by Elie Wiesel
With Hauptmann and the whole group, we went off to celebrate our victory at the Hunchback’s Tavern, where our credit was still good. I gulped down some wine and promptly passed out.
“It’s the excitement,” said a voice. “His first fight.”
“The boy hasn’t seen anything yet.”
“Are you sick?”
“Too much emotion,” suggested Hauptmann.
“I don’t feel well,” I said weakly. “I’d better go home.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Inge firmly.
Hauptmann tried to dissuade her. “Are you playing nurse? That’s really not your style, my sweet.”
Inge shot him a look filled with such contempt that he was silenced. With considerable effort, I got up. Inge guided me toward the exit. A fresh breeze whipped my face. I breathed voluptuously.
“Shall we go?” said Inge.
She was strong, my guardian angel, stronger than I. I could not have hoped for a stronger support.
“Let’s go.”
What would my landlady say? I decided bravely to worry about that some other time. For the moment I had better things to do. Leaning on Inge, my heart in my mouth, I was aware of my body as never before. My eyes searched the small, empty streets, my ears listened to the sound of our footsteps, my nostrils caught the multitude of stale odors from closed restaurants. Beneath the heavy gray sky, as we skipped over the garbage cans, I discovered in myself a blossoming and beckoning new fear, the fear of learning to know this body that was pulling and pushing, hurting and healing my own. What will my landlady say? The hell with my landlady. But Inge—what will Inge say if I ask her to stay with me? And I—what shall I say if she accepts?
My landlady said nothing. She was asleep, the whole house was asleep, so was the street, the whole neighborhood. We stopped in front of the door. I took out my key, I hesitated: Open the door very casually and show her in? Or say goodnight, au revoir, see you soon? Inge made the decision for me. She took the key from me, put it in the lock and turned it.
“What floor?” she whispered.
“Fourth.”
She was about to press the switch for the staircase light. I stopped her. The landlady, what would the landlady say if we woke her? Never mind. Inge always carried matches. Let’s go up. Softly, softly, I first, let’s go up the stairs. I stopped in front of my door. There again, Inge took the key from my hands. She found the switch and turned on the light. The disorder did not seem to shock her. She removed my jacket, my belt, unbuttoned my shirt, and without the slightest embarrassment, said, “Into bed!”
I looked at her aghast: What did she mean? Into bed, just like that, in front of her? I, the son of Gershon Kossover, whose head was still buzzing with the divine commandments heard at Sinai, get into bed in her presence, and maybe, maybe …?
“A night’s rest will do you good,” she stated matter-of-factly.
She flung off her coat and set to work undressing me. Bewildered and embarrassed, I wondered what my role was supposed to be: Protest or cooperate? Close my eyes or stare at her? Talk or keep quiet? Pull her toward me or turn away? A thousand contradictory thoughts raced through my mind. Suppose she stayed—would I be able to measure up? And then, a stupid question, so stupid I could have screamed: How was I going to put on my phylacteries with Inge in the room, or—heaven forgive me—in my bed? By then I was already in bed. Alone, still alone. Inge was busy in the other corner.
“What are you looking for?”
“A hot plate.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“I’ll bring you one tomorrow. A cup of tea is what you need. Or a glass of milk.”
“But I’m not thirsty.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure.”
She inspected the room, the bed, one last time. “Good, in that case I’ll let you sleep.”
She moved toward the door and put out the light. I held my breath. Sleep? I did not want to sleep. I was suffering because I was disappointed. Here I had had all those ideas. And invented all those situations. Liyanov, I thought—Hauptmann was right; I had never left Liyanov. I had misinterpreted everything. I was an imbecile, a village idiot. I had had the nerve to read intentions into her mind.… My fault. I should have suggested she stay, spend the night here, on the pretext I was not feeling well, and needed her. After all, I could hardly have expected her to humiliate herself by offering herself to me, could I? Too late. Inge was gone, probably for good. Gone, the woman who had bewildered me to the point of actual pain. Gone—gone back to Hauptmann.
But, strange, I had not heard the door open and close … not so strange … Inge, Inge’s hand in the dark, Inge’s hand on my forehead … a stinging sensation.… Absurdly, I suddenly remember the old Rebbe of Drohobitch. What’s he doing here, in my room in Berlin? The last time I saw him, at his brother’s, in Barassy, I was still a child. He had questioned me about my studies and given me his blessing by placing his hands on my head. I had had the same stinging burning sensation.… Inge must have gotten down on her knees, her face brushes mine, her breath mingles with mine. I am ill, I shiver; the fever will carry me off. The old Rebbe of Drohobitch speaks to me of God, but God is silent; I am silent. Inge is silent and her silence penetrates mine. I do not dare move or breathe—besides, I am unable to breathe; my lungs are not my own; nor my lips, now sealed by Inge’s. So this is love, I tell myself. A man and a woman love each other and the presence of the old Rebbe of Drohobitch does not disturb them. Two persons embrace and the chasm in their lives is lit up. A man and a woman intertwine and human misery is conquered. It is simple, so simple. No need for words, no world-shaking projects: mankind can be helped with much less. Other reflections, equally naive, float around in my head while Inge teaches me to kiss her gently. Inge is skilled, agile. Without moving away or stopping for a second, she takes off her blouse, her skirt, and the rest, and there she is in my poor, creaking, narrow, uncomfortable bed—with me, on top of me, under me; she hurts me, she shatters me, she hardens me, the better to embrace me; her fingers, her lips, her tongue kindle a thousand flames in my body—and I do not know what to do. I twist and turn, I imitate her, I invent things, I venture in the dark, I see in the dark, I see two bodies mingled, knotted, and freed. And what about the Rebbe of Drohobitch? And my landlady? To hell with my landlady. To hell with everyone. I am alone and free; alone with Inge, free as she is free; we are united in freedom, nothing else matters: we are united in the same cry of pain, pleasure, liberating agony; I have left one world for another, a deeper, more enveloping one. A thought: So it’s true, paradise exists.
What made me think of paradise? Because in Hauptmann’s speech the day before—only the day before?—he had said Trotsky was deluding himself by trying to transform paradise into hell; what had to be done was transform hell into paradise. No—Trotsky, Hauptmann and their arguments have nothing to do with it. If I thought of paradise, it was because of Adam and Eve: I was not a Talmud student for nothing; everything comes back to Scripture. I had just experienced the joy of the first man who came to know himself by knowing his woman.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Eve—Inge.
“I’m thinking of our grandfather Adam.”
“Was your grandfather named Adam?”
“Yours too, Inge.”
I had to explain. She raised herself halfway and began caressing my face as though I were a child, perhaps hers.
“My poor little Paltiel, you really believe in that? The Bible, the holy Bible, you read it too much; it’s time you read something else.”
And there in bed, between two kisses, she gave me a cram course: Darwin and evolution, historical materialism, the origins of the universe, the myth of divinity. I listened without reacting, I heard without listening. God, a capitalist invention? Abraham, a big landowner? Moses, David, Isaiah—enemies of the working class, that is, of the people? A strange place, a strange time to teach me the philosophy of the sciences, I thought, laughing to mysel
f. But Inge was teaching me something else too, something better. Lucky for me.
I fell asleep at dawn, in her arms. Later I woke with a start: How could I put on the tephilin in front of her? I looked at her and an unspeakable shame engulfed me: I had committed a sin, I had just broken one of the Ten Commandments, and, now, like a hypocrite, I was preparing to put on my phylacteries.
Inge was smiling in her sleep: at whom? and why? Perhaps she was laughing at me. I had left Liyanov, but Liyanov was following me. I wanted to wash, cleanse myself, mortify myself, hide, but Inge opened her eyes and drew me to her without a word. My body tensed with desire, I thought of other things, then I stopped thinking.
She left toward noon. She had barely closed the door behind her when I rushed over to the drawer where I kept my phylacteries. I unrolled the leather straps and put them on my left arm and on my forehead and recited the morning prayers. I sighed with relief: a narrow escape—what would I have done had she decided to stay in bed the whole day? Thank you, God, thank you for having permitted me to serve You while loving your adversary.
Later on, Inge must have become aware of my religious infidelities. She often tried to keep me with her, or at her place, to prevent me from being alone, that is, alone with God. She was too astute and too intelligent to restrain me completely; she set me free for an hour or two, but would come back unexpectedly, as if to catch me red-handed. Afraid of this embarrassing possibility, I began praying more and more rapidly. I behaved like a small boy caught stealing candy, like a man hiding a liaison from his wife. Well, I was lying to Inge, and on many levels. She thought she had converted me to the ideal of the atheist Communist Revolution. She was wrong; I was deceiving her. Laugh if you will, Citizen Magistrate, laugh: I loved Inge, I loved her passionately, and I was betraying her with God, whom I no longer loved.
But that’s another story, beyond your authority.
Still, Inge succeeded in influencing my life. One night I accompanied her and a group of comrades to fight Nazis in a tavern near the zoological gardens. There were twenty of us and three times as many of them. Until then I had never been in a free-for-all: I was not meant for that. Puny, skinny, poor at sports and even worse at fisticuffs, I was too cowardly and inept for this type of expedition. But what won’t you do for a woman in love with you and whom you love? So there I was in the midst of a fight. Not for long—a second later I was out. I found myself in the street, on the pavement, my face swollen, spitting blood, half blind, half deaf and possibly dead. Comrades helped Inge take me home. She nursed me. She pampered me. She loved me. And the next day, exhausted, the next day, I am ashamed to admit it, I forgot my prayers. Was it because Inge had not left me for a single moment? Had she deliberately stayed there to force me to break with her rival? Fact is, I did not think of the phylacteries until two days later. Too late, I thought, to resume my habits.
Thus my break with religious practice resulted not from a decision taken after mature consideration but from an accidental lapse of memory, a lapse for which I could never forgive myself. To break with God, all right—but to forget God?
I did not forget Him. I remained attached to Him, hoping He did not hold it against me too much when I left Him at night to meet Inge. I needed her lessons, her presence. As for God, He could manage without my prayers.
My phylacteries? I tucked them away in a corner.
Yoram sang of life,” says Katya in her slow monotone. “No—it was life that sang through him. Here’s a question you should be able to answer: Do mutes sing, even without words? Yoram sang, and I sang with him. And if there is a God, He sang with us.”
Katya rises, sits down again; she talks a great deal, that’s normal: widows talk a great deal when they have someone to talk to. Sometimes she stops in front of the window and contemplates the night, ostensibly addressing herself to it rather than to Grisha. Other times her eyes move to the door and she falls silent. She is afraid to continue just as she is afraid not to continue. Then her face takes on a haggard, slightly mad look.
“In our youth, in the kibbutz, we belonged to a choir,” says Katya, “but I sang flat. I annoyed everyone except Yoram. He loved me, and he didn’t care. People complained: Why couldn’t we love each other without getting on their nerves? But Yoram would say: Better to love each other well and sing flat than the other way round.”
Grisha thinks of his mother, who never sang, and of Olga, who did nothing else. His mother and Olga. Yesterday. And tomorrow?
Olga, in high school: a pretty blonde, excitable and exciting; a ball of fire whenever she did not get what she wanted. In the beginning, Grisha would try to avoid her. To no avail. Whether going to or from school, running an errand for his mother or picking up a newspaper, there was Olga, right in his path. This amused the little minx; she rocked with laughter.
One day she blocked his way on the street: “I bet you’ve never kissed a girl on the mouth.”
“A girl? You mean only one? How old-fashioned can you be?”
“How many have you kissed?”
“Who counts?”
Hands on her hips, she eyed him provocatively: “If you kiss as badly as you lie, I feel sorry for them.”
“You want me to show you?”
“You couldn’t if you wanted to.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
Grisha hesitated; how could he get out of this? “Not here.”
“Coward!”
“In front of everyone? Your father, your mother—suppose they see us?”
“You make me sick,” she hissed.
“Let me pass,” said Grisha.
He did not dare push her aside; he did not know how to do it without touching her; he wished he could touch her without touching her. His brain was a mass of confusion. Did he want to escape or prolong this contact, this encounter? Precocious and bold, Olga made a gesture of scorn.
“Men are so stupid,” she said, with a sigh.
She stepped aside. He took a step forward and she followed. They walked on together, in silence. When they got to Olga’s house they stopped.
“You’re not very gallant,” said Olga. “Open the door for me.” He obeyed. She went in and called to him, “What about this one?”
Grisha opened the door to the courtyard.
“I bet you’ve never looked into a woman’s eyes,” said Olga.
The schoolboy did not have the courage to challenge her remark; his head was spinning, heavy with images and suppressed visions of his mother and Dr. Mozliak speaking to one another, being silent with one another, embracing one another.
“Please, Olga. I have to go back. They’re expecting me.”
“On one condition: look me in the eyes.”
Unable to resist her any longer, Grisha yielded. His head whirling, he felt himself transported to the top of a mountain. There was so much gaiety in the young girl’s smile, and such intensity in the appeal she radiated that he very nearly fell. To keep his balance he held on to her.
“You see?” she said mocking him. “You’re falling into my arms.”
He went home, feverish and breathless. His mother asked him what was wrong. He answered evasively, out of habit, but also because he was surely not going to admit that a little girl had turned his head. The cheeky little thing—he resented her having conquered, that is, humiliated him. He kept holding it against her while thinking of her. He spent a sleepless night followed by a second and a third.
Since they were neighbors, they walked to school together. By accident, of course. Great loves are born without reason and die for very definite reasons. For Grisha and Olga, there were problems of nationality, religion and fear of anti-Semitism: Olga was not Jewish. This detail meant little to Grisha, but his mother interfered:
“It seems you’re going out with Olga?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“I don’t. Olga is a classmate, I see her just as I see other boys and girl
s.”
She vanished into the kitchen and returned.
“Olga’s not for you, and you’re not for her,” she said. “Think of your father and hers. Your father’s pride came from his poetic vocation, his Jewish past; her father is the great-great-grandson of a lieutenant of Bogdan Khmelnitski, whose glory it was to have taken part in thirteen pogroms in nine Jewish communities in less than three days. Did you know that? Did you think of that?”
“Congratulations—you know everything. Do you know as much about your boyfriend?”
Their relations were deteriorating daily. Difficult to talk to each other, difficult to understand one another.
“If you take that tone with me I prefer that you keep quiet,” said Raissa.
“As you like.”
Grisha felt uncomfortable in her presence. Because of Mozliak, of course, who had taken his father’s place. If Raissa and the doctor were not living together, it was because of Grisha. This heightened his feeling of being unloved, an intruder. He represented a dead poet.