All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [88]
The end of the month was the worst time. I trembled at the idea of being unable to pay my rent and sometimes, to avoid going home, spent the night walking along the Seine. I was vaguely afraid of my landlady. I was still too pious, too imprisoned by taboos, not to be afraid of women, who, after all, had been created to seduce us and to incite us to sin. I was afraid she would take advantage of my economic and emotional situation to … to do what exactly? It was stupid, ridiculous, I know that now. Though I was hardly a Don Juan, I had the terrifying impression she was trying to seduce me. When she came to do the room, I would slip out like a thief, and if I accidentally brushed against her, it made me sweat and shiver. She was young and not lacking in charm. To put it more bluntly, her charm was her chest, and it was always in my way Whether I went left or right, I could never avoid it. My fears may well have been based solely on my repressed desires, but they felt real to me—real and upsetting. Even if my landlady acted the same with all her tenants, when we were in the room together I changed to the point that I didn’t like myself, disapproved of myself. I wanted to be somewhere else, to be someone else. I wished I could disappear.
There came a time when I decided to put an end to the sterile life I was leading, laden with apprehension and remorse as it was. For the first time, the idea of suicide occurred to me. I would stare at myself in the mirror and wonder whether the moment had come to put an end to my worries and misery. If I didn’t die of starvation, I could throw myself into the Seine or in front of the métro. Wherever I turned, I saw death staring back at me with its countless eyes. How could I repel it? In ancient Greece condemned prisoners had to whisper verses of Euripides in the tyrant’s ear to be spared. Were there other verses that could appease the angel for whom tyrants and their subjects are equal prey?
This wretched despondency lasted several weeks, perhaps several months. I no longer recognized the man I hoped to become or already was. He eluded me, he was shrouded in fog. Contact between us was severed. My self no longer belonged to me. I doubted him and all others, doubted everything—except my memory. Though it, too, was threatened with death, it had nothing to fear, for it was protected by the dead who inhabited it. They seemed to beckon me. In fact, it was not death that lured me; it was the dead who called out to me. I saw them and questioned them ceaselessly. I sensed, was imbued with, their presence. I lived among them more than among the living. When I speak of suicide in my novels, it is this period in my life that provides the inspiration.
But there was no hurry. Death drew back, and the dead wanted no part of me, perhaps because I had as yet done nothing with my survival.
I fell ill. I ate sardines without bread, and my stomach tormented me, my intestines burned. I vomited constantly. Rarely have I suffered so much. As a child I had enjoyed being sick, but now I was terrified by it. I was so ill my landlady didn’t dare come in. Then one morning, miraculously, François dropped in to see me. He may have suspected the state I was in. “Suppose we study Le Malade imaginaire today?” he suggested, but I lacked the strength to appreciate the joke. He went downstairs to call his mother the physician and returned with some medicine. Then he helped me claw my way out of my state day by day. I don’t know what would have happened without him. The pain gradually eased, and I was able to take an interest in something other than my own body.
The newspapers, which I devoured regardless of the expense, were filled with reports of clashes and turmoil in Palestine. My sole regret was that I had not emigrated clandestinely, with or without Kalman. I wished