The Fifth Son

by Elie Wiesel

  Only I hesitated too long. No more turning back. The train is gathering speed.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Who is begging my pardon?

  “Is this seat reserved?”

  In the semidarkness I make out a well-dressed woman; I didn’t see her come in.

  “No.”

  She thanks me. Politely I stow away her suitcase, hang up her raincoat; she reiterates her thanks. Now it’s my turn to beg pardon—yours, Lisa—for I find the lady traveler attractive. I am partial to grateful women.

  “I am going to Graustadt,” she says. “And you?”

  “Farther.”

  She seems gentle, attractive and very intelligent, but, please God, let her not be talkative.

  “How far is farther?” asks the young woman who may not be as young as all that.

  “Farther is very far,” I say.

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  What would she like to hear me say?

  “Not at all.”

  What I should have done is inform her right away that I do not understand French or English or German. A fellow student once did that on a ship bound for the Orient. His table companions were eager to draw him into their games and conversations. Shrugging his shoulders he expressed his regret at not being able to respond for lack of knowledge of their various tongues. Poor wretches: they tried every conceivable method. With no result. My friend was left alone. He meditated, he daydreamed; no one disturbed him. The last evening, as they gathered around the table for a farewell dinner, his companions made one last attempt: “But you communicate, you speak, you say things: what language do you use?” “Karaitsu,” said he. Of course, there is no such thing as Karaitsu. My friend had made it up, just like that; it sounded exotic. But his fellow travelers were satisfied; they were reassured to find that he did speak a language, any language, even a nonexistent one.

  “My name is Theresa. And yours?”

  “Ariel,” I lied.

  I could have said Friedman or Béla.

  “Ariel,” she said. “I like that name.”

  “So do I.”

  “And Theresa?”

  “I like Theresa.”

  She laughed. “But you don’t know me.”

  “Yes, I do. Better than you think.”

  “Impossible. I don’t believe you.”

  “Once upon a time I earned my living telling fortunes.”

  “You read palms?”

  “No. I read faces. Those in the field call it ‘facial science.’ Would you like me to tell you who you are?”

  I scowl threateningly as I lean toward her. She is shaken.

  “Then let’s not talk,” I tell her.

  Frightened, she holds her breath. I place my hand on hers.

  “One mustn’t be afraid of silence, Theresa. It harms only those who violate it.”

  Her hand is warm and welcoming.

  In another time, another life, silence was ominous. It announced the Angel. When the ghetto held its breath, it meant that the military governor was approaching. He came to shatter the silence, the silence of History before challenging History itself.

  And in the clinic, my mother was begging her physician not to abandon her to the white loneliness of her cell: “I am frightened, Doctor, I am frightened of the voiceless voice.” He gave her an injection to force her to sleep, to dream as she spoke, to penetrate a world inhabited by other humans, but her fear of the “voiceless voice” haunts me still.

  Theresa is smiling at me; she is no longer afraid. Or else: she smiles at me because she likes to be afraid.

  She has kept my hand in hers; she is clasping it tightly. If this continues, I’ll find myself in another liaison with … with whom indeed? Is Theresa German? We had spoken in English; now there is no more need for words. To forget, there is nothing like the awakening of the senses. Sinful? Leave me alone, Simha: go back to your shadows. I am free. Lisa? She’ll understand; she who loves them so knows that “trips” are beyond our control. Abdication in the face of His Majesty: chance. Theresa could have taken the next train; I could have stayed behind on the platform. Let’s love one another, Theresa; our separation will become that much more symbolic. I feel like telling her this but of course I don’t, I don’t do anything, I just wait. I listen to the train rushing through a tunnel with a deafening roar and I say nothing.

  The image of a dark structure reappears in my mind. The train will arrive, but it will not carry you away, my little brother. Be quiet and listen, says a voice. Listen well, says my mother as she strokes your hair. You will leave us, we have arranged everything, your father and I; we have found some good honest people, you will stay with them; as soon as we can we shall come to take you back; do you hear me? You look at my father in the dark, he touches your shoulder and presses it hard, he hurts you but you like it, you would like him to hurt you even more, you would like him never to remove his hand and leave it on your shoulder, pressing harder and harder until your old age. “Come,” says my mother. But she has not spoken; she only thinks she has pronounced the word: it never passed her lips. Still, you heard it. You thread your way between the hundred bodies, you are next to the door. My mother knocks twice, then three times more slowly; the door half opens, you turn around, you are looking for your father, you no longer see him, you no longer see anyone in the dark, besides you are already outside. A woman grabs you by the arm: “Here is your mother,” your mother tells you; “whatever you do, don’t cry, it’s dangerous to cry, it attracts attention: Jewish children cry and that is how they betray themselves; they cry differently, be careful my little one, do you promise to be careful?” You promise to promise, but your mother, my mother is no longer there to receive your promise. The door is closed again. The night is cold and damp. A dark moonless sky. Inexplicably, you and the woman are backing away slowly, haltingly. You keep trying to stop but she won’t let you. You are moving away from the building, the platforms, the empty cars. The early morning mist finds you in a hut at the edge of the forest. You are sitting before a bowl of hot milk which you are refusing to drink. You never saw your mother and father again. The peasant woman told our parents what happened after you left them. Your father told me. Since then I cannot tolerate hot milk.

  “First service,” the steward yells as he swings his little bell.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I shake my head.

  “That’s suspicious,” says she. “A man who does not eat is often hiding something; a man who claims he is not hungry is often a fraud.”

  “I don’t like hot milk,” I tell her.

  “I understand.” Her smile is knowing.

  What does she understand? What can she understand? What’s the difference; let her think whatever she pleases. I smile back at her, to be polite. And I look her over, wondering whether she could be Lisa or my mother or the peasant woman. She is thirtyish, dark-haired, on the voluptuous side, dressed in an elegant suit and wearing makeup: a woman who does not go unnoticed. Married? Children probably. Strongly believes in women’s liberation. Possibly a member of the Red Brigade.

  “Where are you going?” the conductor is asking.

  “Graustadt,” says Theresa.

  “And you?”

  I hand him my ticket. “Oh, you are going to Reshastadt. You change in Graustadt.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  My father. He took the same train once and in his imagination more than a thousand times. I remember his words. Everything seems so familiar that I’m no longer sure whether it is my father or I who is traveling on this train. My head is spinning, I am about to ask Theresa whether she has not made this same journey twenty years ago, whether she has not met a certain Reuven Tamiroff, commentator of Paritus, amateur guardian of justice …

  “What will you do in Reshastadt?”

  “I don’t know yet, Theresa.”

  Theresa: is that her name? Ariel is not mine, and yet I use it; it protects me from myself. I say “Ariel” and I become a child
again, I relive the child’s departure and then his death.

  Theresa: she is neither young nor old, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither clever nor boring, I don’t know, I don’t know whether she is woman or mirage.

  I only know that we are traveling together, that soon we are going to go our separate ways. What will she know of me? She is watching me, that’s certain. I feel her eyes on my body. Too bad. I want nothing. But why does she persist in spying on me as if I were already her lover or her enemy?

  As always when I try to overcome uneasiness, I focus my attention on the past. As always I seek refuge in my parents: will they ever be reunited? I await their return, their reappearance.…

  Often at night, as I tried hard to fall asleep, I was gripped by anxiety: what to do so as not to forget them? Would I recognize them the following day? She in the clinic, he in the next room; so far from one another, and from me. I imagined a small boy swept away by the crowd; he knows that his father and mother are in there somewhere yet he passes them by and it is his fault: he failed to recognize them. “No,” he began to sob, “that will never happen. My mother will speak and I will know that it is she; my father will touch my shoulder and I will know that it is he. I shall ask all men to touch my shoulder and all women to speak to me.”

  “Are you asleep?”

  Barely a whisper. Her lips have not moved. A sleepy sigh. In German. The familiar “Du” annoys me. I rationalize: she is dreaming, she is dreaming of someone, she speaks to him in her tongue. That’s good, I need to concentrate. To prepare myself mentally—morally—for the moment when I shall confront the killer of Davarowsk.

  The Angel and his love of theatrics. His orations, his tricks. His voice demanding silence and that of the crowd reduced to silence. Richard Lander and the end of a world. My parents deported and the death of their son. The death of love and the birth of hate, of the desire for revenge.

  I SEE MYSELF standing, awkwardly, before our neighbor Rebbe Zvi-Hersh. I feel clumsy, stupid and for good reason: one does not come to a pious man, a rebbe by profession and a rabbi to boot, saying: “In the name of your teachings, help me: am I right to want to punish an enemy who has massacred our people? Am I right to want to accomplish my father’s will? Am I right to want to remain faithful to his oath?” Anyway, that’s what I did. The Rebbe received me in his study.

  “Yes?” he said, surprised by my visit.

  “I am the son of Reuven Tamiroff.”

  “I know. Simha’s friend. Good Jews both of them. Simha … is treading on dangerous ground. Kabbalah is the privilege of the initiated.”

  “I like Simha,” I say.

  “So do I. But do we like him for the same reasons?”

  His eyes and his gaze were like enchanted pools; I had the urge to plunge into them and drown.

  “Rebbe,” I said, “I’d like to ask you a question. About justice and revenge.”

  Eyebrows raised, he waited. He had time. He had two thousand years behind him; they had taught him the art of waiting.

  The Rebbe was watching me. At that moment I realized that he knew more about me and about my father than I had thought.

  “Our God is also the God of vengeance,” he replied after a long moment of reflection. He leaned toward me, steadying his elbow on a volume of Talmud. “What does that mean? It means that vengeance is His domain and His alone.”

  I could not hold myself back.

  “And the assassins of our people? Must they be left unharmed?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said the opposite: God will punish them.”

  “By arranging automobile accidents perhaps?”

  “Stop,” he said. “Your irony does not offend me. Do you have faith in divine justice? If not, in what—and in whom—do you believe?”

  “In man.”

  “In man? What has he done that is so great, so beautiful, so true as to deserve such honor? The assassins, were they not men as well?”

  Confused, I fell silent. The Angel committed crimes against God and against mankind; which are more damnable? And can they be separated one from the other?

  “Jewish tradition is opposed to capital punishment,” said the Rebbe in a changed voice. “The Law permits it, but it behooves us not to implement it. A court that issues such a verdict is considered murderous. Think: if a tribunal is encouraged not to enlarge the kingdom of death, what about an individual? To punish a guilty man, to punish him with death, means linking yourself to him forever: is that what you wish?”

  “Rebbe,” I said.

  “Scripture teaches us that it is our duty to kill whoever is preparing to kill us. But does this mean that we are to throw ourselves on just anyone who looks to us like a killer? On the contrary, Torah enjoins us to contemplate this defensive action only if we are certain that the assailant has come with the purpose of killing us. But how is one to acquire such certainty? Supposing that he even states his purpose, how can one be sure that his threats are not meant merely as a deterrent? In other words, the Biblical verse prohibits assassination. It can never be justified.”

  “Rebbe,” I repeated, “listen to me.”

  “I am listening.”

  How was I to tell him? I had the feeling he knew why I had come. He was ill-humored. My presence seemed to annoy him.

  “I am leaving on a journey,” I said. “Wish me success. Give me your blessing.”

  He rose from his armchair; I also stood up. He stretched his hand toward me but pulled it back immediately.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  He knew. How did he know? Did he have powers? I didn’t think so. And yet …

  “I have no choice, Rebbe. My soul is at stake. And so is my mind.”

  “Your soul? Your mind? They have nothing to do with this journey. What you are seeking to resolve over there, you can deal with here.”

  How could I convince him that I had no choice? I was desperate.

  “Forgive me, Rebbe. Your refusal to understand hurts me.”

  My hand reached out to him once more. He looked away.

  “I cannot,” he said.

  And, sinking back into his chair, he reimmersed himself in the study of a question asked two thousand years ago somewhere in Galilee or Yavne, a question of timeless importance.

  “I know that you are not asleep,” says Theresa.

  I jump.

  “I knew it,” she says triumphantly. “I knew that you were not sleeping.”

  She knew, she knows; she is proud of it. And here I am, knowing nothing.

  “I am thinking about the war,” I say.

  “War,” says Theresa.

  Let no one speak to her of war anymore. War is ugly. Nothing but blood, putrefaction, ruins. If only people stopped talking about it, they would stop making it. Intelligent, that Theresa. If mankind were placed in her trust she would make it happy.

  “Anyway,” she says, “it has nothing to do with me. I was born later.”

  So was I. And I regret it. What an idea to be born later. If the writings of the Ancients tell the truth, if it is God Himself who decides the destiny of every soul, if it is He Himself who inserts each one individually, carefully, into human time, He has done a poor job with me. Born after the war, I endure its effects. The children of survivors are almost as traumatized as the survivors themselves. I suffer from an Event I have not even experienced. A feeling of void: from a past that has made History tremble I have retained only words. War, for me, is my mother’s closed face. War, for me, is my father’s weariness.

  Of course, I’ve read countless books on the subject: novels in which everything rings false, essays that are all pretentiousness, films in which facts are embellished and painted and commercialized. None has anything in common with the experience the survivors carry within. War, for me, is Ariel whom I have not known, whom I yearn to know: a false death, a false life, take your choice.

  I once asked Simha:

  “Why did my father choose the Un
ited States?”

  “America chose us. Remember the postwar years: no country wanted the survivors. The war was over, we had won it, but we were still treated as though we carried the plague.”

  “Bontchek went to Palestine.”

  “Illegally.”

  “Don’t tell me that you are so particular about matters of legality!”

  “How can I describe the state we were in? We were tired. Exhausted. To ascend to Palestine, to go on aliyah, one needed to be totally committed and have great stamina: one had to cross mountains, rivers, frontiers; one had to walk days and nights, endure hunger and thirst; one had to embark on ships that were not seaworthy, elude the surveillance of the British navy, risk imprisonment in Cyprus: Bontchek was up to it, your parents were not and neither was I.”

  Still, he is glad that he waited for the American visa, and so is my father. The American way of life suits them; it is easy to blend in with the masses. Perfect for Simha and my father. Removed, on the sidelines, they pursue their obsessions: Paritus and the savior. New York, the most extroverted city in the world, is also the perfect city for loners. Ideal for madmen. Nobody to disturb them.

  “Sometimes your father and I wondered what would have happened if …”

  “… if you had gone to Palestine?”

  “As many refugees did. We were constantly called upon to go there. We were urged to make our aliyah; to live on a kibbutz or in Jerusalem or in Safed in the Galilee: it was tempting.”

  “If you had gone to Palestine, my father would have finished his book on Paritus and you …”

  “Me?”

  “You would have made the Messiah come out of the shadows.”

  And I? I would not have roamed through Brooklyn, I would not have lost my mother to that clinic, I would not have met Lisa.… The Talmud, with humor, no doubt, attributes to the Creator a secret passion and pastime: He arranges marriages and decisive, meaningful encounters. Lisa’s comment: “How is one to explain divorce? Separations? Don’t tell me that He too makes mistakes!”

  Lisa, what are you doing on this train? Actually, her presence should not surprise me.

  “Lisa, you are impossible!”