All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [166]
After a few days my curiosity revived. Colleagues kept me informed. There were even some funny moments. My battered, imprisoned body ached, and yet all the visitors who came to console me said the same thing: “You’re lucky, it could have been worse. You could have lost your sight, your legs, your mind.” It reminded me of the old joke about the man reciting a litany of woes to his friend—he has lost his job, his house, his money, his fiancée—and his friend keeps saying, “It could have been worse.” Finally the man screams, “How the hell could it be worse?” and his friend mutters, “It could have happened to me.”
Haim Isaac, correspondent for the Labor daily Davar, replaced me for daily dispatches, but I was afraid my readers would forget me. I therefore decided to resume working, dictating a first-person account of the accident, followed by several commentaries and background pieces. Dictation wasn’t easy for me. Dov congratulated me, though he may have been more impressed by my determination than by my writing. (He did say I deserved a Pulitzer Prize, but neither he nor anyone else at the paper ever mentioned the mounting doctor and hospital bills.)
In time my room became a meeting place. Of course, Bea and Aviva visited every day. Nurses came to watch baseball games. Before the television set was hooked up (more for them than for me), it had been impossible to get their attention; now they never left. Colleagues held consultations in my room instead of going to the press club at the UN. They talked politics and exchanged news and gossip. The number one subject was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the young Egyptian colonel who dared to defy Britain and France on Suez. The Security Council was virtually in permanent session. Israel was on the alert. Nasser got bad press in the West, but not in the Third World. The Muslim countries hailed him as a glorious hero destined to reconquer the former empire, a modern-day Saladin. Western reporters wondered whether he would be allowed to violate accords between Egypt and the European powers with impunity. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles counseled moderation and patience, Dag Hammarskjöld preached morality. A new war threatened to erupt. Suddenly the center of gravity for international news had shifted from Washington to the Middle East.
One morning I was visited by a lawyer who said he represented an insurance company. He had a proposition for me: If I signed a certain document, a simple piece of paper, he would hand me a quarter of a million dollars on the spot. I asked him to repeat what he had just said. The vastness of the sum made my head spin.
I was ready to sign that document and any others in his bulging briefcase. But my journalist friend Alexander Zauber screamed, “Are you crazy? Don’t sign anything!” I told him to think of the fortune involved. I would never make as much in twenty or a hundred years. He lost his temper: “You really want to let this crook ruin us? Tell him to get the hell out of here! I’ll get you a lawyer who defends victims instead of swindling them. You’re going to be a millionaire, I guarantee it!” How could I turn down such a treasure?
Zauber showed the insurance company’s emissary the door and phoned his lawyer. I was introduced to the supposedly eminent attorney that very afternoon. He seemed serious and professional, and he examined me as if he were a doctor. He also talked to Dr. Braunstein, who confirmed that I was