All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [181]
It was around that time that I returned to France to promote Night. Mauriac’s stirring preface, reprinted on the front page of Le Figaro Littéraire, attracted attention, and his praise for the book aroused the reviewers’ interest. The work was favorably received, though this kind of literature was not yet fashionable. Neophyte that I was, I read and reread every review and wanted to thank each critic individually. I tried hard not to let the praise go to my head. Mauriac, whom I visited the day I arrived in Paris, had his own way of immunizing me: “One day the critics make us pay for the joy they have given us.” Of course, he was right. That day, too, would come. The moment you achieve visibility, you become a target, and often there are more arrows than compliments. I still remember my first negative review: that day, like a child, I wanted to run from newsstand to newsstand to buy up all the copies of the misguided newspaper—and burn them.
I finally met Jérôme Lindon. In his unprepossessing office he explained his opposition to his government’s policy. He was fighting for an independent Algeria. To put me at ease he spoke of his family (his father had been a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials) and his childhood. He made me a present of his lovely translation and commentary on the Book of Jonah. In short, we had a good meeting. It was later, much later, that he adopted political positions that created a rift between us. His preface to the book Pour les Fédayin (For the PLO) hurt me and many of his friends, as did his virtually unconditional adherence to the Palestinian cause. But on a personal level, the contact between us was never severed.
I owe him my encounter with Samuel Beckett. One day he said, “He’d like to meet you.” I was thrilled at the prospect. We made an appointment at a restaurant, Chez Francis. As is my custom, I arrived half an hour early, taking a seat in the corner without noticing the elegant man seated across the terrace. An hour went by. I wondered if I had been told the wrong day or time. I looked at my watch, and that was when I saw him looking at his. Our eyes met, and we smiled at the same moment. I got up and went over to him. We shook hands. I sat down across from him and waited respectfully for him to initiate the conversation. He waited too. I don’t know how long the silence lasted, but I do remember it was he who broke it. Delicately, as if in a whisper, he began to talk—but not about himself or about me. The manuscript of Molloy had just been returned to him, and he realized that the epigraph had been omitted from the printed book. “It was a simple phrase: ‘in desperation.’” He fell silent again. We sat there for an hour, silent but not mute. We would see each other again, and he would speak to me of the tragic role of the witness.
In the 1960s Lindon sent me a message of friendship through Marguerite Duras, then in New York for a brief visit. She was already known, but not yet famous. I knew nothing about her except her connection to nouveau roman circles. I liked her book Un Barrage contre le pacifique, but didn’t know how to tell her.
We went for a walk in Central Park and along Fifth Avenue. I took her to the UN. She tried to get me to talk about my latest book, my work, and especially the experiences I had described in Night. But I was too bashful. We never saw each other again.
For the first time in my life, I was a beneficiary of the luminous