“You see,” Paul Russel said in a different tone of voice, “the difference between you and me is this. Your relation with what surrounds you and with what marks the limits of your horizon develops in an indirect way. You only know the words, the skin, the appearances, the ideas, of life. There’ll always be a curtain between you and your neighbor’s life. You’re not content to know man is alive; you also want to know what he is doing with his life. For me this is different. I am less severe with my fellow men. We have the same enemy and it has only one name: Death. Before it we are all equal. In its eyes no life has more weight than another. From that point of view, I am just like Death. What fascinates me in man is his capacity for living. Acts are just repetitions. If you had ever held a man’s life in the palm of your hand, you too would come to prefer the immediate to the future, the concrete to the ideal, and life to the problems which it brings with it.”
He stood at the window for a moment and stopped talking, just long enough to smile, before continuing an octave lower.
“Your life, my friend, I had it right there. In the palm of my hand.”
He turned slowly, his hand held out. Little by little his face became as it usually was and his gestures became less abrupt.
“Do you believe in God, Doctor?”
My question took him by surprise. He stopped suddenly, wrinkling his forehead.
“Yes,” he answered. “But not in the operating room. There I only count on myself.”
His eyes looked deeper. He added, “On myself and on the patient. Or, if you prefer, on the life in the diseased flesh. Life wants to live. Life wants to go on. It is opposed to death. It fights. The patient is my ally. He fights on my side. Together we are stronger than the enemy. Take the boy last night. He didn’t accept death. He helped me to win the battle. He was holding on, clinging. He was asleep, anesthetized, and yet he was taking part in the fight…”
Still motionless, he again stared at me intensely. There was an awkward silence. Once more I had the impression he knew, that he was speaking only to penetrate my secret. Now, I decided. Now or never. I had to put an end to any uncertainty.
“Doctor, I would like to ask you a question.”
He nodded.
“What did I say during the operation?”
He thought a moment. “Nothing. You didn’t say anything.”
“Are you sure? Not even a word?”
“Not even a word.”
I was relieved and couldn’t help smiling.
“My turn now,” the doctor said seriously. “I also have a question.”
My smile froze. “Go ahead,” I said.
I had to fight an urge to close my eyes. All of a sudden the room seemed too light. Anxiety took hold of my voice, my breath, my eyes.
The doctor lowered his head slightly, almost imperceptibly.
“Why don’t you care about living?” he asked very softly.
For a moment everything shook. Even the light flickered and changed color. It was white, red, black. The blood was beating in my temples. My head was no longer my own.
“Don’t deny it,” the doctor went on, speaking still more softly. “Don’t deny it. I know.”
He knows. He knows. He knows. My throat was in an invisible vise. I was going to choke any moment.
Weakly I asked him who had told him: Kathleen?
“No. Not Kathleen. Nobody. Nobody told me. But I know it anyway. I guessed. During the operation. You never helped me. Not once. You abandoned me. I had to wage the fight alone, all alone. Worse. You were on the other side, against me, on the side of the enemy.”
His voice became hard, painfully hard. “Answer me! Why don’t you want to live? Why?”
I was calm again. He doesn’t know, I thought. The little he is guessing is nothing. An impression. That’s all. Nothing definite. Nothing worked out. And yet he is moving in the right direction. Only he’s not going all the way.
“Answer me,” he repeated. “Why? Why?”
He was becoming more and more insistent. His lower lip was shaking nervously. Was he aware of it? I thought: he’s angry at me because I left him alone, because even now I escape him and have neither gratitude nor admiration for him. That’s why he’s angry. He guessed that I don’t care about living, that deep inside me there is no desire left to go on. And that undermines the foundation of his philosophy and his system of values. Man, according to his book, must live and must fight for his life. He must help doctors and not fight them. I had fought him. He brought me back to life against my will. I had nearly joined my grandmother. I was actually on the threshold. Paul Russel stood behind me and prevented me from crossing. He was pulling me toward him. Alone against Grandmother and the others. And he had won. Another victory for him. A human life. I should shout with happiness and make the walls of the universe tremble. But instead I disturb him. That’s what is distressing him.
Dr. Russel was making an obvious effort to restrain himself. He was still looking at me with anger, his cheeks purple, his lips trembling.
“I order you to answer me!”
A pitiless inquisitor, he had raised his voice. A cold anger made his hands rigid.
I thought: he is going to shout, to hit me. Who knows? He might be capable of strangling me, of sending me back to the battlefield. Dr. Russel is a human being, therefore capable of hatred, capable of losing control. He could easily put his hands around my neck and squeeze. That would be normal, logical on his part. I represent a danger to him. Anyone who rejects life is a threat to him and to everything he stands for in this world where life already counts for so little. In his eyes I am a cancer to be eliminated. What would become of humanity and of the laws of equilibrium if all men began to desire death?
I felt very calm, completely controlled. If I had searched further I might have discovered that my calm also hid the satisfaction, the strange joy—or was it simply humor?—that comes from the knowledge of one’s own strength, of one’s own solitude. I was telling myself: he doesn’t know. And I alone can decide to tell him, to transform his future. At this very moment, I am his fate.
“Did I tell you the dream I had during the first operation I ever had?” I asked him smilingly in an amused tone of voice. “No? Shall I tell you? I was twelve. My mother had taken me to a clinic that belonged to my cousin, the surgeon Oscar Sreter, to have my tonsils removed. He had put me to sleep with ether. When I woke up, Oscar Sreter asked me, ‘Are you crying because it hurts?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’m crying because I just saw God.’ Strange dream. I had gone to heaven. God, sitting on his throne, was presiding over an assembly of angels. The distance which separated Him from me was infinite, but I could see Him as clearly as if He had been right next to me. God motioned to me and I started to walk forward. I walked several lifetimes, but the distance grew no shorter. Then two angels picked me up, and suddenly I found myself face to face with God. At last! I thought. Now I can ask Him the question that haunts all the wise men of Israel: What is the meaning of suffering? But, awed, I couldn’t utter a sound. In the meantime other questions kept moving through my head: When will the hour of deliverance come? When will Good conquer Evil, thus allowing chaos to be forever dispelled? But my lips could only tremble and the words stuck in my throat. Then God talked to me. The silence had become so total, so pure, that my heart was ashamed of its beating. The silence was still as absolute, when I heard the words of God. With Him the word and the silence were not contradictory. God answered all my questions and many others. Then two angels took me by the arm again and brought me back. One of them told the other, ‘He has become heavier,’ and the other replied, ‘He is carrying an important answer.’ That is when I woke up. Dr. Sreter was leaning over me with a smile. I wanted to tell him that I had just heard the words of God, when I realized to my horror that I had forgotten them. I no longer knew what God had told me. My tears began to flow. ‘Are you crying because it hurts?’ the good Dr. Sreter asked me. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ I answered. ‘I’m crying because I
just saw God. He talked to me and I forgot what He said.’ The doctor burst into a friendly laugh: ‘If you want I can put you back to sleep; and you can ask Him to repeat…’ I was crying and my cousin was laughing heartily…And you see, Doctor, this time, stretched out on your operating table, fast asleep, I didn’t see God in my dream. He was no longer there.”
Paul Russel had been listening attentively. Leaning forward, he seemed to be looking for a hidden meaning in every word. His face had changed.
“You haven’t answered my question!” he remarked, still tense.
So he hadn’t understood. An answer to his question? But this was an answer! Couldn’t he see how the second operation was different from the first? It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t understand. We were so different, so far from each other. His fingers touched life. Mine death. Without an intermediary, without partitions. Life, death, each as bare, as true as the other. The problem went beyond us. It was in an invisible sphere, on a faraway screen, between two powers for whom we were only ambassadors.
Standing in front of my bed, he filled the room with his presence. He was waiting. He suspected a secret that made him angry. That’s what was throwing him off. We were both young, and above all we were alive. He looked at me steadily, stubbornly, to catch in me that which eluded him. In the same way primitive man must have watched the day disappear behind the mountain.
I felt like telling him: go. Paul Russel, you are a straightforward and courageous man. Your duty is to leave me. Don’t ask me to talk. Don’t try to know. Neither who I am, nor who you are. I am a storyteller. My legends can only be told at dusk. Whoever listens questions his life. Go, Paul Russel. Go. The heroes of my legends are cruel and without pity. They are capable of strangling you. You want to know who I am, truly? I don’t know myself. Sometimes I am Shmuel, the slaughterer. Look at me carefully. No, not at my face. At my hands.
THEY WERE ABOUT TEN in the bunker. Night after night they could hear the German police dogs looking through the ruins for Jews hiding out in their underground shelters. Shmuel and the others were living on practically no water or bread, on hardly any air. They were holding out. They knew that there, down below in their narrow jail, they were free; above, death was waiting for them. One night a disaster nearly occurred. It was Golda’s fault. She had taken her child with her. A baby, a few months old. He began to cry, thus endangering the lives of all. Golda was trying to quiet him, to make him sleep. To no avail. That’s when the others, including Golda herself, turned to Shmuel and told him: “Make him shut up. Take care of him, you whose job it is to slaughter chickens. You will be able to do it without making him suffer too much.” And Shmuel gave in to reason: the baby’s life in exchange for the lives of all. He had taken the child. In the dark his groping fingers felt for the neck. And there had been silence on earth and in heaven. There was only the sound of dogs barking in the distance.
A SLIGHT SMILE came to my lips. Shmuel too had been a doctor, I thought.
Motionless, Paul Russel was still waiting.
MOISHE is a smuggler. He too comes from Sighet. We were friends. Every morning at six, ever since we were eight years old, we met in the street and, lantern in hand, we walked to the cheder, where we found books bigger than we. Moishe wanted to become a rabbi. Today he is a smuggler and he is wanted by every police force in Europe. In the concentration camp he had seen a pious man exchange his whole week’s bread rations for a prayer book. The pious man passed away less than a month later. Before dying he had kissed his precious book and murmured, “Book, how many human beings have you destroyed?” That day Moishe had decided to change the course of his existence. And that’s how the human race gained a smuggler and lost a rabbi. And it isn’t any the worse off for it.
YOU WANT TO KNOW who I am, Doctor? I am also Moishe the smuggler. But above all I am the one who saw his grandmother go to heaven. Like a flame, she chased away the sun and took its place. And this new sun which blinds instead of giving light forces me to walk with my head down. It weighs upon the future of man. It casts a gloom over the hearts and vision of generations to come.
If I had spoken to him out loud, he would have understood the tragic fate of those who came back, left over, living-dead. You must look at them carefully. Their appearance is deceptive. They are smugglers. They look like the others. They eat, they laugh, they love. They seek money, fame, love. Like the others. But it isn’t true: they are playing, sometimes without even knowing it. Anyone who has seen what they have seen cannot be like the others, cannot laugh, love, pray, bargain, suffer, have fun, or forget. Like the others. You have to watch them carefully when they pass by an innocent-looking smokestack, or when they lift a piece of bread to their mouths. Something in them shudders and makes you turn your eyes away. These people have been amputated; they haven’t lost their legs or eyes but their will and their taste for life. The things they have seen will come to the surface again sooner or later. And then the world will be frightened and won’t dare look these spiritual cripples in the eye.
If I had spoken out loud, Paul Russel would have understood why one shouldn’t ask those who came back too many questions: they aren’t normal human beings. A spring snapped inside them from the shock. Sooner or later the results must appear. But I didn’t want him to understand. I didn’t want him to lose his equilibrium; I didn’t want him to see a truth which threatened to reveal itself at any moment.
I began to persuade him he was wrong so he would go away, so he would leave me alone. Of course I wanted to live. Obviously I wanted to live, create, do lasting things, help man make a step forward, contribute to the progress of humanity, its happiness, its fulfillment! I talked a long time, passionately, using complicated, grandiloquent words and abstract expressions on purpose. And since he still wasn’t completely convinced, I threw in the argument to which he couldn’t remain deaf: love. I love Kathleen. I love her with all my heart. And how can one love if at the same time one doesn’t care about life, if one doesn’t believe in life or in love?
The young doctor’s face gradually assumed its usual expression. He had heard the words he wanted to hear. His philosophy wasn’t threatened. Everything was in order again. Nothing like friendship between patients and doctors! Nothing is more sacred than life, or healthier, or greater, or more noble. To refuse life is a sin; it’s stupid and mad. You have to accept life, cherish it, love it, fight for it as if it were a treasure, a woman, a secret happiness.
Now he was becoming friendly again. He offered me a cigarette, encouraging me to accept it. He was no longer tense. His lips had their normal color again. There was no more anger in his eyes.
“I’m glad,” he said finally. “At the beginning I was afraid…I admit my mistake. I’m glad. Really.”
I TOO. I was glad to have convinced him. Really.
Nothing easier. He only wanted to be deceived and I had played his game. I had recited a text he knew by heart. Love is a question mark, not an exclamation point. It can explain everything without calling on arguments whose strength as well as whose weakness is based on logic. A boy who is in love knows more about the universe and about creation than a scholar. Why do we have to die? Because I love you, my love. And why do parallel lines meet at infinity? What a question! It’s only because I love you, my love.
And it works. For them, for the boy and for the girl, prisoners of a magic circle, the answer seems completely valid. In their eyes there is a direct relation between their adventure and the mysteries of the universe.
Yes, it was easy. I love Kathleen. Therefore life has a meaning, man isn’t alone. Love is the very proof of God’s existence.
Kathleen. In the end I managed to convince her also. True, this was more difficult. She knew me better and was on her guard. Unlike the young doctor, who was running away from uncertainties, she had a feeling for nuances. For her, Hamlet was just romantic and the question he asked himself was too simplistic. The problem is not: to be or not to be. But rather: to be and not to be. What it comes down to
is that man lives while dying, that he represents death to the living, and that’s where tragedy begins.
Why had she come back? She shouldn’t have. I had even told her so. No. I hadn’t told her. She was unhappy. This had surprised me so much that I had felt incapable of telling her not to reopen the parentheses.
She was suffering. Even on the telephone, her voice had betrayed her weariness. Five years had gone by since my silent departure. It had been bitingly cold that morning. Now it was fall. Five years! I had heard from Shimon Yanai that Kathleen had gone back to Boston and had married a man much older than she, and quite rich.
One afternoon, in the office. Up to my neck in work: the General Assembly of the United Nations was holding its annual session. Speeches, statements, accusations and counteraccusations, resolutions and counterresolutions. Judging from what was said on the speaker’s platform, our planet was extremely ill.
The phone rang.
At the other end, in a whisper, a voice murmured, “It’s Kathleen.”
That’s all she said and there was a long silence. I looked at the receiver I was holding in my hand and I had the impression it was alive. I thought: years ago, winter; now, fall.
“I would like to see you,” Kathleen added.
Her voice had the sound of despair. Of nothingness.
“Where are you?” I asked her.
She mentioned a hotel.
“Wait for me,” I said.
We hung up at the same time.
She was staying at one of the most expensive and most elegant places in New York. Her apartment was on the fifteenth floor. Quietly I pushed the half-open door. Kathleen was framed by the window. Her beautiful black hair fell to her shoulders. She was wearing a dark gray dress with a low-cut back. I was moved.