by Elie Wiesel
“Good luck,” I said.
The corridor had become livelier. Some of the passengers, half asleep, were going to the dining car while others, half awake, were coming back. We were approaching Paris. Glimpses of dreary, rainy suburbs. Laughter, yawns, exchange of addresses. Do we arrive soon? Soon. Stiff legs, headaches, heavy, burning eyelids. The train was slowing down.
“Don’t forget, young man,” David Aboulesia said. “Don’t forget—the great thing is not to be the Messiah but to seek him.”
“And if I find him?”
“First find him, then we’ll talk about it.”
“The three of us?”
We shook hands, got off the train together, and were separated by the crowd. I never thought I’d meet him again, but there too I was mistaken. As I was looking for the information desk, I heard his voice behind me: “I know Paris, young man; why not come with me?”
I could not help smiling. What if he were Elijah the Prophet after all? Or the Messiah? Not the real one, not the great and only one, but a more modest messiah: my own? Paris, city of light, wake up—I am bringing you a messiah! And he took me to his hotel.
His “hotel” was a dingy lodging for the poor, not far from the Place de la République. Cramped, smelly, it was always dark inside. The second floor—I was to find out later—was reserved for very special clients who slipped upstairs for un petit moment and left looking guilty.
“The advantage of this hotel,” Aboulesia explained, “is that it’s cheap and the police show themselves only rarely for fear of stumbling upon an important personality—a cabinet member or industrialist perhaps.”
The proprietor, a drunkard with a puffy, sleepy face, managed a smirk as he welcomed us:
“Ah—Professor,” he exclaimed from behind the desk, “so you’re back again? Let’s see—what room shall I give you? Ah, here you are. The same as usual. As for your friend …”
Unfortunately, my room, on the second floor, was occupied—but only temporarily—by a customer of the hurried kind.
“Sit down here,” said the proprietor. “Have a cup of coffee. By the time you’re finished, the room will be ready, I promise.”
That was my initiation into the ways of tourists and hotels in France. The disorder was shocking. In Berlin such things would never happen.
“Don’t be upset,” said the proprietor two hours later. “The customer up there, who knows? Just put yourself in his place.…”
I would have been delighted to put myself in his place; I was collapsing from fatigue. What could I do? Since I knew no French, I couldn’t even allow myself the luxury of complaining. David Aboulesia was fluent; he served as my interpreter.
“Ah, now you can go up,” the proprietor announced sleepily.
To make up for having inconvenienced me, he was ready to offer me—exceptionally and temporarily—what, or rather, who, came with the room, but he saw me blush and did not insist.
I stretched out on the bed and fell asleep. David Aboulesia woke me at the end of the afternoon and took me to a kosher restaurant for dinner. He invited me again the next day and the day after that, and throughout his stay in Paris.
I don’t know what he had come to do; he would leave early in the morning without telling me where he was going or for how long. Upon returning, he knocked on my door and we would go to the restaurant. Later we would go up to his room to chat. Funny: two floors below, men and women were buying and selling one another, enticing one another, indulging in pleasure—we could hear them squeaking, laughing, groaning, we could smell a mixture of nauseating odors—while in his room, the professor-rabbi, the adventurer-magician was describing his journeys. Two floors below, men and women were offering one another simple, immediate pleasures, and David Aboulesia was talking of the End of Days, of the Ultimate Experience, of the explosion of language to the limits of the absolute. The end, the end. It was an idée fixe with him, an obsession. Now I was really getting irritated. I had not come to Paris to listen to speeches on the apocalyptic outcome of history—I had already been subjected to them in Liyanov. But I couldn’t hurt him. I’ve already told you, Citizen Magistrate: there was something about him, something singularly noble—yes, noble, even in that flophouse—that commanded respect. And I certainly owed him that.
“Well, your famous anonymous fellow, did you find him?” I asked, to show my interest.
“Not yet, not yet.”
But he was continuing his inquiries. He was going from market to market, from synagogue to synagogue, from one hotel to the next.
“He too likes to move around,” he explained to me. “He too changes settings.”
“And what if he’s intentionally avoiding you? Fleeing from you? Hasn’t that ever crossed your mind?”
“It’s possible,” he admitted morosely. “It’s possible I am frightening him. I am free not to call him; he is not. I mean, he’s not free to refuse to respond to my call.… Listen to what happened to me yesterday. I visited the mental hospital at Charenton. A friend of mine, a famous psychiatrist, introduced his patients to me. It’s partly because of him and partly because of them that I had to pass through Paris—all of them claim to be the Messiah.”
He paused, to stress the point. “All of them—the psychiatrist too.”
That’s what we were chatting about in my room, or his—I sitting on the bed, he on the only chair—while on the second floor, good, ordinary, and not-so-good, not-so-ordinary people were busy exorcising their depressions, filling their loneliness, or, as they say here, making love—like making coffee or making beds.
The week of my arrival I went to the office on the Rue du Paradis where foreigners such as I received help and advice. I had found the address in a Jewish Communist daily, Dos Blättel. I had also bought a copy of Pariser Haint, a publication whose literary quality I approved, though not its politics. Too Zionist for my taste: I preferred Communist internationalism to Jewish chauvinism. Yes, Inge’s influence was proving more lasting than Rebbe Mendel-the-Taciturn’s: I dreamed of Moscow more than of Jerusalem.
The Aid Committee in the Rue du Paradis mainly took care of special Jewish refugees: Communists, fellow travelers or sympathizers. Its offices were jammed with men and women of all ages who needed residence permits in order to get work permits, or work permits in order to get residence permits. Polish workers, Russian grocers, Romanian merchants. Haggard and frightened, they reminded me of Liyanov and Barassy-Krasnograd.
After waiting an hour or two, I was asked by a buxom bespectacled woman with hair piled high on her head whether I needed money or papers: door A for the former, door B for the latter. Like a schoolmarm, she lifted her index finger to explain it in Yiddish, but with a heavy French accent. “If it’s money you need, you’ll need documents proving you have none, documents if it’s …”
“I have both.”
She jumped. “What?”
“I have money to prove I have money; and I have documents to prove I have documents.”
“Then you don’t need anything?”
“Nothing, madame. I have a valid passport and enough money to live on.”
“But then … what do you want?”
“I’d like to meet people who speak my language and think as I do.”
The poor lady was bowled over. She had never run into a character like me. I explained my situation. I did some writing, I came from Berlin, I felt close to the working class—close, but not part of it—I wanted to make myself useful.… She listened attentively, but incredulously, then got up and went into another office. She reappeared ten minutes later and announced solemnly: “Comrade Pinsker himself will see you.”
Following her directions, I went up to the first floor, where an old gentleman in shirtsleeves told me to knock on the last door on the right at the end of the corridor. Sitting behind a mountain of journals and newspapers, a man with a huge pile of papers stacked in front of him was writing; he didn’t bother to lift his head to nod or even look at me. I moved forward. N
o response. The scribe was very busy, every minute counted. Was he rewriting Das Kapital? I stood there for what seemed an endless time. I coughed. No response. Sucking on an unlit cigarette, he went on writing. He gave the impression he was going to write until the end of his days and mine. I lost patience.
“I was told to—to come see you.”
Nothing, still nothing. He was undoubtedly beginning a new chapter that would revolutionize the philosophic thought of our generation.
“I was told downstairs to come see you—I mean, to speak to you,” I said, annoyed.
Without moving, he deigned to open his mouth.
“Wait,” he said in a cutting voice.
Very well. I observed him with growing hostility. Who did he think he was? No one had ever kept me standing and waiting so long. What did he want to prove? That each office had its own little dictator? Finally he put down his pen and addressed the intruder who had come to disturb his work.
“Yes? What do you want?”
“To sit down.”
With a movement of his right arm, which he had to raise high in order to clear the mountain of papers, he granted me permission to take a seat on a chair laden with dictionaries. His left hand was groping impatiently for something in the mass of papers. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction as he found the matches and lit his cigarette. I sat down.
“Well, speak up,” said Pinsker. “What do you want?”
“I want to do something. Preferably something useful.”
“Who are you?”
Good—Pinsker was not a writer but a police inspector. I introduced myself quickly.
“You say you are a writer?”
“I would like to write.”
“What?”
As if I knew! Does one ever know what one is going to write? One writes, then one knows.
“All right, so don’t answer. Another question: Why do you want to write?”
He was picking a fight, for sure. Why, why did I want to write? Does one ever know why one does this or that without knowing why?
“Well?”
I explained as best I could that I was sorry but … I could explain nothing. To hide my literary incompetence, I expanded on my “activity” as Ephraim’s right hand, my “work” as Inge’s collaborator.
He interrupted me: “Are you a Party member?”
“No.” I hastened to add: “But I am a poet.”
Caught off guard, he forgot to suck at his cigarette, but he recovered quickly. “That explains it; now everything makes sense. I haven’t read the morning paper but I am hungry. Okay, okay … what are your poems about?”
I started to stammer. I never could—I still cannot—speak about my “work.”
“Show me,” Pinsker ordered.
“I’ve nothing with me,” I apologized.
“Recite something,” he said with an air of extreme weariness.
“I—I can’t.”
“But then what are you doing here, young man?”
So he was capable of getting angry, this Pinsker, he could show some human emotion: he wasn’t a machine for writing but for offending. Intrigued, I observed him like a spectator: Will it fall, won’t it fall? I am speaking of the cigarette butt, of course.
“Do you think I have time to waste? Why did they send you to me?
He was getting angrier. He slammed his fist on the table, raising a cloud of dust.
“I am sorry, Mr. Pinsker. I was wrong to come. Wrong to bother you. I interest you less than the most insignificant journal there on your desk. I’ll go speak to the editor-in-chief of Dos Blättel; he’ll be more encouraging.”
I got up. So did he. A disappointment—I had thought he was taller.
“Really?” he said, brightening. “Are you sure of that? So you really think the editor-in-chief will be nicer?”
“I surely hope so.”
Will it fall, won’t it fall? The butt fell. Pinsker had just flung his tousled head back and snorted:
“Keep on hoping, young man, keep on hoping.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem. Absolutely anyone would be more pleasant than you.”
“Anyone? And what if I told you I am the editor-in-chief?”
He burst out laughing, and I felt like sinking into the ground if not lower. Only then did he come to my rescue. He shook my hand, asked me to hurry over to the hotel and come back quickly with my poems.
Unbelievable but true, I swear—he liked my poems, and promised to publish them. He kept his word; the first one appeared in the following Sunday’s issue. It was called “How.” How to return to the hungry their pride, to the humiliated their strength? How to speak to the disinherited of love, and to orphans of happiness? And how to sing of hope in the face of mute suffering? How can this be done? Ask the humiliated, the suffering, it is they who will show you how.… And if you do not ask them, watch out! They are jealous—more jealous than the gods; demanding—more demanding than the prophets; truer and stronger than the judges. Yes, the workers will build the kingdom of man! And you, poor maker of words, you will knock at the doors until madness overtakes you, and no one will tell you how to open them.…
The poem, too declamatory, wasn’t good, and I knew it—it’s not included in my collection. Pinsker knew it sooner and better than I, but his interest had been aroused by the Talmudist, the mystic in me. He could announce to his readers another victory for the enlightened Jewish proletariat: Paltiel Kossover, Jewish by birth and poet by profession, had abandoned the God of his ancestors for the working class, the superannuated Torah for the Communist ideal, idle contemplation for the class struggle.… His editor’s note was on the level of his newspaper, but that hardly bothered me. What was important for me was to be published.
As a result, I began giving Pinsker two or three poems a day; he kept them about a week and returned them to me: too simple, too complicated, too personal or not personal enough, too lyrical, too dry—and surely too numerous. And yet, not all were bad. I included seven in my collection.
Pinsker advised me to try prose. Once he accepted a story of mine, a short pseudo-Hasidic meditation; another time even a poem, and that was cause for celebration.
As for David Aboulesia, he read only the first poem. He read with raised eyebrows, moving his lips and looking sad, sad to the point of tears:
“We’re all knocking at the gates,” he remarked. “Are they the same for everyone? And then, young man—what’s waiting on the other side, tell me?”
“I used to be excited about the other side; now it’s this side I care about.”
“Really? What a pity. Yes, Paltiel, I mean it: a poet who doesn’t look beyond the wall is like a bird without song.”
One day he announced his departure. He had friends to see, missions to accomplish in Italy, Greece, Palestine.
“I’d like very much to do something for you,” he said.
“What—you want me to make another wish?”
“No,” he said, with a friendly smile. “Something else. I’d like you to entrust me with your tephilin. You don’t put them on any more. I’ll return them to you, I promise.”
No, not that. My phylacteries and I were inseparable. That was my father’s wish.
“I understand,” said the mysterious messenger. “And I am happy you refused.”
We shook hands. The question of questions during those years was burning my lips: Will we see each other again? My friend was sure of it, I was not. I left the hotel the same day—to the regret of the owner and a few pretty young girls who loved to tease me. I moved in with a passionate activist recommended by Pinsker, or rather he had recommended me to her. “She adores poets,” he had told me, his eternal cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Sheina Rosenblum was her name. I especially remember her lips, quivering, fleshy, always ready to swallow. Her arms, her head, her eyes, I noticed them only afterward—after the first night.
A strange activist, Sheina Rosenblum. At twenty, owner of a luxurious apartment on t
he Rue de la Boetie, she was a Communist by temperament. She housed illegal foreigners sent to her by the Party, but she selected them with care. As soon as I crossed her threshold, I was submitted to a full-fledged inquisition.
“Who sent you?”
“Pinsker.”
“You haven’t any papers, is that it? Are you here illegally?”
“Not at all.”
“But then, why does Pinsker …?”
“Because,” I said, blushing, “because I am a—a poet.”
And following Pinsker’s exact instructions, I handed her the paper containing my first poem.
“Oh, good,” she said. “Sit down, there, in the living room. Let’s have a talk about your work.”
Was she being ironic? Nasty? I couldn’t have cared less. Throughout the conversation I saw only her lips; they opened and closed at regular intervals. From time to time her tongue licked them slowly, very slowly, as though teaching them patience.
“You often knock on doors?” she asked suddenly, after reading my poem.
Her voice troubled me: voluptuous, too voluptuous. I cleared my throat and said nothing.
“It’s stupid to knock,” she went on. “Doors are there to be forced open.”
Hypnotized by her lips, I guessed her allusion; I would have liked to say yes or no, you’re so right, mademoiselle, or you’re so wrong, comrade, but—inexperience? Shyness? Memories of Inge?—not a sound escaped my mouth.
“I’ll take you,” she said. “I mean, as a lodger. Go and get your things.”
I made a superhuman effort. “But—how much will that be?”
“Don’t worry about the rent. You’ll pay me according to your means; nothing pleases me more than being able to assist our admirable Jewish poets.”
I wanted to protest. I, admirable? But she was already pushing me outside.
“Go, my dear poet, let’s not waste time. Come back quickly. I’d like to know you better. I mean, your poems, of course.”
I did not have to be persuaded. Fortune was smiling on me: I caught all the metro trains, made all the connections, without losing a second. Hardly had I left before I was back, installed in a little room facing the courtyard, and then seated on the living-room sofa with my notebook of poems. On a table was a coffeepot with an intoxicating aroma. Outside it was getting dark. Sheina was preparing to go into a trance.