The Oath (27 page)

The night passed peacefully. No incidents, no trouble. There was nothing to report. So peaceful was it that at the first light of dawn the people left their underground shelters. A haggard Davidov went to bed fully dressed. Shaike sent away his watchmen and dispersed his fighters while still maintaining a state of alert. During a brief conversation after services, the Rebbe and Reb Sholem congratulated each other on the success of the celebration: “The Torah has protected us and will continue to protect us,” said the Rebbe. The Prefect took off his vest, put away his gun and emptied one last glass before pulling the blanket over his head. There were shadows under his eyes, but Toli offered a smiling face to his father, whom he found sitting in the same place, in the same position he had left him the night before. Bent over the Book, the chronicler wrote:

His duty done, my father stretched out on the sofa and fell asleep immediately. Two hours later he awoke in good spirits. We drank some coffee together. I teased Rivka: “No premonitions this morning?” She would not even dignify my question with a look. She seemed reassured. And that was the general impression: having survived this first night of anguish, Kolvillàg was breathing again.

But it was only a truce, and we knew it. Once aroused, the beast would not retreat to its lair without its prey. Living so close to the mountains, people here knew what to expect from
wolves. Once kindled, their cruelty is satisfied only by blood. The respite was temporary, illusory. But just how short-lived would it be? A day? A week? Less? More? The other side could have informed us but it had chosen silence.

Not a single villager had come into town that morning. The shops were open, so were the taverns, but gentile customers avoided them. The stalls, the groceries, the hardware shops—all were deserted. Not one farm hand trying to borrow a few coins from the Jewish innkeeper, not one woodcutter demanding a large glass of whiskey on the cuff. Not one servant girl fingering a woolen or cotton shirt. Not one peasant exchanging whatever he had bought the week before. The market, the square: emptiness everywhere.

It was suspicious, disconcerting. It reminded one of Yom Kippur. One felt there had to be a connection with the situation, but the feeling was so vague, it defied formulation. A town living in slow motion. An idle town. An unreal town.

Awakened by his wife, Davidov washed his face, swallowed a cup of boiling coffee and ran to the Prefect’s house.

The latter shared his fears. “Bad omen. If my men know something, they are keeping it from me. Naturally. They are in league with the mob.”

“So are mine,” said Davidov somberly.

His three employees, in his service for twelve years—since his father’s death—had disappeared the night before, leaving their belongings behind. There had been similar disappearances from most other Jewish homes and establishments: clerks and stablemen, gardeners and servants, maids and nursemaids had all fled at the same time, as though obeying the same signal.

“A pity,” grumbled Davidov. “I thought I could trust mine.”

“Not I.”

“There is no comparison. I treat my employees well. I am
generous with them. And understanding. I have never offended their dignity.”

“How naïve you are, Davidov. You think they hate you, the employer? You, the boss? It’s the Jew they hate.”

Davidov felt a wave of heat rising to his face. He unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “Still,” he said, “there is something in this I fail to understand. I was born here, this is where I grew up. As did my parents and theirs, my children and theirs. I know many people. Some hold me in esteem, others even have some affection for me. I share their joys as they share mine. Their fate touches me, their mourning affects me. An employee’s wife becomes ill, I pay the doctor. Another employee is distraught, I send him away to rest. Up to his neck in debt, my neighbor comes to consult me, the Jew, and not his intimate friends. Matrimonial troubles? I am the confidant. I like to help, I like to seize an outstretched hand. I have never betrayed or abandoned anyone. I know that people count on me. They know that I expect nothing in return. And yet, not one of my acquaintances feels the need to come and speak to me. I ask for neither their help nor their support. Nor do I ask them to take a stand in the name of conscience or friendship. All I want is a token, a word, a gesture to forewarn me. Is that asking too much? Well, it’s a beautiful world, your world …”

“Hey, wait a moment,” the Prefect cried out in mock offense. “What about me? Aren’t you forgetting that I exist?”

Davidov blushed, stammered excuses: “I expressed myself poorly. With you it’s different.”

“Thank you.”

“You are different. You are a friend.”

“Don’t repeat it too loud, it may do me harm.”

“I am not saying that you are every Jew’s friend. Only that you and I are friends. That is enough for me.”

“One compliment deserves another. For me, too, that is ample. Two friends like you, and I am ripe for retirement or the monastery.”

There was a knock at the door. A constable appeared, bearing a message from headquarters: the prisoner was insisting on communicating with the Prefect immediately.

“Aware of the special interest the Prefect has shown the murderer, the captain decided to inform you of the request,” the constable recited, standing at attention.

“May I go with you?” asked Davidov.

Moshe was pleased to see them arrive together. First, because he was afraid of not being able to express himself clearly in the native tongue. Second, because his plan concerned both.

“I should like to make a public address,” said Moshe without preamble. “Help me.”

The Prefect and Davidov looked at one another in amazement. Had they heard correctly? They looked him over more closely. Could he have gone mad, really mad? Could this be a delayed reaction to torture? Had Pavel subjected him to further brutalities? If so, Moshe did not show it. Seated with his back against the wall, he waited for their answer. Calmly.

“An address?” said Davidov. “You? When? Where? For what? Are you serious, Moshe? Come now …”

The Prefect came to the point: “You wished to see me, here I am. You wished to speak to me, I am listening. I admit I expected some unusual request, but not this one. Seriously, Moshe. A speech? At a time like this? People’s minds are on many things, but not on speeches, don’t you know that?”

Moshe was listening attentively, almost solemnly. “I know,” he answered. “What I am asking is unusual. But important. Not for me. For the community. Not only for ours. For the entire community of Israel. I must speak. To explain the conclusion of
an idea, the birth of a project. To publicly announce my last will.”

“Already?” the Prefect teased. “Why such haste? At least wait until the trial!”

“One must refuse nothing to a condemned man.”

“You are not familiar with our judicial system. First we judge, then we condemn. The process is slower than you seem to think.”

“Please, I know what I am saying. Neither one of us is in a jesting mood.”

The two visitors looked at each other again, appalled. What did he have in mind? A plan to escape? To unmask the real criminal? Start an uprising?

Still, for whatever reason, whether because he looked so pitiful or because his voice appeared to be coming from far, far away, or because they felt that, anyway, all was lost, they gave their assent.

“This is Thursday,” said Davidov. “Would next Saturday suit you?”

“Today.”

“Today?” cried Davidov. For him, Moshe’s madness was no longer in doubt.

“Today,” Moshe repeated stubbornly.

“An ordinary Thursday? Who would come? How would you let the people know?”

“I’ll speak at the synagogue.”

“It will be empty! An ordinary Thursday! I like you, Moshe, and because I do, I beg of you to forget this whim! Give us time! Give us until Saturday!”

“Today,” said Moshe. “I’ll start at three o’clock.”

He turned away from his visitors, as though to dismiss them. This affair has unsettled his reason, thought Davidov. This was
no longer a question of mystical madness, this was genuine insanity. A speech at the synagogue, that very day, at three o’clock. This sort of project could only germinate in an unbalanced mind. It was almost noon. All right, they must move quickly, start the race against the clock. There was not a second to lose.

“We’ll see you later, Moshe.”

He did not answer.

The two men left, shaking their heads, still bewildered.

“He had his way with us,” said the Prefect. “I have the impression I am acting in a play he is directing. And he is casting the parts.”

“Well, now you have another friend,” said Davidov with a forced laugh.

They parted in front of the Town Hall. Davidov walked over to the community’s office to make arrangements, give certain instructions. The scribe mobilized the beadles, who went to carry the news to the four corners of the town. Never before had an announcement spread with such speed. But would the public come? Before the church bell had finished striking two o’clock, the big synagogue was already filled. Davidov had underestimated both the popularity of the speaker and the curiosity of the congregants.

None other than Moshe—and at no other moment in his life—could have met this challenge: to gather the community on a simple Thursday afternoon. He had made the appeal and everyone had responded.

One easily understands why. He wore the crown of the martyr to whom nothing can be denied. Moreover, there was the mounting tension, the approaching storm. The prolonged, exasperating uncertainty. Collectivity offered the individual a shield against solitude. It reassured and inspired a sense of security,
however false. Since they were all going to suffer together, the pain would be less intolerable.

A half-hour before Moshe was to speak, the courtyard was black with people spilling over into the street. The shopkeepers had closed their shops, the merchants had locked their counter tops, as they did for funeral processions. The four clothing-goods stores had lowered their shades, and so had the two watchmakers. At the Yeshiva they interrupted the study of Talmud; at the
heder
, that of the Pentateuch. Shaike and his comrades were in charge of maintaining order. They did not know which way to turn.

It was a spectacle without precedent in the annals of Kolvillàg. Never had the ancient synagogue been jammed with so many people from so many backgrounds. Not even the Rebbe attracted such crowds for his semi-annual sermons. Even the visit of the famous Tzaddik of Ostrohov—before his departure for Jerusalem—paled by comparison. With the exception of infants and the very old, every Jew was present, waiting to see the prisoner, to listen to him and if possible, reach out to him. Let him feel less alone and everyone’s solitude would be diminished.

At a quarter to three Moshe made his appearance flanked by the Prefect and Davidov, followed by two guards. For a moment the crowd wavered between curiosity and reverence, between rushing toward the hero of the day or moving back. Fortunately, it moved back. Moshe and his retinue advanced between two silent rows.

At precisely three o’clock he ascended the bimah, kissed the purple-satin curtain covering the Ark and turned to face the hall.

A lectern had been set up for him. He ignored it. Standing straight, his head high, Moshe confronted his audience as would
an older, protective friend. He communicated his silence, drawn from the source of his being, even before he translated it into language. The entire assembly—the men in the auditorium, the women in the balcony, the overflow in the yard—froze. Such immobility, such silence must have prevailed at Sinai. The town, the mountains, even the fields and stones seemed electrified by the current emanating from this man and his fiery, hallucinated eyes, charged with passion, terror and truth.

Assembled here were rabbis and assistants, judges and scribes, givers and takers, Hasidim and opponents of Hasidism. The dignitaries in the first rows, their eyes fixed on the madman turned leader, noticed neither his wounds nor the bloodstains on his tattered clothes. They were staring at his eyes, eyes that were reflecting their future of ashes dispersed by the whirling wind.

Leah was the only one who saw everything, understood everything. Seated in the place of honor in the balcony, at the right of the Rebbe’s wife, she saw and suffered. But her mind was made up not to break her promise, not to disturb the mood created by her husband, not to embarrass him in public—she would not shout, she would not weep, not yet.

And so, when Moshe, still motionless, began to speak, people hardly noticed. He began in a very low voice, almost a sigh. It was like a wordless prayer, a monotonous litany.

“When I was a child I prefaced my words with those consecrating me to God. I begged Him to grant me permission to tell Him my prayers. I didn’t know why, now I know. Man has no alternative, he is condemned to praise his Creator. Were he not to praise Him, he would curse himself. Better to speak to God than to man, better to listen to God than to His spokesman. Man has only one story to tell, though he tells it in a thousand
different ways: tortures, persecutions, manhunts, ritual murders, mass terror. It has been going on for centuries, for centuries players on both sides have played the same roles—and rather than speak, God listens; rather than intervene and decide, He waits and judges only later. We do everything we can to attract His attention, to amuse or please Him. For centuries now we have given ourselves to Him by allowing ourselves to be led to the slaughterhouse. We think that we are pleasing Him by becoming the illustrations of our own tales of martyrdom. There is always one storyteller, one survivor, one witness to revive the murderous past if not the victims.”

And like a Yeshiva teacher with his students, Moshe went on to quote texts and legends from the Babylonian persecutions in Judea to the butcheries throughout Central and Eastern Europe: Congregations that had disappeared, swallowed by the abyss; communities that had perished by the sword, by fire, by water. The enemy had ruled the elements and used them to decimate, annihilate the tribe of Israel. Yet one man had always remained behind, miraculously unscathed, one man who saw and recorded everything: the sorrow and the fury on one side, the indifference on the other. This Jewish memory not only robbed the executioner of his final victory, it haunted and punished him by reminding him of his crimes and citing them as examples and warnings for the benefit of mankind present and future. Since the executioner seemed to be immortal, the survivor-storyteller would be immortal too. Jews felt that to forget constituted a crime against memory as well as against justice: whoever forgets becomes the executioner’s accomplice. The executioner kills twice, the second time when he tries to erase the traces of his crimes, the evidence of his cruelty. He must not be allowed to do it, he must not be allowed to do it, we have been saying
and repeating throughout the generations. He must not be allowed to kill the dead before our very eyes. We must tell, awaken, alert and repeat over and over again without respite or pause, repeat to the very end those stories that have no end …