by Elie Wiesel
Here in this ashram, they teach us the basic principles necessary for self-fulfillment and for one’s insertion into Creation. With their help, I seek to learn how I am responsible for the past, as well as the meaning of my future. Thus I consider myself responsible for what happened between us. Responsible for Mother’s suicide, for Katya’s sickness, and even for yours.
I am unable for the time being to put these thoughts into practice. I am seeking. Here they help me in my search.
Already I know that we may meet again, in another life, or another stage of this life. Then we will try to heal the damage we have done to each other.
My wish for you is that you may find happiness with whatever means you have. I pray to the gods that they not cause you to make others su fer.
This prayer is my way of bidding you farewell.
Your daughter that was, Sophie
For years, Gamaliel had been rereading these letters without being able to comprehend their meaning. They didn’t seem to be about him. Why was he so despised? He could perhaps understand Colette’s hatred, violent like that of all depressives, but that of his twin daughters was utterly beyond him. Never could he have imagined they could so resent him. Had he not been a good father, caring about their well-being, their enjoyment of life, their success? He had long believed they loved him as he loved them. What mistakes had he made? Of course, their mother had done her best to turn them against him. Then again, he sometimes wondered if their resentment was not well-founded. If only he could have talked to them, questioned them, explained himself. . . . But, despite all his efforts and Bolek’s unstinting help, he was never able to make contact with them. All doors were closed, all spontaneous impulses of the heart barred. . . . And now? It was too late. His daughters might even be dead. . . .
Gamaliel felt exhausted. Having scrutinized his past so carefully, he could no longer look at it with enough detachment to tell what was true and what wasn’t. In any case, he had bungled his life. Bad husband, bad father, bad lover: failure all along the line. Were his daughters’ accusations justified? All his certainties were gone. No more light anywhere. He deserved his isolation. Everything he had tried to build had fallen apart. The little good he had done had resulted in fiasco. Whose fault could it be other than his own? If he could start over, he would know how to avoid those pitfalls. But at his age, remorse replaced ambition. And anyone will tell you that if God Himself cannot undo what has been done, certainly man cannot. Then why this feeling of guilt? Go ask Kafka’s Joseph K. If the whole world turns against you, you must have done something wrong. Don’t try to buy your acquittal at someone else’s expense. That would be too convenient.
Of that, Gamaliel was well aware.
SINCE HE’D LOST HIS DAUGHTERS, THERE WERE times that Gamaliel wanted, without knowing quite why, to howl in the sleeping streets of Manhattan or in the midst of an indifferent crowd. He needed to vent his anger and his pain with a cry so powerful, so devastating, that no one could stop it. Passersby did not so much as glance at him, and he came to doubt whether he had made a sound. Sometimes, when he was standing before a store window in broad daylight, or in a darkened movie house, he could not keep himself from weeping, from sobbing, as if in the clutches of some invisible torturer sent by Colette from beyond the grave. . . . Woe to the man who shouts in silence. Woe to the man whose suffering pursues him even into his dreams. He is punished because he insists on living in a world that rejects him, sentences him to anonymity, denies him happiness even when he feels close to the woman stretched out beside him, her head on the pillow. And yet sometimes Gamaliel would sing all night long when he was intoxicated by the memory of Esther or was lying beside Eve when she was half-asleep. From one mirage to another, and where, on what rock, will he founder? Does God howl because He is alone? No. And Mother, Gamaliel reflected, she who was so compassionate, she never howled. He never heard her raise her voice, and that was why he thought of her with still greater sorrow.
He often felt the urge to cry. It might come to him in the middle of a meal, just because he’d recalled his first love. Tears would come to his eyes. Just like that, over nothing. When he was with friends, or at the theater, he would see his daughters once again—the graceful Katya, proud of being the “elder” of the twins; the mischievous Sophie, who liked to settle herself in his lap with a determined air that seemed to say she intended to stay there forever—and he would be seized by an urgent need to tell the whole world how lonely and angry he was. He would remember Ilonka, her kindly caresses, the warmth of her chest, where he loved to lay his head, and he would have to restrain himself from cursing the universe and his own life. He would see his father’s face, his worried brow, hear his hoarse voice, and see his mother’s serious expression, then her smile, which could lighten the somber days of winter and turn terror into hope. Then burning tears would trickle down to his mouth—and at that moment, he could not comprehend how there could be any joy in living.
And yet ...
14
A CALL FROM THE DOCTOR BROUGHT MATTERS TO a head: Zsuzsi Szabó’s condition had suddenly worsened. Lili asked him to come at once. It was almost midnight.
One look at the patient was enough to tell Gamaliel that the end was near. She was in a deep coma, an oxygen mask over her face, her breathing shallow. There was no hope.
“Her heart is giving out,” the doctor said. “She had an attack during the evening. Her body is worn out. You know that. In my opinion, there’s nothing more we can do. I’m sorry for her.” She looked down and added, “And also for you.”
Gamaliel stood at the bedside. He gazed at the frail body lying still under the white sheet. “Did she say anything?” he asked.
“I don’t believe so. I wasn’t here. Another doctor was on duty.”
“Could you find out?”
The doctor left. When she returned, she had nothing to add. “It was too late. She was already unconscious.”
Thus Gamaliel would never know who this woman with the unrecognizable features and walled-off silence was. Was she Ilonka? Perhaps. After all, he had been told she spoke Hungarian. But that was not enough to identify her. The doctor had looked at her papers. The name seemed to be Magyar; she was said to be a widow, born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That didn’t mean anything. Right after the war, it had been easy to buy or trade identities. Her personal effects? A small bag stuffed with clothes and papers. Some cheap jewelry. Some odds and ends. No letters. A couple of candles. No address for next of kin or relatives in America.
“I was fond of her,” the doctor said. Then she corrected herself immediately. “I used the past tense, but she’s still alive. Excuse me. Matter of habit, I suppose.”
After the doctor had told a nurse to stay at the patient’s bedside—“Inform us of any change in her condition”—they went out in the garden.
“I, too,” said Gamaliel, “I, too, feel a kind of affection for her, and I don’t know why. I don’t think I ever met her. I don’t know who she is or where she came from. And certainly not why, if it hadn’t been for your message, I should have come to see her. Except if . . .”
“If?”
“If she is Ilonka.”
And he repeated what he had already told her about this marvelously compassionate woman who had occupied a unique place in his young heart. At a certain moment, Dr. Rosenkrantz took his hand. Gamaliel did not withdraw it, while remaining absorbed in his memories of Budapest. “Ilonka had a soul,” he said.
“Can one have a soul?”
“She could, and I saw it as clearly as I see you now.”
She squeezed his hand, and he uttered words he had not known were in his thoughts: “Do you know Budapest? Someday I’ll take you there. I’ll show you where I grew up, with Ilonka as my guide, then Tolya. Who knows? Maybe Ilonka is there waiting for us. . . .”
“Unless . . .”
“Yes. Unless that’s Ilonka up there. We’ll never know, will we?”
“Probably no
t. I believe it’s too late,” the doctor said.
Gamaliel was struck by the sadness in her voice, and by the sudden awakening of his own desire. He glanced at her. He was moved by her calm beauty in these moments when they were brought together by a life’s ending. He turned and his gaze settled on her mouth. Her lips were sensual, generous, ready to open and give of themselves. A crazy idea flashed through his mind: Suppose Ilonka came here to die for the sole purpose of helping me to find the love of this woman and to welcome her into my life?
They remained silent for a long moment. Gamaliel expected her to take him back to the dying woman’s bedside, but instead she led him to her office on the second floor. Its walls displayed the usual sorts of diplomas; books and journals filled the bookcases. She offered him cognac, which he declined, and hot coffee, which he accepted. They sat down on the sofa.
“Tell me more,” said the doctor. “I like your way of telling about Ilonka’s life.”
“She was a special person,” he said in a choked voice.
Once again, a familiar feeling, one he had often fended off, arose in him and took him in its grasp.
“And now say no more,” the doctor ordered.
Gamaliel felt vaguely guilty. Should they be so close while Ilonka lay dying upstairs? But it was highly unlikely that the unknown patient was Ilonka.
Fatigue and the need to forget overcame him. Suddenly, he felt at peace, and was not even surprised by it. He reflected, without bitterness for once, that the death of others reminds us of our own age, and that he himself was feeling old. But he’d been old for a long time. A Hebrew poet said of certain Jews that they are born old. And Gamaliel recalled the Jewish journalist who during the war cabled a dispatch about Auschwitz and then, when he looked in the mirror, saw that his hair had suddenly turned white. The story was also told of a young Talmudic Sage who became an old man overnight. It was true that there had been times in his tumultuous life when Gamaliel had felt momentarily rejuvenated, usually during amorous encounters. But more and more, he had the feeling that his life was over. Was this true now?
THE NURSE KNOCKED AT THE DOOR TO INFORM them that the end was near. They dashed up the stairs. The patient was softly sighing; the irregular rise and fall of her chest was barely perceptible. Gamaliel wondered if she was suffering. As if she could read his thoughts, the doctor said gently, “She’s not in pain. We did everything so she could leave in peace.”
She motioned to the nurse, who removed the patient’s oxygen mask. Her breathing became erratic. Then it ceased.
Gamaliel bent over her and studied her faded features, hoping somehow to see the face of the unforgettable Ilonka. He had read somewhere that at the last minute death erases wrinkles and scars, that masks come apart and fall away. But not this time. The features of the nameless old Hungarian remained scarred by her suffering.
Gamaliel left a kiss on her forehead. He wanted to say something, but he could not find the words. Do the dead hear what we do not say to them? He was turning the question over in his mind when he felt the doctor’s hand on his shoulder. She whispered to him, “Come. It’s time.”
Time to do what? he wondered. To live with her, separated from Ilonka? To wait for Death to return for him also? Who would come to mourn his passing? Not Katya or Sophie: All trace of them was lost forever in other worlds, other times. His friends would come, of course: Bolek, Yasha, Diego, Gad, Shalom. They would remember. Eve? She, too, perhaps, in her fashion, without letting on to Samaël. And the doctor—if, meanwhile, she had agreed to marry him? And Esther, whom he saw as a grandmother, playing with her thirteen grandchildren? It doesn’t matter, he told himself. In the next world, the world said to be of Truth, other witnesses would be called to testify. But his novel, the Book of Secrets, which he had embarked on so long ago and had finally managed to organize, to structure—who would complete it? Who would recount what had happened in the disputation between the Blessed Madman, that incarnation of Rebbe Zusya, and Archbishop Báranyi? And who emerged the victor? Deep inside himself Gamaliel was coming to a melancholy realization. This novel with which he was to illustrate or even justify what he had truly intended to make of his life—this novel would never be completed. Well, what of it? People know that the son of Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham, wrote books that he never finished and that no one ever found. On the other hand, did not Henry James say that one should never claim fully to know the human heart? After all, even a failed destiny is still a destiny.
THE NEXT DAY, A FRIDAY, ONLY GAMALIEL AND Lili accompanied the old woman to the Jewish cemetery. If it is indeed Ilonka, he thought, she deserves a place among Jews. Since she had been declared a “deceased person of unknown religion,” there was no rabbi present at the interment. But Gamaliel had thought to compose a prayer.
“Lord, receive this soul and comfort her, for perhaps she could not be comforted in this life. Grant her the peace that she surely did not know here below. Open to her the gates of love, which perhaps made her suffer too much. You know her. You who know each being who lives and all who die. Tell her that, without knowing who she was, we loved her and that, thanks to her, we shall love one another.”
Suddenly, Gamaliel heard someone respond, “Amen.” It was an old man, very tall and thin, dressed in black, leaning on a cane. He looked like a beggar. Gamaliel, thinking his memory was playing a trick on him, asked, “Did you know the deceased?” “No,” the man replied, shaking his head. “Then what are you doing here?” “I’m searching,” said the mysterious beggar of his childhood, whose voice had sounded familiar. A pale and holy fire glowed in eyes burdened with secrets. Gamaliel was about to ask him what he was seeking, but he held his tongue, as if he feared the man would answer, You. It’s you I’m seeking. Perhaps he had come, as in the tale of the Besht and his disciple, only to find the end and the meaning of the story that was his own.
THAT EVENIN G, IN THE DOCTOR’S APARTMENT, they prepared a light meal, but neither of them touched it. Resting on the bed, they exchanged memories and ideas in tones that were warm and intimate. Words of love came to them, words that were fresh and new, old and strange. Then Gamaliel started as an idea suddenly came to his mind.
“She had personal effects, didn’t she? Where are they?”
“In the hospital office. They’re kept in case a relative ever comes to claim them.”
“Could I look at them?”
“I don’t see why not, but it may not be necessary. I can tell you everything she left.”
“What was in her bag?”
“Clothes, old newspapers, odds and ends. And two candles.”
Gamaliel hardly dared breathe. Then he let out a cry so loud, it sounded like a howl.
“Two candles? You did say two candles? Are you sure of it?”
“Absolutely. I held them in my hands.”
Gamaliel was stunned into silence. He saw himself with his mother in Ilonka’s apartment in Budapest. It was late afternoon, almost dusk. His mother was preparing to light two candles. Ilonka asked worriedly, “Aren’t you afraid they’ll see us from the street? The Nyilas know your Jewish customs.” “The curtains are drawn,” his mother said. “They won’t see anything. The Lord protects those who keep His laws, and a Jewish woman must light the Sabbath candles.” Then, having lit the candles and blessed them, she added, “You know, I always carry the two candles with me. It was my father’s wish. I remember him saying to me when I was still a child, ‘Sabbath would be sad and lifeless without the light that you will give it.’ Do you understand that, Ilonka?”
Gamaliel gazed at Lili, whose anxious expression suggested she feared what he might be about to reveal. He took her beautiful, pain-stricken face between his trembling hands and whispered very softly, as if he were confiding a secret, “I have a strange feeling. . . .”
He fell silent. As in a flash of light, he saw that all his life, through all his wanderings, in all the people he had encountered, it was his mother that he had been so desperately seeking. It was she who
knew him best and she whose love was true. She could with a caress or a glance confer the happiness he sought. His mother gave him life and comfort. And Ilonka? She had done the same, but in a different way. His mother had left him too soon, taking with her the promise she had not been able to keep. Her tender, gentle touch, her bedtime stories, her smile, her tears—he had found their traces in other women; they, too, had vanished, their traces scattered on faces that came and went. And, he saw, he had never ceased wondering in his heart of hearts whether he would find her before he died.
The doctor was observing him worriedly. Gamaliel, in his turmoil, seemed abruptly to have rediscovered the energy to enter the Garden of Eden and strip the bark from the Tree of Knowledge. He had to, wanted to, but the words would not come—they stuck in his throat. Then the veil lifted. He felt lighter, at peace, almost serene.
“I have a strange feeling. . . . It’s as though . . .”
He didn’t explain. He coughed to hide his emotion.
“Save those candles. We will light them for our next Sabbath.”
The doctor could only smile as she held back her tears.
Bathed in the bluish light of dawn, they felt in harmony. Outside, the seventh day of Creation announced its arrival, glorious in coppery light, ready to enfold the entire world with all its petty stories of love and remorse.
“And yet,” Gamaliel murmured dreamily.
“Yes,” Lili agreed. “And yet, we must go on, isn’t that true?”
Gamaliel reflected before answering. Go on how? Speaking for fear of silence, loving for fear of solitude, or exile, or death; go on stumbling and recovering? Go on knocking on doors that open too soon or too late? Was that what life was about? A matter of trudging on the long, hard road, and acting as guides to those who follow us?