The Oath

  What helped me to stand fast was the Book, the Pinkas of Kolvillàg. If I used all my wits to stay alive, it was to save it, to protect it. A matter of duty. I had no right to die. One night, a few weeks or a few months after the conflagration, I found myself on the verge of suicide. Friendless, without any resources, I roamed from forest to forest, not knowing what to do with my past and my future. Where was I to go? What help was I to solicit and from whom? I was young, I had no experience other than that of death. A kindly peasant woman offered me shelter and food on one condition: that I become her son. A priest declared himself ready to take me in on one condition: that I become a Christian. A forester insisted on teaching me to shoot at animals; when I refused, he set his dog on me. I had had enough, I could not go on, I called the dead, I called death to come to my aid. From beyond sleep I could hear Moshe scolding me: “You must really have fallen low to want to debase yourself further, and I had such hopes of attaining the highest summits through you!” He winked and confided to me that there was no possible escape from Kolvillàg: “Up there, there is a city like ours, only bigger; and it burns incessantly, just as ours did. Except that you are absent. Too bad for you. Imagine the Master mingling with the sages and telling them stories—our stories.” Before bidding me farewell, he added: “I am not releasing you from your oath. On the contrary. With the years, it will grow in significance. For your silence to have meaning, you must stay alive.”

  But what if I didn’t care if my life had meaning? What if I didn’t care about life at all? I owed my survival to an error. And yet, and yet. To survive by error is perhaps the equivalent of being killed by error.

  Sometimes it made me laugh. Laugh until I cried. Like one possessed. I remember and I cannot forgive myself.

  The little monsters. Like obscene visions, they appear out of nowhere. Impossible to hold them back. I am dreaming, I told myself. These crippled dwarfs flocking toward me, surrounding me, are not living creatures; they move only in my imagination, deranged by an old madwoman who, having glimpsed me at the inn at Rinkabar, the village of the holy fountains, had shouted: “A Just Man! A saint! I recognize him! He is endowed with powers, such powers! He is a miracle maker! Thank you, Lord, for having sent him, thank you, thank you for having pointed him out to me …!” The insane old hag. Known as such. Dreaded as such. She terrorized the region.

  Responding to her shrieks, the villagers came storming into the inn. When I saw them head straight toward me, I feared the worst. They are going to kill me, I thought. Sender the Innkeeper apparently thought the same, for he tried to intervene. Three punches later he was on the floor. Alone, defenseless, I prepared to die. Imagine my astonishment when they grabbed me and carried me on their shoulders all the way to the asylum at the other end of the village. There they set me down in the midst of a dozen or so scrawny, resigned inmates.

  “Since you make miracles,” the men who had carried me explained, “go ahead! As you can see, you’ll have plenty of work here!”

  Off they went to bring more cripples from the surrounding villages. Soon their numbers multiplied. I was hemmed in on all sides as though a formidable hand was driving this twitching, moving mass toward me. Fifty, sixty, one hundred and twenty ageless creatures minus arms and legs fidgeted on their stretchers and rolling carts, performing grotesque circus acts. Every hopeless, incurable case of the region had converged on this spot. Wide-eyed young boys, mutilated, patched-up adolescents, bony women and girls with distorted limbs, all of them staring at me fixedly—God must have invented them in a moment of cruel fancy; they were playing with Him and He with them.

  Once I was over my initial fright, I tried to go around them, then to jump over them. I almost trampled them, so anxious was I to break their hold, to escape before I lost my mind. In vain. They had blocked all avenues of retreat. In the end I stumbled and let myself fall. I remained mute, motionless. I remembered my conversations with Abrasha: every truth that shuts you in, that does not lead to others, is inhuman. Between these living wrecks who took me for a miracle maker and myself who knew my limitations, between their destiny and mine, there did exist a link, a kinship that imposed a role, not to say obligation, on me. Since I did not share their predicament, I was identifying myself with the powers that had reduced them to their condition of victims.

  “Well?” the villagers were shouting outside. “Hurry up! Show them to us, your gifts! Prove to us that God is listening!”

  “He’s a saint!” the old madwoman was screaming. “He knows how to force the Lord’s hand! Cures for our dear ones, he’s the one to get them! Your requests, give him your requests!”

  “My husband is paralyzed,” cried a peasant woman with a black kerchief on her head. “I have five mouths to feed! Give me back the father of my children!”

  “I have three,” roared a giant, a horse dealer by trade. “Three small boys. They are in there, do you see them? There, with crutches! If God refuses to cure all three, let Him cure at least one!”

  Meanwhile the crowds were getting larger, outside and inside the asylum. Soon the building, then the village, the river, the horizon were hidden from my view. The excited wretches used their elbows, shoved and pushed to get a closer look at me. Dazed, my head on fire, I wanted to speak, explain to them that I myself was helpless and poor, with no powers either on earth or in heaven, and that I considered myself their fellow-man, their brother, also nothing but a freak, a useless mouth. But the words were lost, dissipated in my throat. I could only look, remember and keep quiet while the monstrous bodies pressed around my own rigid body in successive waves, uttering weird, barely human sounds. While they gesticulated and performed their dances, they eyed me not with hate, but with curiosity and infinite seriousness. In all their lives they had never seen a miracle maker, a Just Man, who had taken the trouble to come to console them and intercede on their behalf. Except for the villagers, I was the first whole man they had ever seen. Unwittingly I was offering them a new spectacle, heralding a probable event, holding out a possibility of hope.

  I experienced a sharp, urgent need to do something, say something, but I could control neither my muscles nor my voice.

  “He is meditating,” the old hag screeched, “he is concentrating! Look at him! He is sending his soul to heaven! In a moment it will be up there with your requests! Hurry up! Entrust him with your sorrows, your suffering! Quickly, do it quickly! Seize the opportunity, it is unique! Quickly, quickly!”

  Pandemonium ensued. Everybody yelled at once, trying to outdo all others, trying to be heard above all others. The scene might have been a howling contest, with life or death as the prize.

  “Blessed man, bless us.”

  “Revered Sage, come to our aid! Lend us your ear!”

  “A miracle! Just one! I am the mother of seven starving little girls! Mercy!”

  “Don’t forget Benish! Benish the Tailor!”

  “And the welldigger! Holy man, a word for the welldigger!”

  “And the tax collector’s widow, are you forgetting her? The girl behind you! She’s my oldest! Consumptive, that’s what she is! Have mercy, mercy!”

  “He has powers,” the old madwoman growled. “Let him use them!”

  “Quickly, quickly!”

  “Have mercy on us!”

  I do not remember at what moment I began to laugh. I was laughing and did not know it; I could not hear myself laughing. In the deafening roar one had to either join the crowd or seek refuge within oneself. Unconsciously I chose escape into laughter. I became aware of what I was doing only by the way the creatures stopped in their tracks and exchanged glances. The sound was so new to them that they received it with drawn-out, almost languid whispers, followed by prolonged and uneasy silence. Never before had these men-puppets heard human laughter; they didn’t know it existed. A black glimmer lit their eyes. They were convinced I was a divine messenger; more than that, a human god who had forsaken his home to share theirs.

  “More, more,” they clamored. “Cont
inue!”

  “More, more!” The old madwoman was screeching, jumping up and down. “Look, look! He’s laughing! The holy man is laughing! That’s a good omen! Do you hear? It’s a good omen! He’s happy! He made them listen up there! Watch him! It’s important! More, more!”

  “Louder, louder!” the poor monsters bellowed, their eyes gleaming darkly, insistently.

  “He’s laughing! Thank you, heaven! Thank you, Lord! Thank you, ancestors! The holy man will help us, he has already helped us!”

  I am dreaming, I thought. I am not here but elsewhere, I am not myself but another. I find that I cannot see what my eyes are showing me; that I cannot hear what my ears are perceiving. I dream of a dreamer who haunts my dreams. And here my goal is attained: I am present while my “I” explodes, I shall be present when it disappears. I brush against nothingness almost stealthily. And I shall penetrate the void. I am Azriel. I am not Azriel. I come face to face with his victims and I laugh. I come face to face with naked misery and I laugh. Sitting here, I contemplate injustice at its ugliest and I laugh. Suddenly I remember the features and expressions of my mad friend Moshe. Moshe in prison. Moshe facing me. As he faced me long ago. I open my mouth to give free rein to laughter. I am dreaming your dream, Moshe. It is you who are laughing.

  Then ecstasy takes hold of my audience. Bravo, bravo! More, more! Louder, louder! Whenever I stop, they protest vigorously, indignantly: More, more! And the old madwoman flings herself about, wildly shrieking: “Go on! Don’t let him stop in the middle! As long as the holy man is laughing, the gates of heaven are open to him!” And the villagers yell: “Mercy, mercy!” And the cripples pick up the cry: “Yes, more, yes, mercy!” Everything is spinning inside my head, which swells and swells until it becomes a caricature. I double up with laughter when I see it. Bravo, Moshe. Now I understand your teachings. In the valley of tears we are left one weapon, the last. Now I understand you. I will laugh like you. I am laughing louder and louder, louder than the noise of the mob and of the valley below, the noise of life and of heaven, I laugh with all my strength and I know that this time it is not your doing, it is mine. With my laughter I drive the living to life, the dead to oblivion. With my laughter I bring together earth and sea, hell and redemption, enigma and light, my self and its shell.

  I am ashamed just thinking of it. I had transcended my own person and I did not know it.

  “What is that? A diary? May I see?”

  In my hands I held a thick bound notebook, the old-fashioned kind. Black cloth cover and narrow long pages. It looked like a ledger. With an abrupt, angry motion, Azriel tore it from my hands and clasped it to his chest as one might a threatened or recovered treasure. He was behaving like a father with his child, or a child with his toy.

  “Don’t touch that,” the old man said harshly.

  We had gone up to his garret; he wanted to put on warmer clothes. While changing coats, he had taken the notebook out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

  Why this harshness in his voice? What was so special about this notebook? I felt an irresistible urge to know. The rest no longer mattered. My mother and her ghosts, my father and his air of resignation—there was nothing on my mind except the notebook.

  I surveyed the room; it was almost bare, half monk’s cell, half hotel room. A bed, a table, a chair, a tiny bed lamp, a wardrobe. In the wardrobe, a metal trunk. What does it contain? What treasures, what documents? Is it locked? What does he see from his tiny window? A piece of sky, two chimney stacks towering over five roofs? How many hours a day does he stay here? With whom? To do what? My eyes wandered back to the notebook. Dimly I sensed that it contained the answer to all the mysteries surrounding his person.

  “These pages intrigue you,” Azriel said, nibbling at his lower lip. “That’s fine. A man who searches does not kill himself … You want to know what they contain, don’t you? All right. After all, there is nothing extraordinary about the Pinkas except … the ending. I shall stop before.”

  The Pinkas: a collective work extending over many generations. The last author to consign events to its pages was Shmuel, father of Azriel, official registrar of the community. His predecessors go back to the famous chronicler Matityahu the Judge, a native of Cracow, who came to Kolvillàg to be married and found his bride-to-be drowned in blood. Matityahu described the scene and added a terse observation: “In these days exile is becoming ever harsher. To have hope in God is to have hope against God.”

  His successor Meir of Podoli liked to link his name to maxims. On hate: “Self-hate is more harmful than hate toward others. The latter questions man’s relationship with man; the first implicates man’s relationship to God.” On encounter: “Man changes whenever he confronts his fellow-man, who, in turn, undergoes an essential change. Thus every encounter suggests infinity. Which means: the self is linked to infinity only through the intermediary of another self, another consciousness.”

  In the following century an anonymous scribe took up Matityahu’s theme: “When stricken unjustly, man theoretically should have the right to decry divine justice. But knowing the value of theories, he will not use that right.”

  In 1851 a certain Itzhak, son of Israel, an enlightened and literature-loving man, confided his despair to the Pinkas: “All has been said, I can only repeat … In the beginning there was the word; there no longer is. We no longer say ‘light’ to simply name it, but to replace it; we say ‘love’ not because it is present, but because it is not. Every creation, on the individual level, implies a void, that is to say a gap, a sin, a failure. Doomed to repeat himself, man resorts to language for atonement.”

  Twenty years later his son Israel ben Itzhak took an interest in mysticism: “The ‘I’ of man is the ‘I’ of the individual, yet the converse is not true. The first is situated in time, the second in consciousness. My mind seeks the individual, my soul flees from him. The mystic in me knows that he must fall in order to see and recognize himself; that he must touch the bottom of the abyss to aspire to the heights. The ‘I’ dissolves before it fulfills itself.”

  Two generations and fourteen pages of chronicles later, a lonely bachelor called Akiba the Sleepwalker set down an astonishing thought: “The sum of all men is not God, whereas my innermost self is.”

  The next pages were written in Shmuel’s own handwriting. I tried to imagine him bent over the notebook, at night. Leafing through the Book, Azriel explained:

  “My father loved to write, erase, erase some more, condense twenty words into a single word or preferably into a comma. Did he suffer? Surely. But he was too proud to show it. His life? Total identification with the heroes and characters of the Pinkas, his only reading matter. Look at his legible, precise handwriting. Every sentence is definitive. He chiseled his words and fitted them like stones into a gigantic tower, until they burst apart, like so many dismembered bodies tumbling into the precipice.”

  I thought: Now I know what a Pinkas is—a precipice.

  Blackened pages, images torn from death, undelivered messages. I plunge into the whirlwind, at random I reread verdicts, indictments, anecdotes, complaints, notes taken on the spot. Now that I am old, I see them more clearly than I see myself. Here I am treading on familiar ground. I know everybody and everybody smiles and waves to me. I engage others in conversation; I communicate to them what I have acquired, I explain the inexplicable, I fear neither lies nor cunning. I understand and make myself understood, I love and am loved, and it gives me neither pride nor remorse. Here everything is simple and genuine; everything is past, unalterable. These characters have lived their quests before they transmitted them. And I? I shall take mine into the grave with me. What you have written, Father, nobody will read. What you have accomplished, Moshe, nobody will know. And it hurts me, I admit it. Ten Just Men could have saved Sodom. One man by himself can justify the hope of mankind. I learned that from you, Moshe. What is the Messiah, you said, if not man transcending his solitude in order to make his fellow-man less solitary? To turn a single hu
man being back toward life is to prevent the destruction of the world, says the Talmud. Do something good and God up there will imitate you; do something evil and suddenly the scale will tip the other way. Let me succeed in diverting death from this boy and we shall win. Such is the nature of man, you told me: whether he celebrates joy or solitude, he does so on behalf of all men. Would you want me to end my life on a defeat? Are several decades of silence not enough for you? Release me from my oath, Moshe. My mad friend, my dead friend, give me back my freedom. I don’t want to die defeated.

  And I can see my father taking up the notebook from which emerges my mad friend, who winks at me as he did long ago in prison. He voices his displeasure: “Hey, what’s the matter, are you letting yourself go? A man ought to control his grief, stifle it and hold his tongue. Have you forgotten? To cry when one hurts means to succumb! Don’t you remember? The tears one does not shed are precious and fertile. The silent prayer is the only one heard …”

  He has not lifted the injunction. Neither has my father. And you, do you still want to end it all? You are staring at me. Why? I suddenly find a strange resemblance between you and Yancsi, that little hoodlum who was the cause of all our woes. And what if you were he? Quickly, let me dismiss this foolish thought; you would now be as old as I. Quickly, let us turn the pages. Thank you, Moshe. Thank you for showing me the way, thank you for restraining my impulses. Don’t worry. Your haunted, fiery gaze, so harsh, so impenetrable and yet so human, I carry it inside me—it is me.