“He lives in New York.”
“Is that far?” asked the gravedigger. “How big is it? Bigger than this town? What are the cemeteries like? Rich? Deluxe?”
The blind man and his visitor paid no attention to the drunkard’s interruptions. The old man had flung his head back as if to read the low, dark ceiling. “Your father,” he said pensively. “Your father is a wise man. I see him from here.”
If he only knew, Malkiel thought, taking away his hands. If only he knew how sick my father is.
“Your father sent you here, and you don’t know why. But I know. It was to see me. To receive my teaching. He too would like to become invisible.”
This man’s mind is wandering, Malkiel decided. Can he really see my father? Who knows? In this strange place all things are possible.
“And another thing,” the blind man said. “He wants to become part of my memory.”
He wants, he wants, Malkiel thought. Does my father still want anything?
Irritated that no one was talking to him, the gravedigger cried, “And me? I don’t count? I have no memory? I can’t see the invisible?” He put a bony arm on Malkiel’s shoulders. “Remember what you seem to want to forget. I was the one who buried Malkiel son of Elhanan. And you, the other Malkiel son of Elhanan, you ought to respect me and honor me for it.”
Had his father sent him to this town to listen to the two strange Jews? Could he have guessed that the gravedigger
and the blind man were still here, as if forgotten by history?
“And if I were to tell you,” the gravedigger went on, “that your father hopes you’ll have yourself buried here? I’m the world’s finest gravedigger, take my word for it.”
“Let him be,” said the blind man in a louder voice. “He is young and has much living to do. His father sent him here not to enter into death but to emerge from it. I can help him. You cannot.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know; let that be enough for you. Your job is to make people disappear; mine is to keep them among us.”
Why did Malkiel now see himself with Tamar after one of their visits to Elhanan? They talked endlessly. Did hope help us to survive, or not? Too many families clung to it all through the war, thus falling into the enemy’s trap. But would they have survived without hope? Hope is sometimes unworthy of us, Tamar said, but despair is even worse if it kills the will to act, to confront events, to protest evil, to shout, No! We are not blind, we will not submit! If the absurd exists, we’ll respond. With reason or with more absurdity—but we’ll respond.
The blind man leaned toward Malkiel as if to inspect him; their heads touched. The old man’s breath entered Malkiel’s nostrils. “You are young,” the blind man said. “At your age a man is desperate and proud; at mine, pride vanishes. And yet it seems to me that I could teach you pride. And hope, too.”
“You speak without knowledge.”
“I know that. I am memory.” He said “I am memory” as others might say “I am music” or “I am luck” or “I am death.” “Listen, my young friend. Don’t linger here. Get out. I implore you. What you seek, you can find in me. Look upon
me and go. Feel the chill of my hand and go home. Your place is not with us. It is among the living.”
“But my father—”
The blind man grew angry. “I have powers, I could force you, but I prefer not to. You’ve seen me, you’ve visited the grave of Malkiel son of Elhanan, and that’s enough. I am your savior, your guide. The rest is none of your concern.”
To avoid hurting the old man, Malkiel would have promised anything, but he could not lie to him. He would certainly leave. But not yet.
A memory was waiting for him. And calling to him.
“
I’m afraid, son. If you knew how much.
”
“
I’m trying to understand, Father.
”
“
I’m afraid of failure. Of not passing along enough. At night I wake up sweating. There are so many things still inside me that I want to save. For you. For your children. Will I have time? At dawn I can’t calm my heart. This morning I wondered, Suppose God has forgotten His creation, and the Messiah His mission? Suppose the sun forgot to rise and the rooster to crow? Suppose my soul forgot it was a soul? Words are already playing tricks on me; they’re all colorless, and bloodless; my mind is already ashamed of its limits, its opacity. What’s to become of me, my son?
”
“
Such questions prove your faculties are still there.
”
“
But someday I’ll forget those questions, too.
”
“
Someday … someday
…”
“
Tomorrow? Next week? I must hurry. The story I don’t tell will be lost forever. The idea I don’t pass along to you will never spring forth again. The event you don’t hear about will be forever erased from history. Everything is already muddled in my head. Have I told you how I met your mother?
”
“
In a camp for displaced persons.
”
“
Did I tell you that we became friends because
—”
“
Because you spoke Hebrew.
”
“
I spoke it well. Better than now. My accent was perfect. I recited Bialik’s poem called … I can’t remember what it was called. It’s about a student who neglects everything but his studies
.”
“Hamatmid.”
“
What did you say?
”
“Hamatmid.
The assiduous student
.”
“
Ah yes, that’s it.… I forgot.…! forget so many things. Soon I will forget where I come from and where I am going. Now and then my blood freezes at the thought that one day—who knows?—I will forget you, too.
”
Thus did Elhanan helplessly witness his own destruction. Forgetfulness was for him the death not only of knowledge but also of imagination, hence of expectation. Mentally torn, struggling vainly to control his actions, to transform time into consciousness, he submitted himself to constant examinations: What was the name of the man who … What happened on the day when … His reason, still clear, watched over a shrinking, progressively impoverished memory. In his brain a huge black sponge scrambled words and images. Time no longer flowed, but toppled over the edge of a yawning precipice. Overcome by a sense of inevitability, Elhanan decided that the end was approaching. He was losing sight of his landmarks. Forgetfulness was a worse scourge than madness: the sick man is not somewhere else; he is nowhere. He is not another, he is no one. Certainly Elhanan hung on; certainly he fought. With pills and potions he resisted, reading all he could on the subject. But, like Moses in the legend, he forgot at night what he had learned in the morning. “We can’t do anything about it,” the
specialists repeated. “Forgive us; but medical science has its limits like everything else.” Elhanan had to accept it: he was slipping down a slope, and at the bottom he would encounter nothingness.
Tamar came often to visit, between two assignments, alone or with Malkiel. Elhanan greeted her tenderly. Because she reminded him of Talia? Sometimes he talked to her as if she were his wife. She would not play the game: “I’m Tamar. But tell me about Talia.” Other times: “Tell us about the war.” Or: “And when you were a little boy. Tell us about when you were a little boy.” Elhanan let himself go more easily when Tamar was there. When Malkiel decided that his father’s accounts should be taped, Tamar approved. “It’s good for him to talk. Words stimulate him. And it makes him feel useful.” When the old man’s brain dimmed, they worked together to brighten it. They gave Elhanan all their free time and lived according to his rhythms. But Elhanan was tiring more quickly. His memories were blurring faster. He repeated himself, or interrupted himself in mid-sentence, unable to finish. It was a kind of twilight, and Malkiel and Tamar felt it in their very being. It devastated them to see this man, once so proud of his lucidity and so attached to his past, lose both. Also, Elhanan was decaying physically. More and more he seemed extinguished. His voice no longer carried, his hands pointed aimlessly. But Malkiel and Tamar refused to resign themselves; they went on asking him questions. It was strange, but he seemed better on the Sabbath; he seemed more serene. He managed to express himself with his old eloquence.
“Remember what our sages teach us,” he said to Malkiel after dinner one Friday evening. “It is given to man to know where he comes from, where he is going and before whom he will have to give an accounting. I still know where I am
going, but I know less and less where I come from. My consolation? You, at least, you will know where I come from.”
And later the same night: “You should go … go on a pilgrimage.”
Malkiel was about to protest, when Tamar tugged at his sleeve. “Let him finish.”
“Yes, my son. You must go to the town where I was born. You’d understand me better. You’d remember more. You may meet people who knew me. The woman …”
“What woman?”
“You know, the woman who …”
In the small hours Tamar turned to Malkiel. “Will you go, then?”
“I can’t. He’s so sick.”
“I’ll stay. I’ll watch over him. Do what he asks.”
“I’m afraid,” Malkiel said.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know, but I’m afraid.”
“Sometimes I think your whole life is ruled by fear. Fear of loving, fear of not being worthy of love, fear of having children …”
He bowed his head. Tamar knew him well. “Still, I do love you,” he said. “Fear doesn’t keep me from loving you. And you?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“What do you want?”
“From you? More sharing.”
“Is that all?”
“That would be enough.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
Beloved Tamar. You, the beginning. You, the awakening. You, who will make sense of my father’s disease. “Do you think a cure is possible in spite of everything?”
She did not answer immediately. She was lying down, and in the half-light of dawn she seemed asleep. In the end my father’s agony will wear her out, Malkiel thought. A woman’s role? To understand, to trust, to wait, to have faith and to share it. Then why have you fled into sleep, Tamar? Don’t go away, don’t leave me while I’m staring at you—as if you were a stranger—to give you shape and voice, so that your face, tense under my gaze, will become present again, human again, again filled with grace. “Tamar. Are you asleep?”
“No, I’m not sleeping.” And after a moment, “Yes, I believe that even at the last agony, man is worthy of triumphing over death.”
“We’re not talking about death, but of oblivion.”
“Oblivion is a way of dying.”
“And you still believe?”
They clasped hands, as if to reaffirm their pact.
“I still believe. Do you want to know why?”
“Tell me.”
“Because I love your father’s stories. We won’t forget them. Isn’t that the beginning of a victory?”
Blessed Tamar.
Hershel the gravedigger came up to him at the gate of the cemetery. “You’re leaving?”
“Maybe.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Too bad.”
“Why too bad?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing you stay. I could dig a grave near your grandfather’s. Can you picture it? Two graves, side by side, marked with the same name: Malkiel son of Elhanan.”
Malkiel made no answer.
“You’re not thirsty?” asked the gravedigger. “My throat is on fire.” And when Malkiel made no answer, he went on slyly, “I’ll sell you another story for a drink.” Still Malkiel said nothing. The gravedigger insisted. “The story’s a good one. You’ll like it. I promise.”
“A story about the dead? Another one?”
“If you like. Let’s say a murder.”
Malkiel stopped. Something in the gravedigger’s voice had excited his attention. “What murder is that?”
“It takes brandy to revive my memory.”
So there they were again at the table they occupied almost every afternoon. The gravedigger ordered a bottle and began his drinking. Malkiel did not touch the glass that the waiter set before him. He noticed suddenly that the gravedigger’s eyes were bloodshot.
“Did I ever tell you I killed a man? No? I really didn’t? Unforgivable. That’s how it is; I’m getting old. I forget things.… I really never told you that during the war, after the ghetto was liquidated, I joined a partisan group? Our job was to punish the bastards who got rich denouncing Jews, stealing from them, selling them to the enemy. We executed a few. Matter of fact, we were the ones who took care of the head Nyilas here—well, not we but me.”
Now Malkiel was all ears. The gravedigger was a missing piece of the puzzle. His story was part of the story.
“We sentenced him to death, you understand,” said the gravedigger. “He was the worst kind of sadist, believe me. I know Death; and I can tell you that Death itself detested that man. We knew he was in Stanislav the day the Germans massacred thousands of Jews. A survivor told us this bastard had tried to rape two girls before he killed them. They fought back, so he locked them in a barn and set fire to it. They burned to death.
“Well, I tracked him down, me, imagine that. One night we mounted an attack on a barracks. This fellow was humping a whore, and I knew the address. So with my famous rabbi’s cane—I was never without it now—I broke down the door, and there I was staring at two naked bodies locked together. The woman screamed, and the man was scared stiff. I shut the whore in a closet and ordered the bastard to his feet. As he was, stark naked. I took a good close look at him. So this was Death’s accomplice, I said to myself. All that ugliness, all that cowardice, all that flabby flesh: here’s a man who must be an enemy to man. Why is he trembling?
“I glared at him like a lunatic; my gaze scorched him. Yes, sir: my gaze can burn. But the son of a bitch refused to give in. I felt rage mounting in me, and I wondered if I ought to keep cool. I was blinking too fast: I got my eyelids under control. Now his were blinking. Right: he realized he was finished. The bastard was all alone, and solitude can breed courage, but it can breed cowardice too. He began to snivel. ‘I didn’t do a thing, I swear it. I swear it on my unborn children’s heads, on my sick mother’s head I swear it. My hands are clean and my heart is clean—I did nothing, nothing bad.’
“He was a wreck. In a few seconds his outlines blurred; he began disintegrating before my eyes. Was this an officer? A fighting man? A lord decreeing the life or death of his subjects? What happened to his pride and his power? ‘You’re making a tremendous mistake,’ he whimpered. His eyes and nose and mouth were dribbling, and his body was jerking and twitching. ‘I’m not the criminal, not me, not me, not me.’ And I thought, You little bastard, pretty soon you won’t be able to say ‘me’ at all. You’re about to die. I’m going to give you death, the death that suits you: I’m going to strangle you. You see these hands? They conceal death, your death.