by Elie Wiesel
I knew Béinish's story, but I did not yet know Tamir's story, and there was no reason for him to talk to me about it. So then why was he trying to make me into a secret agent?
“It's simpler than you think,” he explained in a voice that had become impassive again. “You're an American citizen, you have an American passport, you're not involved in politics, you're neither a Zionist nor pro-Israel, you're young and intelligent; it's normal for you to travel around the world. In other words, you have the perfect cover and wouldn't attract the attention of the authorities.”
“You're flattering me,” I replied. “But really, can you seriously see me as a Mossad agent? I haven't read a single spy thriller—”
“A good agent is precisely someone who wouldn't be taken to be a spy. All I ask is that you think about it. The life of a good number of Jews, here and in certain Arab countries, may hinge on your decision.”
Several days later he suggested I meet a friend of his by the name of Laurent in a Tel Aviv café.
I don't know why, but I expected to come face-to-face with another madman.
16
Laurent and his deep gaze: it warmed and calmed everything it enveloped. The bird in flight, the windswept tree, the sunlit rock.
Tall, slender, impeccably dressed, he had everything to live happily among the living. But the dead, who refuse to be forgotten or pitied, prevented it. They too know madness.
“Come,” he said to me, “let me treat you to a drink.”
“I stopped drinking long ago.”
“A coffee?”
“Okay. A coffee.”
Laurent stared at me with his gentle, understanding gaze. “Why did Tamir want us to meet?” he asked.
“Ask him.”
“No, I'm asking you.”
“I have no idea. I can't answer for him.”
“Don't try to lie to me.”
“I'm not lying. I really don't know what Tamir would answer.”
“What could his motives be?”
“Let's wait until we see him again. He'll tell us.”
“Why wait?”
“I don't know you well enough.”
As if it is possible to know anyone, I mean really know, in a few minutes or even a few years. But if I waited longer, would I know him better? Does that mean knowledge at first sight may exist just as love at first sight exists? And if the other was merged with me, everywhere and always, as mad as I was and still am, would I know him slightly better, notwithstanding the rare sunny spells that cause more harm than good?
“As for me, I was waiting for you,” said Laurent. “Perhaps just to chat. I know your name.”
As though that was enough. As though a few casual exchanges could reveal anything about what defines a human being, his shortcomings and virtues, his instincts and his will to master them, his exuberant joys and silent nightmares: all these riches, all these signs, all these secrets—how could a name contain them all, except God's, hence by definition a sealed name, forever unknown, in other words, unusable and ineffable?
In response to my silence, Laurent talked. “You're Doriel. That's what I was told. But is it your real name?”
At that point, I said to myself that we were going to become accomplices. Usually, people leave their names anywhere, on a piece of paper or on people's lips. In the past, during the occupation, names were at war with one another. There were those who fell, others who got back on their feet. They were all loaded with stories. Being a good Jew, Laurent knew that the Bible is filled with names. Each one is a biography, a memory fragment. God gave Adam the power of naming, thereby marking the beginning of the human adventure, with its unpredictable, improbable, yet true developments.
Laurent had everything that women find attractive. First of all, he was slender and dynamic, well dressed, and as handsome as a movie actor. Second, he was an intellectual; he was refined, with a deep understanding of the world and an insatiable, lofty curiosity. He was also attractive to men. But I ask you, how can one possibly be attractive to everyone, to Tamir and me, to the rich and poor, to the learned and the ignorant? He had all the ingredients for a happy life. Here again, I ask you, how can one possibly be happy in a world that will one day plunge into violence and hatred, in other words, into the black hole of history? Well, Laurent didn't plunge. When I met him, he was running a pharmaceutical company. He was admired, liked, respected, even in political circles. Was it just that he lacked madness? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity; all is madness, and honors more than the rest. But how had he wound up in the Israeli intelligence?
He was born of Polish Jewish parents who had immigrated to France and worked twelve hours a day so he could have a good education. His education in the best secondary school in Paris was interrupted by the war. His parents were deported. He and his younger brother, Maurice, both members of the same underground Communist network, miraculously escaped the roundup of Jews in the Vélodrome d'Hiver.
And afterward?
Feverish days, harrowing nights. Companions vanishing in the night and fog. Imprisoned, tortured, shot.
And afterward?
The liberation. Happiness regained? Laurent skipped over events too numerous to go into. His parents? His brother? He jumped to the present.
Laurent was in love with Jacqueline. They were both proud of their children, Tili and Cécile, who were proud of them in return. In other words: he had nothing short of a perfect career, with no gray areas.
He related all this to me in a natural tone of voice without any boastfulness. Apparently, he was eager to convince me that he was leading a happy life in a sunny environment. But what had he found in this country where highs and lows came in quick succession? Something about his behavior bothered me. Was it his voice? When he spoke about his life, he seemed to be describing another person's fate.
“Laurent,” I said to him several days later. “I hope you won't mind my being indiscreet, but—”
“But what?”
“Tamir wanted us to meet. We don't know why, but now we know each other and we will soon separate. And if I leave you without asking you the question that's on my mind, I'll have the feeling of having abandoned you.”
“I'm listening.”
I told him I had a special relationship with what is called depression, and more specifically, thanks to my sixth or seventeenth sense, with those who fear it or invite it. He looked at me with a faint ironic smile but remained silent. I told him I wasn't making fun of him, that when someone was unhappy and felt drawn by some demon or other, he sent out a signal that I detected like a kind of ultrasound. To use a mystical metaphor, I explained, it was like an abyss always attracting another abyss; I felt concerned. And today this feeling came from him.
Laurent looked at me without blinking, as if I had just escaped from a lunatic asylum. “I'm listening,” he said.
“Me too, Laurent, I'm listening. I'm listening to what you hear and what draws you and causes you to slip and stumble.”
That evening we were sitting at the same table in the same café, watching the patrons who came to celebrate bittersweet, unexpected victories, or to drown in whiskey defeats that could have been graver and delusions that tore them away from those who loved them.
I said to myself that in the eyes of destiny we are all voyeurs or beggars, for it is not in our power to choose other skies that we could populate with other spectacles or other gods.
Laurent stared at me with a wan smile on his lips. A mad thought, like uncontrolled grass caressing the foot of a tree, went through my mind: And what if we were close, not because of our melancholic personalities, but because he and I, each in our own way and perhaps to a different degree, were—how do you put it—afflicted souls?
“Are you still friends?” Thérèse asks me.
“No.”
“How would you define your relationship?”
“He was my companion during a brief but important moment in time.”
“Moment?”
“We saw each other four or five times; then I lost touch with him.”
“Yet he remains present in you. More so than the many others you must have come across. Could it be because you see in him a resemblance or difference that troubles you?”
“Did I envy him? Did I fear him? Let's say he intrigued me. He made me feel disconcerted. He lived such a full life, the opposite of mine. Did he know the anguish of error, of doubt? Listening to him, I told myself that I was born too late.”
“That's all?”
“No. I also told myself that he had been lucky to be able to rebuild a life. To give it meaning. To make those he loved happy. When I compare myself to him, I feel useless. I didn't do anything, didn't build anything, didn't obtain anything. Great events didn't touch me; lofty ideals didn't attract me. Compared with his story, mine seems dull, childish, and more or less futile.”
I am fascinated by what I learn of the different episodes of World War II, the deadliest and most insane war in history. Those recounted to me by Laurent were the ones that Tamir wanted me to know about. They made an impression on me because they made me think about my mother and sister.
Like them, Laurent, my new friend, had been active in the clandestine struggle. Was that why I had felt close to him? Because, like my sister and mother in another country, Laurent had fought against the cruelty of the German occupier? Laurent was his nom de guerre. Idealist, daredevil, volunteer for the most dangerous missions. In spite of his youth, or perhaps because of it, he didn't wait for orders to come down. Embodying the spirit of personal initiative, he acted as he pleased. It was a question of impulse. When there was a good opportunity, he made sure not to miss it. Though they congratulated him on his successes, his superiors criticized him for his impetuousness: Didn't he know that all armies, even secret ones, had a hierarchy that had to be respected, or else his comrades might be endangered? He knew it, but his desire to defeat the enemy was stronger.
From time to time, I used to interrupt him. “Laurent,” I would say, “you should write about all this.”
“What for?”
“Because it's fascinating, that's why.”
“What if it is? Don't tell me that everything that is interesting in life must be written up.”
“Not everything, but some things.”
“Which ones?”
“Those that help man progress, discover, fulfill himself.”
“How are these things recognized?”
What could I answer? Romek had wanted to persuade my mother in the same way, using the same arguments. In vain. Should I press him? Laurent had already launched into another story.
“And now, as I describe him, Doctor, I ask myself: If all these events had happened to me, rather than to him, if I had been Laurent, would I have let myself be swept up by my secret demons?”
“And what if, precisely, you had been him?” asks the doctor.
What makes her suddenly break her silence? “Why are you asking me this question, Doctor?”
“I don't know. It just popped into my mind unexpectedly. I'm thinking of our last conversation …”
“Well, no, I never thought I was Laurent. Are you disappointed?”
“Not at all. Continue.”
“No, Doctor. First I'd like to know why you're trying to rob me of my identity. I have a right to know.”
“Far be it from me to think of depriving you of your identity. Quite the contrary, I'm trying to help you to better define it so you can protect it against what's undermining it. The illness you're suffering from—as opposed to love, which protects and celebrates identity—can distort identity and bring about its loss and disintegration.”
Should I answer that love … But the session is about to end. Thank God. I know my therapist well enough to anticipate what will come next: eroticism, love in my life, my mother's love, why I speak so little and so badly about it, and why I say nothing about women, if I have known any in my life, and if not, why. So will I forever be deprived of the joy of the senses that can only be kindled and enhanced by a woman's body? No, no, Doctor, I'm bathed in sweat; that's enough for today. In fact, excitement is bad for me; I can no longer control my words. My thoughts remain clear, but suddenly my sentences become muddled, buzz around in my head, come to a standstill, unite and intertwine, past and present merge, as human beings do, Laurent and I becoming one single self, in order to better hate ourselves and hate me, repudiate ourselves and condemn me.
Laurent, my alter ego? I repeat: his past has nothing in common with mine. In those days, time itself showed overwhelming signs of true madness.
Winter. Gray sky. Snow flurries. Icy roads. One long shiver. The homes on the long avenue de Paris are silent. The patrols are menacing, their heavy steps pounding the pavement, careful not to slip. Laurent is telling me about Rheims, on a December evening in 1942.
It is like a war film. I like war films, though I loathe war. I like them because they end with the triumph of Good over Evil. I like the pace of these films. Each shot, each word, each sign brings us closer to the death of some and the joy of others. Victory is patient. It bides its time. As for death … In these films, death is ubiquitous.
“That night, the entire city was shivering from the cold,” said Laurent.
And from fear.
He had just left Maurice, his brother, who was living with an old friend of their father's, a former railroad engineer. As they shook hands, Maurice said, “You'll be careful?”
“Of course,” Laurent replied. “I'll be back home tomorrow afternoon, as usual. As for you, stay here.”
As he made his way to the bus station, Laurent began to feel anxious. It was a vague anxiety, and he had trouble pinpointing its cause. Usually his comrades admired him for his composure. So why this anxiety? He had no idea.
Would Dumas, his immediate superior, show up at the meeting place? And what if he, Laurent, was nabbed in a roundup? Would he hold his tongue when confronted by the Gestapo or the militiamen? And what about his little brother, stubborn as a mule, would he do something foolish? As it happened, it was Laurent himself who would.
And not just him. The noncommissioned German officer who stopped him made a mistake too. Emerging out of the darkness, he focused his flashlight on Laurent's face, blinded him, and said in a low voice: “Papieren.” Laurent slipped his hand into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out the fake papers that identified him as a nice French boy studying at the Protestant Institute. “Du sprichst Deutsch?” the German asked. Remembering some Yiddish words he used to hear at home as a child, Laurent answered without thinking, “A bissel,” a little. No sooner had he pronounced these words than he realized his mistake. The noncommissioned officer was going to arrest him. It wasn't serious as such: his papers were good; the identity card, made by an employee in the Rouen police headquarters, was authentic. More serious? If the German brought him to the police station, he'd be searched. And in his pocket was something that could get him a death sentence: a gun taken from a soldier killed during an attack organized by Dumas a week earlier. Regaining his sangfroid, Laurent said: “I'll show you something that will convince you.” He slipped his hand into his pocket again. In a split second the German was sprawled out on the snow, his flashlight still lit. Laurent bent over the body, grabbed the weapon from the German's hand, and calmly walked away without turning around.
Fifteen minutes later, he was with Maurice again. “Listen, little brother,” he said, “I've just killed a German.” While he hid the two guns, Laurent went on: “You must leave immediately. Very soon, the whole neighborhood will be sealed off. The army, the police, and the Gestapo bastards will search the houses. It's best to be elsewhere before they come around with their dogs.”
Fortunately, they knew shortcuts to another part of the city. They found a way of getting to Paris. They took the subway to the Châtelet stop. Maurice joined their parents, who had been taken in by the wife of a neighborhood shoemaker, while Laurent contacted Dumas's liaison officer. They
met in the Luxembourg Garden at lunchtime, when a great number of students clustered around the ornamental lake, seeking a bit of warmth and friendship. Laurent was ordered to go see Dumas. It was urgent. A phone call confirmed the appointment for the next day, in the late afternoon.
Broad-shouldered, wearing a leather jacket, badly shaven, with the look of a tired manual laborer, Dumas had already been informed.
“So it was you?” he asked, averting his gaze.
All the security rules had been followed. The place: a café near Les Halles. It was their first time there; the spot was reserved for exceptional occasions. Dumas had checked that there was nothing suspicious in the vicinity. Laurent had joined him a bit later. It could have been a chance meeting of two employees. Dumas stood to the right of the counter, a sign that there was no danger. The only other patrons besides the two of them were habitués. A tramp, frozen stiff, half drunk. A worker exhausted from the day's labor. Two women wearing heavy makeup being entertained by an overdressed man. They were all chatting in low voices. As though they were hoarse. A bluish light enveloped them in an unreal color. “So it was you?” Dumas asked again.
Laurent was surprised. How had his superior heard the news, and through whom? On the radio? Laurent had listened to the morning broadcast: the usual mix of triumphant news from the front and propaganda, nothing about the killing.
“So it was you?” Dumas pressed him, looking straight at him.
“Yes,” Laurent replied, “it was me.”
“Why? Did you forget? No personal attacks. Not without orders from above.”
“I had no choice.”
“Explain.”
“He was going to arrest me. I was armed.”
“Was he alone?”
“Not really. There was surely a patrol in the area.”
Dumas didn't hide his displeasure. “You should have run away,” he said. “You're young. You run fast.”
“The Germans would have caught up with me.”