“Do you know what happened at Blois?” my father asked. “On Passover eve, in the year 1171, the Jews were accused of having killed a Christian child. Count Theobald condemned them to die at the stake. All except Pulcelina, a beautiful and well-bred woman whom he loved passionately. But Pulcelina rejected mercy and chose to share the fate of her people. The entire community died singing its faith in God.”
He marked the passage, closed the book and added: “Pulcelina, beautiful Pulcelina, how I understand her. Better to die singing than to submit to stupidity.”
Then, staring into emptiness, he went on: “I shall have to add to the list the name of Kolvillàg.”
I should not have come, mused Davidov. I should have foreseen his reaction, his condescending advice to remain cool: “Christians are not barbarians, Mr. Davidov!” That was his set formula for use in conversations with Jews. Not that Stefan Braun, attorney, had many conversations with Jews.
The fact was that he himself was Jewish, albeit an ashamed, assimilated, perhaps even converted Jew. His help was solicited only in cases of extreme urgency. Indeed, this was the first time.
“You must help us,” said Davidov, uncomfortable in his too comfortable armchair. “Take on our defense. Do the necessary, the impossible. Use your connections …”
“And what for?” asked the lawyer.
“You know what for.”
“At the risk of disappointing you …”
“Oh yes, you know. You cannot help but know. Every child knows. Don’t pretend. You are neither deaf nor blind. They are concocting a nasty brew. A blood bath. A massacre. A pogrom.”
“They? Who?”
“You know very well …”
“You mean the few boors who have no special affection for you? Who don’t appreciate being robbed by Jewish merchants? And who happen to be Christian? But, my dear sir, we are no longer living in the Middle Ages. Really!” Braun’s voice took on the inflection of an attorney addressing the court, his arms raised in a gesture of sincere indignation. “After all, my dear sir! Christians are not barbarians!”
I should not have come, thought Davidov. I was wrong. If our optimists were so interested, they should have come themselves to retain his services. His grandiloquence does not impress me. I have no use for it. If he has such a high regard for our enemies, let him keep them. The fool! As though he could truly be one of them! In their eyes, he is nothing but a dirty Jew like the rest of us.
“A question, Mr. Braun. May I?”
“Of course.”
Davidov leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Between you and me … aren’t you a little concerned? I mean, for yourself? Your family?”
“Mr. Davidov! I …”
“Don’t go and get angry now! Your borrowed airs don’t deceive me. Do you really think you can remain above the scuffle? There will be plundering, Jews will be killed—and you expect to be left unharmed? Do you really believe that? That our enemies are not your enemies too? That they will grant you immunity? Is that what’s at the back of your mind?”
Braun was pale, as though he had just been slapped, and there was hatred in his voice when he spoke: “I forbid you, do you hear me? I forbid you to insinuate …”
“I admire your self-control!” said Davidov without raising his voice.
“Your insinuations, I know all about them! You people love to disturb others, upset their lives, implicate them in your affairs! No wonder you are not liked!”
“You? Did I hear you say you?”
“Precisely! You! All the members of the tribe! You are tactless, tasteless and without honor! You reward hospitality with insult! To courtesy you respond with insolence! And you expect to be liked?”
The poor lawyer was trembling. They were pursuing him into his very fortress, undermining his defenses. His round face was livid. His breathing came faster. He was like one possessed, in the grip of hate, the worst kind: self-hate.
“Why are you losing your temper?” said Davidov. “Did I offend you? I am here as a client. To solicit your services. One of us, a madman called Moshe, is in prison. We wish to provide him with legal counsel. We thought of you. Was that wrong of us? Are you not a good attorney? We pay cash.”
Davidov’s calm served only to exacerbate the lawyer’s anger, accumulated over the years. Braun resented the fact that the Jews—whom he had repudiated—were repudiating him in turn.
“Stop it!” he shouted, pounding the desk. “I know your wiles! There’s no point in lying! You didn’t come to see the lawyer, but …”
“Yes?”
Stefan Braun chose not to finish his sentence.
Braun considered himself a full citizen. He saw himself on the other side, a stranger to our history, to our fate. His wife, a member of a Protestant upper-middle-class family, boasted of never having shaken a Jew’s hand. They occupied a luxurious apartment near the municipal theatre. His neighbors were high officials, high-school teachers, assistant directors of various governmental agencies. They entertained only the elite. “The ghetto,” Braun was said to have remarked, “is something I left behind. I have no intention of letting it follow me into my home.” His father, like all pious fathers of renegade children, considered his son dead.
The lawyer had a son of his own—Toli—who was my age. The same teacher taught us to play the violin. Toli, who looked more Jewish than I, was at home nowhere, for wherever he went, he felt watched, observed, judged. He was precocious, but because of his extreme susceptibility he was even more melancholy and vulnerable than I.
As I remember him, Toli was a stranger to almost everyone; I suspect, even to his parents. He seemed out of place. His street was not really his street the way our street was ours; we played, rolled on the ground and did all the things children don’t do in the presence of grownups. He lived on a lane, straight and bright as a path in a hospital garden. Carefully trimmed trees seemed to keep an eye on the sidewalks, which were so clean one hardly dared tread on them.
There was no neighborly calling from window to window, no chestnut fights among the boys, no housewives going to market in groups to exchange gossip on the way. This well-ordered and scrupulously observed serenity must have bored all the youngsters of the neighborhood, and Toli most of all. In the afternoon, on his way home from school, he would hurry toward the gates of his house. Frequently he caught himself on the verge of running, but that wasn’t proper. He had been taught to exercise self-control, never to betray emotion, and think of what people would say. Viewing the world with disenchanted eyes, trapped by his father’s lie, Toli would probably sooner or later have attempted suicide had he not caught sight of me one afternoon, chatting with a dignified and beautiful old Jew who looked like a legendary sage—his grandfather. Since then they had been meeting clandestinely and Toli at last was discovering what his parents had kept from him—the freedom of his childhood.
“Admit that it’s the Jew Braun, not the lawyer, you’re interested in!”
“I admit it. If you were not Jewish, I would not have taken this step. If there is any hope, it can come only from our own ranks. The others have sacrificed us in advance.”
“I was right, then,” sighed the lawyer. His voice was changed, weary. “You will never give up. And yet, I made every effort to escape you …”
“Escape us? But we are not your enemies, Mr. Braun!”
The lawyer stared at him for a moment, then rose and paced the floor, thinking out loud: “I have cut all ties with my parents, broken my old father’s heart, shamed my family, renounced my past and repudiated my people …”
He was enumerating his desertions and betrayals, counting them on his fingers. Suddenly he stood still, a gleam of curiosity in his eyes. “What do they say about me … back there?”
“Many bad things, sir, many bad things.”
“Do they speak of me as a renegade?”
“Well … yes.”
“But I never converted!”
This is news, thought Davidov. I would have sworn the opposit
e. One does not break with one’s faith without embracing another. On Sundays did he not receive in his house the Protestant minister, along with the cream of gentile society?
“I did not convert! Do you want to know why? Because I loathe all religions! Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism. I am against every one of them, on principle. All religion is perversion; without it, men would be equal and brothers. And happy. Religions are the devil’s invention; they are his most dazzling success. God himself could not have done better. Why in the world would I convert? I believe only in man—and even that …”
Davidov was moved by this last confession. He thought: Braun is more to be pitied than we are. He belongs nowhere, expects nothing from anybody. His condition confers on him nothing but burdens and none of the privileges. Having lived a lie, he now must watch it explode. Will he have the courage to retrace his steps?
He offered Braun an opening: “Will you help us? We need you. More than ever.”
Braun, half amused, half chagrined, looked at him without hostility. “What if I told you that I should like—that I should like very much—to be of service to you. Would you believe me?”
“Certainly.”
“And if I added that I am unable to do so—would you also believe me?”
Surprised, Davidov was about to answer, but the lawyer stopped him: “Don’t answer. Don’t say anything. Let the question remain question. Please.” And, escorting him to the door: “I believe it is late, later than we think.”
I did well to come after all, thought Davidov, stepping into the lane where everything seemed quiet and peaceful. I should come back one day. One day, one day … he repeated the words to himself while anguish was forming a lump in his throat as at the announcement of an irrevocable event, an event already present.
“And Grandfather?” asked Toli breathlessly.
The lawyer jumped. “Toli! You came in without knocking!”
His obedient and well-bred son certainly knew that he must not enter his father’s study without permission …
“And Grandfather?” insisted Toli unhappily.
I should be getting angry, the lawyer thought. Scold him, call him back to order. What kind of manners were these? He is challenging me, provoking me, he knows very well that his grandfather …
“I have met him, you know,” continued Toli.
Leaning against the door he had closed behind himself, he was expecting an outburst. His father was hardly one to encourage insubordination. He sometimes punished him, and on those occasions Toli prayed for death to strike him at his father’s hands.
“I heard everything,” said the boy, lowering his voice.
Nothing makes sense any more, thought the lawyer. My own son flouts me and I accept without a word. I should be rousing the entire house, I should be slapping him hard to bring him to reason, to discipline him, yet here I am, more astonished than angry; I am not even annoyed.
At the sight of his son—suddenly grown-up, different—he felt the urge to question him about his encounter with his grandfather: Where had it taken place? When? Under what circumstances? What had they said to one another the first time? But he did nothing of the kind. Ultimately it mattered little. What mattered was that it had taken place.
“So,” he said, trying to appear stern, “now we are listening at doors?”
“Forgive me, I couldn’t resist. When I saw the man enter your study, I was sure it concerned Grandfather.”
Well, thought Stefan Braun, the circle is closed. The race is over. The game of hide-and-seek with myself is finished. I repudiated my father to save my son; and now my son wishes to save my father. Damn it, why am I not flying into a rage? I failed all the way, I have no allies, no support. I wasted my past and ruined my future—yet somehow I don’t seem to mind. I don’t recognize myself any more!
“I know where he lives,” Toli was saying defiantly. “I have been there.” And after a slight hesitation: “In fact, quite often.”
Better and better, thought the father. He stared at Toli— so frail, so serous and obstinate—and was overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to laugh. Laugh about life and man, laugh about his people so foolishly determined to survive in a twisted, perversely evil world, and about himself most of all. But he must not. He must not make any noise; his wife was asleep. All right, he would laugh silently. Too bad Davidov had left. He would have invited him to laugh with him. Too bad his son could not guess how ludicrous the situation really was.
“Don’t you think that we should …”
“Go and warn him?”
“Yes, Father. And perhaps … bring him here … Here he will be safe, whereas …”
Father here, thought the lawyer. Father with his beard, his caftan, his ritual shawl, his prayers, his songs, his prohibitions—here, in the house! He imagined the scene: his wife, tomorrow morning, enters the drawing room and—horrors—sees an old Jew—he must be old by now—wrapped in his tallith, rocking to and fro. What a sight! Mentally he burst out laughing. Unbeatable, that scene: my father and my wife.
“Let’s not exaggerate, son.”
“But I am telling you I heard everything! Grandfather is in danger, all the Jews are in danger, all the Jews are in danger—except us!” He blushed with shame. “Except us,” he repeated.
“Tell me, are you that attracted by danger?”
“No, Father. Not by danger. Only by Grandfather.”
“Don’t worry. Jews like Davidov—that is the name of my visitor—tend to exaggerate, to dramatize. If one were to believe them, the whole world has but one thing in mind: to mistreat, persecute and annihilate the Jews. If the idea seems insane, so does believing it. You see, my son, in our day mankind and nations have rid themselves of many outdated rituals, hereditary taboos, savage and gratuitous hates. The era of crusades and pogroms is gone. Ours is dominated by humanism, liberalism. We no longer kill our fellow-man in the name of obsolete and absurd legends.”
“That is not Grandfather’s opinion,” said Toli, bristling.
“How would he know? It has been a long time since he gave up living in this world; he lives in an unreal universe, in unreal times. He knows more about Abraham than about his Christian neighbors. His king is David, not the one ruling this country. His law is the Talmud and not the law of the land. Don’t you think I’m right?”
He remembered the arguments he had used against his father, long ago, before their break. The arguments were the same, only the tone was different. And the old passion, the old fervor were gone.
“Grandfather says … Do you want to know what he says?”
“Of course,” said the lawyer, swallowing hard.
“Grandfather says that when a Jew says he is suffering, one must believe him, and when he is afraid, one must assume his fear is justified. In neither case does one have the right to doubt his word. Even if one cannot help him, one must at least believe him.”
“And what if I, a Jew like him, say that he is wrong? That they are all wrong?”
“You are not a Jew … not like him …” Toli stood facing his father, stiff, vulnerable. He was looking at him, imploring him with his eyes. “Let’s bring him here, right now! Father … This Davidov whom you saw … he spoke of a massacre, he mentioned the word pogrom. Have we the right to doubt his words?”
Stubborn little fellow, thought the lawyer. Besides, he is not so little any more. How he has changed! His shy manners hide a mature will.
“Davidov,” said the lawyer. “The president of the community. The Jewish Prince of Kolvillàg. In his place I would be afraid too. Jews like him, people like him, have suffered so much, in so many places, for such a variety of reasons, that their distrust has become second nature for them, an instinctive defense. They see an enemy in every stranger, a killer in every passer-by. And yet, one day they shall have to free themselves, they shall have to adjust. I have told you over and over again, we are no longer living in barbaric times.”
Even while he was talking he thought: If something
terrible happens tonight, if their premonition comes true, I shall have lost both my father and my son. For Toli will not forgive me. What am I to do? Give in? Rush over there and bring back my old Jew of a father? Would he agree to come? After so many years, so many wars? Would he come alone? Without the tribe?
“I feel that even if Davidov’s fears are unjustified, or only partly justified, Grandfather should be taken to a safe place,” Toli insisted.
“You’ll make an excellent lawyer. You have almost convinced me. Here is what I propose to you. Give me, give yourself one night to reflect. Tomorrow we shall see more clearly. If the rumors persist, I shall accept your arguments. Your mother will become hysterical, but between the two of us we’ll calm her down. But all of this is academic, believe me. Christians are human beings like you and me; all men are the same. There are fanatics among the victims as well as among the murderers; both are driven by intolerance. The enemy is in intolerance and fanaticism, not in man. You should bet on man, not against him.”
“I’d like to,” said Toli, a faint smile on his lips.
This conversation had done him good. Never before had he spoken to his father at such length. And surely not so freely. Did I persuade him? he wondered. We shall see. He took a step forward, said goodnight and opened the heavy padded door. With his hand on the latch, he turned. “You know, I … Grandfather … he is somebody.”
Left alone, leaning against his desk, the lawyer felt a vague melancholy engulfing him. He would have been at a loss to say whether it linked him to the past or to the future. One or the other had just collapsed. For an hour he thought of nothing, letting himself sink into nothingness. Then he heard his son opening the door of his room, then the gate. He could have, he should have, run after him and brought him back; he did not. Perhaps, he told himself, it would be in vain.
And so, his head slightly raised, he listened to his son’s vanishing footsteps, his son who left without informing him whether he planned to come home early or late, alone or accompanied, tomorrow or next year, as penitent or as avenger—or whether he planned to come home at all.