The Testament
Page 31
And those fools of magistrates and executioners who see nothing! They think that they are finished with this Jewish poet—one more—and his work. They think they can control time as they dominate man: “To be preserved for eternity,” reads the rubber stamp that seals their files. But eternity couldn’t care less about them—and neither could I. I’ll show them what their stamp is worth! And what I do with their secrets. I’ll show them, yes I will.
Now Ivan is behind his victim: I watch him as he raises his arm slowly, slowly. The barrel almost touches the nape of your father’s neck. My eyes become blurred, there are knots in my throat: the Angel of Death is not a monster covered with eyes, but a well-dressed man armed with a nagan. Abruptly your father shatters the silence. He is speaking softly: “You must understand, the language of a people is its memory, and its memory is …” A muffled explosion tears through me. The poet collapses, slides slowly, gracefully to the ground, his head slightly to one side as though dreaming. Ivan motions to us: it’s all over. The magistrate and the executioner exchange procedural remarks: burn the corpse; also his personal effects; also his wretched ritual objects; burn it all, erase his name from history by striking it from all the records. While they talk I contemplate the poet’s face and promise to avenge him. That bastard Ivan will not have the last word; he means to obliterate your death just as my chief took away your life—but I am here. Those fools forgot me. The perfect witness, that’s me. Though invisible, I was present as they transacted their filthy business. I heard it all, understood it all and filed it all away! Imagine their faces, those fools, on the day your father’s song will come to haunt them from all corners of the globe. On that day I shall laugh, I shall laugh at last, for all the years I tried so hard to laugh and did not succeed. Thank you, poet. Thank you, brother. I leave you but you’re not leaving me.
Back at the office, I hear the chief make his report—brief, neutral, concise: “Your order has been carried out this morning at 5:34 A.M.” He gives the necessary instructions. He calls for tea, for buttered bread. As for me, I experience a strange sensation: my heart is broken but I know that I shall laugh. And suddenly it happens: I am laughing, I am laughing at last. And if the Chief doesn’t notice, it’s only because he is a blockhead, like all the rest.
It’s idiotic, even unjust, but it is the dead, the dead poets who will force men like me and all the others to laugh.
I tell your father and I repeat it to him. Even though he is no longer living and no gravedigger will ever lower him into the ground because the ground is cursed and so is heaven. Never mind. I shall carry him, your big child of a father, I shall carry him a day, a year, ten years, for I must hear him laugh as well. That is why I implant in you his memory and mine, I must, my boy, you understand, I must. Otherwise …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 1986. His Nobel citation reads: “Elie Wiesel is a messenger to mankind. His message is one of peace and atonement and human dignity. The message is in the form of a testimony, repeated and deepened through the works of a great author.” Wiesel is Andrew Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University and is the author of more than forty books. He lives in New York City with his family.
Books by ELIE WIESEL
Available from Schocken
ALL RIVERS RUN TO THE SEA
Elie Wiesel’s long-awaited memoirs recall in intimate detail the experiences that shaped his life—from the small Carpathian village where he was born to the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald to his discovery of his calling as a writer and “Messenger to Mankind.”
0-8052-1028-8
A BEGGAR IN JERUSALEM
In the days following the Six-Day War, a Holocaust survivor visits the reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present.
0-8052-1052-0
THE FIFTH SON
When the son of a Holocaust prisoner discovers his brooding father has been haunted by his role in a murder of a brutal S.S. officer just after the war, the son also discovers that the Nazi is still alive. What begins as a quest for his father’s love becomes a reenactment of the past, as the son sets out to complete his father’s act of revenge.
0-8052-1083-0
THE FORGOTTEN
A distinguished psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor is losing his memory to an incurable disease. Never having spoken of the war years before, he resolves to tell his son about his past—the heroic parts as well as the parts that fill him with shame—before it is too late.
0-8052-1019-9
FROM THE KINGDOM OF MEMORY
The essays and speeches collected here include reminiscences of Wiesel’s life before the Holocaust and his struggle to find meaning afterward, his impassioned testimony at the Klaus Barbie trial, his plea to President Reagan not to visit a German S.S. cemetery, and his speech in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize.
0-8052-1020-2
THE GATES OF THE FOREST
A young Jew hiding from the Nazis in the forests and small towns of Eastern Europe allows another refugee to sacrifice himself in his stead. As he struggles with his guilt, one question recurs: How to live in a world that God has abadoned?
0-8052-1044-X
THE TESTAMENT
On August 12, 1952, Russia’s greatest Jewish writers were secretly executed by Stalin. In this novel, poet Paltiel Kossover meets the same fate but, unlike his historical counterparts, he is permitted to leave behind a written testament. Two decades later, Paltiel’s son reads this precious record and finds that it illuminates the shadowed planes of his own life.
0-8052-1115-2
THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL
Based on Wiesel’s own life, this is the story of a young Holocaust survivor who returns to his hometown after the liberation, seeking to understand the mystery of what he calls “the face in the window”—the symbol of all those who just stood by and watched as innocent men, women, and children were led to the slaughter.
0-8052-1045-8
THE TRIAL OF GOD
When three itinerant actors arrive in a small Eastern European village to perform a Purim play for the Jewish community, they are horrified to discover that all but two of the Jewish residents have been murdered in a recent pogrom. The actors decide to stage a mock trial of God, indicting Him for allowing such things to happen to His children.
0-8052-1053-9
TWILIGHT
The story of a man whose search for a friend who saved him during the Holocaust leads him to question the very meaning of survival, this novel of memory, loss, and madness resonates with the dramatic upheavals of our century.
0-8052-1058-X
Available from Vintage
A JEW TODAY
In this powerful collection of essays, letters, and diary entries, Wiesel probes such central moral and political issues as Zionism and the Middle East conflict, anti-Semitism in the former U.S.S.R., the obligations of American Jews toward Israel, and the media’s treatment of the Holocaust.
0-394-74057-2