All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [2]
If only I could hold my memory open, drive it beyond the horizon, keep it alive even after my death.
I know it isn’t possible. But what of it? In my dreams the impossible is not a Jewish concept.
My father enjoyed considerable renown in the community. To this day old men stop me on a street in Brooklyn, or on the Rue des Rosiers in Paris, and ask, “Aren’t you the son of Reb Shloime Wiesel?” And I feel proud, delighted to be known as his son, for it means I come from somewhere and that while I am but a branch, the trunk is sturdy, and the treetop stirs the clouds.
My father was famous for his intelligence, his perspicacity, and his kindness. People turned to him for advice. Patient and tolerant, he would see anyone, for any reason, listening with the same attentiveness to rich and poor, friend or stranger. His views mattered, his advice was invariably followed. I was not surprised that he was so sought after, but I never understood fully why he had time for everyone but me. Why did he seem so lost in thought when I spoke to him? Why were his answers so brief? How I wish he had told me of his own childhood, of his studies and experiences. How had he behaved at heder (elementary Hebrew school)? Had he been dutiful or headstrong? Who had been his friends? What games had they played? What about his father, whose name I bear? My paternal grandmother talked of him often, and always with a smile. But that wasn’t the same.
I can see Grandma Nissel now, with her pale, thin face, framed by the black scarf she never seemed to take off. And her eyes, I remember her eyes. When she gazed at me, she must have seen another Eliezer. To smile at me was to smile at him.
Friday was our special time. I would stop and see her on the way home from heder. “Eliezer, my boy, come, I’m waiting for you!” she would call out from her window. She would give me fresh buns from the oven and sit and watch fondly, her hands folded, happy and at peace, a glimmer in her blue-gray eyes, as I washed and recited the appropriate prayer. It was as though she wanted to say something, to ask me something, but never quite managed it. She was probably like that with her husband too: humble, respectful, always ready to receive his words as an offering. Strangely, her silence never troubled me. I would look at her as I ate and, fifteen minutes later, I would get up. “I have to go home and get ready, Grandma. Shabbat will be here any minute now.” But then, when I was already at the door, she would call me back. “Tell me what you learned this week.” It was part of the ritual. I would share a Bible story or, later, an insight of the Midrash (commentary on the Bible text). Once, I remember, I made her laugh. I was a little boy and had just learned that Moses fled out of Egypt. “Grandma,” I exclaimed, “I have great news for you. Moses is alive! Wicked Pharaoh couldn’t kill him. He’s going to get married, our Master Moses, and you know to whom? To Zipporah, the daughter of a priest called Jethro …”
Grandma Nissel lived alone in her widow’s house, just a few steps from ours, though she certainly could have moved in with us. We adored her, our only grandmother, and she knew it.
On market days she helped out at the store. I can see her now, sitting motionless at the till, her lips sealed, giving change to peasants in vests and striped skirts of garish colors. But in the evening she went home to her own house, not wanting to be a burden. Maybe she was trying not to show favoritism toward any of her children. My father was the oldest, but she was just as close to my Uncle Mendel, who had a modest grocery store on the other side of town. I also had two aunts in Czechoslovakia: Aunt Idiss in Slotvino and Aunt Giza (whom we considered the more beautiful, since she used to bring us presents) in Ungvár. Aunt Giza survived deportation. When I saw her again in Israel in