The Oath

  “Oh yes,” called out Moshe, and he seemed to be smiling. I knew for whom he was smiling—for my father. “Oh yes, it has been going on for centuries. They kill us and we tell how; they plunder us and we describe how; they humiliate and oppress us, they expel us from society and history, and we say how. They forbid us a place in the sun, the right to laugh and sing or even cry, and we turn it into a story, a legend destined for men of good will, for spirits in search of faith and friendship, for men of heart. Yet the more they hate us, the more we shout our love of man; the more they mock us, the more we shout our attachment to history. The enemy can do with us as he pleases, but never will he silence us—that has been our motto. Words have been our weapon, our shield; the tale, our lifeboat. And we wanted those words strong, stronger than our foes, stronger than death. Since someone would be left to tell of the ordeal, it meant that we had won in advance. Since, in the end, someone would be left to describe our death, then death would be defeated; such was our deep, unshakable conviction. And yet …”

  Moshe, sweat pouring down his face, paused before making his final point. His heavy, rasping breathing could be heard. For a moment he leaned against the lectern, but then he pushed it back so abruptly it almost toppled over.

  “… now the time has come to put an end to it,” he continued angrily. “Put an end to it once and for all. We have been mankind’s memory and heart too long. Too long have we been other nations’ laughingstock. Our stories have either amused or annoyed them. Now we shall adopt a new way: silence.”

  Another pause to permit his words to sink in, take root inside us.

  “We are going to start on an unexplored path, one which does not lead to the outside, to expression. We shall innovate, do what our ancestors and forebears could not or dared not do. We are going to impose the ultimate challenge, not by language but by absence of language, not by the word but by the abdication of the word. Brothers and companions, accept my plan. Let us take the only possible decision: we shall testify no more.”

  Moshe seemed rational yet like one possessed, free yet somehow directed. He explained: It was in prison, in his cell, while talking with the official chronicler of the community, that he had realized that the circle must be broken. Though his visitor, the chronicler, had spoken at great length of the grandeur and mission of the witness, he had pursued his own idea to its final conclusion. If suffering and the history of suffering were intrinsically linked, then the one could be abolished by attacking the other; by ceasing to refer to the events of the present, we would forestall ordeals in the future.

  And here Moshe cried out in a burst of passion: “If you agree, if you give me your trust, we shall resolve the problem of Jewish suffering. We shall do it without the help of the Messiah; he is taking too long. We shall start right here. I have found the method, I have discovered the solution. Listen …”

  His two hands were now gripping the lectern. He let his eyes wander over the assembly and raised his voice. “Whether or not our enemies scoff at us, trample us, mutilate us, we shall not speak of it. Whether the mob massacres or humiliates us, we shall tell neither God nor man. If we must die, then the story of our deaths will follow us into our graves, where we shall guard it jealously.

  And he continued, prophetically: “Cursed be he who will uncover it, seven times cursed he who will let it be known! Thus the chain will be broken and our people will come out of the night. You see, it was important that I speak to you, that I share my discovery with you. Here is one solution we have not yet tried; that is its merit. It is the only one left that may work. I ask you to adopt it. No, I order you!”

  Mad, Moshe. Mad, my friend. Madder than ever, madder than at the time of his first speech from this same podium. His eyes were jets of fire. His arms were blessing, threatening. He had at last found his true role, Moshe. He was sweeping us all away into his madness.

  The Rebbe’s face was pale; he was covering it with his hands. Toli thought of his father, and felt choked. His grandfather, lost in deeper contemplation than usual, seemed to be dreaming his own death and that of his descendants. Adam the Gravedigger, in complete agreement with Moshe’s proposition, made the greatest effort of his life not to applaud. Upstairs, a woman screamed; others were quick to join in. The chronicler was vibrating with every inflection of Moshe’s voice; echoes of an ancient lament, confirming his failure. But I saw in Moshe’s mysterious protest a paradox—it incited to joy, to fulfillment through joy, rather than to despair.

  “Such is my wish, such is my will,” Moshe solemnly declared.

  Was it because of his past? Or of the guilt people felt toward him? Nobody challenged him. He had his way. He was triumphant, my friend. The crowd was ready to acclaim him, to crown him king and follow him to the end of his road, the very end, anywhere. At this point in time he personified for them the combined virtues of the sage, the prince and the visionary. He had but to command, they would obey. He knew it, for already he was commanding.

  “Let us all take an oath so that those among us who will survive this present ordeal shall never reveal either in writing or by the word what we shall see, hear and endure before and during our torment! Let them tell nothing of us, nothing of what we are saying and dreading! May he who violates this oath be doomed to the throes of hell! May he who breaks this eternally sealed vow, he who defiles this oath be cursed! This vow, this oath, our community must sanctify on behalf of the entire people of Israel, placing it under the sign of the Herem!”

  At the sound of this last word, the assembly shuddered. Old men bowed their heads. Terrified women covered their mouths. For it is a word charged with occult powers, weighed down with horror. It evokes ancestral maledictions and eternal damnation.

  “In the name of this living community and of the divine presence it conceals, I pronounce anathema on the rebel and the renegade!”

  The men were appalled; the women mute with fear. Instinctively, children clung to parents, their teeth chattering. Baleful angels and demons without name or master had flapped their wings at the invocation of the Herem. One must try not to flinch, not to see, not to be seen. Only Moshe’s eyes remained deliberately open.

  “My fellow Jews, brothers and sisters, impress this moment on your minds, for it marks a turnabout in the destiny and itinerary of our people. Meditate, withdraw into yourselves, pray to God to let you prove yourselves worthy of the courage within us. My Jewish brothers and sisters, repeat after me: I swear in the name of my allegiance to the covenant …”

  And everyone, men and women, children and old people, I shall never, never forget it, moved by the same impulse, driven by the same force, jumped to their feet and together repeated word for word, verse for verse, the oath composed by the herald of a new era. The Prefect himself, fascinated, his heart pounding, heard himself recite without understanding:

  “I swear …

  —That if, with heaven’s help, I should survive …

  —I swear that if with heaven’s help …

  —Never … shall I reveal …

  —Never …

  —How I survived …

  —Never …

  —Nor how the dead perished.

  —Never.”

  Were they conscious of all the implications of their commitment? Did they understand its full significance? They seemed to have fallen under Moshe’s spell.

  “And if I break my word …

  —Never …

  —My soul will never find respite, never will it deserve divine mercy, never will it be redeemed.

  —Never, never!”

  Was this all? No, not yet. Determined to go all the way, Moshe restated the rules of the tradition. Excommunication takes place within certain well-defined formalities. The rabbis, the judges, the president, the cantor and other notables were ordered to wrap themselves in their ritual shawls. Another tremor, this one more tangible, ran through the assembly. So it was going to be a true Herem!

  “May he who repudiates this pact be cursed,” conclud
ed Moshe, who, covered by his tallith, seemed taller than before. “By repudiating it, he will repudiate himself and us, the living and the dead, those of today and those of tomorrow. Never will he be forgiven, never will his sin be expiated. The judges will judge him, the victims will scorn him! Eternal will be his damnation, eternal his solitude!”

  The black candles specifically reserved for the purpose were lit. The shofar was brought. Hushed and feverish, the crowd followed every move. And what if it were only a dream? Time stopped, turned back at lightning speed. And here they were, in another town, in a delirious, terror-stricken medieval ghetto. Who was present? Who was in jeopardy? The future travelers journeying to the Spain of the Inquisition? The disciples of the false Messiah Shabtai Zvi? How could I be sure that what was happening was happening to me? Only Moshe seemed sure of himself and of us, of his gestures and words as he pronounced slowly, accentuating every syllable, the ancient ritual formulas of anathema: the excommunicated renegade would forfeit all his rights and bonds, future merits and past attachments; he would not belong to any human family, to no world, neither that of the living nor that of the dead.

  The shofar’s plaintive, languid sound brought tears into the eyes of many. The ceremony concluded with the Kaddish recited by Moshe in an almost inaudible voice.

  He turned to the assembly for the last time. “Better than our predecessors, better than our ancestors, shall we praise our God. We shall speak of Him so as not to speak of ourselves. What will remain of us? Something of our kinship, something of our silence.”

  His task accomplished, he was overcome by a profound lassitude. He came slowly down the steps, removed his tallith and went to join the president and the Prefect, followed by a thousand eyes that continued to observe him, to hold him back, as though to graft his being onto their own.

  The congregation remained standing for a long time, transported, under the spell of the scene it had just witnessed. It was then that a cry rang out from the balcony, a harsh sob rending the air—poor Leah, she could restrain herself no longer.

  PART THREE

  The Madman and the Book

  AND THEN CAME FEAR. Dense, brutal. It swooped down and invested the town. As at the approach of a scourge, of an inexorable god, Kolvillàg crouched to let the Exterminating Angel pass. His breath could already be smelled.

  Harassed men. Frightened women. Busy, excited children. Children love the unexpected, the unusual; to them nothing is more exciting than a catastrophe. Resigned old men. Some whispered Psalms, others feigned sleep.

  Immediately after the ceremony, the crowd had dispersed. Night was falling from a misty sky. Why had the street lights not been lit? People advanced, groping their way; some tripped. Why wasn’t anybody lighting the street lamps? People were in a hurry to reach home. The deserted streets announced, invited the invader, offered themselves to him from afar. In fact, Kolvillàg was already his.

  Windows were closed, shutters locked in place, belongings put away. The cellar was turned into a shelter, the attic was inspected. Bags and carts were readied as though for a long journey. Barricades were erected as though to withstand a siege. And then there were those who settled into passivity, perhaps to die at home.

  The lamps and candles had been extinguished. Everywhere. Even in the shtibels, even in the mortuary chambers. Even the eternal light in the sanctuary had been snuffed out.

  In most houses, the men, more restless than their wives, were at a loss. How were they to fill the hours of waiting? Nobody thought of fleeing the town; too many ties were holding them back—there were the old, the sick who could not be moved. And so, hiding in their pitiful fortresses, they waited for night to go away. Let dawn come; they had seen worse. The enemy would tire, depart. Everything passes. Pogroms flare up, bite into their prey and burn out. Everything goes on. Who shall live, who shall die? Dawn would tell. Meanwhile one could only be patient, force oneself not to move, not to betray one’s presence. A night to live through—is that long? Never mind, they had seen worse. No night lasts indefinitely. Would the barricades hold? Morning would tell, death would confirm it. If at least one could resist, fight. Impossible. They lacked the experience, and also the will. Everybody cannot be a Shaike. All they had learned was the necessity and the art of waiting. If at least they could emulate the saints and martyrs of the faith, say no to the cross, shout their contempt for those who use it to kill. Impossible. Kolvillàg was neither Blois nor Mainz. Here the killers were hoping not to convert but to plunder and massacre. All one could do was hope in God, stay home and stare into space, into darkness, the wall, the ceiling or the door, above all, the door, the one that opens onto the courtyard or the street, a certain target for the first blow of the ax.

  The Rebbe was pacing his study, from one end to the other, looking for a volume whose title eluded him. A basic, vital book, conceived and composed for extreme situations such as this. At the shelter, the beggars were telling each other stories, memories. Strangely, Adam the Gravedigger was the most talkative of all. Davidov looked at his daughter, Tamar, sixteen and mischievous, and regretted not having dispatched her to her Uncle Peretz. He had wanted not to show panic; after all, he had to set an example. And yet, and yet. On second thought, if they had all sent their children out of town, where would have been the harm? Too late. Stefan Braun was watching his restless wife: Toli still had not returned home. “Your Jews,” she grumbled. “Always ready to upset order.” The lawyer did not answer, but he thought: There was a time when I loved her. Toli was in a narrow, lightless room, listening to his grandfather commenting on the afternoon’s ceremony: “Every community has the right to exclude anyone who by his actions undermines its very existence.” And he went on to quote Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav: “ ‘A passenger on a ship digs a hole under his seat, explaining to the other passengers that what he is doing does not concern them, since he is not digging holes under their seats—do the passengers not have the right to render him harmless?’ ” Leah was tossing on her bed, gnawed by remorse—she had broken her promise, she had cried—and now she was calling sleep, in vain. Moshe in his cell dreamed of an appeased Moshe, confident and master of his pain, defeated by God but stronger than death. The Prefect, a half-empty bottle before him, was drinking.

  My father was bent over the Book, writing in the semi-darkness. Rivka served us coffee while admonishing me to lie down. “You must save your strength,” she said. Another premonition? Had she some idea of what lay in store for me? This night was to be our last together. Father sensed it, for he sided with me. “You want him to sleep? No. Let him stay awake. These hours we are about to live, you want him to sleep through them? No, son. Stay next to me.” Rivka handed me a second cup of coffee. “You will be exhausted tomorrow.” Tomorrow—how far away that seemed.

  “Listen to what I am writing,” said my father.

  “Let it not be said that the Jews of Kolvillàg, in these dark hours, lacked solidarity. I say so with pride. Rabbi Yohanan, son of Zakkai, fled the siege of Jerusalem? We do not have his excuses though we shared his ambitions and every Jewish town belongs both to Yavneh and to Jerusalem. Here, not one flight has been recorded. I, Shmuel, son of Azriel, chronicler of Kolvillàg, say that which everybody repeats in his heart: whatever happens to the community I want to happen to myself as well.”

  Was he preparing me for what was to follow? Rather than concealing his fear, he opposed it to the one that penetrated the community. And he went on:

  “A man who is afraid, how easy it is to speak of him: the child in him emerges, refuses to grow up, to choose, to die. But how can one describe a town that is afraid? Its fear is greater than the sum of individually felt anxieties; it is something else; it acquires divine attributes. It is time standing still, the object that survives you. Stricken with an obscure ailment, their eyes lifeless and their voices extinguished, people walk differently, express themselves differently, keep silent differently. With their hunched bodies, they look like birds of ill omen overwhelmed by guilt. Ch
ildren do not recognize their mothers, women turn away from husbands, men from their brothers and eventually from themselves; such is the nature of fear, such is a community in the grip of fear.”

  And the chronicler in my father tried to describe it:

  “I shall remember it even in my sleep; I shall never be free of it, I know. Fear: a mute and blind raven bearing twilight on its wings. You dare not look into its eyes, you want to run; it follows you, precedes you. And so you remain riveted to the ground, barely breathing, watchful. You know it to be ferocious, fierce. You sense its proximity there—crouching, blending into the darkness—its fangs bared, ready to pounce at the slightest noise, ready to rob you of vision and life and of your very desire to go on living.

  “Like a certain silence, fear has its own sound, its own weight. Heavy, impersonal, it hangs over the town: a leaden sky, a horizon of death. It permeates the trees, the walls, one’s every movement. All-pervasive, it crawls from body to body, from house to house, from one creature to another. It restrains dying men from moaning and incites dogs to bark. It saps the blood out of your lips; it chokes you, fills your lungs until you feel them burst.

  “A town that is afraid is a besieged, defenseless town. Heralding disaster, fear becomes disaster. The enemy’s ally, fear becomes the enemy. Surreptitious, ubiquitous; both cause and effect.