All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [114]
Dov, the Old Man’s nephew, was now in charge of all departments of the paper except the editorial page. He suggested I write a column entitled “Sparks from the City of Light.” I accepted immediately, not only for purely material reasons—I would now draw a monthly salary of twenty-five thousand francs, modest enough, but better than before—but also because I would at last be able to break out of the “ghetto” to which my newspaper had previously confined me. Twice a week I recounted amusing anecdotes, gossip, and stories from the world of arts and letters. I attended openings, but not receptions. I was invited to various performances, but not to banquets. Neither Yedioth Ahronoth nor its correspondent was important enough for that. I was refused an interview with the winner of the Prix Goncourt but was granted one with a novelist who had just been awarded a less august literary prize. I had a brief exchange with Louis Jouvet, whom I went to see in his dressing room after a performance of a play by Molière. “Monsieur Jouvet,” I asked, “what do you do when you’re not being Louis Jouvet?” His reply: “I call him to show you the door, young man.” I scoured the weeklies, looking for sensational reports. Dov was happy with the column, and so was I.
Mira Avrech, Israel’s most famous gossip columnist, later told me a secret that pleased me: When she was hired by the paper to write a column on society and politics, the Old Man recommended that she read my “Sparks” for inspiration. And so I found out that I had at least one reader in Israel.
I had one in France as well. Dana, an Israeli woman of Romanian origin, worked with my friend Shlomo Friedrich. She had many suitors, whom she attracted and discarded with great frequency. Hers was a quick and stinging intelligence, and she had lots of charm. I didn’t dare pursue her; it would have been hopeless. I was therefore content with her company. She had a bawdy sense of humor that would have made a regiment of soldiers blush. She had opinions on everything and hated being contradicted. I loved the fact that she enjoyed my articles and sometimes invited me to share her meals in a small restaurant near the Grands Boulevards. She was almost as broke as I was, but the “almost” made all the difference. She often acted as my banker, helping me make it to the next payday.
It was around that time that I saw Rachel Mintz again, the poet who had recited Yiddish verses for us in Écouis. She wanted to see me, and when I asked why, she told me it was “personal.”
She lived not far away, near the Place de la République, in a small, well-appointed apartment filled with books and flowers. There was a samovar on the table. As I looked at her, the thought crossed my mind that she must once have been very beautiful.
“I’ve been reading your articles,” she told me. “Some are good. You will be a writer. That’s why I phoned you.”
I waited to find out more about her intentions.
“I want to ask you a favor,” she continued. “But you have to promise me you’ll say yes.”
A strange request, but what did I have to lose? I replied with a phrase from the Book of Esther: “Ask for half my kingdom and it shall be yours.”
“This favor is rather more modest,” she said with a smile. “All I want is for you to listen to me, then write, and then publish. But not until after my death.”
My mind raced ahead while she stared at me calmly, waiting for my answer.
“Madame Mintz,” I said, “I promise you the second half of the kingdom.”
“Good,” she said. “Then listen …”
She began to tell me of her love affair with Nikos Kazantzakis in Berlin after the First World War, how they had met in an archaeological museum filled with Egyptian statues. “Nikos was convinced I was a reincarnation of Nefertiti,” Rachel said. “He thought I looked like her.”
It was she who introduced him to the Jewish tradition, teaching him to fast on Yom