by Elie Wiesel
At the dinner table they talked about current events. The situation in Israel. The Suez campaign. The Six-Day War. Politics and its scandals. There was one shadow, though: on Talia’s birthday, Elhanan spoke only of her. They lit a candle and went to synagogue, where Malkiel recited the Kaddish. All that day Elhanan fasted: he neither ate nor drank. The rest of the year Talia was an absent woman shrouded in mystery. Elhanan thought much about her but rarely spoke his thoughts.
Malkiel would have liked to know more. Sometimes when his father was away he would contemplate the photograph of the beautiful Israeli woman that his father kept both on his desk and on his night table. Subconsciously Malkiel sought a reflection of his mother in all young women. They had to be dark, athletic, free and open, liberated and bold. Cheerful, active and outgoing. How many times did he fall in love? The woman in question, whether he met her in class or in the corridor, at a restaurant or a concert, filled his life for a week, a day, perhaps only an instant, until the surge of a new passion.
But the center of his existence was always his father, whom he respected and admired. Even when he resented him—for obscure childish reasons—he loved him. Sometimes he teased him. “Why don’t you marry again?” Blushing in embarrassment, Elhanan would change the subject. And later, when Tamar appeared on the scene, Elhanan took pleasure in responding, “And you? Why don’t you get married?”
One day when he came home from school—he must have been twelve—Malkiel had surprised his father, who was seated on the sofa beside a dark-haired woman. They both seemed cheery. Loretta, too; Loretta was glowing. One word and she would have burst into song. But Malkiel wondered, What’s going on here? What’s the big celebration? Somebody win a lottery?
“I know your name,” said the young woman.
“I do, too,” said Malkiel acidly.
“What a sense of humor!” she said.
Elhanan introduced her. “Shoshana is from Jerusalem.”
“Mother was from Jerusalem, too.”
“Exactly. Shoshana was a friend of your mother’s.”
Malkiel had the impulse to reply, “My mother is dead and you two sit here happy; you’re glad my mother is dead.” But he held his tongue. Elhanan invited him to sit down.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I have homework.” He went to the kitchen to look for a piece of cake.
Loretta scolded him. “That’s no way to behave with your father. He finally asked a woman up. They’re laughing and having a good time. Have you often seen him laugh that much?”
“Who is she?”
“Your father told you. An old friend of your mother’s, may her soul rest in peace.”
“Married?”
“I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that your father’s finally showing an interest in a woman. He’s decided to live a normal life. Now, a normal man ought to live with a woman, preferably a normal woman. You won’t say no to that? So are you going to sulk until he crawls back into his loneliness? Is that what you want? Is it?”
Malkiel put off his homework; he rejoined his father and the guest. When she laughed, her whole face lit up, her eyes, her lips, her nostrils. Every once in a while she touched Elhanan to stress a word or a memory.
“Shoshana was about to leave the DP camp when we did,” Elhanan said.
“And if I hadn’t been sick, you might have married me,” Shoshana added.
And you’d be dead today, Malkiel thought.
“Your mother replaced her at the very last moment,” Elhanan said. “What happened?”
“I’ve forgotten. The flu? A bad stomach virus, maybe. I hated Talia for being so healthy. I was in bed moping. But we were good friends, truly we were, Malkiel.”
Why did Elhanan gaze so intently at her? Why did he insist she stay for dinner? How long would she be staying in the United States? Malkiel always remembered: he was jealous. For his mother? For himself, too.
Their guest returned the next day. And the next. Elhanan let her come along when he met Malkiel that day at the schoolyard gate. On the third night they went to the theater. Elhanan got home late. Malkiel was not asleep. As always, Elhanan came in to give him one last hug before turning in for the night.
“Did you have a good time, Father?”
“A very good time.”
“That … that woman …”
“Yes?”
“Do you love her?”
Elhanan sat on the edge of the bed. A melancholy wrinkle deepened at the corners of his mouth. “I loved your mother only.”
“But … this woman …”
“She was close to your mother. And for that reason she’s close to me.”
“Is she married?”
Elhanan hesitated, and then said, “No,” before saying good night.
Shoshana never came back to the house.
Twice a week for four hours Elhanan contributed his psychotherapeutic services to survivors of the camps. These men and women felt a loyal affection for him that was not hard to explain: he listened without judging, and asked questions tactfully. He was always discreet, humble and honest. When he told a visitor, “I’m at your service,” he meant exactly that.
Sometimes at the dinner table he would tell Malkiel about certain cases, naturally withholding the names. The lonely old man who had given up hope: he was the sole survivor in his family and knew that when he died his line would die. Despite his age he wanted to adopt a child.… The wife who had, for complicated reasons, lied about her past to her husband. Why was she so ashamed of her suffering?… The man who could not forgive himself for having refused a piece of bread to a friend, back there … The rich businessman who woke in the middle of the night, went into his study, locked it, and wept … The woman who, alone in her kitchen, stood in front of a mirror to watch herself swallow candy and cheesecake …
“One man said to me, ‘In a camp in Poland I saw the extreme of human cruelty. I saw a German officer slaughter a father in front of his four children. That day I lost my faith.’ ”
“I can understand him,” Malkiel said.
“Another man told me, ‘In a camp in Poland I saw the extreme of human solidarity. I saw three strangers who sacrificed their sleep and their health to save a sick prisoner. That day my faith was restored.’ ”
“I can understand him, too,” Malkiel said.
“And I might have seen it the other way: the first man might have been able to regain his faith, and the second to lose it.”
“Do you help them by understanding them?”
“No. No one can really help these people. What they went through places them beyond reach. All you can do for them is listen.”
“Do they feel better?”
“No.”
“Then why listen?”
“No one has the right not to listen.”
Malkiel thought, Someday I’ll understand.
He and his father often talked about God. Like any adolescent raised in faith, Malkiel debated the notion of Providence. If God is everywhere, how do we explain evil? If God is good, how do we explain suffering? If God is God, how are we to conceive man’s role in Creation? “God Himself likes an argument,” Elhanan told his son. “But what is an argument? It is an admission of conflict and separation; these God creates and destroys, by His presence as much as by His absence. All is possible with Him; nothing is possible without Him. But the opposite is equally true. Never forget what the ancients taught us: God exists in contradictions, too. He is the limit of all things, and He is what extends the limit.”
During another discussion, on a Friday night: “We must also consider the tragic situation of God Himself. He can only give His commandments to free men, to people with free will. But in considering the past and their future, men and women no longer demand that freedom which only God can grant. So they give it back to Him, and there is God dealing with people who are no longer free: is it to the greater glory of God if He rules, is obeyed by, a mankind diminished and enslaved? To take an extreme, we c
ould suppose that it was God’s will that mankind be superior to Him. Superior because it resents its limitations, because it aspires to the unattainable. Humanity is people who walk, who dance, who stubbornly pursue the perpetual conquest of their own freedom and their own innocence.…”
Malkiel thought again, Someday I’ll understand.
Lidia stared at Malkiel as if he were out of his mind. “You’re looking for what?”
“A woman.”
“And if I understand you correctly, I won’t fill the bill?”
“You always misunderstand me.”
“Your riddles are getting on my nerves, Mr. Rosenbaum!”
“Don’t be angry, Lidia. Please.”
He seemed so worried and miserable that the young interpreter softened. “I’m not angry. Only jealous.”
“It’s my loss, not yours. The woman I’m looking for is old. She must be about seventy.”
They were sitting on their usual bench in the park. Late afternoon on a pleasant day. The park was swarming with people. The sun, white and cold in the transparent air, was setting lazily.
“And what’s your dream girl’s name?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know.”
Lidia slapped her knees. “I have to hand it to you! Has it never occurred to you that there may be several old women in this city whose names you don’t know?”
Of course she was right. He should have asked his father for more details. The Nyilas was called Zoltan. Was that his first name or his last name? Elhanan had never specified, and would he remember now?
“Let me explain, Lidia.” He told her about the partisans and the Red Army. The liberation. Itzik the Long and his thirst for vengeance. The rape.
Her face betrayed horror and disgust. How could she have reproached him? “A question,” she said, and cleared her throat.
“Yes?”
“What would you have done in your father’s place?”
Malkiel had asked himself that question many times. He had tried to imagine himself in the room, standing over the two thrashing bodies. Would he have flung himself on his best friend to save him from himself? Would he have called for help? “I just don’t know.”
A couple sat down on a nearby bench. The man whispered in his companion’s ear. Malkiel wondered, Do I exist for them?
The sun was truly setting now, and the sky over the mountains darkened and seemed menacing. The air was cooler. Cold.
“It’s hopeless,” Lidia said. She explained so calmly that Malkiel was annoyed. “There were plenty of raped women around here. Everybody knows about it, but nobody talks about it. Don’t give me that look, Reporter. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You didn’t know that our liberators, the Russian soldiers, raped every woman they could get their hands on? Beautiful and homely, large and small, skinny and fat, innocent schoolgirls and shriveled-up grandmothers: they all went through it. That was life. The rules of the game. All’s fair in love and war. The ransom, the warrior’s reward, the conqueror’s right to possess the conquered—call it whatever you like. Sometimes I suspect that my aunts, their friends, my own mother … They never talk about it. None of them will ever talk about the first days and nights of the liberation. It’s an enormous act of collective repression.
And you really believe you’ll find the one your father saw on the floor, being tortured by his comrade in arms?”
Malkiel did not answer. She was right. It was hopeless. “I didn’t think hard about it,” he said in low tones, upset. “I know how stupid that is, but I can’t help it. All I know is that it was only here, and I’m not even sure exactly when, that the real reason for my trip became clear to me.”
Lidia teased him dryly: “A sudden revelation?”
“Sure, why not? I suddenly realized that I had to find that woman. See her, talk to her, hear her voice, see her eyes and her lips and her hands. I have to find her. I have to, Lidia.”
Night had fallen. Malkiel could not see her features. A solitary stroller crossed the park and went to drown his sorrows God knows where.
“One question,” Lidia said. “Suppose she’s dead.”
Again she was right.
“Would you regret your visit here?”
“No,” Malkiel said. And after a moment, “I’m glad our paths crossed.” Malkiel meant it. He liked her very much, this interpreter full of charm and information. If he had not met Tamar, who knows?
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go to work. The woman in question was a widow, and her husband was a Nyilas. He was called Zoltan. Unfortunately, there were plenty of Nyilas in our lovely garden spot under the Hungarian occupation.”
“And Zoltan?”
“A common enough name.”
“Famous for his cruelty. The terror of the ghetto. Excited by Jewish blood …”
Lidia listened carefully and asked some pointed questions. She had him repeat this incident and sharpen that detail. When he was finished she stood up. “All right, then. I’ll see if I can be useful. After all, I know a lot of people. Maybe some of the oldest will remember. If so, we’ll have a chance of finding her.”
She said “we,” Malkiel thought as he, too, stood up. A good sign. Another sleepless night. Should he spend it with the gravedigger and his blind companion? Maybe one of them could answer the questions: why had his father sent him to this city? To see the widow? For some other reason?
Malkiel almost lost his temper next morning when they shook hands in the hotel lobby. “Well?” he asked.
“Well, what?”
“Any luck?”
“Oh, luck; luck is a vague word.”
“Have you learned anything?”
“Have I learned anything? Maybe.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Calm down, my friend, calm down. You’re in a country that requires iron self-control.”
He took a deep breath to get hold of himself.
“Let’s go have breakfast together,” she said. “In peace and quiet, all right? That’s a condition. Otherwise I’m through with you. I refuse to let you spoil my morning with your impatience.”
Malkiel would have liked to tell her what he thought of her, but that would have been counterproductive. And what was the meaning of her game? Maybe police surveillance had tightened around them. “This hotel isn’t famous for breakfast,” he said, forcing himself to be amiable. “But I have some good American Nescafé. Will you do me the honor of sharing it with me?”
“But of course, kind sir.”
By now used to Malkiel’s generous tips, the waiter brought them fresh bread, butter, eggs and cheese. Lidia ate with good appetite. Had her woman’s self-respect been wounded? Was she seeking revenge? She chatted about anything but the raped widow. The political economy under this regime, the Communist educational system, international current events as seen by Romanian commentators, literary analyses of the national folklore, funny stories about not so funny love affairs—for over an hour Malkiel played the game, never interrupting or betraying the slightest restlessness. And then with calculated nonchalance Lidia drew a folded sheet of paper from her handbag. “The whole works,” she said. “Name, address, personal data.”
Malkiel almost shouted, “Give it to me!” But he restrained himself. He stared at the folded sheet as if his life depended on it.
“Take it,” Lidia said.
He grabbed it, and stroked it for a moment before unfolding it.
“Will you translate for me?”
“Elena. Calinescu. Linden Street, number fifty-two. Lives with her daughter and son-in-law. There’s a granddaughter too.”
Malkiel tried to keep calm, or at least not to show his anxiety. “She’s alive,” he said.
“And you are going to meet her,” Lidia said.
“When?”
“Right away.”
Without admitting it, Malkiel was somehow afraid to stand before this woman who had haunted his father for so long. What if she hurled reproaches at him? What i
f she screamed her hatred in his face?
Lidia asked, “Shall we go?”
Outside, it was drizzling. The city was sinister; its colors seemed less friendly, and the trees, in yellow leaf now, more depressing.
It was a silent, disturbing walk of ten minutes to a handsome little two-story house. Lidia rang for the second floor. The door opened a crack. Lidia spoke a few words in Romanian; someone answered. Lidia argued. The door closed. Lidia pursued the argument vigorously. The door opened again. Lidia and Malkiel entered. A disheveled girl led them to the living room. So, Malkiel thought, they have living rooms under the Communists. He wondered which Jewish family the house had once belonged to.
“Good morning, miss,” a voice quavered. “Good morning, sir.” It was a sickly voice, and barely audible. A distinguished-looking woman was standing before them, her head tilted toward her left shoulder. “What can I do for you?”
Malkiel inspected her: short, slight, dressed in black, her features delicate and sad. Was she in mourning? Hollow wrinkled cheeks. Heavy lips and eyelids. “Lidia,” he said, “would you be good enough to explain … but carefully … kindly.”
Lidia explained.
As the old woman listened, or seemed to listen, her head drooped more and more toward her shoulder.
The girl brought them glasses of mineral water. Lidia broke off to take a sip.
“What have you told her?”
“Nothing yet. A few words about you. That you’re a reporter, that you live in the United States, that your father once lived here.”
“Nothing else?”
“That’s all so far.”
The old woman was watching him, and waiting. Where should he begin? “Ask her to excuse us for imposing on her.”
The old woman gave a barely perceptible nod. She picked up a glass of water and squeezed it with both hands.
“And forgive us for opening old wounds—I hope they’re long since healed.” The old woman’s gaze was penetrating and added to Malkiel’s anxiety. “Ask her if she understands what we’re talking about.”