All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [87]
With François’s help I enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the Sorbonne. At last I found my vocation.
I have happy memories of my student years. There were lectures by Daniel Lagache in the Descartes or Richelieu amphitheater, and by Louis Lavelle at the Collège de France. I devoured books on philosophy and psychology, Plato’s dialogues, Freud’s analyses. I wandered from bookstore to bookstore, from park to park. I remember the silence of the Sainte-Geneviève Library and the chance encounters and inevitable rendezvous in the Sorbonne courtyard. François, my tutor, guide, and friend, did his best to initiate me into the life of the Latin Quarter, taking me to hear Sartre and Buber, whose lecture on religious existentialism was an event. The hall was packed, the audience enthusiastic. Buber was treated like a prophet. His listeners were elated, conquered in advance, ready to savor every word. There was just one problem. Had Buber spoken in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, or German, there would have been some people in the hall able to follow his address. But he opted for French, and his accent was so thick no one understood him. Everyone applauded just the same. No matter, they would read the text when it was published. But I was delighted to have seen the handsome face and heard the searching voice of the author of I and Thou, one of the great Jewish spiritual thinkers of our time.
At that moment, however, I was more concerned with material problems than with theology or existentialism, for I had nothing to live on. My sole means of support was the meager OSE subsidy: eight thousand francs a month (sixteen dollars today). “You have to learn how to get by,” Bo told me. Easier said than done. I sent some “philosophical” articles to the Zionist daily of Paris, which did not bother to reply. I didn’t know what else to do. I was good at nothing: I would never find a way to make a living. Success required daring, which I lacked, for I feared rejection; better to die of hunger than of shame. (I knew all about hunger. I had no wish to become acquainted with shame.)
Like everyone else, I had ration cards. When I wasn’t broke, I ate corn bread and cheese. The young salesgirl at the cheese shop always gave me an extra-large slice of Brie. She was probably a romantic who liked helping starving students.
Bo got me a job tutoring a doctor’s son in Hebrew and Bible studies in preparation for his bar mitzvah. I was paid just enough to feel useful, but the truth is I wasn’t worth my salary, for I left my twelve-year-old pupil hopelessly confused. The problem was that I used Shushani’s method, far too complicated for a boy his age. Instead of teaching him to read the sacred texts, I decided to help him discover the mystery of their genesis. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” my pupil would murmur, and I would stop him. In the beginning? What does “beginning” mean? Can there be a beginning for God? Or an end? And suddenly I was talking about the Ancients and their concepts of creation, citing Nahmanides and Abrabanel. My poor pupil seemed unsure whether he should pretend to listen or run crying to his room. His father happened to sit in on one of our early lessons and politely shared his discontent with me. For the time being, he said, his son could do without my metaphysical imaginings. Perhaps I might come back when he was grown up, after his marriage, for example.
There remained the question of questions: How would I pay my rent? Food was a problem too, but I found a way around that. Sometimes Bea would send me cans of condensed milk or cookies, and I ate at Hilda’s from time to time: bread and french fries. Hilda had no idea how precarious my situation was. She was preoccupied with problems of her own.
Every morning I had to decide whether to walk