All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [156]
At the end of my stay in Israel, Dov proposed that I leave Paris and go to New York, not just to write a few articles, but as a permanent correspondent. “That way Leah and I will be able to visit the United States,” he said with an impish smile. But I had no desire to leave France. I didn’t know anyone in America and wasn’t sure I could make enough money to get by there. Dov told me they would raise my salary to $160 a month. When I politely inquired whether he thought I could make ends meet on that, he replied, “No, but you can do what other people do.” I asked what other people did, and he said, “Make speeches.” That was a fine idea for someone who broke into a cold sweat whenever he had to open his mouth in public. “You’ll learn,” Dov said. I told myself he couldn’t be serious, but decided to wait and see.
When was it that I realized I was not in control of my destiny? It was by chance that I had survived, by chance that I had followed one road rather than another. It was by chance that I had become a journalist. Events unfolded outside me and beyond my will. Very often I simply let myself be carried along.
Back in Paris I began to prepare my move. I arranged for Shaike Ben Porat, a young Israeli intellectual who wrote for one of the ideological weeklies, to cover Paris in my absence. At Dov’s request I set up a whole network of European correspondents. In Geneva I appointed Edwin Eytan, a likable bon vivant who gave up his medical studies to assume the post. Alfred Wolfmann kept the position in Bonn, and Abraham Rosenthal his in London. They were all happy, and so was I. In my new capacity as chief foreign correspondent, I paid them visits, feeling not only useful and influential (with Dov) but also vaguely superior, though why or to whom I couldn’t say. I had never given anyone an order and wouldn’t have known how to.
In December I received from Buenos Aires the first copy of my Yiddish testimony “And the World Stayed Silent,” which I had finished on the boat to Brazil. The singer Yehudit Moretzka and her editor friend Mark Turkov had kept their word—except that they never did send back the manuscript. Israel Adler invited me to celebrate the event with a café-crème at the corner bistro. He was wearing my raincoat. Why? One day I had gone into a store to buy a bathing suit. They didn’t have my size, but since I was too shy to say no to the salesgirl, I had left with an ill-fitting raincoat. So I had passed it on to Adler, half-price. “Tonight,” he announced, “you’re coming with me to hear some Brazilian music.” I told him I couldn’t. I had an appointment with Amos K., a young, wooden-faced journalist who was for many years the enfant terrible of the Israeli press. I knew he wanted to see me because he was hoping I would intercede with Yehuda Mozes on his behalf. He wanted to write for Yedioth, but the Old Man wanted no part of him, for reasons both ideological and personal. “Bring him along,” Adler expansively suggested. Amos said he would come if there would be drinks.
A lover of food and drink, Amos was a tireless talker who became brilliant when drunk. But when he was sober, his smile was forced. In fact, everything about him seemed forced. He aroused discomfort the way some people spread warmth. That night he complained steadily about the service, the singer, the food, the drinks, even the cigarettes. By two in the morning he was not so much unpleasant as grim and incoherent. He was shouting obscenities at shuttered windows on a street behind the Boulevard Saint-Germain when suddenly he noticed