Dawn: A Novel Read online

  to François Mauriac

  Contents

  Preface

  Begin Reading

  Preface

  THIS NOVEL, MY FIRST, may be surprising for its sudden relevance to our present times. Does it not have to do with hostage-taking, violence, and clandestine rebellion?

  Yet the action of the novel is set in a past at once recent and far away, in a Palestine that is still Jewish, ruled by Great Britain, before the creation of the state of Israel.

  Elisha, a young survivor of the death camps—an orphan bereft not only of his father and mother, but of hope—is recruited by members of the Resistance. At this point the enemy is not Arab but English. The power is in London, not Jerusalem. The tribunals are overburdened, the prisons overflowing. The executioner is working full-time. His justice is draconian.

  A Jewish combatant is condemned to death. His superiors in the Resistance order Elisha to execute one of His Majesty’s officials in retaliation. Both men are to die at dawn.

  Dawn is purely a work of fiction, but I wrote it to look at myself in a new way. Obviously I did not live this tale, but I was implicated in its ethical dilemma from the moment that I assumed my character’s place. Difficult? Not really. Suppose the American army, instead of sending me to France, had handed me a visa to the Holy Land—would I have had the courage to join one of the movements that fought for the right of the Jewish people to form an independent state in their ancestral homeland? And if so, could I have gone all the way in my commitment and killed a man, a stranger? Would I have had the strength to claim him as my victim?

  So I wrote this novel in order to explore distant memories and buried doubts: What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in the camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could I have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man?

  And taking the questions further within the context of the narrative: How are we ever to disarm evil and abolish death as a means to an end? How are we ever to break the cycle of violence and rage? Can terror coexist with justice? Does murder call for murder, despair for revenge? Can hate engender anything but hate?

  The young hero spends an entire night preparing himself. He looks back on his blighted childhood, his open wounds. At the core of his being, he rejects the new part he is to play. He is afraid of betraying the dead who, as judges and witnesses, observe the living but are unable to come to their aid. And yet…

  What will dawn bring for him? More darkness, or the light of the coming day?

  This is where we see two men, albeit enemies, pursue a simple and inevitable dialogue illuminating the human truth that hatred is never an answer, and that death nullifies all answers. There is nothing sacred, nothing uplifting, in hatred or in death.

  In this story, which calls religious and cultural ideas into question, I evoke the ultimate violence: murder. It aims to put on guard all of those who, in the name of their faith or of some ideal, commit cruel acts of terrorism against innocent victims.

  And yet, this tale about despair becomes a story against despair.

  —ELIE WIESEL

  SOMEWHERE A CHILD began to cry. In the house across the way an old woman closed the shutters. It was hot with all the heat of an autumn evening in Palestine.

  Standing near the window I looked out at the transparent twilight whose descent made the city seem silent, motionless, unreal, and very far away. Tomorrow, I thought for the hundredth time, I shall kill a man, and I wondered if the crying child and the woman across the way knew.

  I did not know the man. To my eyes he had no face; he did not even exist, for I knew nothing about him. I did not know whether he scratched his nose when he ate, whether he talked or kept quiet when he was making love, whether he gloried in his hate, whether he betrayed his wife or his God or his own future. All I knew was that he was an Englishman and my enemy. The two terms were synonymous.

  “Don’t torture yourself,” said Gad in a low voice. “This is war.”

  His words were scarcely audible, and I was tempted to tell him to speak louder, because no one could possibly hear. The child’s crying covered all other sounds. But I could not open my mouth, because I was thinking of the man who was doomed to die. Tomorrow, I said to myself, we shall be bound together for all eternity by the tie that binds a victim and his executioner.

  “It’s getting dark,” said Gad. “Shall I put on the light?”

  I shook my head. The darkness was not yet complete. As yet there was no face at the window to mark the exact moment when day changed into night.

  A beggar had taught me, a long time ago, how to distinguish night from day. I met him one evening in my home town when I was saying my prayers in the overheated synagogue, a gaunt, shadowy fellow, dressed in shabby black clothes, with a look in his eyes that was not of this world. It was at the beginning of the war. I was twelve years old, my parents were still alive, and God still dwelt in our town.

  “Are you a stranger?” I asked him.

  “I’m not from around here,” he said in a voice that seemed to listen rather than speak.

  Beggars inspired me with mingled feelings of love and fear. I knew that I ought to be kind to them, for they might not be what they seemed. Hassidic literature tells us that a beggar may be the prophet Elijah in disguise, come to visit the earth and the hearts of men and to offer the reward of eternal life to those who treat him well. Nor is the prophet Elijah the only one to put on the garb of a beggar. The Angel of Death delights in frightening men in the same way. To do him wrong is more dangerous; he may take a man’s life or his soul in return.

  And so the stranger in the synagogue inspired me with fear. I asked him if he was hungry and he said no. I tried to find out if there was anything he wanted, but without success. I had an urge to do something for him, but did not know what.

  The synagogue was empty and the candles had begun to burn low. We were quite alone, and I was overcome by increasing anxiety. I knew that I shouldn’t be there with him at midnight, for that is the hour when the dead rise up from their graves and come to say their prayers. Anyone they find in the synagogue risks being carried away, for fear he betray their secret.

  “Come to my house,” I said to the beggar. “There you can find food to eat and a bed in which to sleep.”

  “I never sleep,” he replied.

  I was quite sure then that he was not a real beggar. I told him that I had to go home and he offered to keep me company. As we walked along the snow-covered streets he asked me if I was ever afraid of the dark.

  “Yes, I am,” I said. I wanted to add that I was afraid of him, too, but I felt he knew that already.

  “You mustn’t be afraid of the dark,” he said, gently grasping my arm and making me shudder. “Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.”

  He came to a halt in front of my house. I asked him again if he didn’t want to come in, but he said no, he must be on his way. That’s it, I thought; he’s going back to the synagogue to welcome the dead.

  “Listen,” he said, digging his fingers into my arm. “I’m going to teach you the art of distinguishing between day and night. Always look at a window, and failing that look into the eyes of a man. If you see a face, any face, then you can be sure that night has succeeded day. For, believe me, night has a face.”

  Then, without giving me time to answer, he said good-by and disappeared into the snow.

  Every evening since then I had made a point of standing near a window to witness the arrival of night. And eve
ry evening I saw a face outside. It was not always the same face, for no one night was like another. In the beginning I saw the face of the beggar. Then, after my father’s death, I saw his face, with the eyes grown large with death and memory. Sometimes total strangers lent the night their tearful face or their forgotten smile. I knew nothing about them except that they were dead.

  “Don’t torture yourself in the dark,” said Gad. “This is war.”

  I thought of the man I was to kill at dawn, and of the beggar. Suddenly I had an absurd thought: what if the beggar were the man I was to kill?

  Outside, the twilight faded abruptly away as it so often does in the Middle East. The child was still crying, it seemed to me more plaintively than before. The city was like a ghost ship, noiselessly swallowed up by the darkness.

  I looked out the window, where a shadowy face was taking shape out of the deep of the night. A sharp pain caught my throat. I could not take my eyes off the face. It was my own.

  AN HOUR EARLIER Gad had told me the Old Man’s decision. The execution was to take place, as executions always do, at dawn. His message was no surprise; like everyone else I was expecting it. Everyone in Palestine knew that the Movement always kept its word. And the English knew it too.

  A month earlier one of our fighters, wounded during a terrorist operation, had been hauled in by the police and weapons had been found on him. A military tribunal had chosen to exact the penalty stipulated by martial law: death by hanging. This was the tenth death sentence the mandatory power in Palestine had imposed upon us. The Old Man decided that things had gone far enough; he was not going to allow the English to transform the Holy Land into a scaffold. And so he announced a new line of action—reprisals.

  By means of posters and underground-radio broadcasts he issued a solemn warning: Do not hang David ben Moshe; his death will cost you dear. From now on, for the hanging of every Jewish fighter an English mother will mourn the death of her son. To add weight to his words the Old Man ordered us to take a hostage, preferably an army officer. Fate willed that our victim should be Captain John Dawson. He was out walking alone one night, and this made him an easy prey for our men were on the lookout for English officers who walked alone in the night.

  John Dawson’s kidnapping plunged the whole country into a state of nervous tension. The English army proclaimed a forty-eight-hour curfew, every house was searched, and hundreds of suspects were arrested. Tanks were stationed at the crossroads, machine guns set up on the rooftops, and barbed-wire barricades erected at the street corners. The whole of Palestine was one great prison, and within it there was another, smaller prison where the hostage was successfully hidden.

  In a brief, horrifying proclamation the High Commissioner of Palestine announced that the entire population would be held responsible if His Majesty’s Captain John Dawson were to be killed by the terrorists. Fear reigned, and the ugly word pogrom was on everyone’s lips.

  “Do you really think they’d do it?”

  “Why not?”

  “The English? Could the English ever organize a pogrom?”

  “Why not?”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “Why not?”

  “World opinion wouldn’t tolerate it.”

  “Why not? Just remember Hitler; world opinion tolerated him for quite some time.”

  The situation was grave. The Zionist leaders recommended prudence; they got in touch with the Old Man and begged him, for the sake of the nation, not to go too far: there was talk of vengeance, of a pogrom, and this meant that innocent men and women would have to pay.

  The Old Man answered: If David ben Moshe is hanged, John Dawson must die. If the Movement were to give in the English would score a triumph. They would take it for a sign of weakness and impotence on our part, as if we were saying to them: Go ahead and hang all the young Jews who are holding out against you. No, the Movement cannot give in. Violence is the only language the English can understand. Man for man. Death for death.

  Soon the whole world was alerted. The major newspapers of London, Paris, and New York headlined the story, with David ben Moshe sharing the honors, and a dozen special correspondents flew into Lydda. Once more Jerusalem was the center of the universe.

  In London, John Dawson’s mother paid a visit to the Colonial Office and requested a pardon for David ben Moshe, whose life was bound up with that of her son. With a grave smile the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs told her: Have no fear. The Jews will never do it. You know how they are; they shout and cry and make a big fuss, but they are frightened by the meaning of their own words. Don’t worry; your son isn’t going to die.

  The High Commissioner was less optimistic. He sent a cable to the Colonial Office, recommending clemency. Such a gesture, he said, would dispose world-wide public opinion in England’s favor.

  The Secretary personally telephoned his reply. The recommendation had been studied at a Cabinet meeting. Two members of the Cabinet had approved it, but the others said no. They alleged not only political reasons but the prestige of the Crown as well. A pardon would be interpreted as a sign of weakness; it might give ideas to young, self-styled idealists in other parts of the Empire. People would say: “In Palestine a group of terrorists has told Great Britain where to get off.” And the Secretary added, on his own behalf: “We should be the laughingstock of the world. And think of the repercussions in the House of Commons. The opposition are waiting for just such a chance to sweep us away.”

  “So the answer is no?” asked the High Commissioner.

  “It is.”

  “And what about John Dawson, sir?”

  “They won’t go through with it.”

  “Sir, I beg to disagree.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

  A few hours later the official Jerusalem radio announced that David ben Moshe’s execution would take place in the prison at Acre at dawn the next day. The condemned man’s family had been authorized to pay him a farewell visit and the population was enjoined to remain calm.

  After this came the other news of the day. At the United Nations a debate on Palestine was in the offing. In the Mediterranean two ships carrying illegal immigrants had been detained and the passengers taken to internment on Cyprus. An automobile accident at Natanya: one man dead, two injured. The weather forecast for the following day: warm, clear, visibility unlimited…We repeat the first bulletin: David ben Moshe, condemned to death for terroristic activities, will be hanged…

  The announcer made no mention of John Dawson. But his anguished listeners knew. John Dawson, as well as David ben Moshe, would die. The Movement would keep its word.

  “Who is to kill him?” I asked Gad.

  “You are,” he replied.

  “Me?” I said, unable to believe my own ears.

  “You,” Gad repeated. “Those are the Old Man’s orders.”

  I felt as if a fist had been thrust into my face. The earth yawned beneath my feet and I seemed to be falling into a bottomless pit, where existence was a nightmare.

  “This is war,” Gad was saying.

  His voice sounded as if it came from very far away; I could barely hear it.

  “This is war. Don’t torture yourself.”

  “Tomorrow I shall kill a man,” I said to myself, reeling in my fall. “I shall kill a man, tomorrow.”

  ELISHA IS MY NAME. At the time of this story I was eighteen years old. Gad had recruited me for the Movement and brought me to Palestine. He had made me into a terrorist.

  I had met Gad in Paris, where I went, straight from Buchenwald, immediately after the war. When the Americans liberated Buchenwald they offered to send me home, but I rejected the offer. I didn’t want to relive my childhood, to see our house in foreign hands. I knew that my parents were dead and my native town was occupied by the Russians. What was the use of going back? “No thanks,” I said; “I don’t want to go home.”

  “Then where do you want to go?”

  I said I didn’t know;
it didn’t really matter.

  After staying on for five weeks in Buchenwald I was put aboard a train for Paris. France had offered me asylum, and as soon as I reached Paris a rescue committee sent me for a month to a youth camp in Normandy.

  When I came back from Normandy the same organization got me a furnished room on the rue de Marois and gave me a grant which covered my living expenses and the cost of the French lessons which I took every day of the week except Saturday and Sunday from a gentleman with a mustache whose name I have forgotten. I wanted to master the language sufficiently to sign up for a philosophy course at the Sorbonne.

  The study of philosophy attracted me because I wanted to understand the meaning of the events of which I had been the victim. In the concentration camp I had cried out in sorrow and anger against God and also against man, who seemed to have inherited only the cruelty of his creator. I was anxious to re-evaluate my revolt in an atmosphere of detachment, to view it in terms of the present.

  So many questions obsessed me. Where is God to be found? In suffering or in rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses? Where does suffering lead him? To purification or to bestiality? Philosophy, I hoped, would give me an answer. It would free me from my memories, my doubts, my feeling of guilt. It would drive them away or at least bring them out in concrete form into the light of day. My purpose was to enroll at the Sorbonne and devote myself to this endeavor.

  But I did nothing of the sort, and Gad was the one who caused me to abandon my original aim. If today I am only a question mark, he is responsible.

  One evening there was a knock at my door. I went to open it, wondering who it could be. I had no friends or acquaintances in Paris and spent most of the time in my room, reading a book or sitting with my hand over my eyes, thinking about the past.

  “I would like to talk with you.”

  The man who stood in the doorway was young, tall, and slender. Wearing a raincoat, he had the appearance of a detective or an adventurer.