by Elie Wiesel
It is because of her that blue remains my favorite color.
“You look at me and I look at you,” she said, smiling slightly at the corners of her lips. “That's enough to imagine the impossible and even to live it, isn't it?”
“Enough for whom?”
“For couples in the making,” she said, her eyes lighting up, gleaming mischievously. “Am I wrong, Mr…. who?”
“Doriel. My name is Doriel.”
“What a strange name. I don't like it.”
She took me to the cemetery and, being discreet, left me alone. I visited ancient graves before visiting my parents’. I recited the Psalms with my prayer: Do you recognize your son? Watch over him when he goes astray.
That's the story of Maya. That meeting binds me to other encounters, of another kind; that's the way things are in life. Every human being is unique, but his or her stories aren't. From a quasi-mystical point of view, it could almost be said that the stories are all alike. And yet I didn't know that many years later I would meet other Mayas, with other names, smiling like sensible children grazed by fear, but never close enough to be able to talk of a fulfilled love.
Blushing like a schoolboy on his first date, my heart racing like a wild beast chasing its prey, I see myself again with Maya by the sea in Marseilles. We had just left the cemetery in silence. I felt close to her. Nothing had faded. This is how the past survives in the present. Speechless, I saw myself in the little Polish village whose surrounding mountains I loved. Now, I loved the sea. Hypnotized, I gazed at the waves that recounted their eternal stories to me lost and swallowed up deep in their unfathomable mysteries. Suddenly her voice struck me. More affectionate than before. She was smiling at me. She looked like a worried child, but she was smiling. What was she hinting at? What did she see in me? Her own youth, perhaps? Her loss of faith? The opportunity to convey to me her experience of shared desire? As a result, I began to forget all the strange women that, because of the fear of God and my arousal on seeing them in the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, I had unsuccessfully tried to blot out of my consciousness. None had her charm or imagination. Or her freedom. She spoke to me uninhibitedly, as though we were alone in the world. For Maya, everything seemed simple, at close range. The word was innocent, gesture much less so; everything in her exuded naturalness.
“Is it your dead parents? Are you grieving for them?” she asked me, still in Yiddish. “I lost mine too. We must not let them weigh us down,” she added. “Despair can have a kind of beauty, provided it remains in the sphere of memory. Your memories paralyze you; mine do not.”
She wanted to celebrate life but instilled in me an anguish that dragged me down. How had she guessed my appalling frame of mind? How did she know that I was unhappy? She took my hand and held it for a long while, and in my heart, darkness gave way to a spark of enthusiasm and joyfulness. But while her body said yes, mine replied no. Is it my fault? Must I feel guilty for that too? Guilty for not having extended and fecundated this tie that, in plain sight of the sea and sky, might have united us in a moment of happiness, though fleeting and therefore deceptive? And what if I stayed in Marseilles, canceled my trip to Israel, and took her with me to the United States? All these thoughts swirled around in my head.
Many things happened afterward. Was it too early or too late? They all led to the time of separation. But no matter. In a diseased brain, time follows a special rhythm. In the past, at my uncle's, life seemed more orderly. In the past? When was that? What was it? A pause, an invitation? A warning from destiny? Let's put in a crossroads. In the past is far away.
“When it comes to destiny, everything is a challenge,” Maya said. “But who comes out the winner? That is the question.”
Our second meeting took place a few years later in a seaside café in Tel Aviv, a city that is constantly growing in successive maelstroms of fury and joy. Was it chance? Was it destiny? The Jewish tradition—for, you see, Doctor, I remember it—doesn't believe in fate. And yet. Everything in every creature's life is part of a grand design. Even the rolling stone or swaying tree. Everything is preordained. I might not have come here today. I might have come to see you at an earlier time, or later. And you'd have known nothing about my life. The same is true of Maya. No doubt this will seem to you childish and absurd, but an inner voice had whispered to me that I would see her again in Israel. In Jerusalem? On a kibbutz? But why did I want to meet her again? Out of curiosity? Simply to prove to myself that I was capable of loving? Or to pursue our sad romance, in any case doomed to failure? But Maya had other plans. I wasn't that important in her life. And was she in mine? Where and for whom had she concocted dreams for months?
I saw her arrive, holding a young officer's arm. She was glowing with pride. Having eyes only for her companion, she didn't see me. With a heavy heart, I wondered whether I should attract her attention.
I left the place, tiptoeing away through a hidden door. Like a thief.
I have so many things to keep silent about, so many episodes, and I search and search for my words. They hide, evade me. Why don't you try to capture them for me? You have given me so much, for one thing, life; now give me the words I need in order to love, to understand, and to open myself up to serenity.
Late November, 1973. Sitting in a café near the center of Jerusalem, I'm waiting for an old friend of my uncle's, a Haredi, as pious as he. I listen distractedly to the discussion between two journalists at a nearby table. They're talking about the debacle at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War. The shameful deficiency of Israeli military intelligence. Never had the existence of the Jewish state been in such danger. And never had there been as much talk about divine intervention and miracles. Especially in the first few days: helped by the Soviets in the south, the Egyptian forces had crossed the Suez Canal and advanced into the desert, while in the north the Syrian army was winning unprecedented victories. Here, there, and everywhere, disabled tanks and airplanes were being replaced too slowly and too inadequately. In some circles, people mentioned in an undertone the possibility of the Third Temple, symbol of the new Jewish state, being destroyed. Young soldiers, thanks to their courage, stopped the invasion. The price was high: three thousand dead in combat and more than ten thousand wounded. And Europe remained indifferent to the anguish and suffering of the Jews. When the United States finally agreed to deliver arms to Israel, none of the European countries gave the military planes permission to refuel in their airports. You'd almost think France, Germany, and the other countries had accepted the possibility of a Jewish tragedy on a historical scale. Though anti-Zionist, my uncle's friend hadn't concealed his grief and fears from me. Fortunately, Tsahal, the Israeli army, had crossed the Suez Canal as well, taking the rear of the Egyptian army by surprise and threatening Cairo.
I sipped my lemonade thinking not about my studies, so frequently interrupted, but about my uncle and aunt. They lived in New York and must have been fretting: I was nearly thirty-eight, but if something were to happen to me right then, they would sink into a possibly irreversible depression. For in a country at war, the tragedy is not just death but uncertainty. That's why their anguish kept haunting me during my long nights wandering around the world.
“And our future, what's become of it?” a voice in back of me suddenly asked in Yiddish.
I gave a start and exclaimed: “Maya! Where have you been? What are you doing here? Are you on a special assignment?”
“I came to surprise you.”
“You knew I was in the country?”
“I had no idea.”
“Well then?”
“Well, nothing.”
“You're the goddess of surprises.”
“All the better.”
“For whom?”
“For couples unexpectedly in the making.”
Couples. Again, almost the same thoughts she had expressed the first time, in Marseilles. She alluded to it once more; then, taking on a professorial tone, she explained: if surprises didn't exist, life would be
nothing more than a bad novel about mediocrity. She still had her beautiful low voice, suggesting unsuspected profundity. But it wasn't her voice that made her attractive; even then, it was her dark, haunted eyes and her childlike smile, not frightened but amused. Could this be a disease, Doctor, which psychiatrists will have to deal with, the disease of “blue eyes” and of “a childlike smile”?
“You look at me and I feel like smiling at you,” Maya said in her melodious Yiddish. “And talking to you about us, and maybe about myself too. I look at you and you seem as lost and as unhappy as the last time. Is it because of the squandered years?”
“It's not our fault. If we just met again, it's because it was meant to be.”
Did I still love her?
I asked myself this question a long time ago. Today, as I speak to you, to you who are no longer here, and to you too, Liatt, while I write to you, I would answer: something of this love has remained in me. It is not nothing, but no more than that. Today I am writing to you, and not to her.
Yes, I loved her in my way, not in hers. I loved her because her voice took me back to my childhood and those miraculous moments. And because she had dark blue eyes and dark rings around them. And an open face. And she forgot nothing. She requested—she demanded—that I take up the bet of candidly narrating a novel to her about the future we could have had. I briefly invented a languorous engagement, a wedding celebrated by mystical beggars in a bewitched forest. And then I loved her because it was a pure, naïve, innocent love. I told her that I used to think women liked me and were attracted to me. Now, no women smiled at me. None, except her. Then Maya in turn described the same period since we had first met but dwelled on aspects of a coupledom marked by unfulfilled love and ending in a cruel disease. She described a hospital room, physicians, visitors, flowers on the table, and the river view from the window. She said she married to counter destiny; she thought she would be able to demonstrate she had powers over it. But it always wins in the end. She seemed so young still. And already a widow.
“You look at me and I feel like smiling,” she said again in her melodious Yiddish.
And I felt like crying.
This was our third meeting, though there really wasn't a second one.
I remember: She was best at talking and I was best at keeping silent, unlike with you, Doctor. She repeated simple but strange words. As though she were reciting, in Yiddish, poems by Mar-kish, short stories by Peretz, verses on death culled from esoteric ancient works from Tibet, Egypt, and Babylonia. I listened to her with the same anxiety as the first time. Doctor, was I already then the man you see today? Was the dybbuk already haunting me? Maya dreamily recalled our hours of imaginary happiness, whereas my thoughts drifted to the finality of suffering. The Angel of Death, the only one to have escaped madness, now made his presence felt under his anonymous and indifferent masks. Nasty, pernicious, he prowled through the streets populated with Jewish and Arab children and on the sunlit hills of Judea, ready to strike the descendants of Moses and David.
Many years have gone by since then. I had pleasant affairs, and though some were not so lovely, they were never dull. I studied, made a few breakthroughs in the interpretation of texts, traveled across exotic countries, got close to some great masters, played with the children of my friends, spent money left and right, founded shelters and health-care centers for the disinherited, and did my best to help people resigned to regaining a little bit of hope. I took care of the unfortunate orphans whose parents were victims of war.
When I'm sick, which at my age happens more and more frequently, children come to see me. Irene, so young and so sickly, kisses my hand. Little Avrémele, who lost his mother, looks at me with a sad expression; he wants to know where it hurts. I answer I don't know. He's surprised; if I don't know where it hurts, it must mean it doesn't hurt. Logical, isn't it? Then he caresses my forehead and says: There, it doesn't hurt anymore. And my chest: You see, it doesn't hurt anymore. I smile at him and tell him that I love him. Between two hospital stays, I have work that sometimes gives me a feeling of satisfaction. I give adolescents private courses on medieval Jewish history. That's my area; don't ask me why, Doctor. Perhaps because, at my advanced age, I thought it would make my elderly parents happy, my parents who died young, so young. First I grieved over the death of my mother. Then over that of my father. Yet they died together, on the same day; I know when, where, and in what circumstances. I also know that I should have done more for them and better … I grieve over the deaths of my sister, Dina, and my brother, Jacob. She, so graceful, so intrepid; he, so frail and vulnerable. Is it because of them that I expect so little out of life?
I told Maya all this, and she interrupted me. “Of life?” she asked. “What life are you talking about? Yours or mine? Or the one suggested to you by your fantasies?”
When two destinies beckon to each other, Doctor, the gods always intervene. Either they applaud or they get angry.
“And you,” I said, in order to hurt her back, “what couple are you talking about? Yours or mine?”
“Ours, you poor fool. We could have lived together, spread happiness in a world doomed to suffer and cause suffering. We could have …”
She was dreaming.
Should I question her about our “second” meeting? She was with an officer. Who was he? Her future husband? And if I had joined her, would she have left him?
We brought our heads closer. Around us, the world continued on its restless course. For us, time stopped.
At the frontiers of the desert, war was too exhausted to strike again; hundreds of families were grieving over the heroic deaths of their close ones; journalists talked of scandals involving the military and politicians; commentators demanded resignations, but the two of us, in that café, we thought only about our little quarrel.
“Tell me a story,” Maya begged, her blue eyes becoming bluer than the sky.
“A story?” I asked, half surprised. “Here? Now?” “Why not?” she replied with a serious expression. “Is there a special time for stories?”
I could have answered yes, there's a time for revealed stories and a time for those that remain hidden away in the shadows, a time for tears and another for songs, except that tears can turn into songs. “Would a memory do?” I asked.
“Instead of a story?”
“Why not?”
“I prefer stories. Memories are often too sad.”
“And stories aren't?”
Maya stopped smiling. She must have been weighing the pros and cons in her mind.
“Very well then,” she concluded. “A memory will be okay.”
How could I avoid making her sad? I told her about the tradition that existed in our family, transmitted from generation to generation. It concerned my maternal great-great-grandfather. He lived in a small village tucked away in the Carpathians. He kept a tavern and inn, where he lived with his wife and children. In spite of the difficult times in that region for our people, he never complained. Was he happy? Like all Diaspora Jews, yes and no. On the Sabbath, he and his entire family glowed with happiness. Yet he had his share of hardships. Up to his neck in debt, threatened and occasionally beaten by fanatical hooligans, especially during Christian holidays, he was convinced that only the arrival of the Messiah would bring an end to the curses hanging over his household and the greater house of Israel. Thanks to this belief, he overcame sufferings and misfortunes. Then, one winter night, when everything was closed in the sleeping village, someone knocked at his door. A shabbily dressed visitor, probably a peasant or coachman, asked if he could sleep at the inn until daybreak. He was exhausted and penniless. My great-great-grandfather wanted to know who he was and where he was from, but the visitor evaded the questions and said, “What does it matter where I'm from? Actually, I'm from where you're from. And you'll be going where I'm going.” With that, he turned away and walked toward the hearth to warm himself up. My great-great grandfather brought him some hot tea, a fur pelisse to wrap himself in, some dried
fruits, and an oil lamp. Worried, he didn't go back to bed but kept a watchful eye on the sleeping visitor. It was Rabbi Israel, son of Eliezer and Sarah, the man who would become the Ba'al Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name.
Maya waited for me to continue, but I kept silent.
“That's all?” she cried out, disappointed.
“No,” I said. “That's not all. That's only the prologue.”
“Well, then, tell me the rest! There's a sequel, isn't there?”
“Yes, this memory, or story, has a sequel.”
“What is it? Don't be cruel!”
“I'm not cruel; you know that.”
I asked her not to press the matter: “Be patient. Now you know there's a sequel, and that one day you'll know it. Let that be enough for you. It's dangerous to run too fast. Only madmen take that risk.”
Being intelligent, Maya pretended to be sad, but she didn't press the matter.
I know, Doctor, I know what people are saying: “He's gone mad, poor Doriel's gone mad.” Oh yes, mad, me. I raise again the question that comes up at all our sessions: What is being mad, Doctor? Between a normal storyteller narrating the story of a madman and a madman describing the death of a normal man, which one would require your treatment, Doctor? If the world tells me I'm mad, whereas I know I'm not, which of us is right? Thus, being mad is what? Starting a story or a sentence and not finishing it? Inventing a life one hasn't lived or loving a woman met in another lifetime? Is it clinging to unsatisfied desires? Having a blazing head and a heart frozen in terror? Living on the fringes of time in a country where everything is orderly just as others go off to live and dance at the ends of the earth? Yes, I'm chained to my madness, to its fury, caught up in its violence. My brain is mush, Doctor; my mind is in shreds. And what about the soul, Doctor? The possessed, desecrated soul. Does the madman's soul leave with his reason, or does it become mad too? But then what does this madness consist of? Is it attracted by the black flames of a fire like the ones, during a pogrom, that devour the hearts and bodies of the living and the dead, and even of babies still to be born? And this ailing soul, disconsolate or raging, how can it be healed without knowing the true nature of its shackles and wounds?