All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [157]
My intercession with the Old Man worked. He withdrew his veto against Amos, who then made a career at the paper that hadn’t wanted his byline. His pieces were original to the extent that they were hurtful. In Yedioth Ahronoth he wrote on Chinese cuisine, pornography (political and otherwise), abstract painting, the greatness of his friends (who feared him), the stupidity of his enemies (who were legion), the ambitions of leaders and the frustrations of their critics. He liked to hit, and he hit hard. As it happens, he was often right. But why did he detest all those who wrote about the Holocaust when he himself referred to it more frequently than they did?
Over the years he would drop in on me during his visits to New York, downing a bottle of whiskey while asking me to find him an American publisher. Once he mentioned in an article that he had never seen me laugh, and it’s true that in his company one really didn’t feel like it.
Later I will have occasion to come back to this eternal adolescent who aged so badly. Our paths have not crossed since 1986. My friendship with Israel Adler, on the other hand, has withstood time.
But let me return to the preparations for my trip to America. I planned to be away for only a year. That was what I told Shaike Ben Porat and Poliakoff, my actor friend. “Look at it this way,” I said, “our monthly will now have an office in the United States.” I promised to send them articles about Broadway. And, I promised, when I came back, everything would resume as before: I would resume my duties as Yedioth correspondent and editor in chief of Le Miroir du Théâtre. The Lenemans assured me that they would receive me again as a lodger; I could leave with peace of mind.
The night before my departure Amos and Israel insisted I join them in a café. As usual, Israel drank a little, Amos a lot. I knew that journalists should be able to tolerate whiskey and cognac, but I wasn’t much of a drinker. That night, however, I did drink a little, and for me a little was too much. When I got home, I felt so sick I vomited. I didn’t have the strength to get undressed. Through it all, my great worry was what the housekeeper would think when she came to make up my bed the next day.
In a flash of lucidity, I told myself this was my farewell to Europe.
NEW YORK
On the interminable El Al flight to New York I struck up a conversation with one S. L. Schneiderman, a journalist of Polish origin, who wrote for a Yiddish daily and worked part-time for the United Jewish Appeal. I asked him whether it was true that this philanthropic association organized lectures and paid the speakers. He said it was, and that he could introduce me to the right person. I phoned him from my hotel room, and he made an appointment for me with the secretary of the speakers’ bureau. I went there the same day, wondering whether Dov was right. The secretary’s secretary kept me waiting for an hour before agreeing to see me. She was in her forties, her hair was pulled back into a bun. From her piercing gaze I could see that she was used to refusing requests of all kinds.
She subjected me to a formal interrogation: age, profession, titles, personal tastes. “Schneiderman said you would like to speak in Yiddish about your experiences in the camps, is that right?” I hastened to correct her: I had no intention of dealing with that subject. “But Schneiderman said you wrote a book in Yiddish about the camps. Was that wrong?” No, it wasn’t wrong, but writing was one thing, speaking another. “I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re an author, aren’t you? Your work is autobiographical, isn’t it? You want