The Testament (20 page)

Then why was I so troubled? What irritated me was not knowing what irritated me. As for Paul, he behaved very naturally. He commented with humor on current events, described the situation in Germany: anecdotes, predictions, rumors. He was more brilliant and fascinating than ever. The meal over, he had the tact not to come with us. “I have some things to take care of in the neighborhood,” he said, kissing Sheina on both cheeks. He shook hands with me and vanished in the direction of the Opéra. I was grateful to him; I was happy.

Was I really? In this cold, barren cell where the sun never penetrates, not even on orders from on high, the answer seems obvious to me. Yes, I was happy, free, without care, blessed with love and companionship. Moreover, I knew I was doing good useful work, fighting the good fight. Everything seemed simple. In a sick society we represented the only chance for a remission. We were raising the banner of revolt against complacency and resignation. I knew where I was going, I knew what I wanted and from whom and how I was going to get it. I knew my enemies and was exposing them. And I knew my allies too. Is that true happiness? Today I say “yes” without hesitation, without qualification. At the time I would have said “I don’t know.” I would have said, “Happiness? I am much too busy to think about it; happiness, gentlemen, is for the bourgeoisie; we the proletariat have something better to do just now.”

And yet I experienced moments of happiness—conscious and fully felt—and I remember them. There was that visit
with a family in the north, then in the middle of a strike. A miner and his children receive me. Sad but proud, they invite me into their home. “We have nothing to offer you, we have nothing.”

“But you do,” I say to them. “A good word or two, a story will be enough. I’ll put them in the paper.”

They consult each other silently, then the father turns to me and says, “Ordinarily we don’t speak about ourselves. But since you’re our guest, this will be our way of offering you hospitality.”

I ask questions, they answer. How do they live, how are they managing? The mother’s illness and death, the solidarity of the fellow miners … I listen, I take notes and I am ashamed. I am ashamed of not being hungry, of not being unemployed. And what if I went to the grocer’s now? I am afraid of embarrassing them. I’ll do it later.

The grocer opens his eyes wide, astonished at the size of my order. I tell him where to deliver the food. “All that?” asks the grocer. “Yes, all that.” I pay and walk toward the station. The train is not leaving for an hour. Suddenly, I hear footsteps. My miner sits down next to me on the bench and says, “What you did there is—how can I say it?—it’s beautiful.”

His familiar way of talking moves me. Awkward like myself, he has difficulty hiding his emotion.

“I didn’t know,” he says.

“What didn’t you know?”

“That Santa Claus was a Communist.”

“Santa Claus? I am a Jew, comrade. Our Santa Claus is called Elijah the Prophet. He variously disguises himself as a peasant, a beggar or a coachman.”

“And he’s a Communist?”

We burst out laughing at the same time. That is what I call happiness.

Another example: a demonstration from the Place de la
République to the Bastille. The Popular Front is the rage. Leon Blum and Maurice Thorez are beaming; Socialist and Communist embrace. We shout our hopes at the top of our lungs. With fists raised, I march past the platform; I am every workingman’s brother, and like him, bubbling with enthusiasm. Together with our comrades from the paper and our aid societies, we march, heads held high, joyous, confident, inspired by an unshakable faith in our power: we shall triumph over Nazism. I am not a Frenchman—so what? I am part of an immense family that carries history on its shoulders. Behind us, in front of us, all around us, intellectuals and stevedores, winegrowers and bricklayers advance with firm and equal step, irresistible, ready to conquer the earth, and the sun too, if necessary. Forgive me, Citizen Magistrate: a sally of Trotsky’s comes to my mind: “And if they tell us that the sun shines only for the bourgeoisie, well, comrades, then we’ll extinguish the sun.” No, Trotsky—what’s the good of extinguishing the sun? We’ll turn it around to our side, that’s more practical.… Suddenly, I see some Zionist groups in the crowd. They, too, have Socialists in their ranks. Come to think of it—their paper stopped attacking me weeks ago. Once again my thoughts go to Elijah the Prophet: there’s no end to his miracles! And while marching and shouting the usual slogans, I address a silent prayer to the most democratic, most political and most militant of our prophets: I thank him for involving himself in our affairs. My thoughts also go to my father; I am grateful to him for having taught me to pray and give thanks. If he ever comes across my picture in a Jewish or Romanian newspaper, he’ll surely write me a letter that will not hurt.

Secret mission to Hamburg: I hand over a sum of money to a network entrusted with the escape of an underground leader. Later I will learn it concerned Brandberg, the deputy, Rosa Luxemburg’s friend. Three rendezvous in three
different public places: the railway station, the harbor, a stop of the Number 3 streetcar. Secret codes, passwords. A waiter takes charge of me first, then a streetcar conductor. Finally I find myself in a restaurant beside a dowdy housewife. Following instructions I put my
Völkischer Beobachter
next to me on the seat; the money is folded inside. I let my neighbor take over. She substitutes her paper for mine. We eat without haste, without greeting one another; two strangers. She leaves before me. Furtively, I follow her with my eyes.
Will we see each other again one day?
The teams keep changing, the question remains the same. I think of Inge. No doubt she’s performing similar missions; how much time will go by before she is jailed? I have an idea: What if I stopped off in Berlin? For one day, one night? My heart beats like a drum. No, the orders are explicit. It’s forbidden to see old friends again, to expose them to useless risks. I never see the Hamburg housewife again. But a few months later at Paul’s I meet a sick, elderly man. Paul introduces us. “That’s him,” he says, pointing to me. And the man shakes my hand, does not let it go. “I owe you my life; believe me, I owe you my life.” And my only thought is, That is what I call happiness—when a man owes you his life.

Oh, yes, I was happy in Paris: as only a Jewish activist—and a poet to boot—could be.

There was also that trip to Palestine. An unforgettable lightning trip. I experienced it intensely—I was about to say, religiously—from beginning to end. And, from beginning to end, my father’s eyes never left me.

One gray, rainy morning, Paul calls me into his office.

“The Holy Land—what would you say to going there?”

Emotion—at the moment inexplicable—leaves me speechless.

“We’re hearing about serious events, riots,” says Paul. “A complicated, tangled situation. Englishmen, Arabs,
Jews; intrigues, plots; religion, politics, finance: it’s one big mess. We can’t make head or tail of it, and we’d like to.”

His hand on my shoulder, Paul speaks to me softly: “Will you be up to it—I mean, will you try to remain neutral, objective? You won’t forget that passion blinds judgment, and thus is dangerous?”

My face changes color. Yes, I am moved, I don’t deny it.

Paul’s office takes care of the arrangements: visas, steamship ticket, my “cover” as a special correspondent for a prestigious weekly,
Images de la Vie
. Unlimited expenses. Best hotels. And I’ll be carrying an important amount of money to turn over to someone who will introduce himself in a certain Jaffa café as “Wolfe’s lost cousin.”

The crossing is awful. Hardly have we weighed anchor in Marseille when the sea breaks loose. I never imagined that so large and heavy a steamship could toss around like a matchbox. The ship seems to rise and fall simultaneously, and simultaneously lunge right and left, and I remain behind, always behind, snatched up by the monstrous jaws of the black waves. Vomiting makes me long to flee, to die, to disappear in the dark waters.

The sun returns and the calm restores my zest for life. I spend hours on the bridge, I feel the pull of the sea; I love the murmur of the waves suggesting an endless song; I love the thick white foam stressing the inadequacy of all fixed forms. Peace and depth—I do not resist. I look, afraid to look too much. I go off to read or chat with an Austrian explorer, a Frenchwoman who is an Egyptologist, an emissary from a kibbutz. Unbelievable how quickly one forgets. Yesterday, I was suffering so much I thought of death. Now, I am so at peace with myself I am thinking of death.

The last night I could not close my eyes. Excited, troubled, my heart beating furiously, the Talmud student
from Liyanov remained on the bridge so as not to miss that first contact, that first image. Other passengers too must have yielded to the same curiosity, the same impatience. Here and there I caught a whisper, a sigh. The steamship was gliding toward the shore and holding its breath.

At dawn I saw Carmel rising from the sea into a blazing sky of deep blue shot through with red. The beauty of the landscape hit me with almost physical violence. Wide-eyed, I scrutinized the horizon and heard my father saying: “This is the land of our ancestors, my son. Don’t you think you should say a prayer—for yourself and for all those who can’t pray any more?” I went down to my cabin, and obeying the wish of Gershon Kossover, his son put on the phylacteries from which he had never been separated.

Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem. Taken in hand by the Political Affairs Department of the Jewish Agency, I traveled throughout the country, studying its problems, penetrating its multifaceted drama. I wanted to meet with members of the Socialist communes: Degania, Ein-Harod and Givat-Brenner. I could have spent the rest of my life there. I feared for the activists, so young and handsome, so open and determined, who were preparing for armed resistance against the Arabs
and
against the English.

I was astonished: “There are so few of you, and you hope to beat them all?”

“Here history counts more than statistics.”

“But you’re mad! To fight, you need men, arms. You don’t go to war with ideas and words. The Bible may be very useful, but it will not protect you against bullets.”

“You’re thinking in political terms. If we thought the way you do we’d abandon the struggle immediately.”

“You’re mad!”

I loved their madness. The British colonial policy, on the other hand, scandalized me. As imperialists they
despised both the Jews
and
the Arabs, amusing themselves by turning one against the other. In matters of duplicity and intrigue they needed no lessons from anyone. If one were to believe them, the Jews and Arabs could not survive without them; without them, there would be a massacre.

In Jerusalem I walked through the narrow, bustling alleys of the Old City, looking for a memory, some sign of another age. I loved the sky hanging low over the cedars, the incandescent clouds above the domes, the motionless shadows hugging the hovels and shops. I loved the camel drivers and their camels at rest, at the gates of the city. I loved the muezzin whose calls to prayer and faith were lost in the distance; it filled me with nostalgia. I loved, above all, the stone pathways leading to the Wall of the Temple. I always took the last few steps at a run. There I found pilgrims, beggars, mystical dreamers seeking illumination. I joined them without knowing why; as for them, they did not ask me why, and I asked nothing of them.

One night a figure emerged from the shadows and joined me. It crouched beside me and greeted me. In the silvery half-light of the moon I recognized Aboulesia, my Sephardic friend. Was he smiling at me or just studying me? And where did he come from anyway? From the sky? We shook hands and, foolishly, I wanted to weep.

“It’s natural,” said David Aboulesia. “Everyone feels like weeping in this place. This is where God Himself weeps over the ruins of His temple and His creation.”

We strolled around the city. The air was balmy; the wind was playing in the mountains, rustling through the trees, descending to the valley to rest. A star flickered. Behind the walls of the houses, men and women were trying to interpret the meaning of their encounter, and perhaps of ours.

“Well, and what about the Messiah?” I asked my companion. “Are you still pursuing him?”

“When he’s not looking for me, I’m running after him.”

But that wasn’t the only reason for his coming to Palestine. He made a point of being there during the riots.

“My place is among my persecuted brethren,” he said. “Among those being pushed toward the abyss. I am going to prevent them from falling, I must. I know how to go about it. I am a secret agent; I am making my report. To whom? You know perfectly well. I tell Him my fears, point out the dangers. My role is to sound the alarm; I did it in Germany, I am doing it here; I do it wherever the Eternal People are in danger of death. For, unfortunately, this is only the beginning.”

I shuddered.

“The beginning of what?”

“I don’t know. Of redemption perhaps? Great suffering is to precede the luminous explosion of the messianic age, our mystics tell us. It fills me with fear.”

“Fear? Of suffering?”

“Yes. Suffering is meant to frighten. But I am even more afraid of what it means: namely that evil plays a role in the cosmic drama of ultimate redemption. Well then, poet, is it possible that those who bring about suffering, hence injustice, hence evil, are doing the work of salvation?”

While wandering through the silently brooding old city, listening to the insane words of my strange friend, I could not keep from smiling. I thought: This professor-adventurer-mystic expresses himself like a Marxist without knowing it: he is a revolutionary in spite of himself. Paul says that to save the world you must amputate it; to save the arm, you must cut off the little finger. The old metaphor: The worse things are, the better they will become. The more blood flows, the nearer peace. But I cannot stand the sight of blood. If, in order to appear in his immaculate glory, the Messiah has to have himself announced by shrieking nations massacring one another, let him stay home. And yet, both my friends are invoking him,
each using methods repugnant to the other. Poor Messiah! All the things done for you in your name—all those things you’re made to do.