The Testament (17 page)

Translated from Yiddish

Paris, city of light? Why not? Getting off the train at the Gare de l’Est one rainy day, unshaven, exhausted, covered with soot, I had no idea where to go. I knew no one, no distant cousin in leather goods, no uncle in the Rue des Rosiers. I had only one address, which I knew by heart—that of Paul Hamburger.

Traub had given it to me. “Get in touch with him. You never know, you might be able to be useful to each other.”

Easier said than done. I could hardly present myself at his home, just like that, fallen from the sky, suitcase in hand, empty stomach and all. I had eaten nothing since Berlin. Too tense, too nervous. And also, my traveling companion had intimidated me to the point where even if I had been hungry, I wouldn’t have let him see it.

We were alone in the compartment. He sat near the door, I had the window seat. Knowing nothing about him—not even whether he was Jewish—I kept looking out at the landscape, the sky, the telegraph poles, the houses and thatched cottages so as not to have to start a conversation. I was being cautious. We were still on German soil; what if the fellow were a spy? He didn’t look the part, to be sure, but informers and policemen never do. No, it was better to hide behind my thoughts and my homesickness.
I was still pleading with Inge; I kept finding new arguments, and never had I been so eloquent, so persuasive.…

Suddenly, I turned around, bewildered: my companion had spoken to me—in Yiddish. “In this cursed land, one has the impression of witnessing the end of the world, don’t you agree?”

I answered in the same language, but with a certain anxiety. “You shouldn’t speak of such things, not out loud.”

Disdaining my advice, he went on, “Fear is one of the Biblical curses. Fear of speaking and listening, of awakening and sleeping: oh, yes—we are witnessing the apocalypse.”

His Yiddish was from Lithuania, pure, melodious, in contrast to his raucous voice. “At the same time I tell myself that since the world was world, there has always been one man who looks around and declares the end is at hand—and he is always right.”

His recklessness intrigued and disturbed me. I turned and studied him more closely. In Berlin I had taken him for the prince of a royal tribe of Israel, so majestic was his bearing. As I said, he was dressed austerely and elegantly, with waistcoat and gold chain. He had a free and easy manner, an aquiline nose, and a faraway, preoccupied look. In Barassy and Berlin, in Liyanov and Bucharest, I had seen all types of Jews, believers and nonbelievers, rich and poor, affectionate and vain—but this one resembled none of them. Radiating a mysterious power that transcended his own person and mine, he was in a category all his own.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Forgive me. I have not introduced myself; I am a professor, my name is David Aboulesia.”

His looks and demeanor were neither those of a professor
nor those of a Spaniard. A man named David Aboulesia would express himself in Castilian or in Ladino, but surely not in Yiddish. I suspected him once again of having disguised himself for some unavowed purpose.

“What do you teach?”

“The history of Jewish poetry. Or, if you prefer, the poetry of Jewish history.”

And he started talking to me of Biblical, prophetic, midrashic poetry; medieval litanies; songs commemorating the martyrs of the Crusader period and the pogroms; of Yehuda Halevy and Shmuel Hanagid, Eliezer Hakalir and Mordechai Yoseph ha-Kohen of Avignon. He had such mastery of his subject that I became oblivious to the constant comings and goings in the corridor of suspicious characters in dark raincoats and uniforms. We were approaching the frontier.

“The work of the poet and of the historian are identical,” said my companion. “Both illuminate the summit and proceed by the process of elimination, retaining only one word in ten, one event in a hundred. The difference between poetry and history? Let’s say that poetry is history’s invisible dimension.”

He carried on so long about all this that he was beginning to annoy me. We were crossing a barbarian land where Jewish history and poetry were continuously threatened, yet here he was, erect and dignified as a statue, playing with words, juggling ideas—and in Yiddish, to boot. After all, there’s a limit.

“David Aboulesia is a Spanish name—where did you learn Yiddish?”

The explanation was simple: his maternal grandparents were Russian Jews. And on his father’s side?

“Sephardim from Tangiers.”

Where did he live? Where did he teach?

“All over. I’ve been traveling for some years now. I
move through towns and villages, I go from country to country.”

What was he looking for?

“Someone,” he said. “I am looking for someone.”

“The Messiah?” I asked, by way of a joke.

My tone displeased him. He stiffened.

“Why not? Why not him? He’s of this world, young man. The Talmudic sages place him at the gates of Rome, but in fact he lives among us, everywhere. According to the Zohar, he is waiting to be called. He is waiting to be recognized in order to be crowned. Remember, young man, the Messiah looks like anyone at all except a Messiah. His name, which preceded Creation, also preceded him. The story of the Messiah is the story of a quest, of a name in search of a being, or of the being itself.”

His digressions irritated me. Who did he think he was? An initiate? A madman, I thought. We’re still in Hitler’s Reich and all he has in his head are messianic theories. He must be mad. But I had no chance to let him see my irritation. The train stopped, we had reached the frontier, and other preoccupations gripped me. What if my name was on a blacklist? And if they arrested me? The agony was interminable: police and customs officers were turning my passport over, searching my suitcase. Aboulesia watched them with a calm, almost haughty look. Because he had a British passport? I detected no trace of alarm in him. The Germans saluted us politely and left. But the strain did not relent for me until the train started again and crossed the border. I sighed with relief. I looked at my companion in a new way: Now let’s begin. But he beat me to it.

“I saw you yesterday, young man,” he said. “I caught a glimpse of you, near the Zirkus in Berlin. I was waiting for you to follow me.”

He really
is
mad, I thought.

“But—I have followed you, haven’t I?”

“So you have,” he answered. “That places me under an obligation. Make a wish, no matter what.”

There he goes again. He was no longer playing at being the Messiah; now he was impersonating Elijah the Prophet. One more, so what! They were not hard to find, those prophets and messiahs, they were a dime a dozen. I quite liked them; and they liked me too. There had been many, ever since I was a child. Maimonides is right: a world without madmen could never exist. But those of my childhood were all poor, lost, stray devils, searching for a morsel of bread or an attentive ear—not like this Sephardic professor who had gone to look for the Messiah in Germany.

“I’m waiting—your wish?”

“Very well. Answer one question: What were you doing in Germany?”

He left his corner and sat down opposite me, near the window.

“Our sages believed the Messiah would come the day mankind was either entirely guilty or entirely innocent. I went to Germany—on a mission. To assess the country’s guilt.”

“So?” I said, playing the game. “What did you find?”

“The world isn’t altogether guilty yet, but don’t worry, young man, it soon will be,” he said with surprising detachment. “But—”

“But what?”

“Now it’s my turn. I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“I noticed some phylacteries in your suitcase. Now, you’re not wearing a hat, you didn’t say your prayers this morning. What kind of Jew are you?”

Ah, the phylacteries.

“I am not a practicing Jew.”

“But then I don’t understand.…”

Soon I was telling him about Liyanov, my father, my promises. Aboulesia took an interest in my past. He spoke to me of his own. He had studied in a famous yeshiva in Lithuania, had taught in Galicia, in Greece, in Syria, in the Old City of Jerusalem. He had masters and disciples everywhere.… As I listened to him, I recalled an incident from the time I was studying under Rebbe Mendel-the-Taciturn.

His pupils were young, devout, fervent, engaged in penetrating Scripture’s secret splendor, a splendor linking mortals to their immortality. Each of our words resounded in the Celestial Palace where God and those near to Him fathom the story of our sufferings; each of our silences suggested another silence, more sublime, more holy.

I remember one evening, before midnight, Nahum, the youngest son of the
mikvah
attendant, asked a question: “We have reached the threshold of knowledge, Rebbe, but what use is it?” Nahum was trembling like a leaf about to drop from its branch. It was a dead-end situation, and he knew it. Means or end, knowledge inspires the same degree of fear.

Rebbe Mendel-the-Taciturn hid his head between his hands and raised it only after a long moment. “You want to know the use of knowledge?” he said. “Well, listen, all of you listen: it helps us understand Creation, that is, to grasp it, to work on it and even on its Author; it helps to bring us close to the beginning and the end simultaneously; it helps to bring about a liberation of the being inside beings, of the eternal in time.…” The Master seemed in a trance. He kept saying that knowledge is a key, the most precious of all keys, and also the most dangerous, because it opens two identical doors: one to Truth, the other to the abyss. Nahum cried out, “And what if I refuse the key?” “Too late,” answered our Master. “We have crossed the threshold; from now on,
doubt is no longer permitted.” A silence heavy with apprehension fell over us. No one dared break it. It lasted until the morning prayer—no, it drove away prayer. We passed that day without prayer, without food, without rest. Shortly afterward, Nahum lost his faith, his brother lost his life, and I myself felt the ground shaking under my feet.

David Aboulesia was speaking and I remembered Rebbe Mendel-the-Taciturn, whose eyes flashed with rage whenever a text refused to reveal its meaning. I remembered Ephraim and his politico-religious games. Inge and Traub. Hauptmann and Bernfeld. And now David Aboulesia.… They all were trying to hasten events, to prepare man for the Messiah or the Messiah for man. The goal was the same—impossible to attain. Impossible? Not for Inge. In a guilty Germany she represented salvation. Aboulesia was speaking, and I was imploring Inge to drop everything and come join me in Paris.

“… Since he refuses to appear in our midst,” said my companion with complete seriousness, “I shall continue to pursue him wherever he may be in heaven or on earth.”

“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.