by Elie Wiesel
Flabbergasted, I take the tray she is handing me and remain motionless.
“That's five dollars,” she says, a hint of amusement in her voice, while looking me directly in the eye. “Over there, on the left, there's an empty table waiting for you.”
If her aim was to give me a lesson in humility, wisdom, and good humor, she has succeeded admirably. Should I ask her if she knows my language and my personal logic, the language and logic of my illness? Or ask her if she's mad, I mean mad, not unsettled or out of step, but mad in the head, a bit like me? Can two mad individuals, coming from faraway galaxies or backgrounds, have the same vision, and own the same key, the same code, allowing them to open a vault where they deposit, like treasures, words emptied of their usual meanings and given new ones, known only to them? I should get the waitress to speak more, but she is already far away, busy with new customers. Yet I know it is imperative that we continue our all too brief exchange. It is the beginning of an adventure. I don't know where it will lead us, to which victories and over which enemies, and that's for the best. It's proof that I am living through a period of uncertainty and doubt that has nothing to do with the crises where everything remains clear, rigorous, and inevitable. As in a dream that is not yet mine, I see myself rising from the table, going up to the counter, and saying to the waitress in a voice loud enough for the customers to hear: “I've been waiting for you. You have to come with me.”
“But …”
“But what?”
“My work …”
“I'll give you double what you earn here. Or triple, if you like.”
“And what if I'm fired?”
“My offer is good no matter what happens, whatever the circumstance.”
“If I follow you, where will we be going? To do what? Are you taking revenge for something? Trying to humiliate someone? Trying to find happiness in another person's misfortune?”
Good questions, I say to myself. Reasonable and pertinent. You'd have to be an idiot to dismiss them, and a poet to reply to them. But aren't madmen sometimes poets in their way, though they don't know it? Where had I read or heard the improvised verses that my lips were about to pronounce? Won't my dumbfounded “public” react, as it should, with an outburst of noisy laughter? Too bad, I'll take the giant risk.
“All I want is to be with you,” I say, pleading. “Yes, my young lady, together we'll jettison the weight of memories that don't yet belong to us. Together we'll seek intoxication; the intoxication of gold dawns and of darkness in desolation.”
Suddenly she stops playing. Life becomes normal again. The waitress no longer incarnates my dreams of breaking with routine: her feet are on the ground once again. She becomes serious, skeptical, and almost fretful again. And from her lips come these words that can only disappoint me: “But who are you, sir? What weird world do you come from? And who do you take me for?”
She obviously takes me for a liar. I take a wad of bills out of my pocket: “They're yours.”
She looks at me, wide-eyed, hands on her hips. I don't look like a Wall Street banker. She's puzzled by me; that's clear. I frighten her. She whispers: “A crook? Are you a big-time crook? An adventurer? A romantic outlaw who is fond of other people's money?”
As I'm convinced she can guess what's going on in my heart and mind, I reply that she must know that I'm not a gangster.
“But then who are you?”
I say it's a long story. I'll tell it to her later. First she must come with me. Seeing her hesitate, I turn to the patrons of this blessed pastry shop; hypnotized, they are watching the scene, chuckling or irritated. I ask them to help me convince my beloved of my good faith. An elderly man, with a felt hat and fur collar, cries out and applauds: “It's a beautiful love story!” And a respectable but exuberant lady approves: “An old man and a young woman! And I thought this only happened in the movies!” One patron urges her on: “Go ahead, miss! Don't pay attention to his age! So he could be your grandfather, so what?” And another patron: “Prince Charming is calling you—don't keep him waiting!”
Then, with a brusque movement, she grabs her coat, comes up to me, takes my arm, and says, “You see: I'll follow you. I'm willing to sacrifice everything. But don't disappoint me, huh; that would be rotten, and stupid to boot!”
“Trust me,” I say.
“Oh, I'll watch my step. What you don't know is that I've been through this kind of story before …”
“Trust me,” I say to her.
Taking her arm, I open the door, and we plunge into a life that doesn't expect us, but whose uncertainties, I know, we're eager to confront.
“Listen to me without interrupting,” she says, as though echoing words previously heard in other circumstances. “I'll talk about myself for ten minutes; then you'll talk about yourself. Ten minutes each, is that okay? I can say anything I like, and you too. Lies or truth, it doesn't matter. Then we'll decide if it's worth going on. Is that clear?”
We're sitting in a nearby café, drinking hot chocolate. As agreed, she describes her past. A secular or agnostic Jew, she's not too sure which. Sephardic, born in Jerusalem, American citizen. Age: thirty-six. A degree in the social sciences. As a student, at times mediocre, at times brilliant, depending on her mood. She gave it all up after an unhappy love affair with her philosophy professor. Never married. Various jobs, none worthwhile. The only daughter of survivors, which should explain everything. Everything? A big word may say nothing, or so little. Weightless, with no depth, like all the others. Perhaps it conceals her impulses, her irrational whims, her curiosity about everything that is out of the ordinary, her rejection of the standards imposed by a hypocritical society, adrift and doomed to perish from its fear of boredom.
“But you didn't say anything about the story.” I say.
“What story?”
“The one you'd been through, that's like ours.”
“Oh yes, that one.”
One day, she went to an elegant hotel to see an American girlfriend who was visiting Paris. She went to the wrong floor and knocked at the wrong door. A stranger opened it. Disconcerted, embarrassed, she mumbled: “I'm sorry, I made a mistake …”
He smiled: “No, don't say that. Since you're here, come in.” And seeing her hesitate, he added: “I promise nothing bad will happen to you.”
“Naïve as I am, loving the unexpected,” she tells me, “I accepted. Besides, he didn't look dangerous. He asked me to sit down, which I did. The room had been made up, the bed covered with a bedspread. There was a big pile of books and manuscripts on the table. He explained that he was a novelist. I stayed with him for three months. Three months of trips to the sunshine, of night adventures, of discoveries and learning. Then one morning, while I was asleep, he disappeared without leaving a good-bye note …”
“Trust me.” Again, this is all I can think of to say.
It is my turn to speak about myself. I just tell her a story told by head rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav:
“One day, the king read in the stars that the coming harvest would be cursed; whoever would eat from it would become mad. He summoned his best friend and said to him, ‘Let's both put a mark on our foreheads. That way, when we both take leave of our senses, along with the entire population in the kingdom, we'll know that we're mad.’ “
“In other words?” she asks.
I lean toward her.
“I don't understand,” she says. “I talked about myself, whereas you're telling me a parable.” She was not angry but intrigued.
I then pass on to her the remark of another great master, Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin: a day will come when the parable and its meaning will have nothing in common anymore.
“Plainly stated, what do you mean by all this?” she asks.
“Let's imitate these two great masters, shall we? In this demented, doomed world where the living all seem to be fleeing from a past that is bound, sooner or later, to become their future, we'll be alone together, irremediably alone, but we'll know it.”
&n
bsp; “We'll know what?”
“That we're mad.”
I hope to see her smile, I would give anything for her to smile, but she remains impervious to my sense of humor. Solemn, suspicious, she looks at me as though I'd just dropped down from Mars.
“Really, Mr. Storyteller,” she says, “I find you peculiar. I don't know your name and you didn't ask me mine. We're two strangers that a beneficent or evil coincidence brought face-to-face in a pastry shop, where other strangers come for food and indirectly put food on my table. Giving in to one of your whims, I let you tear me away from my customers, my workplace, my milieu, my entourage, my habits. No explanation and maybe no reason. Others have done it before and are still doing it to other young women. But they promise a week of pleasure by the seashore, a costly jewel, lots of exotic memories, meetings with famous people, and even a bit of love and happiness. Whereas you, if I understand correctly, your gift is madness. Right?”
“Let's say I have a one-word answer to that question: yes.”
“Well … are you making fun of me?”
“No. I'm not making fun of you but of myself.”
“And you'd like to use me to better laugh at yourself?”
“There you're mistaken. I'm not using anyone.”
Suddenly, she seems frightened. “Mr. Stranger,” she says, “let's forget the jokes. Tell me the truth: What are we doing here?”
I lean even closer to her, as though I want my head to touch hers, my life to join hers, or at least to make her smile. And foolishly, at the same time I tell myself that if I don't succeed, my whole life will be ruined.
“You'd like to know what we're doing here. Simply put, I could tell you that we're both trying to change an apparently fortuitous meeting into a story that could perfectly well be placed, with a bit of luck, under the sign of destiny, which has more imagination than we have.”
She's a good listener. Silently, she seems to be taking in my words before deciding whether she can fit them into the book of her life. Then she pulls herself together.
“They call me Liatt,” she says.
My heart misses a beat; she didn't say, “My name is,” but “They call me.” I've never known a woman by that name. It's a Hebrew word. It means “You're mine.” I repeat: “Li-att.”
And finally, no longer resisting, her beautiful oval face, with its harmonious features, lights up with a smile.
“I could tell you my real name, the one I had up until now,” I say, “but for you, and you alone, I'd like to invent a new one.”
She waits. Her smile seems to deepen. It reconciles sadness and joy, fervor and grace, nostalgia for the past and fulfillment in the present. I scan my mind feverishly for biblical, prophetic, and Talmudic names, a special, unusual, unique name that would reflect the moment I just lived through and the one to come. I look at her intensely, hoping to find it in her. That way, as she gave me the gift of Liatt, I will give her my new name.
“So,” she says. “Did you find the name? I'm waiting for it.”
I like to have her waiting.
“One word. Hebrew like yours. One syllable: Od.
“Which means what?”
“It has two meanings. Od with an ayin means ‘again.’ With an aleph, the word could mean ‘thank you, I will give thanks.’ “
Is she touched? She takes my hand and says, “Again.”
It's been ages since I've been so deeply moved. Or so deeply worried.
This is because a timid but persistent voice within me keeps whispering doubts and warnings: What are you doing? Beware, you old confirmed bachelor. You're about to tread on unknown, dangerous, explosive terrain. This whim could cost you dearly. You're forgetting the negative side of this equation, first of all, your age. This time, it's serious; you're not dealing with a flirtation or a fleeting affair. By what right can you decide to shape or change this young woman's life, to take advantage of her naïveté or simply her curiosity? You, a man with so many complexes, including a guilt complex—think what you're getting yourself into.
However, another voice whispers to me: Remember the women you've known. And who frightened you. Are you sure it isn't the same one every time, who lived several lives before becoming the woman before you now?
“What's wrong?” Liatt asks. “All of a sudden I sense you're troubled.”
“I've always been. Sometimes I think that I've let myself be swept away by moments of madness, just to drown out what was troubling me in my life.”
But the tiny, insistent voice dares to lecture me: Why don't you tell her the truth, huh? Admit you're too old, with a rather limited future, that you never were able to live like everyone else, in a stable home, with singing children and laughing grandchildren ; tell her it's too late for you to start a life as a couple with a beautiful, intelligent young woman who deserves a spouse her own age. Go ahead, tell her …
“Listen to me, Liatt.”
“I'm listening.”
“Liatt, I love that name and I think I'll love you, whose name it is. And the reason I feel like addressing you familiarly, while you don't address me so, is because you're still very young and I'm much older. If we stay together, I know I'll receive a lot from you, whereas you'll receive very little from me.”
“Does that frighten you?”
“No, not really. But you're frightened. Or am I wrong?”
“Yes, I am frightened. Frightened of liking my new life too much. In other words, frightened of loving you and then having to leave you.”
This day we do nothing but talk. About everything and nothing. About our first memories, our dreams, and our disappointments. Like me, Liatt has already lived a full, turbulent life, with its wounds and joys. But compared with mine, her life is only just beginning. She asks me what I have read and I ask her what she has read. She asks me about my parents and I about hers—professors of biogenetics, they live six months of each year in Israel and six months in California. She asks me about my political opinions, and I ask about her leisure activities. About my Jewishness. I explain my attachment to tradition, memory, community. Our romantic experiences? Scanty on my side, plentiful on hers. She describes several affairs at the university without going into details. At one time, she fell in love with a pseudo Hindu guru. She followed him to his ashram for a week—the worst week in her life. Hell on earth. And the loss of her illusions. But now she is free.
We leave the café at about noon, with the intention of having lunch in a restaurant. She isn't hungry; nor am I. We walk aimlessly through the snowy streets. The coat she is wearing is too flimsy. I offer to buy her a warmer one. She refuses categorically; she will never be a kept woman. Even if I love her? Especially if I love her. Even if I'm far from destitute? Even if I was the wealthiest man on Wall Street. Even if I tell her I have no one else in the world but her? Now she doesn't answer right away. Then it's her turn to ask. Without looking at me, she says, “You never married. Why?”
“I have no idea, Liatt. Let's say that before it was too soon and now it's probably too late.”
“Yet you must have met women, and loved some.”
“Yes, I think I loved. I was looking for the kindred soul, though I knew I would run away before having found her.”
“But … why this fear of committing yourself? Why this pattern of running away?”
“My psychotherapist asked me the same questions. With her help, I tried to explore this question in depth. I suspect you don't know analysts; they're a special breed. Their domain is the soul or sexuality, or the two together. According to my therapist, I looked where I should not have, and this caused my psychological problems. Added to that, apparently, is my acute guilt complex for having outlived my parents and siblings. Which is why I refused to imitate them—in other words, I didn't marry, didn't start a family, didn't have children.”
“Is that all you discovered?”
“No. There's something else as well. My therapist is convinced that I'm afraid of having sexual relations. What do you expec
t; she's a Freudian. She clearly implied it: if I had had the courage and not repressed my desire, if I had chosen a woman to whom I was sufficiently attracted and whom I could have loved other than mentally, I would have long ago been rid of what I call my madness.”
“And what did you say to that?”
“I told her that, in life, intimate things must remain intimate. But if you require—”
“I require nothing.”
Liatt stops in front of a clothing store; we look at the reflection of our two silhouettes and our two faces in the shop-window.
“And now?” she says.
“Now what?”
“Don't you have regrets that you stayed single, I mean, single forever? Without a wife, of course, but also without descendants.”
She has been quick to identify my weak spot, the place where I am vulnerable: children. In the past, I was convinced that we shouldn't have children anymore. It was a way of saying to God, echoing my roommate in the clinic: Lord, You witnessed the systematic, implacable annihilation of a million and a half Jewish children. You let the killers get away with it. Well, if that was your desire and aim, if You prefer a world with no Jewish children, who am I to go against Your will? Watch, I'll tiptoe away and say to You: At least my children won't be killed by the enemy. They won't be killed because they won't be born. So staying single was a well-thought-out decision in my case. It was my way of protesting against the cruelty of men and the silence of their Creator. And now, behold, this beautiful, grave woman calls all this into question. Does she want to marry me? Is that the reason for her curiosity concerning my status as an old bachelor? I ask her. She replies with one word: “Possibly.”
“What about the age difference, Liatt, what about that? The body has rights and requirements. The irresistible call of life to life is also subservient to nature. And nature requires that a young woman marry a young man. When a young woman marries an older man, it's against nature. For the body couldn't care less about feelings of love.”