All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [101]
The police and customs formalities were quick. Here no one was treated as an alien. Still, there was an assembly line of stamps, forms, and money-changing. People smiled and winked at me, not because I was a journalist but because I was a Jew, because we were all Jews. Immigration officials shook my hand and welcomed me. A disturbing thought crossed my mind: How could they be sure no spies had slipped in among all these immigrants from the four corners of the earth? Anyone could have told them any story; it was impossible to check. I made a mental note to look into it. In the meantime, I followed the immigrants to a reception center with the highly poetic name of Bat-Galim, “Daughter of Waves.”
Everyone in our group slept in the same tent, and—yes, there is a God—I was lying on a cot next to Inge, and all at once she reached out to me in the darkness. Truly, this was a land of miracles. Trembling, I took her hand in mine and held it for an eternity; perhaps an entire minute. Was this why I had come to Israel? To find out what it was to hold a delicate, sweet, and open hand, a feminine hand?
I grew up in a tradition that denies chance. Though not everything is predetermined, everything is linked. Nikos Kazantzakis once said, citing an Etruscan proverb: “It is not because two clouds are joined that the spark ignites; two clouds are joined so that the spark may ignite.” Yet, free will and the possibility of choice exist. Rabbi Akiba tells us that all is foreseen, though human beings have free choice.
Holding Inge’s hand in mine, I was free to keep it or to let it go, to kiss it or caress it, to let my own hand wander. Would I dare? Yes, I would. I felt her breast, and the blood rushed faster in my veins. Then I stopped, perhaps out of modesty, or out of fear. Looking back, I think of what Oscar Wilde said: Our greatest regrets are for the sins we didn’t commit. I had made a fool of myself in Inge’s eyes, and now she proved it to me, sighing and withdrawing her hand. Feeling mutilated and empty, I could not fall asleep.
The next morning I couldn’t face her and promised myself that the next night would be different. But there was no next night. Someone came to pick her up and take her to a kibbutz. She never even said goodbye, and for the first time since Écouis I forgot to say my prayers before breakfast, not even realizing it until nightfall, by which time it was too late to put on the tefillin. Yet the sky did not split; no bolt of lightning struck me. But it happened in Israel.
A few days later I left Bat-Galim, having gathered enough material to write my first article on the immigrants’ arrival. I went to Tel Aviv to register with the foreign press service at the Kete Dan Hotel, but first I took a walk along the shore, and suddenly I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. Aground off the coast lay a hulking wreck: all that remained of the Altalena. Someone had written in gigantic white letters on its blackened flank: “Herut, you will end like the Altalena.” Why had that relic of a shameful episode not been erased? Herut, after all, was a democratically constituted, legal party. Why call for its doom?
I introduced myself to the officer in charge of press relations and was issued a “foreign correspondent” card, which, I admit, impressed me. The provisional government of Israel, no less, requested that civil and military authorities aid and support me in the performance of my duties. The young state was eager to please. All doors