All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (26 page)

One of the OSE volunteers—Joseph Milner, from the famous village of Chelm (all of whose inhabitants, legend has it, were innocents), a physician and a Yiddish writer in his free time—became interested in my writing. He gave me a letter of recommendation to the editor in chief of a Yiddish daily. Armed with that letter, I visited their headquarters and was shown into an office in which disorder was not king but emperor. Someone was hard at work behind a mountain of files, newspapers, and books. Only his head was visible. When I said hello, he didn’t answer. I cleared my throat, but he didn’t look up. It was as if I weren’t there, as if he himself weren’t there. Was this his way of initiating a beginner into the delicate craft of journalism? I coughed loudly, simply to see if he was alive. After one last attempt to attract his attention—a loud and clear
“Bonjour, monsieur”
—I tiptoed out, unaware of how lucky I had been. The newspaper in question,
Neie Presse
, was the organ of the French Jewish Communists. We were hardly made for each other. I would not be a Communist journalist.

That year the OSE organized a summer camp in Montintin, in the Limousin region. Bo Cohen suggested I go along as a counselor, a proposal Israel Adler urged me to accept. For one thing, I could use the money; for another, it would be a valuable experience. Adler planned on going too, for the same reasons. Ted Comet, the young volunteer from New York, would be part of the leadership team. At
first I couldn’t make up my mind. I waited for a sign, and finally it came: Hanna was going too. Was that why I said yes? Anyway, I never regretted it. Early every morning I worked (in Hebrew) on “my book” on asceticism, and after breakfast I gave Bible and Midrash classes. I organized discussions on the situation in Palestine. I liked to listen as much as to speak. At night I was the last to leave the campfire site. Life seemed fruitful and promising. I discovered the true joy of teaching, that of confidence and sharing.

Hanna, of course, remained true to her nature, treating me with special unpleasantness. I did my best to avoid her. Fortunately, the other girls were not without charm. I indulged in some serious flirting, by which I mean that I talked to them of things too serious to achieve the desired result.

When summer ended, Bo advised me to leave the comfort of Versailles. Except for Shabbat, which I would regularly celebrate at Our Place, I would now live in a small room near his home at the Porte de Saint-Cloud. Nicolas, Shimon, and Félix were given the same advice and identical rooms in the same building. Bo was right. I was nineteen years old. It was time to strike out on my own. But to do what? I forget whose brilliant idea it was to urge me to go into science. It was hard to see how someone incapable of solving a simple algebra problem could become an engineer. I refused. There was a future in engineering, but not for me. Then someone got me to sign up for a course in chemistry, and one fine morning I found myself in a laboratory surrounded by colored test tubes. An anarchist would have felt as much at home among dervishes or Trappist monks. I loved my white smock, but that was about all. I dropped out two weeks later, embarrassed but relieved.

I continued my courses with Shushani and François. My room was a gloomy little box without running water. Visitors had to sit on the bed. Fortunately, there were Shabbat, Versailles, and the choir. The choir and Hanna, so cold and beautiful.

Naturally, I followed Jewish current events closely, participating in various Zionist meetings and demonstrations at the Salle Pleyel and other, less distinguished places. Elated, I read reports and articles in
Franc-Tireur
on the heroic odyssey of the
Exodus
and Britain’s outrageous exclusionary policy. I cursed British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin. How dare he send survivors of Bergen-Belsen back to Germany?

Kalman reappeared in Versailles. He had fallen ill and disembarked
in Port-de-Bouc. His exuberance was gone. He seemed sad and discouraged. He gave me a firsthand account of the voyage of the
Exodus
, of the courage of the clandestine passengers, the complicity of the French authorities, and the duplicity of the British. For a brief moment the world’s heart beat to the rhythm of that ship, which has become part of Israel’s legend.

With hindsight we have a better sense of the historic dimensions of that epic journey. More than the debates in the United Nations and as much as the battles waged by the Jewish resistance groups in Palestine, the saga of the
Exodus
fascinated and swayed public opinion on several continents. There was much admiration for these men and women without weapons or resources who had chosen to tear themselves from the graveyard that was Europe and to reclaim the land of their ancestors.

Sometimes I stare at photographs taken at that time, looking for familiar faces, and I still wonder: How was it that these refugees from so many lands, survivors of so much persecution, of so many massacres and so much hatred, found the courage to confront the perils of that crossing, not to mention His Britannic Majesty’s invincible navy? They were survivors of death camps, women with veiled eyes, stooped old men and eager adolescents, students drawn by the Torah or inspired by patriotic faith. How did they manage to transform themselves into heroes? Kalman’s only answer was a shrug. “That’s how it was.”

Of course, they were inspired by a common ideal: to break with the vicissitudes and temptations of exile, to build their homes in joy rather than in fear, to render unto Jewish destiny and Jewish history their due. They could not know, they could not have guessed, that their dream, once realized, would entail new challenges and fresh perils.

I study their faces in candid photos, taken later on Israel’s liberated soil. Sober, melancholy, do they regret that true redemption, ultimate messianic deliverance, has yet to come? No, they are used to waiting. They have been waiting for centuries. Some demand peace, all dream of it. “We have done our duty,” they might easily say. “Leave us alone.” But they don’t. Peace—peace with the Arabs, with the Palestinians—is now their goal, for they have children and grandchildren who also must live, just as the other children, on the other side, must also live. There is enough sun to warm all hearts, enough dew to freshen all flowers. How to explain the generosity of the people of the
Exodus?
It was thanks to them, and people like them, that the Jewish state was born.

Israel: nearly fifty years of social turmoil, of wars, victories, and burials, and now, as the century draws to a close, its anguish grows ever more violent. What can be done, what must be done? How I would love to be able to discuss that with my friend Kalman.

He emigrated to the United States, where he became an authority on radar. I saw him in Brooklyn during my first visit to the United States. “How’s your work on asceticism going?” he asked. Much later we met again at Hunter College, where he was teaching and I had come to make a speech. He hadn’t changed; he was as reserved and delicate as ever, and as frail. Some years later I got a call from Harav Menashe Klein, our old friend from Ambloy. “Call Kalman immediately,” he said. “He’s not well.” It was cancer. “Do you know Professor Steven Rosenberg?” my childhood friend asked in a whisper. “He’s the man who operated on President Reagan. He alone can help me live. Without him I’ll die.” My heart breaking, I did all I could to make contact with the famous oncologist. Kalman beat me to it, but in vain. He died soon afterward, and once again I got the news from Menashe. I was out of New York, too far away to make it to the funeral the next day. We had shared so much: Écouis, Ambloy, Taverny, Versailles. His sense of humor, the rigor of his thought had sustained me so often. Kalman, my old friend, why did our paths diverge? We lived in the same city so long yet saw each other so rarely.

With François’s help I enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the Sorbonne. At last I found my vocation.

I have happy memories of my student years. There were lectures by Daniel Lagache in the Descartes or Richelieu amphitheater, and by Louis Lavelle at the Collège de France. I devoured books on philosophy and psychology, Plato’s dialogues, Freud’s analyses. I wandered from bookstore to bookstore, from park to park. I remember the silence of the Sainte-Geneviève Library and the chance encounters and inevitable rendezvous in the Sorbonne courtyard. François, my tutor, guide, and friend, did his best to initiate me into the life of the Latin Quarter, taking me to hear Sartre and Buber, whose lecture on religious existentialism was an event. The hall was packed, the audience enthusiastic. Buber was treated like a prophet. His listeners were elated, conquered in advance, ready to savor every word. There was just one problem. Had Buber spoken in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, or
German, there would have been some people in the hall able to follow his address. But he opted for French, and his accent was so thick no one understood him. Everyone applauded just the same. No matter, they would read the text when it was published. But I was delighted to have seen the handsome face and heard the searching voice of the author
of I and Thou
, one of the great Jewish spiritual thinkers of our time.

At that moment, however, I was more concerned with material problems than with theology or existentialism, for I had nothing to live on. My sole means of support was the meager OSE subsidy: eight thousand francs a month (sixteen dollars today). “You have to learn how to get by,” Bo told me. Easier said than done. I sent some “philosophical” articles to the Zionist daily of Paris, which did not bother to reply. I didn’t know what else to do. I was good at nothing: I would never find a way to make a living. Success required daring, which I lacked, for I feared rejection; better to die of hunger than of shame. (I knew all about hunger. I had no wish to become acquainted with shame.)

Like everyone else, I had ration cards. When I wasn’t broke, I ate corn bread and cheese. The young salesgirl at the cheese shop always gave me an extra-large slice of Brie. She was probably a romantic who liked helping starving students.

Bo got me a job tutoring a doctor’s son in Hebrew and Bible studies in preparation for his bar mitzvah. I was paid just enough to feel useful, but the truth is I wasn’t worth my salary, for I left my twelve-year-old pupil hopelessly confused. The problem was that I used Shushani’s method, far too complicated for a boy his age. Instead of teaching him to read the sacred texts, I decided to help him discover the mystery of their genesis. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” my pupil would murmur, and I would stop him. In the beginning? What does “beginning” mean? Can there be a beginning for God? Or an end? And suddenly I was talking about the Ancients and their concepts of creation, citing Nahmanides and Abrabanel. My poor pupil seemed unsure whether he should pretend to listen or run crying to his room. His father happened to sit in on one of our early lessons and politely shared his discontent with me. For the time being, he said, his son could do without my metaphysical imaginings. Perhaps I might come back when he was grown up, after his marriage, for example.

There remained the question of questions: How would I pay my
rent? Food was a problem too, but I found a way around that. Sometimes Bea would send me cans of condensed milk or cookies, and I ate at Hilda’s from time to time: bread and french fries. Hilda had no idea how precarious my situation was. She was preoccupied with problems of her own.

Every morning I had to decide whether to walk to the Latin Quarter and eat a snack or sandwich at the kosher restaurant on the Rue de Médicis or take the bus or métro home on an empty stomach. Wretched economist that I was, I wore out my shoes walking. Having them resoled cost more than the métro.

The end of the month was the worst time. I trembled at the idea of being unable to pay my rent and sometimes, to avoid going home, spent the night walking along the Seine. I was vaguely afraid of my landlady. I was still too pious, too imprisoned by taboos, not to be afraid of women, who, after all, had been created to seduce us and to incite us to sin. I was afraid she would take advantage of my economic and emotional situation to … to do what exactly? It was stupid, ridiculous, I know that now. Though I was hardly a Don Juan, I had the terrifying impression she was trying to seduce me. When she came to do the room, I would slip out like a thief, and if I accidentally brushed against her, it made me sweat and shiver. She was young and not lacking in charm. To put it more bluntly, her charm was her chest, and it was always in my way Whether I went left or right, I could never avoid it. My fears may well have been based solely on my repressed desires, but they felt real to me—real and upsetting. Even if my landlady acted the same with all her tenants, when we were in the room together I changed to the point that I didn’t like myself, disapproved of myself. I wanted to be somewhere else, to be someone else. I wished I could disappear.

There came a time when I decided to put an end to the sterile life I was leading, laden with apprehension and remorse as it was. For the first time, the idea of suicide occurred to me. I would stare at myself in the mirror and wonder whether the moment had come to put an end to my worries and misery. If I didn’t die of starvation, I could throw myself into the Seine or in front of the métro. Wherever I turned, I saw death staring back at me with its countless eyes. How could I repel it? In ancient Greece condemned prisoners had to whisper verses of Euripides in the tyrant’s ear to be spared. Were there other verses that could appease the angel for whom tyrants and their subjects are equal prey?

This wretched despondency lasted several weeks, perhaps several months. I no longer recognized the man I hoped to become or already was. He eluded me, he was shrouded in fog. Contact between us was severed. My self no longer belonged to me. I doubted him and all others, doubted everything—except my memory. Though it, too, was threatened with death, it had nothing to fear, for it was protected by the dead who inhabited it. They seemed to beckon me. In fact, it was not death that lured me; it was the dead who called out to me. I saw them and questioned them ceaselessly. I sensed, was imbued with, their presence. I lived among them more than among the living. When I speak of suicide in my novels, it is this period in my life that provides the inspiration.