All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [9]
I mean to recount not the story of my life, but my stories. Through them you may perhaps understand the rest a little better. Some see their work as a commentary on their life; for others it is the other way around. I count myself among the latter. Consider this account, then, as a kind of commentary.
Moreover, I must warn you that certain events will be omitted, especially those episodes that might embarrass friends and, of course, those that might damage the Jewish people. Call it prudence or cowardice, whatever you like. No witness is capable of recounting everything from start to finish anyway. God alone knows the whole story.
To paraphrase a Talmudic saying, I hope the last page will bring me greater certainty than the first.
Do we write because we are happy or because we’re not? A legend of the Midrash says that King Solomon wore a ring with the power to make him happy when he was sad and sad when he was happy. Why would he want to be sad when he was lucky enough to know happiness? Solomon was a Jew and a writer, which is to say, never content. Is the story meant to make us laugh or cry? To cry is to sow, said the Maharal of Prague; to laugh is to reap.
And to write is to sow and to reap at the same time.
YES, LAST NIGHT I saw my father in a dream. The landscape around him was changing, but he was not. He looked at me strangely, I don’t know why or for how long. Was he waiting for me to speak to him, to tell him I was happy to see him again? But I wasn’t. Now, I wasn’t unhappy. I was … I don’t know what I was. I don’t know what I felt. I know that I looked at him and he looked at me, but that our eyes never met.
Did he beckon to me? Did he want to take me to a place where only memory remained alive? To our dead town?
Like all children, I had my share of rebellion against this or that teacher or classmate, and even against my parents. Sometimes I felt they didn’t understand me, that they judged me wrongly or were unfair. A single stern look or harsh word and I wanted to flee, far beyond the rivers and valleys, preferably to my grandfather’s, or to the Holy Land. Don’t laugh, I really thought it was possible. All you had to do was climb the mountain and look for the secret door to the special corridor that led to Galilee. There, far from my family, all my anger would vanish. But I wasn’t old enough. It was easier to sulk in silence. Fortunately these storms did not last long.
World events had little direct effect on me at the time. I was too young. I remember only feeble echoes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s victory in the American presidential elections, the Reichstag fire, the first Stalinist purges, social and political convulsions in Spain, the war in Ethiopia, the death of the League of Nations: there was talk of all these things at the synagogue, and my father would discuss them with visitors at night, but they felt very far away.
The local situation, on the other hand, did scare me. When the anti-Semitic Iron Guard raised its head, we lowered ours. Slogans would sprout on the walls: “Jews to Palestine!” Thugs, their faces twisted with hate, would assault Jews in the street, tearing at their beards and side curls. The Kuzists, as they called themselves, were the Romanian version of Nazis. Savages thirsting for Jewish blood, they would launch pogroms on the slightest pretext. “Don’t go to heder today,” my worried father would say. My sisters often didn’t go to school. On those days the store was bolted shut, and regular customers were escorted in through the living room. At the slightest warning we rushed to the cellar, though I had no idea why. Were the thugs afraid of the dark? We couldn’t rely on the police, who not only failed to protect us from these murderers but helped them. We lived in terror. Our enemies were capable of anything, including accusing us of ritual murders.
I remember a sad song my mother used to sing to me, a popular song about