All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [67]
As I sat there on the train, someone suddenly spoke to me in Yiddish in a hoarse, raspy voice. It was the man I had seen at Aya Samuel’s in Lyons. He was slovenly, and his ridiculous tiny hat and dusty glasses made him more than a little conspicuous. “Come over here,” he said, looking at me. “There’s room.” When I didn’t move, he came and sat down next to me. “What are you reading?” he asked, as if we had known each other for years. Without waiting for an answer, he took the book out of my hands, glanced at the cover, flipped through the pages, and handed it back to me: “The only thing of value here,” he said matter-of-factly, “is an innovative commentary on the fifth verse of the fifth chapter.” Then he asked me why I was carrying Job around. “Because,” I stammered, “I have to give a talk about it tomorrow.”
“Oh, you’re teaching Job? You?”
“I’m just supposed to talk about it a little,” I said, lowering my head.
He asked me—was there a hint of sarcasm in his voice?—whether I knew the subject. Yes, I said nervously, but not that well.… “But you’ve studied it closely?” Well, maybe not closely enough. “In other words, you’re going to teach without having studied.” I was silent. “You probably figure you know enough to impress your audience, right? Or at least enough to have the right to discuss the subject, yes?” I couldn’t think of an answer so I said nothing, but he kept at me until I stammered a few words about the value of dialogue, silence, and the theme of friendship, and the power of Satan. Which was pretty much all I knew. He then proceeded to prove that I had understood nothing whatever about the marvelous Book of Job. In fact, I couldn’t even translate the very first verse to his standard. And if I was arrogant enough to believe that this was the only subject about which I knew nothing, I was sadly mistaken, as he now proved by subjecting me to a veritable examination strewn with traps and trick questions. It was clear I was an insolent ignoramus of the worst order. “And,” Shushani concluded, “you have the chutzpah to give a speech on Job in public?” All right, enough of that, I thought. I was eager for this ordeal to end. The train moved with agonizing lethargy, but to my relief we finally arrived in Taverny, where I could take leave of his sarcasm. I got up, shook his hand, and politely wished him a good Shabbat. “What do you mean, a good Shabbat?” he said. “We’re not done yet. I’m coming with you.”
That Shabbat is engraved in my memory like a punishment. No one had invited Shushani, and I wondered whether the sole purpose of his gate-crashing was to ruin my talk. That was his method. He liked to demolish before rebuilding, to abase before offering recompense.
I trembled as I began my presentation. Ish haya be’eretz Utz…. “There was a man in the land of Uz.…” A perfect and upright father, charitable and generous. Almost a tzaddik, a man so good that Satan was jealous of him.… Supreme injustice: Job suffers without having sinned, and God goes along with the game.… Job as a living example of the problem of theodicy.… My classmates paid no attention to the strange-looking man who had come for the talk and the meal but not for the service. Ensconced in a corner, he seemed to have dozed off. I half expected him to interrupt me, but he was charitable enough to let me finish in peace. He didn’t speak during the discussion either, but an ironic smile fluttered on his lips.
It was during the traditional third meal of Shabbat, late in the afternoon, as dusk gathered, that the thunderbolt fell upon the assembly. Breaking the silence between two songs, he began to talk about the prayers composed in honor of the final hours of Shabbat.