by Elie Wiesel
Who’s this, Mommy?”
A man with a melancholy, anxious smile, a man both very old and very young, very sad and very happy. How could one tell? The picture was frayed, dusty. Grisha must have been three at the time.
He had held out to her the book with the picture.
“Where did you find that? Give it to me!”
She had snatched the book from his hands and quickly put it back in its place on the highest, most inaccessible shelf, behind a pile of dishes, glasses and pots. Grisha did not understand why his mother was so upset—he had not done anything! Finding the book on the floor, he had opened it casually, not knowing why, hoping perhaps to find some funny drawings of animals having marvelous adventures. But there was only a single photograph on the cover.
“Mommy, that man—who is he?”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Grisha could not forget the man in the picture. The way his hands were clasped, palms out … He seemed to be looking for something or someone, or perhaps telling a story about wild animals, hungry children, a story about …
“But who is he, Mommy?”
“Don’t bother me!”
Grisha had never seen his mother in such a bad mood. She usually talked to him calmly, explaining what he was supposed to do or not do, say or not say. And here she was turning her face away from him, dodging his gaze. She washed the dishes, hung up clothes that were lying about, all the time avoiding the little boy’s eyes.
“What did I do, Mommy?” he asked, feeling guilty.
“Nothing.”
“But you’re angry!”
“I’m not angry!”
Grisha felt like crying, he who always prided himself on not crying. His eyes wide open to keep them dry, his jaw set, he held his breath. Raissa took him in her arms.
“I don’t want to cry,” said Grisha, crying.
“I know. I know. You’re a big boy, and big boys don’t cry.”
He wanted to start questioning her all over again, but changed his mind; why make her angry? He loved his mother and told himself how lucky he was—she could have been some other little boy’s mother.
“Promise me something,” Raissa whispered. “Promise me never to touch that book again. And if someone asks you, say you’ve never seen it.”
“Who is that man in the picture?”
“Forget him. You’ve never seen the book or the picture.”
At that point, a confused Grisha, feeling misunderstood, started to sob. He saw himself floating in the air, sitting on the highest shelf, the book on his knees, and the man was saying to him: “Grisha, my boy, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, crying like that?”
“He’s your father,” Raissa said.
And Grisha calmed down. My father is not a man like other men, my father is a picture. Then, a moment later, he corrected himself: My father is a book. And for years he was to carry this discovery within himself like the most precious of secrets.
Often when he was alone in the apartment, he would climb up on the table, then on the sideboard, from where on tiptoe he could reach the forbidden book. And feel his father’s presence, his warmth. Or sitting at the foot of the bed, ready to hide the book at the first warning, with pounding heart, he would leaf through its pages though he could not yet read. Then his father would speak to him in a language he did not understand. He didn’t care: he moved his fingers over the lines, over the words, and that made him happy.
One day Raissa came back unexpectedly. He thought she was going to scold him, but she took off her coat and sat down on the floor, facing her son. She looked more worried than usual.
“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Grisha said. “But Yuri has a father, little Natasha has a father, Vanya has a father, and I too have a father. I want to love him, to see him, caress him.…”
Raissa’s eyes filled with tears. “One day you’ll understand.”
“You promise?”
“Of course I promise—one day you’ll understand.”
She took the book and, opening it at random, in a melodious voice recited a few verses in Yiddish, then translated them:
I offer you
My memory
And its wellspring,
My light
And its shadow;
And I ask
Your own
In return.
“Again,” asked Grisha, without understanding, but overcome by an excitement he had never felt before. “More, I want more.”
You tasted the forbidden fruit
Before I did;
You felt the breath of life
Before I did;
You measured eternity
Before I did.
But the hungry child,
The thirsty stranger,
The frightened old man,
All ask for me.
And I take pride in that.
You—are too far away.
“It’s Yiddish,” Raissa explained. “Your father wrote in Yiddish.”
“What’s that?”
“A language.”
“Like Russian?”
“No—it’s a Jewish language. A language unlike any other, it tells of sorrows and joys unlike any others, it’s a very rich language given to a very poor people.”
“More,” Grisha begged, his cheeks on fire.
She started reading again. Then, closing the book, she said to him:
“Remember—your father is a poet.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means poets live in the present.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that … that your father was different from other men; he lived, dreamed, suffered, loved—differently. For him, life was a song. He thought everything could be accomplished through words.”
Grisha clapped his hands. “I love it when you read. It makes me feel like opening the window and shouting—Come here, come and hear my father’s songs!”
“Don’t,” murmured Raissa. “Don’t ever talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s dangerous.”
“For my father?”
“Of course not. Your father’s dead.”
“Dead? My father? How is that possible, if he is a poet? You told me poets live forever.”
“They do.”
“Well then …”
“They are dead, but they live on.”
“No, Mommy. My father is not dead. My father is a book, and books do not die.”
There was so much pity in Raissa’s eyes that he was overwhelmed.
“Don’t be sad, Mommy. I love you just the way I love him. The way you love him yourself. You do love him, don’t you?”
Raissa’s gaze became remote and Grisha was seized by fear.
“What’s the matter, Mommy?”
“Nothing.”
“I want to know.”
“You’re too little. Too little to understand.”
The tremor in her voice made Grisha fall silent. He felt threatened. His room was no longer his room, his toys were no longer his toys. He was being separated from his mother as he had been separated from his father; the world was filled with thieves, stealers of souls, who kill poets and destroy their books. And in that kind of world, orphans are doomed to solitude.
THE TESTAMENT OF PALTIEL KOSSOVER I
With your permission, Citizen Magistrate, I should like, before I begin—and I shall begin with the end, which I know to be near—to express my gratitude to you.
You were kind enough to allow me to continue to exercise my profession here. You even suggested a subject: “Your life.”
Thus, thanks to your kindness, I enjoy a privilege that, in our tradition, is accorded only to the Just. They are forewarned of their end so as to enable them to live their death, and, above all, put their affairs in order. And their thoughts. And their memories.
A Just, me? Of course I’m joking. But I find that religious notion strangely appropriate here: h
ave not our relations, Citizen Magistrate, developed, from the beginning, under the sign of religion? You have been urging me to repent, to confess, to purge myself, to expiate, to atone, to seek pardon, to be worthy of salvation: these acts are all essentially religious. Priest or inquisitor, you serve the Party whose attributes are divine: great and magnanimous, omnipotent and merciful, infallible, omniscient.…
If time allows, Citizen Magistrate, I shall return to this another day. But first my confession.
You have interrogated me a thousand times on the crimes of which I stand accused; and a thousand times I have answered you that none of it made any sense.
To show you my appreciation, I have today the honor of informing you that I have changed my mind: I plead guilty. Not on all points—not on those that implicate other persons. Only on those that for me—and hence for you too—have symbolic value.
I plead guilty to having felt something akin to hatred for the glorious Russian nation into which I was born and for which I have fought.
I plead guilty to having nurtured—a little late, too late—an exaggerated, boundless love for an obstinate people, my own, whom you and your people have endlessly denigrated and oppressed.
Yes, today, I break my links with your world, a world protected and represented by this prison; I espouse the Jewish cause, I espouse it entirely and totally; yes, I declare my solidarity with the Jewish people everywhere, always. Yes, I am a Jewish nationalist in the historical, cultural and ethical sense; I am first and foremost a Jew, and regret not having been able to declare this earlier and elsewhere.
And now the facts.
You will laugh: I should like to express myself in verse. But that would take a lifetime.…
Name, given name, patronymic: must I write them down? You know very well who I am. It is true that, under the pressure of your interrogations, one reaches the point of forgetting one’s own identity. And you, do you learn any more from that? Forgive the impudence of a maker of words, Citizen Magistrate. His history binds you to him forever, for one day you will be old and alone with your reflections, as I am now. And you will ask yourself who you are. And you will answer: I am the one who was seen by a Jewish poet before he died, I am the one whose image Paltiel Gershonovich Kossover carried with him to his death.
Yes: Paltiel Gershonovich Kossover, that is my name. Poet by avocation, Jew by birth, and—forgive me—Communist, or former Communist, by conviction. I know: you are wincing. You deny me the right to refer to my various titles of service. I am an enemy of the people—you have drummed that into my head often enough. You do not become an enemy of the people; it is something you have always been. Even if you never knew it, never wanted it, even if you spent your life fighting the people’s enemies, you are still an enemy. It is like grace for Christians—you have it or you don’t; you are born with it.
The transition is perfect: I was born in this very place in 1910, in this lovely city of Barassy, better known since the Revolution as Krasnograd.
I am sorry I cannot be more precise. It was at the end of May, or the beginning of June. All I know is that I came into the world the second day of Shavuot. My father, you see, like all middle-class Jews, was profoundly religious and lived according to the Jewish calendar, from one holiday to the next, from one Sabbath to the next. The week began on Sunday, the year began on Rosh Hashanah, in the fall.
Strange coincidence: my grandfather, whose name I bear, died on the same day of the same holiday, but three years earlier. All I know of him is that he owned a sawmill in a neighboring village and was respected throughout the province. The wandering beggars used to pronounce his name like a blessing; he housed them and fed them like honored guests, making them feel that they were honoring him by accepting his alms. He was respected equally for his erudition and his piety. In order to attract Jews to his village, he had a House of Study built where he taught Scripture and the commentaries to both adults and children. The most famous rabbis, it seems, attended his funeral.
As an adolescent I stumbled upon a photograph in one of my father’s books. It showed a stately Hasid, tall and vigorous, with kind and noble features. I asked my mother who he was.
“Your grandfather,” she answered, “Paltiel Kossover. Be proud to bear his name.”
And I, foolishly, contradicted and hurt her, “Why should I?”
The insolence of the Communist in me went even further: “Proud of a Hasid, me? I’m ashamed!”
My mother began to weep silently, and, instead of stopping and begging her forgiveness, I continued with the same idiotic insolence:
“You forget the age we’re living in, Mother; we believe in Communism, we reject God, and even more those who use faith in God, who use God to prevent the Jews from freeing themselves, from emancipating themselves, from claiming their rights as citizens and human beings.”
In a frenzy of arrogance and stupidity, I tore up the yellowed photograph, in a way annihilating my grandfather, right under the horrified eyes of my mother. That memory still haunts me.… Today, Citizen Magistrate, I regret that act. In fact, I regretted it immediately, though for other reasons. Rather than scold or threaten me, my mother said quietly, “I won’t tell, Paltiel, I won’t tell your father.”
I wanted to beg her pardon, to nestle against her and … But I did nothing of the sort. I was too ashamed—or not ashamed enough. I regret it today. I regret having hurt my mother; I regret having betrayed my father; I regret having torn up the face of my grandfather, whose name I bear. I so wish that my son could have seen his picture one day; my son will not even see mine. My son … Don’t make me speak of my son, Citizen Magistrate, have pity, you who are without pity. Question me about anything you like, but leave my son out of your games: he is only two years old.
He bears my father’s name: Gershon, nicknamed Grisha. My father was strict and gentle at the same time. The youngest of eight boys, he seemed incurably shy. Yet his presence was imposing. He rarely raised his voice, but we paid attention even when he coughed before speaking. He said what he had to say in a few sentences, sometimes in a single word, always clear, concise and to the point. You are sneering, Citizen Magistrate; my love for my father no doubt amuses you. So what! I loved my father; I admired him. I never told him, so you will be the only one to know it. He himself, you see, must have thought the opposite. Admit it—I was a good Communist; one who repudiated his forebears.
I made my father suffer, but in so doing, I suffered too. I tormented and tortured him. Yet, whenever he chose to answer me, to refute an argument, or simply to speak man to man, I listened without interrupting.
Of his three children—I had two sisters—I was the only one who caused him worry. He dreamt of seeing me grow up to be a good Jew, and I spent my time distorting that dream. I am trying now, while writing this Testament, to return to the origins of that revolt of mine. How old was I? All I know is that it was sometime after my Bar Mitzvah and that by then Barassy was far behind me.
I remember Barassy, I remember my childhood in Barassy. A Jewish home, on a small Jewish street in the Jewish quarter. If I may paraphrase our great poet Y. L. Peretz—in Barassy even the river spoke Yiddish; and the trees, month after month, preened themselves or lamented in Yiddish; the sun rose so as to send Jewish children to heder and kabbalists to the ritual baths. Time flowed in harmony with the rhythms and seasons of the Torah. We observed the repose of the Sabbath, we ate matzo during Passover, we fasted on the Day of Atonement, we drank to celebrate the Giving of the Law; we lit candles to illuminate victories and miracles thousands of years old; we prayed for the reconstruction of the Temple, whose ruins still saddened us. King David and his Psalms; Solomon and his parables; Elijah and his companions; the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples: all of them lived in our midst. Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Shimeon Bar Yohai, little Rabbi Zeira of Babylon were all intimate parts of our landscape: I listened to them, spoke with them, played with their children; we linked ourselves to the present while living in the past.
When I was three, my father wrapped me in his immense heavy ritual shawl and carried me to Reb Gamliel-the-Tutor. He was a stern-looking man with bushy eyebrows and an unkempt beard, and he spread terror around him. There were a dozen or so of us children whom he taught how to chant the holy eternal letters, with whose help God was supposed to have created the universe—and with whose help you, his adversaries, fierce rationalists, think you can explain it. The dunces would tremble every morning, the others too; Reb Gamliel never hesitated to crack his whip over the backs of those whose thoughts wandered—he accused them of idleness, laziness, even banditry, why not?… How I could hate, at the age of three! But now, when I take stock of those distant years, I recall my old teacher with nostalgia and affection.
Please don’t tell me that is natural; don’t tell me Jews like to suffer. We are not so stupid. If I feel tenderness for an old man who once used to hurt me, it is surely not because I love pain but because I love knowledge. I would even say that, at the time, I hated Reb Gamliel, the man and all he stood for—education by fear, forced study, stifling prisons where words were suffused with hostility, a hostility that scarred our minds.
Every evening I came home in tears. But I let myself go only in front of my mother. Since my father often stayed late in the store—he sold piece goods—I had an hour or two to wipe away the traces of my torment. To calm me down my mother would sing sad lullabies: A Jewish child goes to sleep with a goat under his cradle and receives the tears of a sweet, lovely widow called Zion.… And my mother would tell me, “Learn these words that make you dream today; tomorrow you’ll make them sing.”
Little by little I grew accustomed to the rhythm of that life: I would cry during the day, and smile in the evening. That lasted two years, two years of pain and repressed anger. The twenty-two letters of the alphabet mocked me; they fought me and I had to tame them.
When I left Reb Gamliel for a more learned teacher, I realized I was not to be free of fear; it clung to my body, to my life. And I understood I was not the only one to endure it; my parents too were marked by it, and their friends, and all the other Jews in our town; all were victims of fear. All were afraid, not of Reb Gamliel, of course, but of the world surrounding us, the world whose dark threat made Reb Gamliel himself tremble.