All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [73]
I did not stay long at Maimonides. The OSE offered me the chance to move into a small studio in the Latin Quarter. A friend from Écouis, a few years older than I, had enrolled in the Sorbonne and did his best to teach me the facts of life. He introduced me to a young and pretty maid who was prepared to take charge of my apprenticeship, but after just a few days I decided to go back to Versailles.
Kalman, Nicolas, Binem, and I were among the “grown-ups” at Our Place. Nicolas dreamed of putting together a literary review; Kalman was about to set out for Palestine aboard the Exodus, Binem was on his way to an internship with Henri Milstein, a choir conductor in Moissac, site of another children’s home. As for me, I had all I could handle with Shushani for the Talmud and François for French. But I did find the time to organize a choir with the assistance of Israel Adler, a Palestinian emissary of the Jewish Agency. My childhood violin lessons proved useful, my participation in the Sighet synagogue choir even more so.
My choir attracted quite a few people. The most beautiful girls in the home joined, and suddenly I had more boys than I needed. Some of them sang off-key but insisted on taking part anyway. Just because God gave them thin voices and tin ears, why should they be denied the right to sing? One of them, Nicolas, put forward a more elegant argument: He was hopelessly in love with Myriam, a superb blond choir member, who did not reciprocate his affection. If only I would let him in the choir, he would have a chance of winning her over. “But you sing completely out of tune,” I told him. He replied that he would make the effort of his life, that he would learn. “Learn what?” I countered. “It isn’t something you can learn.” But he was so crestfallen that I gave in, on one condition: that he not sing but only move his lips. He promised but occasionally got carried away and forgot, which was near-catastrophe. But he and Myriam saw each other often, and finally the god of love smiled upon them. Strangely, the boy stopped singing off-key.
As choir conductor I was stupidly and inexcusably severe, doing all I could to appear authoritarian, aggressive, and domineering. The reason was that I was, in fact, painfully shy. If one of the female singers cast a knowing glance in my direction, I lost my composure. If she smiled at me, my heart would pound as if in anticipation of committing a sin. I blushed when I spoke and when I was spoken to. So I raised my voice, striving to affect a stern expression and to project an image of irritability and inaccessibility. I lost my temper easily and reprimanded anyone guilty of the slightest infraction. I was even pleased to be considered harsh. If I aroused anger and hatred, so be it. Anything was preferable to unrequited love. For that’s what it was all about. I was convinced that no one I loved would love me back, that anyone I desired would reject me.
Three of the choir members troubled me especially: a brunette with a provocative laugh, a blonde with dreamy eyes, and someone I’ll call Hanna. Their mere presence made me lose control. Such was my nature: I dreamed of living on this unlivable earth neither poetically, like Hölderlin, nor piously, like my grandfather, but lovingly.
A need to love and be loved. It seems silly to admit it, but in those days I got crushes far too fast, on everyone at once and on one girl in particular. She was a soloist with an awful personality—Hanna. She was the daughter of an OSE administrator, a fact that embarrassed and annoyed her no end. Rather than assume a false identity, she insisted on being treated