“What other revelations do you have for us?”
“I’m Jewish. My name is Shaltiel Feigenberg.”
“As though we didn’t know.”
“I’m the son of Jews. The descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The disciple of Moses, Isaiah and …”
The Arab slaps him on the right cheek.
“We’re fighting for the liberation of Palestine. Keep your history lessons for your own people.”
“So tell me why I’m here.”
Another slap, on the left cheek. This is not a dream.
“Did you really forget everything?”
“I have a dreadful headache.”
“You’re here precisely because you’re Jewish.”
Oddly enough, Shaltiel feels slightly reassured. He had been trying lately to imagine the irrational, absurd fear that his father must have felt during the war, far away, over there.
He hears his abductors opening the two books he had borrowed from the library and had under his arm when they captured him; then he hears them throw them on the ground. They empty his pockets—a few dollars, a handkerchief, his library card.
“Why do you refuse to help us?” the Italian asks.
“I’m a storyteller. If you want, I’ll tell you a story.”
“Storyteller isn’t a profession.”
The Arab cuts in. “Where we come from, it is. Arab storytellers are respected. But you’re Jewish. Do Jews also respect them?”
“That depends on the storytellers.”
“You,” asks the Italian, “are you respected?”
“I respect those who listen to me,” says Shaltiel.
“Do you also write your stories down?”
“It all depends on the stories. Some I write down.”
Another slap from the Arab.
“Tell me,” says the Italian, “do you know any wealthy and influential people?”
“The only wealth I’m interested in is a wealth of words. The people I know are different, you might say.”
“Different in what way?”
“Today’s wealthy are poor though they don’t know it. They can’t bring their possessions to where we’re all going.”
Shaltiel feels he has less to fear from the Italian than the Arab. The Italian must have doubts about this exploit. He must have some education; he must know Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Wittgenstein. He must know that philosophers don’t turn into executioners; they’re incapable of it. A crazy and slightly ridiculous idea surfaces in his seething mind: In other circumstances, could they have become friends? And what about in these circumstances? Oh my heavens, the famous Stockholm syndrome! Oh no, says the prisoner to himself, not that.
“I imagine you’ve published some of your stories,” says Luigi.
“Yes,” says Shaltiel. “But very few.”
“In what language?”
“In Hebrew, in Yiddish and in English. But I also speak French.”
“Where could I find them? I mean the writings in English.”
“In the New York Public Library. In fact, if you want, I’d be glad to go there with you.”
The Arab shouts an obscenity and punches him for the first time. “Oh, and he thinks he’s being funny!”
And he thinks he’s a revolutionary! Shaltiel says to himself, surprised that he’s beginning to collect his thoughts again.
A face flashes before the prisoner’s swollen eyes: Piotr. Where are you, my friend? Come and help me!
The torturers interrupt the session. They’re not getting anywhere.
Revolution, thinks Shaltiel, it’s a noble concept, but a blood-drenched word. Its results are violence and transformation. It sparks the most human hope and the cruelest loss of hope—Robespierre and Saint-Just, Lenin and Trotsky, Bakunin and Stalin; scaffolds, guillotines, jails, the Gulag, concentration camps.
With the years and convulsions of history, the word—as reductionist as the dictionary itself—has undergone absurd metamorphoses. In some countries, they prefer the word “destabilization.” “Poor” countries no longer exist, just “disadvantaged” or “underprivileged” ones. We say “brainwashing” instead of “propaganda.” And now we refer to revolutions in fashion, music and electronics, where ink flows but not blood. The point is profit, not truth.
Shaltiel remembers the “1968 Revolution.” He was spending a few weeks alone in Paris; Blanca had to take her exams in New York. In Germany, America, England—everywhere—young people were in rebellion, eager for change, every type of change. In Paris, the students occupied the Sorbonne; in New York, they invaded Columbia University. The postwar generation berated its recent history. It had had more than enough of the wealthy class, the overlords, the decision-makers.
Shaltiel was happy. He was giddy with hope, exhilarated by life and humanity. The enthusiasm in the Latin Quarter, the rioting—it was like a celebration. A celebration of freedom, of happiness. Strangers kissed each other, vowing eternal love that lasted only an hour, an instant, a glimmer. There was magnificent sexual liberation. It was forbidden to forbid. The power of imagination and imagination in power! Long live anarchy, the liberator!
It was a struggle of the “people” against authority, battling the establishment, repudiating everything that had been taken for granted, accepted, respected and admired. The police, the tear gas—driven back, the students came back yelling, chanting, laughing. Idols were abolished, glories repudiated. Friends, it was said, let’s start all over again, from Creation! Down with the rich, the great, the master thinkers, comrades! Down with matter, long live poetry!
Shaltiel had joined the crowd. Sometimes he didn’t know why they were fighting or whom they were denouncing. He hadn’t mastered French, but he felt at home among friends and accomplices on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. He didn’t really understand what he saw, but he participated in it with a juvenile enthusiasm.
Oh, to sing the praises of the body and its areas of mystery—that was called loving. Suddenly everything became possible, vivid and within reach. They were at the seat of action. It was a destructive novel of acquired ideas. To finally wake up in a state of creative anguish, to lose oneself in order to find oneself again, to sleep in the arms of a beautiful student whose name one didn’t know, to fall back to sleep over a love poem—that was called existence. The harmonics of artistic creation, of fertile sensibility, of anticipated events—history in movement—that was called a privilege.
A happy, peaceful man is walking in the street, holding two books. Some strangers seize him and imprison him. That is called a hostage taking.
He had remained faithful to Blanca, in his own way. She had continued to exist in his mind. Even when his body was overwhelmed by desire, his passion went to her.
Yes, he had lived through those events in Paris. They were still inscribed in his flesh and his conscience, embedded in his inner self, the underpinning and crucible of frustrations and emotions that were beyond him. And to think he might be leaving this earth without having had the time to transform them into stories.
No one had died in those clashes. And here these two terrorists, these torturers, enthusiasts of murder, dared to call themselves revolutionaries! Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just—these disciples of yours may have kept their heads, but they have lost their hearts and souls. They have rediscovered idolatry.
• • •
Shaltiel thinks of his father. Their story is made up of so many chapters and revelations. If the executioners bring him down, they will kill his father as well.
Shaltiel draws from his memories:
An emaciated, famished and exhausted man lies in a bed in a military hospital. Haskel Feigenberg is convinced that all his relatives have perished except Arele, his nephew, and his son Pinhas, in Russia. His parents, his brothers and sisters, his uncles, aunts, cousins—all have died. Some of them together, on the same night, upon arriving at the camp, during the first selection.
In his feverish, ailing brain, Shaltiel tries to visualize his
father’s face, no doubt changed by beatings and blows. How did he manage to survive for so long? Was Death just too busy elsewhere?
Shaltiel recalls what his father had recounted: the evacuation from the camp, the night march through snow flurries and a violent wind. Guttural howls of “Faster, faster.” Cracking. Whistling. Pistol and rifle shots. In an ocher, pallid, repulsive light, dry, hard noises; bodies deformed by hunger, fear, decrepitude and the remnants of an empty, disfigured life. Some slow up, exhausted. Comrades cry out to them not to slow up; they must not. Whoever is separated from the crowd, whoever doesn’t keep walking, is shot. Haskel is losing his strength. He clings to one unknown comrade and another, all winded stragglers like he. A few more steps. Still a few more. The barking of dogs. Forward, forward. As though Death were at their heels.
Haskel is no longer running or making progress. He doesn’t know where he is anymore, or where he’s going. He walks gropingly. Then he stops walking, falls into a ditch with others who have reached their limit. What’s the point of wanting to live if life is a traveling slaughterhouse?
Machine guns shoot into the night and its ghosts. Snow is a cemetery. Haskel passes out. But he doesn’t die. No bullet has entered his body. Hours go by. The day dawns on many corpses lying in a strangely peaceful landscape. Someone shakes Haskel: “Wake up if you’re still alive!” The hoarse words come to him from afar. “You’re moving, so you’re alive,” the same voice says, booming. While lying in the snow, Haskel makes a superhuman effort and opens his eyelids. It’s Leibele. They had become friends in the camp. Now he’s a fellow orphan, famished, weakened, marked for death. As they labored, they had exchanged Hasidic sayings and stories: the ones from Vizhnitz for those from Guer. What was he doing here, stepping over corpses, all awaiting burial under the heavy, huge, silvery snowflakes? “You’re alive, thank God,” says Leibele. “Pull yourself together. Get up. Let’s not stay here. The SS are gone, but they may come back; you never know. We’re the last ones, the only ones.”
Haskel, his limbs numb, gets up unsteadily, helped by his friend. Where should they go? Leibele thinks they should return to the camp. At least then they’ll know where they are. Haskel replies that it’s too far away; he doesn’t have the strength. Leibele tells him to take his arm. Remaining where they are, he thinks, is exposing themselves to death.
Two desperate young old men stagger forward, with small steps, nearly sliding, toward a more uncertain future than opaque slumber.
After wandering aimlessly for hours, Leibele spots a hut in the distance. An old peasant woman wearing a black headscarf opens the door for them and ushers them in. The heat smacks them in the face. Dazed, they collapse on the beaten-earth floor. They think they’re in paradise.
The peasant woman crosses herself and hands them some warm milk. She talks to them in Polish. Leibele understands her. He translates in a whisper: “The Germans have left, but if they come back they’ll kill all of us, including her. But she’s not afraid … at her age. And besides, the village is expecting the Russians, who are very near.”
They stay with her. Haskel will never forget her. Nor will he ever forget his friend.
The Russians arrived a week later on a beautiful, peaceful day. Four armed soldiers suddenly appeared in front of the hut and stiffened. They looked around inquisitively and spoke among themselves for a while. Then one of them opened the door without knocking, pointing his cocked rifle in front of him. The old woman, with no trace of fear, said to him, in Polish, to come in and warm up. He paid her no heed, turning instead to the two young human skeletons and yelling, “And you, who are you? Hands up!” The old woman was about to answer, but Leibele spoke first. “We’re from over there.” With his right hand, he pointed to the rear. The soldier looked him over and then glanced at Haskel: Standing motionless, the two men smiled at him faintly and pitifully, as if to welcome him. The soldier called out to his comrades. “Look, Ilya,” he said to the eldest of the four, “you who are Jewish, take a good look at them and tell them the Red Army is happy and proud to be bringing them liberation and life.”
Ilya said a few words to Haskel that Leibele translated. They had just seen the camp. There were still a few survivors, who were being treated by military physicians. “And you,” he said to Haskel, “where are you from?”
Haskel replied that he was from Galicia.
“But you’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Jewish.”
“You speak Yiddish?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve spoken it all my life.” Thereupon Ilya started chatting with them in the language that had almost been silenced forever by Hitler’s madness.
Ilya and one of his comrades took off their padded jackets and slung them over the backs of the two survivors. They left the old peasant woman after having given her all the food in their possession.
Haskel and Leibele were taken to a refugee center in Kraków but fell ill there with high fevers. Ilya took them to a military hospital and put them in the care of warmhearted personnel. The two friends lay side by side, each locked in his own pain.
Haskel was the first to get better. A young army nurse feeding him some hot tea told him in Yiddish that her name was Natasha and that she was happy to report he was doing much better. He couldn’t believe it, he said. She smiled and caressed his forehead. The nurse spoke Yiddish! he thought to himself. What was she doing at his bedside, and how did she know he too spoke Yiddish?
She seemed to read his thoughts. “Ilya told me about you and Leibele.” She paused for a moment, then added, “You’ll be fine, you’ll live, I promise. You can count on Ilya and me.” She looked around to make sure no one could hear her, then went on, “After all, we’re Jewish. You suffered enormously. We must help one another.” Natasha was Jewish; the thought reassured him.
“What about my friend?” he asked. “Where is he? Why isn’t he here with me? How is he?”
The young woman’s face darkened.
“He’s not well. I’m sorry to have to tell you; he’s not well at all. It’s hard to fight it, but we’re trying, believe me. A miracle is always possible.”
Natasha didn’t want to drive him to despair; that was clear.
“A miracle? Did you use the word ‘miracle’?”
“Yes, I did. You never know. Ilya tells me you come from a religious family. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true. Very religious.”
“Then pray for him.”
Pray? Haskel said to himself, I haven’t addressed prayers to the God of my ancestors for ages. I’ve been telling myself that a Sage should invent new ones, prayers that no mouth has pronounced yet, prayers that would bear the burning stamp of an accursed place called Auschwitz.
“I’d like to see my friend,” he said to the nurse.
“Why?”
“If what you say is true, my friend will be leaving us soon. I’d like to be present.”
“But you’re not well yet, Haskel. You won’t be able to stand up.”
“Yes I will. I’m strong enough, you’ll see. I must see him. Please, Natasha, please help two Jewish friends to get together for the last time.”
Natasha looked at her watch.
“Ilya will be here very soon. I’ll discuss it with him.” She left him.
For the first time since his deportation, Haskel’s eyes filled with tears. Over there, people didn’t cry, for they feared they would never be able to stop. Now he would have to make an effort not to break down if he got to see his dying friend one last time.
Natasha and Ilya arrived, forced smiles on their lips. Ilya sat down at the edge of the bed.
“Listen, Haskel, my friend, I know you can be strong; proof is, you’re here, among us. Here’s what I suggest: In a few hours we’ll go with you to Leibele’s room. You’ll stay for no more than fifteen minutes, and then you’ll come back here. Agreed?”
Haskel nodded yes.
It was a long, irritating wait. His nerves were on edge. He didn’t want to a
nswer questions as to his own health. He had no appetite; it was hard for him to swallow. He thought of praying, remembering those he had known in his childhood. Should he pray for his wife? How could he know if …? So as not to think about them, he prayed for Redemption in the distant future and happiness in the near future. He prayed for health, peace, springtime, bread and honey: No tradition has as many entreaties and divine interventions. Were all of them in vain? God may have turned away.
In the late afternoon, Natasha and Ilya took him to the room opposite his. There was just one bed and Leibele was in it. His face was bathed in sweat, his body shaking with convulsions, his lips trembling—he seemed delirious.
“Leibele, my friend,” said Haskel in a very low voice.
There was no reply.
“It’s me, Haskel. Can you hear me?”
No response.
Haskel didn’t dare scream, but he certainly wanted to, at the top of his voice.
He wanted to wake up his friend, keep him alive, have him stay with him for another hour, for eternity. But Leibele couldn’t hear anything.
Haskel wished he could touch him, or get close to him, but his two chaperones wouldn’t let him. So he had to content himself with leaning closer to the patient.
“Leibele, Leibele, I want to pray for you. I have to know your mother’s name, Leibele; tell me your mother’s name.”
As Leibele started mumbling something, Natasha stifled a small cry, her hand over her mouth.
“He’s talking to me,” Haskel cried out, with joy.
He began moving closer to the patient, but Ilya stopped him. He put a white handkerchief over his mouth.
“Go ahead, my friend,” said Ilya. “But only for a minute.”
Haskel bent over his friend’s parchment-like face and heard him whisper, “My mother’s name … is Rachel, Rochele. My mother’s … name is Rochele.”
Haskel straightened up and stepped back.
“God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, among all your sick, heal Leib, son of Rachel, of all his ills.”
“My mother,” Leibele said in a trembling whisper, “she left before me. She’s waiting for me up there. And I’m waiting for her.”