARY 1945. BUDAPEST LIBERATED AT LAST. THE siege is over. The guns are silent. The old capital city, once so proud of its bridges, its buildings, its boulevards, lies in ruins. Gone are the Nyilas, the collaborators, the militia. Few buildings are undamaged. Drunk with victory, Russian soldiers wander the deserted streets arm in arm, drinking and singing. Tomorrow, they may be corpses in the snow in Poland or Germany. Local people, especially the women, hide from them. Ilonka holds me close. “What’s to become of us, my precious?” She’s afraid, and I don’t understand why. “But for us the war’s over, isn’t it?” I ask. She rocks me in her arms; her tenderness makes me want to cry. “The nightmare is over, but the war is not,” she says. Her hair hangs down limply, she looks old and sick. “I’m not beautiful to look at,” she tells me. “Isn’t it true that I’m not beautiful? Aren’t I ugly as sin?” I embrace her and protest. “You’re beautiful, Ilonka. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” She explains that right now it’s dangerous for a woman to be beautiful. The soldiers of the Red Army don’t behave well with women; it’s better to look old and ugly and repulsive. “You could never be repulsive,” I tell her. “Not for you, my boy, but for them.” “But they’re our friends,” I say. “They drove out the Germans and their collaborators. Jews no longer have to be afraid to say they’re Jewish. Why are you afraid of these good Russian soldiers?” Ilonka tries to smile. She says, “But I’m not a Jew.” “Don’t be afraid,” I whisper in her ear. “I’ll protect you, you’ll see.”