The Judges

by Elie Wiesel

  The Judge’s voice cut him off. “Don’t be too sure of it. We’re not at the cinema. Besides, not all movies have happy endings.” After a silence, he saw fit to add, “The telephone is out of order. The weather forecast is bad. Two days and two nights will pass before contact can be made with those who have been more fortunate than you.”

  The Hunchback did not wait for any of the prisoners to react to this before intervening. “But miracles are always possible. I know a bit about that. They can happen when you least expect them. Do you want my opinion?”

  Little by little, imperceptibly, the castaways felt well and truly trapped. Inexplicably, the voice of the Hunchback had changed; it was now marked by both warmth and uneasiness.

  “I wish you no harm,” he continued, “and here’s my advice to you. Above all, don’t panic; act as if it were really a game and play along with a good grace. It’s pointless to resist the Judge; I speak from experience. Obey him, and he’ll take account of it.” Then, after a pause: “Look at me: I know I’m hunchbacked, but to keep shame and suffering at bay I sometimes tell myself I’m only playing the part of a hunchback. Do as I do. Isn’t all human life a game in which the Lord himself makes the rules, in consultation with Satan?”

  Claudia had a foolish impulse to quote Shakespeare—All the world’s a stage. . . . Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage . . . a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing— Razziel wanted to reply, No, my friend, God does not play games with his own creation. But both remained silent.

  Curiously enough, some of the prisoners fell under the spell of the Hunchback’s voice, as it came to them from outside the four walls of their room. They might have been ready to resist the Judge, but they allowed themselves to be persuaded by his servant. It was doubtless best to face up to the realities of the situation, however bizarre; maybe the game was becoming dangerous, but only insofar as it was a game. And since it was only a game, why get upset about it? In fact, why not give a merry laugh and say, OK, let’s join in, like kids with nothing better to do. They certainly weren’t going to take seriously the midnight fantasies of an unhinged madman who talked about death like an old acquaintance. What were they supposed to do, wail and tear their hair? Was everyone to draw up a balance sheet of his life? The only trouble was that the Judge held all the cards.

  Yoav shook himself. Wary of bugs, he scribbled a few words on a piece of paper and showed it to his companions, one after another. When this swine of a judge comes back, let’s grab him. We’ll turn the tables on him and make him our hostage.

  Some of them nodded: good idea, excellent idea. Only Razziel was not entirely convinced. The Judge and his accomplices were doubtless armed. Furthermore, everyone’s agreeing to use violence didn’t mean that they had, in fact, given up believing it was all simply a wager, a game, a stupid and puerile game, perhaps, but in essence harmless, and one that, at the end of the day, would be finished without injury to life or limb. On the other hand, if the Judge remained sole master of their fate and imposed his will on theirs, did not this already constitute his first victory? And then what would be the next, the death of one of them?

  As for George, who knew he could have some influence on European history, no one would succeed in convincing him of it. He simply could not die before having shown the secret document to his colleague in Jerusalem. And Claudia, who had always been a survivor, with luck on her side since her earliest childhood, just knew she would live to see the man she loved—and because she loved him and he loved her, death would have no power over her. Razziel knew— yes, he knew—he could not die before meeting his friend, who was waiting to reveal to him the sources of his mutilated memory; afterward, yes, maybe, but not before. Yoav, thanks to his experience of war, was the only one to perceive the absurd as a possibility, if not a probability. In other words, even if it were only a game, a charade in bad taste, it was better to make profitable use of the time left to them to thwart the sadistic plans of this judge gone mad, knowing always that, whatever you may plan to do in advance the enemy may well have thought of first. As he pretended to write, Yoav concentrated his mind on what the intentions of their jailer might be.

  Claudia laid down her pen in front of her and shook her head. I seem to be behaving like an idiot, she thought. Even if the Judge is really a judge and even if he’s acting like a madman, what did he say before disappearing? That death is searching for prey. In other words: One of us is going to die. Just one. I have an eighty percent chance that it won’t be me. Very well. Every time I walk through Greenwich Village to go to the theater I run greater risks.

  In fact, while remaining skeptical, they were all asking themselves the same questions. How would the Judge choose the victim, by drawing lots? If not, what logic would he follow? Would he force them all to make the choice? Now very agitated, Bruce cried out, “Enough of these crazy calculations! They don’t relate to anything! We’ve got to stop thinking about what that lunatic brain might inflict on us! We’ve got to find a way to escape!”

  Easy to say. But how to achieve it, since the room was hermetically sealed? And how could they stop thinking about the threat that hung over them? An idea occurred to Razziel. That other prison I was in was even more closed, and yet I escaped it. Oh, Paritus, show me the way.

  Yoav was remembering: He too had once encountered a strange man, as strange as the one Razziel had talked about—he seemed to have taken upon himself the mission to be the consoler of orphans. It was during the Yom Kippur War. The first battles had been disastrous for the Jewish State. The surprise attack by the Egyptians across the Suez Canal had cost the Israeli army such heavy losses that there was a risk the morale of the population—already at an all-time low—might collapse completely. The very existence of the newly formed state was in danger. Special teams, consisting of an army officer, a rabbi, and a social worker or psychologist, called on bereaved families to tell them they must go into mourning. When he lost one of his own soldiers, Yoav tried to carry out this mission himself. In words simple and truthful, he would tell parents, wives, and children about the heroic way their loved ones had fought.

  On each occasion, Yoav was followed by a nameless, ageless man. Tall, squarely built, with piercing eyes, he represented no authority, official or otherwise. What was he doing in those somber homes, heavy with distress, where you needed exceptional self-control not to burst into tears? On the sixth visit, or maybe the tenth, Yoav asked him.

  “I’m on a mission,” the strange visitor replied. “My purpose is to take charge of the future that our dead children leave behind. At midnight I go to the Wall and talk to the Lord. I implore him not to squander these young lives that have not yet been lived, nor these joys prematurely cut short, but to offer them to those who need them: the sick, the wounded, the invalids, people in despair. Sometimes my prayer is granted. Then the earth rejoices.” One evening Yoav found him wandering downcast through the old city. “What has happened to you?” “I am in mourning.” “Who is dead?” “Myself. I am dead.” And, after a silence: “No, it’s not me. It’s my prayers that are dead. It’s for them that I am in mourning.”

  The man disappeared into the night. Yoav never saw him again and never discovered his name.

  The silence in the room, which was now bathed in a dim twilight, was unreal.

  George remembered that in college his English teacher had once given his class an essay to write on the following theme: “You have twenty-four hours to live; how do you spend them?” Some students wrote about their heroic dreams, others their erotic fantasies. Several of them composed a kind of will. The most brilliant of them wrote an essay on laughter. George himself, after several false starts, found himself incapable of giving any answer at all. He had ideas and knew how to express them, but they meant nothing to him. He could not contrive to grasp what it would signify to a man to be doing, saying, and seeing everything for the last time. How could one feel one was dying bef
ore actually dying? He decided to approach it obliquely: He did not speak about himself but quoted from and commented on the last words of the great historical, religious, and literary figures: Moses and Socrates, Goethe and Tolstoy, Giordano Bruno, Gertrude Stein. He did not earn a very good grade.

  And now?

  In his mind’s eye he saw his grandfather: a piercing but concerned gaze, as always; shaggy hair, as if he had just emerged from the African bush or the Arizona desert; a permanently skeptical smile on his lips. He heard his nasal voice. “Do you understand the problem, my boy? It’s insoluble. Science should be dedicated to preserving life, and man uses it as an instrument of death.” A professor of nuclear physics, he had been recruited by Robert Oppenheimer to take part in the research project at Los Alamos. Like most of his colleagues, he carried with him a vague feeling of guilt at having contributed to the making of the atomic bomb. Yet he did not regret having collaborated on it. Like Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi, he knew the risk that the German scientists would get there first. They had to work quickly and well; hence the necessity to mobilize all wills, all talents, all governmental and academic resources. The survival of the free world depended on it.

  What made George think about his grandfather that night? He adored him. He got on better with him than anyone else in the family. His grandfather was content to live with doubts, while his own son, George’s father, fed upon certainties. The former radiated good humor, whereas the latter wore the severe mask of a preacher from dawn till dusk and well beyond. “Like Prometheus, you have robbed the gods of their secret,” he would declaim, when the impulse came on him to speak. “They will take their revenge and punish us. If not tomorrow, then the day after.” He would be silent for a moment and then add, “I, for one, hope I won’t still be around when that happens.”

  So, Father, you are not around anymore. Nor you, Grandfather. What would you do if you were here, yes, in my shoes, or with me here? These twenty-four hours left to live, Grandfather: How would you use them? What would be your last will and testament? George would never have had the courage to put this question to his father. A rationalist, unsociable, his presence was burdensome. He was a hospital administrator who preferred the company of the patients to that of the doctors. Taciturn and depressive, he found it hard to conceal his frustration and suppressed anger in the face of the ills he struggled against. He would have liked his son to follow in his path and was disappointed to learn that, like his grandfather, he was more interested in an academic career.

  And you, Father, George now pondered. What would you do? His father was dead—maybe from bitterness but surely from other causes too. George had been at his bedside. He would have liked to stroke his brow, to take his hand, but had not dared. His father discouraged all demonstrations of affection. How had he managed to tell his fiancée he loved her? Only his patients benefited from his gentleness. And there, as he lay dying, he had murmured, “George, my son. . . . The conversation we should have had, you and I, will never take place now.” He had closed his eyes and given up his soul to God. And at that moment all the warmth went out of the world.

  George felt a pang of anguish: Who would be at his own bedside when he died? He shut his eyes and had a vision of Pamela in the doorway of the office next to his. She signaled to him: “Shall I see you this evening?” Pamela had been pretty in her youth and, indeed, still was. Pamela, the embodiment of wisdom. Her innocent love. Pure affection, free of all bitterness and reproach.

  His secret life.

  At 1:30 A.M. the loudspeaker broadcast a CBS news bulletin: “The New York region is experiencing one of the worst snowstorms of the past few decades. A state of emergency has been declared. Airports are closed; roads are blocked. Tens of thousands of homes have lost electrical power. Churches, synagogues, and barracks have been converted into temporary shelters for the elderly and sick. Police reports indicate that the bad weather has already resulted in twelve deaths, and it is feared that the death toll will rise.”

  “You don’t love me anymore,” Lucien had said to her sadly.

  Claudia remembered his sadness. It was not that Lucien never smiled; he smiled often, but it was his sadness that had won her heart. She had always loved his sadness; she saw it as being as much a gesture of trust as a cry for help. But this time it was different. Everything was different. He was frowning differently, he was suffering differently.

  She had just told him she had decided to leave him. They were in the dining room. The table was set, the meal was ready. All of a sudden she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and did not recognize herself. Her face was no longer hers. It was the face of a liar. I can’t go on like this, she thought. It’s too painful.

  “You don’t love me anymore,” Lucien repeated, and his sorrow gave his mouth an especially sensual look.

  “No, that’s not the reason. But we ought to separate,” said Claudia.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the best thing. For you. For me.”

  Should she tell him she could no longer live with him because of the lie, because her own life had become a lie? What was the point? He would not understand. Explanations would no longer serve any purpose. It was too late for them.

  Lucien gave a little joyless laugh that had nothing natural about it. “So that’s it. Ten years of love and happiness, and it takes just one little sentence to end it all. What’s happening to us, Claudia, if a few words can carry more weight than ten years of harmony and trust? What do those words hide? Have I—even in a dream—done something to offend you, humiliate you, hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “So why do you want to leave me? You don’t love me anymore? Not as much as before?”

  Should she admit to him that her love for him had faded away, that she carried a dead love within her, and that it was not his fault but hers? Should she tell him about the wrong she had committed the previous week? Maybe he would forgive her for it, but she would never forgive herself.

  Now they were silent. Nothing more to say? Lucien was thinking about his wife’s wild and flamboyant beauty at night, the warmth that emanated from her body. Often, when they were making love, he would whisper in her ear, “This is the truth, my angel, this is the truth about you and me.” But Claudia, for her part, would be thinking: There is no longer any truth; truth itself is a lie. Had she really ever loved Lucien? She used to think so in the old days. Now she was no longer sure. She told herself that she had never given herself to him entirely. One part of her was not involved, remained at a distance, like an observer with dulled senses. When love dies you forget the fire that made it sing.

  Remembering that evening, thinking about that last conversation, which had turned out to be so short, Claudia asked herself, Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth? An observation of Gertrude Stein’s, when she was dying, came into her mind: “There is no answer. There never was an answer. There never will be an answer. And maybe that is the answer.” Now, in this snowbound prison, she rebelled against this fatalism. To favor questions is one thing, but to deny the possibility of all answers is quite another. And for Claudia, since her break with Lucien, that answer had finally come to exist. It had a name, a face, a face like no other; all the beauty of the world and all its strength could be read in it; all the imagination and fervor of the muses radiated forth from it. David. Yes, the answer was called David. And he was waiting for her. And she would find him again. And they would show the world that the heart can be surprised and that love is not necessarily tragic in essence.

  Bruce Schwarz stopped pacing up and down the room. “I think I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

  “What have you got?” Claudia asked.

  George stopped writing and looked up. Razziel, too, looked at Bruce with curiosity; his thick lower lip was trembling strangely.

  “Yes, it’s clear now,” said Bruce. “These guys must be terrorists.”

  “Terrorists?” George said in amazement.

/>   “Hostage takers.”

  “How could kidnapping us serve their purposes?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they want to use us to obtain a ransom or to get prisoners released—here, in Saudi Arabia, or in Israel—you see what I’m talking about?”

  For a moment there was silence, as the import of these words bore down on the prisoners with its burden of uncertainty. Visions of victims of recent assassination attempts arose before their eyes, as if seeking revenge.

  Hostile to everything Bruce said, Claudia put down her pen and rejected his theory with contempt. “That’s a bit far-fetched! How could the Judge and his accomplices have foreseen first the snowstorm and then that our plane was going to land near this village?”

  Impeccable logic, thought Razziel. Terrorists can manipulate public opinion but not the weather.

  “They could have prepared everything a long time in advance,” Bruce replied. “Then all they had to do was to wait for the moment when all the necessary conditions came together.”

  “It’s possible,” George said. “Yes, what you say is possible. But in that case our situation would be even more hopeless.”

  “Tragic, but not serious, as they used to say,” said Bruce, with bitter irony.

  “Terrorists are always serious,” said George. “Too serious, even.”

  He embarked on a historical account of terrorism. The Russian nihilists, the anticzarist revolutionaries—oh, it was different in the old days. A hundred years ago they never attacked children or civilians. He quoted Dostoyevsky and Camus. He was just getting ready to mention some “sensational” texts he had found in the archives when Bruce stopped him.

  “That’s enough, professor. We’ll listen to you some other time, but not now.”

  Nevertheless, the debate continued. How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds—and why for intellectuals? Is it a longing for power? The desire to make an impact with actions rather than words? Maybe for romantic motives? In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference—numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.