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By Root 2238 0

dreams, almost a Just Man who would give his life to save a brother or a comrade. But then why accuse Ben-Gurion and the Haganah of “collaborating” with the British police by turning in Irgun patriots? I translated and retranslated, but did not understand. The article talked about a certain “season” during which atrocious acts were allegedly committed by the Jewish political establishment. I didn’t dare ask Joseph about this. He probably assumed that the political situation in Palestine held no secrets for me and that I had deliberately chosen to work for the Irgun. But he was wrong. I didn’t know one underground group from another, and if the gatekeeper at the Jewish Agency hadn’t turned me away, I might have been sitting at a desk working for the Haganah, translating an insulting article about the Irgun. Obviously I had to find out what was going on. For the moment, however, I simply translated, the need for translators apparently also being part of the underground patriotic struggle.

The task was far from easy. I read Hebrew well and spoke fluent Yiddish, but my Germanized written Yiddish wasn’t good. My style was dry and lifeless, and the meaning seemed to wander off into byways lined with dead trees. That was not surprising, since I was wholly ignorant of Yiddish grammar and its vast, rich literature. I had not yet read—except for a few fragments—the works of Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, or Mendele. The names Leivik and Markish, Bergelson and Der Nister, Glatstein and Manger, were still unfamiliar to me. I had a lot to learn.

Joseph edited my translation and told me he was ready to teach me. He soon became my professor of literature and political science, explaining that Yiddish had its own grammar and idiosyncrasies, with countless nuances and as many pitfalls. “If you want to hold the readers attention,” he said, “your sentence must be clear enough to be understood and enigmatic enough to pique curiosity. A good piece combines style and substance. It must not say everything—never say everything—while nevertheless suggesting that there is an everything.”

I learned that Polish Yiddish differed from Lithuanian Yiddish, and that Romanian Yiddish had a rhythm distinct from Hungarian Yiddish. The Yiddish of the Hasidim was not the same as that of their adversaries, and the Yiddish of intellectuals was not that of fairground workers and lumberjacks.

I talked about this with Shushani—whom I was still seeing in the evening—and once again he astonished me. His own accent was Lithuanian, but he knew all Yiddish variants except Hungarian. On the same occasion he asked about my work, but, faithful to my oath, I evaded his questions. He wasn’t offended. “I love secrets,” he said. “Think of the alchemists trying to turn sand into gold in their underground hideouts. All great projects are conceived in secret.” Though he abhorred violence, he was hardly indifferent to the Jewish struggle in Palestine. Whenever the British arrested a member of an underground organization, Shushani tried to get information about his fate. One day he seemed extremely agitated. He interrupted our lesson, pacing back and forth, bumping into walls, blowing his nose, panting, and wiping his forehead with the biggest handkerchief I had ever seen. It was the day a member of the Lehi and a member of the Irgun committed suicide together just a few hours before their scheduled execution.

I also continued to meet with François. Joseph allowed me to pursue my studies with him and at the Sorbonne. But we spoke less about Hernani, Victor Hugo’s play that marked a turning point in French theater, than about the fighting ravaging the Holy Land. How and why did François suddenly decide to join the struggle for an independent Jewish state? Had he, too, knocked on the Jewish Agency’s door on the Avenue de Wagram? Though he joined the Lehi, and I belonged to the Irgun, our friendship was unaffected. In any case, each of us kept his activities to himself. We both agreed that the less we knew about each other, the better.

I confess I enjoyed my “clandestine” life. To be