All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [203]
Maria, the kitchen, the yard, Shabbat, heder, the landscape of my childhood—dream long enough and the dream becomes obsession. I related my return to Sighet in The Town Beyond the Wall. Except for the chapter on the childhood of Michael, the protagonist, this was a fictional work. When he goes home, he finds no one there. He opens the door of his father’s store and a stranger asks him what he wants. Candles, Michael replies, taken aback. Why candles? He doesn’t know. When the Communist police arrest him, they are intrigued by these candles. Inspectors slice them into pieces, certain they will find coded messages and microfilm inside. Disappointed, they torment the suspect. What did he mean to do with these candles? Why had he bought them? Michael has no idea what to say—for I didn’t know myself. I had made him buy candles without thinking about it, simply because he had to account for his presence in the store. I could have had him ask for buttons or scissors. And yet …
When I finally did return to Sighet, the cemetery was the first place I wanted to visit, to meditate at my grandfather’s grave. As is customary, I would have to light candles. I found a store and bought two candles. So it was that I had the feeling I was following a scenario written by someone who existed only in my imagination. Michael was my precursor, my scout. I followed his every step. I saw through his eyes, felt what he felt as I wandered the streets among passersby who didn’t recognize me or even glance at me, and as I entered my home, a stranger in my own house.
Though it hadn’t changed, I found it hard to orient myself in the little town. It seemed not to have endured a war. The streets were teeming with people. The park was as it had been, the trees and benches still in place. Everything was there. As before. Everything except the Jews. I looked all over for them, looked for the children whose joyous laughter once filtered through from the garden near my home, looked for the Talmudic students whose melodious chanting had always filled me with happiness and nostalgia. I looked for a sign of the exhausted porters who leaned against the wall at dusk to recite the minha prayer, and for the princes disguised as madmen. And I looked, too, for my comrades possessed of the messianic dream. But all were gone, swallowed by the night. Yes, they do live on—for a time—in the survivors’ memory. And then? Primo Levi may have been right: Perhaps they go on living in the memories of the dead.
I roamed the streets, stopped at the movie house, went to the hospital. No one paid attention to the prodigal returning home from afar. It was not only as though I didn’t exist, but as though I had never existed. Had there really been a time when Jews lived here?
Friends had given me the phone number of Leibi Bruckstein, a Communist Yiddish writer who lived on what used to be “my” street. I called him. He was afraid to see me alone. It was 1964, and the walls had ears. But we did manage to walk together for an hour or two. “I’m going to have to file a report,” he warned me. I understood his concern. My visit threatened to cause him trouble with the Securitate. He would have to be careful.
We walked around. Here was the house where my friend Dovid’l had lived, and there was Itzu’s, and further on Yiddele’s, whose grandfather I remembered well. He had been the dayan, or rabbinical judge, always elegant and pleasant. Across the street was a former House of Study. “Can I go in?” I asked. My companion hesitated, then nodded: “Yes, but it will be in my report.” I asked him, very softly, “How can you live like this?” He looked over his shoulder. No one was following us. “I would love to leave for Israel,” he whispered, “but it’s complicated. Asking for an exit visa makes you suspect. You instantly become isolated and targeted. And then, what would I do there? I’m too old to start from scratch.” I shuddered. My father had spoken