All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [182]
The next day people recognized me in the street. They didn’t know who I was or what I had written, just that I had been interviewed on the small screen by one of its stars. I didn’t have the impression that La Nuit was selling well, but it was being talked about here and there.
They say Borges insisted on writing personal thank-you notes to everyone who bought his first book. I might well have done the same.
An anecdote for writers just starting out. Franz Kafka was ill and decided to recuperate in Marienbad. “Your name seems familiar to me,” the innkeeper said, glancing at the registration card.
“Impossible,” Kafka replied. “I’ve never been here before.”
He took his valise and went up to his room to rest. He had barely dozed off when someone knocked softly at the door. It was the innkeeper. “Excuse me for disturbing you, but I have a question: Are you a writer?”
Astonished, Kafka replied, “Not really. Why do you ask?”
“Because my son says you are.”
“Tell him he’s made a mistake.”
The innkeeper left, and Kafka tried to go back to sleep. He was awakened again. “It’s my son,” the innkeeper said. “He claims you’re a very great writer. He wants to meet you. It’s important to him. If you want to get some rest, you’d better say yes and get it over with.”
Reluctantly, Kafka agreed, and the innkeeper went to fetch his son. The young man could only stammer, “What an honor, what a pleasure!”
“But why?” Kafka asked.
“Because … because … you’re Kafka.”
“So?”
“So? Mr. Kafka, don’t you realize who you are? You’re a great writer, the writer I admire most in the world.”
“Have you read anything of mine?”
“Of course. Your work changed my life.”
“Which work?”
“Metamorphosis.”
“You read it?”
“Of course I did. I read it and reread it.”
“Where did you find it?”
“What do you mean, where did I find it? I bought it.”
“So you’re the one!” Kafka exclaimed.
Despite the praise I received as the author of a first book, I felt a gnawing doubt. I wondered if I had said what needed to be said in the way it needed to be said. The more enthusiastic the reviews, the more anxious I became. In the end I decided that if people liked what I had written they had not understood. Testimony like mine should have aroused anger.
Around the same time, in the spring of 1958, Bea happened to be in London, where an acquaintance of hers was gravely ill. All his friends had gathered at his bedside. Dreaming of a reunion with both my sisters, I invited Bea to Paris, but she phoned to suggest I come to London instead. She was engaged to be married. I assumed she was about to marry the dying man, and exclaimed, “Are you mad?” (I had never stopped urging her—affectionately—to find a husband.) She hastened to reassure me: It was the doctor, not the patient, whom she planned to marry. I caught the first plane to London, where I had dinner with her and her fiancé, Dr. Leonard Jackson. Bea seemed so happy that on a sudden impulse I took off my watch and gave it to my future brother-in-law as an engagement present. Later Bea and her husband settled in Montreal, where they lived happily with their two children, until the day it was discovered that she had lung cancer.
In the United States someone else had come into my life. Georges Borchardt, a New York literary agent whose reputation was on the rise, was desperately seeking an American publisher for my little book. Georges is a former teacher of French origin. He is a man of keen intelligence, deceptively cynical and sincerely skeptical, and, fortunately for his clients, totally discreet and reliable. To have him as an agent is lucky, to have him as