All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [64]
There was some good news: Niny was to accompany us to Ambloy, and two nice young women, Judith and Mireille, both observant, were put in charge of the new home.
It was an unforgettable summer. Vacation was in the air. Our counselors had no trouble getting the “children” to respect the community, and normal life began. Several minyanim gathered each morning, and study circles and sports clubs were formed. A group of religious Jewish intellectuals, Yeshurun, often came to spend Shabbat with us. Though I sat in on these highbrow meetings, I felt left out, since I couldn’t understand their French. Among the participants were Marc Breuer, son and grandson of rabbis; Théo Dreyfus, author of a work on the Maharal of Prague, later director of the Maimonides School before emigrating to Palestine; Benno Gross, another pupil of André Neher, who would later teach at Bar-Ilan University; and Lucien Lazare, who would write important works on the Jewish Resistance and Righteous Gentiles in France.
At night we lit campfires, which the romantic in me loved. They took me back to Fantana, the mountain village near Borsha where we used to spend our vacations. The crackling of the logs, the spray of the sparks, and the solemn, nostalgic songs made us feel close to one another. It was an atmosphere of healthy intimacy, a complete harmony of voice and silence, of the presence of the living and the dead, of memory and what it harbors. If the shadows were too close, they were not menacing. If the stars were too high or their light too cold, nothing frightened us—not so long as the flames bore our songs and voices to heaven. Little by little, cliques had formed. I spent a lot of time with Nicolas. Kalman, Binem, and I studied with Menashe, the most accomplished resident Talmudist. Kalman often surprised me with the rigor of his logic; it was clear that he would become a scientist.
Niny didn’t know it, but Kalman and I wrote impassioned, mediocre Yiddish poems to her glory. Our attraction to her, innocent and platonic as it was, seems natural to me today. We lived among boys, and were inevitably conquered by Niny’s affectionate, feminine presence. My heart pounded whenever she came within sight.
Judith and Mireille had fiancés and were therefore untouchable. But Niny was alone, and so theoretically open to being loved. Kalman loved her, and so did I. In fact, we all did, though none dared admit it, for we were so sincerely devoted to religious practice that we feared being lured into sin. What is sensuality, we reasoned, if not an invitation to physical pleasure? And what is physical pleasure if not the road to the forbidden and to eventual punishment?
Niny decided it would be instructive for us to meet some of the French “children” (sons and daughters of deportees) who lived in other OSE homes. She therefore invited Kalman and me, along with a third boy, Moshe Kunitz, who was from a village near Sighet, to spend a few days with her at a home called Les Hirondelles not far from Lyons. There I met André Neher, whose sister, Aya Samuel, was director of the home. I was immediately struck by his warmth and thoughtfulness, and by the depth of his knowledge. We conversed in Hebrew. Neher quoted the Midrash and Maimonides, while I simply listened, impressed by the clarity of his ideas. After morning Shabbat services I attended a lecture of his entitled “Transcendence and Immanence,” listening intently though failing to understand a word. Neher was kind enough to explain it to me that afternoon, as we walked in the garden. It was in part thanks to him that I turned to philosophy, and he remained a source of light and fervor to me. He introduced me to his future wife, Renée, whose charm and grace were equaled by her erudition and gifts as a historian. Our friendship ended only with his premature death in Jerusalem in 1988.
I also met a girl, Régine, dark-haired, shy, and sentimental. She played the piano. It was the first time I heard a piece