All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [205]
The day before I had left New York, I had received a cryptic telegram from the NBC director, Martin Hoade, who was already in Sighet with his crew: “We’ve been lucky enough to find your Moshe. He will participate in the broadcast.” Marion and I read and reread that telegram, telling ourselves that surely Martin had lost his mind. Didn’t he know that “my” Moshe—the man I speak of in my writings, Moshe the beadle, also known as Moshe the madman, who returned from “there” to warn us of disasters to come—couldn’t possibly be alive? I had seen him depart with the first convoy. Was it possible he had survived and returned to Sighet? I rushed to the phone. Of course, it was impossible to get through to Sighet, but suddenly I could think of nothing but Moshe, the first of the Sighet Jews to have seen death at work in Kolomyya and Kamenets-Podolski.
When we landed at the Baia-Mare airport, I grabbed Martin before even saying hello. “What about Moshe? Is it true he’s still alive?” Martin’s reply was reassuring: “I guarantee it. I saw him just yesterday.” As we were driven to Sighet over terrible mountain roads, I bombarded Martin with questions: Where did you find him? Where is he now? What does he look like? In what language did he speak to you? Martin was evasive and I presumed that he was trying to maintain the suspense to make our reunion as dramatic as possible. My disappointment was all the greater. The man had the same first name and the same past—common to all of us—but he was not “my” Moshe. No matter, I liked him anyway. Like all my favorite characters, he seemed out of place. Dressed in the manner of Hasidim of long ago, he was the very last Hasid of Sighet and its environs. He had a white beard, deep blue eyes, a wonderfully kind face, a childlike smile. Rembrandt would gladly have painted his portrait. After we had shaken hands, I asked him what he was doing in this godforsaken town, and he replied that he was the region’s shokhet, or ritual slaughterer. Martin was not disappointed. But he postponed the shoot until the following day. He wanted to film us in the context of two survivors from the same town exchanging memories and impressions. In the meantime, I chatted with Moshe. He lived alone, in a tiny, airless hut he had to crawl into on all fours. “Like a dog,” he told me, never having heard of Kafka and unaware that he was echoing one Joseph K. But he did not complain, for he felt he had a mission. There were still Jews in Sighet and its surroundings who kept kosher and therefore needed him. How many were there? A few in Sighet, two or three in this village, three or four in that village. “How many doesn’t matter,” Moshe said. “Without me they wouldn’t be able to eat meat on Shabbat.” Late that evening, before returning to my hotel, I asked him if he needed anything. He smiled. “Me? I don’t need anything. But there is something.… The community is suffering. We have only one synagogue still open here. Maybe you could help us repair the roof.… It leaks.…” I offered him money, but he refused. It was illegal to take money from a foreigner. Then I had another idea. On camera, during our filmed conversation, I would ask him to tell me his greatest wish, and he would reply that the synagogue roof badly needed repairs. I felt confident that after such public exposure the authorities would take care of the problem. Moshe agreed. We rehearsed my question and his reply, and he asked me, incredulously, “Do you really think …?” I told him I could guarantee it. The roof would soon be repaired.
I slept fitfully, assailed by my usual entourage of ghosts, who dragged me to the cemetery, where we gathered at the grave of my grandfather whose name I bear. But that’s another story.
The next day Moshe and I met for the filming. There was an