Authors: Elie Wiesel
Today she had been warned not to stay at home and been invited to come and spend the night at Davidov’s home. She was marked, she was a target. If a pogrom broke out, she would become its first victim. She refused to understand that and nobody dared tell her openly. People said to her: “Leah, Leah, you must hide somewhere, anywhere.”—“Why must I? Because my husband is in danger?”—“Yes, Leah. Because Moshe is in danger.” She could see no connection. Had they let her, she would have gone to hide in prison. To be with her husband. And in her own way that was what she did. To be reunited with Moshe she took refuge in sleep. There, she and Moshe were safe. And since he was the only one to see her, Moshe could not become angry when she stupidly began to cry.
Notwithstanding the omens, there were optimists who trusted immanent justice more than forebodings and rumors. They did not exclude the possibility of a trial, but it would naturally be preceded by a bona-fide inquiry. The aroused mob would shatter a few windows, provoke incidents and riots, but surely they would stop short of a pogrom. A pogrom would take place only if, after deliberation of the court, Moshe were to be declared guilty. What they really needed was to build a case for the defense.
Though he was skeptical, Davidov discussed the suggestion with my father. “We must not neglect any possibility. I don’t
have much faith in it … But if you have a moment, glance through our reference books. You never can tell … it could turn out to be useful.”
“I am not a lawyer.”
“I know, I am not asking you to plead, nor to compose a legal document, only to draft an outline, a historical summary of the problem. As for the lawyer … I know where to find one.”
And so my father immersed himself in martyrology. Names, dates, numbers. Sources, motives, consequences. Gloucester, 1168. Fulda, 1235. Lincoln, 1255. Pforzheim, 1267. Stupidity recognizes no borders; it transcends the centuries. The accounts followed and resembled one another. A Christian boy disappears and the Jews are massacred. Trente, 1475. Tyrnau, 1494. Bazin, 1529. With every approaching Easter, the Jews tremble. In Prague the Maharal creates a clay golem and entrusts him with the mission of outwitting the enemy. There are cases of fanatic Christians hiding corpses in Jewish homes and subsequently accusing them of ritual murder; the golem discovers the corpses and denounces the murderers.
Question: Why did the famous Maharal choose a golem rather than a man as his instrument? Answer: Israel’s foes had fallen so low, had shown such intellectual baseness that they would have been unworthy adversaries for a man. Frankfort, 1712. Posen, 1736. Tasnad, 1791. Bucarest, 1801. Vitebsk, 1823. A long, bloody list. Damas, 1840. Saratov, 1857.
The world evolved, society was emancipated and rejected obscurantism, but on this particular subject the myth lived on. Newly liberated nations moved toward enlightenment, trusting in reason, but the slander of ritual murder continued to spread from country to country, from town to town. Galatz, 1859. Kutaisi, 1877. Tisza-Eszlar, 1882. Accounts, reports, expert
testimonies. The inanity of the accusations was demonstrated, sources quoted. The Bible was invoked, the Talmud, the Gaonim. Legend roused tempers, blinded reason, poisoned the heart. It was enough to make one despair, despair of mankind.
“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 opposite. 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.