All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [185]
During one of his trips to Paris, Georges Borchardt happened to spend a morning at Éditions du Seuil, where Monique Nathan told him she had read Night. She asked whether I had written anything else, and Georges told her I had. In fact, he just happened to have the manuscript with him. He gave it to Monique, who withdrew to her small office to read it. Fortunately for both of us, it was not a long book. Georges was still talking to Paul Flamand when Monique came out to say she couldn’t understand why Jérôme Lindon had rejected it. Still, she refused to steal an author from a rival house, so she phoned Lindon to tell him she thought he was making a mistake. But Jérôme stuck to his decision and Monique kept the manuscript.
Paul Flamand, who ran the house, was not only a wise and daring publisher but also a superbly intelligent and sensitive humanist, a man of vast culture capable of guiding and enlightening an author without offending him. An hour in his office or two hours at a restaurant alone with him was worth a trip to France. He had a way of soothing the heart while arousing the mind. It was impossible not to grow attached to him. The contracts he sent Georges were unusual: he let us fill in the amount of the advance ourselves.
Delivering a manuscript to Paul was a ritual that never changed: He would touch it, caress it, sniff it, put it down and pick it up, flip through it. Finally, he would stuff it into the bulging briefcase he carried home. A day, a week, or six months later, over dinner, he might suddenly refer to the book’s theme, construction, and characters, each of which he had thoroughly analyzed. If he failed to understand an episode, he would gently try to show me that I hadn’t understood it well enough myself.
I loved our discussions. A devout but enlightened Catholic, he was interested in Jewish tradition and culture as a means of gaining greater insight into his own. I liked the way he asked questions or commented on an author or a text: He would draw you out tactfully, delicately, muttering something like “Well, well,” which would force you to go into even greater detail. You could never be superficial with him.
I remember the time we visited the cathedral of Chartres. No one could talk about it or view it as he did. He made the stones tell their stories.
I remember Marguerite Flamand, solemn and contemplative, expressing herself deliberately, covering the essential in just a few words; I remember her as her health declined, as she battled her illness with a stoic strength that accentuated her feminine grace.
I remember Paul, when asked about his wife’s health, opening and closing his mouth without uttering a sound.
“What’s wrong? You look terrible.” I was talking to Saul Friedlander. We had last seen each other at the home of a friend in Manhattan in 1958 or 1959. He was working for Nahum Goldmann. I had never seen him so depressed.
As we sat at an outdoor café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he took a Valium and told me his troubles. In the course of preparing his thesis on the diplomacy of the Third Reich, he had come upon sensational documents about Pope Pius XII’s policy toward Nazi Germany. He was putting together a book on the subject. I immediately understood what the problem was, for I had lived it: Publishers were no longer interested in that period. I promised I would speak to someone about it.
The next day I brought Saul to Le Seuil and introduced him to Paul Flamand. It was a turning point for Saul, the beginning of a career.
• • •
For ten years, until her premature death, Monique was in charge of my manuscripts. A Jewish convert to Catholicism, peerless reader and talented editor, extraordinarily demanding but never obstinate, she was cultivated, frank, and extremely witty. She was either for or against, all the way. Not for her the golden road