Legends of Our Time (11 page)

I would have wanted to interrupt: “You’ve misunderstood me, I’ve expressed myself badly, I wrote badly and you misread me. Now I know the truth, and the truth is that Moshe the Madman isn’t dead nor will he ever die, just as his vision will never be extinguished.” But I said nothing and let his phrases rain down on me like a punishment I deserved.

At last, when I could stand no more, I cried: “What do you want from me? What have I done to you? Who gives you the right to judge me, to accuse me? Moshe the Madman? He didn’t condemn anyone, but you do. In the name of what? of whom?”

He placed his hand on mine to calm me.

“You’re getting carried away, don’t be angry. I’ve offended you: I beg your pardon.”

I thought: “Yes, indeed, he has changed after all. Moshe never begged anyone’s pardon, not even God’s, especially not God’s.”

He took a swallow and continued, his voice a little lower: “I was so curious that I let myself take advantage of your kindness, do you understand?”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s drink up. The best way to evoke the cantor is to drink.”

To gain forgiveness, he gulped down the contents of his glass; then, after a moment of hesitation, he continued: “One last question. Perhaps it will offend you. You speak of him lovingly. Always. You speak of him the way I do of my father. Why is that?”

He wanted to tell me the story of his life, his experiences before, during, and after the war. I hardly cared to hear about them. I was becoming confused, I was beginning to lose my temper, my thoughts were getting tangled up, I was losing my way.

“Let’s get back to your question. Why do I evoke his memory with love? Because nobody else does. Because he was no one’s father, no one’s son. Homeless, rootless, jobless:
a free man, so to speak. Nothing outside tempted or frightened him. Unreliable, solitary, he made of his madness a contagious joy, a public good. A guide, he showed the way. A visionary, he never drank twice from the same cup, never invited the same experience twice. How could I recreate his image without love, his destiny without longing?”

I could have gone on that way until morning, but I fell silent. Suddenly the idea came to me that we really knew nothing about him, except what he himself had forced us to see. Perhaps he had had a family in a neighboring village, had loved a woman, brought up children. What could we say, exactly? That he proclaimed himself a madman, that he confused happiness and poverty, lucidity and hallucination. But the rest? The side he would not show? I was beset by doubts. I took another look at the Jew from Brooklyn.

“The truth,” I whispered. “I insist you tell me the truth. You have information I need. Give it to me. Who are you? Why does the cantor interest you? Could you be his brother? his friend? his murderer? his avenger? Could you be—his son?”

My question seemed to surprise him. He flushed and began to blink, his eyelids seized with a nervous tic he made scarcely any attempt to control. After a moment of silence, he regained possession of himself and burst out laughing.

“You’re joking! You’re wandering off! What an imagination you have! Me, his avenger! Me, his son!”

“You laugh, but that proves nothing. You are laughing to conceal your little game, but I see through it. Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, in front of me. I must know everything, I tell you.”

He became serious again and began to inspect his fingernails. My eyes clouded over.

“Well? Nothing more to say? Too bad. If Moshe the
Madman were here, he’d know how to conquer you. But he is no longer of this world. Moshe the Madman never was of this world. All the same, I knew him and have followed him to this very day. That must prove something, but I shall die without knowing what.”

He was biting his nails, sweat was streaming down his forehead. I frightened him, that was clear. Because I was unmasking him? Or because he had just had a glimpse of the cantor’s other face? Or because he took me for Moshe the Madman himself? Sadly, he shook his head a few times, then got up suddenly to announce, in a dazed, staccato voice, that he had to leave.

As if through a fog, I watched him make his way to the door; he stopped in front of the cashier, paid the check, gave the waiter a tip, came back to take one last look at me, then left. I should have held him back, run after him, forced him to admit everything. The cantor would have done that, but I was incapable: I had had too much to drink.

I began to look distractedly at the other customers, who, fortunately, were not concerned about me. Young couples were smiling at each other and forgetting to eat; old people were eating in silence, as if out of spite. Little by little, the restaurant began to empty. In my turn, I got up and left, reeling. I soon found myself in Times Square again, that grim fair where the down-and-out come to unload their desperations. Bathed in neon light, numbed by music from jukeboxes, the lonely passersby drag themselves from one bar to another. I walked aimlessly all night. Then I made my way homeward, along the river, reinvigorated by the freshness of the morning breeze. The effects of the alcohol disappeared, I regained my equilibrium, I began to see clearly. My behavior in the restaurant filled me with shame, I had made a spectacle of myself. After all, the Jew from Brooklyn, whose name I still did not know, was only a curious reader intent on meeting
a fellow countryman. The rest had been the work of my sick imagination. He, poor fellow, had nothing to do with it.

Blessed Moshe, I thought, smiling: you’ve played another trick on me. You will never change.

And yet, I retain a question from this episode which I must add to all the other questions concerning the cantor from my town. Perhaps, in my drunkenness, I had seen clearly after all. Perhaps Moshe the Madman, being no one’s son, is the father of us all.

No one knew his name or his age: perhaps he had none. He wanted no part of what ordinarily defines a man, or at least places him. Through his bearing, his knowledge, his way of taking various and contradictory positions, he aspired to embody the unknown, the uncertain: his head in the clouds, he made use of his learning to obscure clarity—no matter what kind, no matter where it came from. He liked to move fixed points, to destroy what seemed secure. He reproached God for having invented the universe.

Where did he come from? What were his joys, his
fears? What did he seek to attain, to forget? Nobody knew. At some point in his life, had he known women, happiness, disappointment? A mystery seven times sealed. He spoke of himself only to throw people off: yes and no had the same value, good and evil pulled in the same direction. Using similar tactics, he constructed and demolished his theories at a single blow. The more one listened, the less one learned about his life, about the world within him. He possessed the superhuman power of remaking the past for himself.

He inspired fear. Admiration, too, of course. People used to say: “A dangerous character—he knows too many things.” Talk like that pleased him. He wanted to be alone, strange, inaccessible.

He popped up almost everywhere, always unexpectedly, only to disappear a week later, a year later, without leaving any trace. He would turn up, always by chance, on the other side of a frontier, a mountain: as miracle-working rabbi, businessman, servile beadle. He had been around the world several times without money, without passport; no one will ever know how or to what end. Perhaps he had done it precisely so that no one would ever know.

His birthplace was, now Marrakech, now Vilna, then Kishinev, Safed, Calcutta, or Florence. He produced so many proofs, so many details that he managed to be convincing about each place as the final verity. But the next day the edifice would crumble: he would describe, in passing, the enchanting atmosphere of his native town, somewhere in China or Tibet. The vastness of his exaggerations exceeded the level of falsehood: it was a philosophy.

The outcome of his real or imaginary voyages? He talked much and well. He had mastered some thirty ancient and modern languages, including Hindi and Hungarian. His French was pure, his English perfect, and his Yiddish harmonized with the accent of whatever person
he was speaking with. The
Vedas
and the
Zohar
he could recite by heart. A wandering Jew, he felt at home in every culture.

Always dirty, hairy, he looked like a hobo turned clown, or a clown playing hobo. He wore a tiny hat, always the same, on top of his immense round bloated head; his glasses, with their thick, dirty lenses, blurred his vision. Anyone encountering him in the street without knowing him would step out of his way with distaste. To his own great satisfaction, moreover.

For three years, in Paris, I was his disciple. At his side I learned a great deal about the dangers of language and reason, about the ecstasies of sage and madman, about the mysterious progress of a thought down through the centuries and of a hesitation through a multitude of thoughts. But nothing about the secret which consumed or protected him against a diseased humanity.

Our first meeting was brief and stormy. It took place in a small synagogue, on the Rue Pavé, where I often went on Friday nights to take part in the services welcoming the Sabbath.

After prayers, the faithful gathered around an old man, repulsive in appearance, who, with flamboyant gestures, began to explain the
Sedra
—the biblical passage—for that week. His voice sounded harsh, disagreeable. His delivery was rapid, his phrases ran into one another, he was difficult to follow, and this was intentional: it amused him to confuse his audience. We understood each word, each idea, and yet we had the impression that we were being deluded, that the old man was making fun of all who claimed to understand. But no one resisted: to let oneself be taken in became one of the mind’s pleasures—an unhealthy one.

Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he saw me. He interrupted himself.

“Who are you?”

I told him my name.

“Foreigner?”

“Yes.”

“Refugee?”

“Yes.”

“Where from?”

“Oh,” I said, “from far away. From over there.”

“Religious?”

I did not answer. He repeated: “Religious?”

I still did not answer.

He said: “Ah, I understand.”

And he went on with his questioning without giving my embarrassment a thought.

“Student?”

“Yes.”

“Of what?”

“I’d like to study philosophy.”

“Why?”

I remained silent.

But he insisted: “Why?”

“I’m searching.”

“What are you searching for?”

I was going to correct him: “whom,” not “what.” But I got hold of myself and answered: “I don’t know yet.”

He was not convinced.

“What are you looking for?”

I said: “For an answer.”

His voice was cutting: “An answer to what?”

I was going to correct him: “to whom,” not “to what.” But I looked for the simplest way out: “To my questions.”

He let out a spiteful little laugh.

“Ah,” he said, “you have questions, you?”

“Yes, I do have some.”

He held out his hand.

“Give them to me; I’ll give them back to you.”

I looked at him, confused. I did not understand.

“I will,” he said, “I’ll give them back to you with all the answers.”

“What?” I cried. “You have answers to questions? And you expect to be able to state them publicly?”

“Of course,” he replied. “If you want proof, I can provide it on the spot.”

I was silent a moment and said: “No, in that case I prefer to take you at your word.”

“I don’t like that.” He was becoming irritable.

“I can’t help that,” I said, blushing. “But if you can answer my questions, then I no longer have any.”

The old man—how old was he, seventy? older?—stared at me for a long time; so did the faithful. Suddenly I was afraid, I felt threatened. Where could I hide?

The old man bent his heavy head forward.

“Ask me a question just the same,” he said in a conciliatory tone.

“I told you: I no longer have any.”

“Of course you do. Just one. No matter which. You’ll see, you won’t regret it. You have nothing to fear.”

I was not quite convinced. On the contrary, I had everything to dread. The first submission would bring another in its wake. There would be no end to it, no way out.

“Well?” said the old man, friendly now. “Just one question.”

My obstinacy made him furrow his brow; a dark flash passed through his eyes.

“This is pure stupidity, my boy. I offer you a short-cut and you reject it: are you sure you have the right? Who told you your coming to France had any other purpose than to meet me?”

My heart was beating fast, I bit my lips. An inner voice put me on guard. I was at a crossroads, I had to be careful, keep my eyes open, remain quiet, avoid taking a road that might not be my own.

“Well? You choose to be stubborn? Have you lost your
tongue? your memory? Or do you think you’re strong enough to disobey me?”

He was becoming impatient. My fear grew, I was suffocating. Like a child, I saw a messenger in every stranger: it was up to me alone to receive his promise or his curse. My teachers had taught me never to trust appearances, to suffer a thousand humiliations sooner than inflict a single one. According to the Talmud, to humiliate someone in public is to shed his blood. Refusing to play this old man’s game was to attack his honor.

“Have you decided?” he asked, his eyes mean. “Are you finally going to open your mouth?”

With difficulty, prudently, so as to have done with him, I managed to query him about a certain passage in the Bible. Too easy a question for his taste. He demanded another: still too easy. And another. His face tightening, he drove me on.

“Are you making fun of me? Go ahead, throw yourself into it, go to the end, all the way to obscurity, and bring back to me whatever escapes you, whatever baffles you.”

After my tenth or twelfth try, he declared himself more or less satisfied. He closed his eyes and went into an explication, the brilliance and rigor of which dazzled me. I was already his, I entrusted him with my will, my reason. He spoke and I could only admire the extent of his knowledge, the richness of his thought. His words wiped out distances, obstacles: there was no longer beginning or end, there was only the voice, harsh and disagreeable, of a man explaining to the creator the mysteries and inadequacies of his creation.