The Forgotten Read online

  Books by ELIE WIESEL

  Night

  Dawn

  The Accident

  The Town Beyond the Wall

  The Gates of the Forest

  The Jews of Silence

  Legends of Our Time

  A Beggar in Jerusalem

  One Generation After

  Souls on Fire

  The Oath

  Ani Maamin (cantata)

  Zalmen, or The Madness of God (play)

  Messengers of God

  A Jew Today

  Four Hasidic Masters

  The Trial of God (play)

  The Testament

  Five Biblical Portraits

  Somewhere a Master

  The Golem (Illustrated by Mark Podwal)

  The Fifth Son

  Against Silence (Edited by Irving Abrahamson)

  Twilight

  The Six Days of Destruction (With Albert Friedlander)

  A Journey into Faith (Conversations with John Cardinal O’Connor)

  From the Kingdom of Memory

  Sages and Dreamers

  The Forgotten

  A Passover Haggadah (Illustrated by Mark Podwal)

  All Rivers Run to the Sea

  And the Sea Is Never Full

  Copyright © 1992 by Elirion Associates, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Originally published in the United States by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1992.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wiesel, Elie, 1928–

  [Oublié. English]

  The forgotten / Elie Wiesel ; translated by Stephen Becker.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80642-0

  1. Children of Holocaust survivors—United States—Fiction.

  2. Holocaust survivors—United States—Fiction. 3. Fathers and sons—United States—Fiction.

  I. Becker, Stephen D., 1927– .II. Title.

  PQ2683.I3209213 1995

  843′.914—dc20

  94-3677

  v3.1

  For Marion, Always

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Elhanan’s Prayer

  Malkiel’s Words

  An Excerpt from Elhanan Rosenbaum’s Diary

  Elhanan Rosenbaum’s Words

  A Letter from Talia to her Husband

  Farewell

  About the Author

  Respect the old man who has forgotten what he learned. For broken Tablets have a place in the Ark beside the Tablets of the Law.

  —THE TALMUD

  ELHANAN’S PRAYER

  God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, forget not their son who calls upon them now.

  You well know, You, source of all memory, that to forget is to abandon, to forget is to repudiate. Do not abandon me, God of my fathers, for I have never repudiated You.

  God of Israel, do not cast out a son of Israel who yearns with all his heart and all his soul to be linked to the history of Israel.

  God and King of the universe, exile me not from that universe.

  As a child I learned to revere You, to love You, to obey You; keep me from forgetting the child that I was.

  As an adolescent I chanted the litanies of the martyrs of Mainz and York; erase them not from my memory, You who erase nothing from Your own.

  As a man I learned to respect the will of our dead; keep me from forgetting what I learned.

  God of my ancestors, let the bond between them and me remain whole, unbroken.

  You who have chosen to dwell in Jerusalem, let me not forget Jerusalem. You who wander with Your people in exile, let me remember them.

  God of Auschwitz, know that I must remember Auschwitz. And that I must remind You of it. God of Treblinka, let the sound of that name make me, and You, tremble now and always. God of Belzec, let me, and You, weep for the victims of Belzec.

  You who share our suffering, You who share our wait, let me never be far from those who have invited You into their hearts.

  You who foresee the future of man, let me not cut myself off from my past

  God of justice, be just to me. God of charity, be kind to me. God of mercy, plunge me not into the kaf-ha-kallah, the chasm where all life, hope and light are extinguished by oblivion. God of truth, remember that without memory truth becomes only the mask of truth. Remember that only memory leads man back to the source of his longing for You.

  Remember, God of history, that You created man to remember. You put me into the world, You spared me in time of danger and death, that I might testify. What sort of witness would I be without my memory?

  Know, God, that I do not wish to forget You. I do not wish to forget anything. Not the living and not the dead. Not the voices and not the silences. I do not wish to forget the moments of abundance that enriched my life, nor the hours of anguish that drove me to despair.

  Even if you forget me, O Lord, I refuse to forget You.

  MALKIEL’S WORDS

  My name is Malkiel. Malkiel Rosenbaum to be exact. I feel that I must set it down. Superstition? To ward off bad luck? Perhaps I merely want to prove to myself that I have not yet forgotten my own name. Could that happen to me, too? One morning I could pick up my pen and it would not obey me; it would refuse to follow my orders for the simple reason that I would no longer be capable of issuing them. Malkiel Rosenbaum would still exist, but he would no longer be master of his own identity.

  I am forty years old. Malkiel Rosenbaum is forty years old. That, too, I must set down; it is important. I was born in 1948 in Jerusalem. I am as old as the State of Israel. Easy to remember. I am as old, and as young, as Israel. Forty. Plus three thousand.

  What does it matter? Only memory matters. Mine sometimes overflows. Because it harbors my father’s memories, too, since his mind has become a sieve. No, not a sieve: an autumn leaf, dried, torn. No, a phantom which I see only at midnight. I know: one cannot see a memory. But I can. I see it as the shadow of a shadow which constantly withdraws and turns inward. I hardly glimpse it, and it vanishes in the abyss. Then I hear it cry out, I hear it whimper softly. It is gone, but I see it as I see myself. It calls: Malkiel, Malkiel. I answer: Don’t worry, I won’t leave you.

  One day it will call no more.

  The shock was so violent that he lost his balance and almost fell to the damp soil; the name on the tombstone, tilted as if under the weight of its weariness, was his own. Malkiel ben Elhanan Rosenbaum.

  A wild notion crossed his mind: could he already be dead? He could not remember living through his death. So what? That meant nothing. Who’s to say that the dead carry their memories into the other world? Despite himself he leaned forward and deciphered the date: the month of Iyar 5704. May 1944. I’m a fool: I was not yet born. How can you die before you’re born? But then, why am I here? Could I have forgotten? No, forgetting is not your problem, not yet, but your father’s, right? I’m here to remember what my father has forgotten. But do I live only to remember? Suppose life were only your ancestors’ imagination, or a dream of the dead?

  Leaning on the tombstone of this grandfather who bore his name, he was suffused by an obscure and almost animal anguish, a black tide, menacing, portending disaster. Beyond the trees he saw the reddish-gray roofs of the town hall and the school. Beyond the tombs he saw the blood of the dying day and heard the moan of the yawning twilight. Living, he thought with
dread. They call this living.

  It’s the same with love. They say, If I stop loving I’ll die. And then one day they stop. And they’re still alive. They call that loving. They call that choosing life. God has ordained that. As He ordains faith. So He always wins: the opposite of God is still God. To flee God is also to draw near Him. You cannot escape Him. Am I right, Grandfather Malkiel—you cannot escape Him?

  Answer me. Help me. Come to our rescue. Your son needs you, and so do I. My father no longer understands anyone and no one understands him. As if he’d gone mad. But he hasn’t. They say a madman, like an animal doomed to sacrifice, uses an intelligence different from ours, or at least a primitive form of ours. But my father’s intelligence has been crippled. He’s sick, Grandfather, and I’m fighting to help him.

  His disease has a name, but he refuses to hear it. He will not let it be spoken in his presence. You’d say he was afraid of it. As if he were dragging a procession of soulless, faceless phantoms behind him. Strange, this apprehension. Is it because in his house, in the small town of his childhood, they avoided naming certain illnesses, certain disasters, for fear of being noticed by them? And now does he think he can fend off the disease by not naming it? Whatever his reason, I must respect it to the end.

  He pressed harder on the cold stone, as if he wanted to embed himself into it, or at least leave a visible and lasting imprint.

  From a distance a hoarse voice hailed him: “Hey, stranger! Where’d you disappear to?” It was Hershel, the caretaker-gravedigger, a clumsy giant with a head carved of granite and a face of blackened bark. He seemed out of breath. “I lost sight of you, stranger. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not so young anymore. My legs, oh my legs! If I were married I’d say they couldn’t chase my wife anymore. They don’t carry me around the way they used to. It’s not their fault. Here we say the years too can make us grow old. Ah, if I were your age …”

  “I’m not so young either,” Malkiel said.

  “Cut it out. You’re making fun of me. I could be your great grandfather.”

  Well, thought Malkiel, my great-grandfather’s grave is here, too; I must try to find it.

  “But I’m talking, talking, and you have to leave. We’re locking up. And be careful. A Jewish cemetery is a dangerous place even if it’s abandoned.”

  “Dangerous for whom? For the dead?” Malkiel was a bit annoyed.

  “For everybody. Except me. The gravedigger never has anything to fear. But other people … they don’t realize. A cemetery is a special place, and an old one even more so. Look around you, how calm it is. And if I told you that was only appearances, a trick? You bet. The dead are like you and me: jokers slip in with the heroes, and between them they drive us crazy. They play all kinds of games. They will grab your coat and rip it, and grab your eyes and rip them, too. You’re a happy man, stranger. You don’t know about all that.”

  The gravedigger sat heavily on a low tombstone, across from Malkiel. Mopping his brow with a huge patched handkerchief he’d pulled from an inside pocket, he went on. “Listen, stranger. A visitor from a nearby village showed up one day, a long time ago, before the war, and asked me to show him a relative’s tomb. I showed it to him. All of a sudden he turned to me and said, ‘Who’s that open grave for?’ Now, I’m the gravedigger, and I couldn’t remember digging a grave, for the simple reason that no one had died that week. And maybe you know that tradition forbids us to dig a grave before the person has died, for fear of tempting the Angel of Death. So who dug that open grave? The dead themselves? So I said to this visitor, Listen, friend, if I were you I’d get out of here now and go far, far away, as far as you can. He refused. I don’t believe in these superstitions, he said, disgusted. Well, you can guess the end. He left and went to the inn and a beam fell on him. They buried him the same day. In the grave waiting for him.”

  The gravedigger gestured as he spoke. He was enjoying himself. I’ll give him a good tip, Malkiel decided; he’s earned it. Any man who spends his life among the dead deserves a good tip. Do the dead enjoy his stories?

  “All right, then, let’s go,” said Hershel the gravedigger. “In these parts night falls fast, because of the mountains.”

  Malkiel followed him out of the cemetery. At the gate a bucket of water stood ready for them. He washed his hands according to custom and gave Hershel two packs of American cigarettes. The gravedigger bowed low. “They’re worth four bottles of tzuika,” he said, patting his belly. “Listen, someday I’ll tell you about the Great Reunion. I owe you that much. Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” Malkiel said.

  Hands in his pockets, his throat dry, Malkiel walked along the river. Night was about to invade the town.

  Arriving there two weeks earlier, on a beautiful morning in August—or Elul, by the Hebrew calendar—Malkiel had planned to stay only a few days: inspect the cemetery, stroll about, visit his family’s old home, soak up the climate, the ambiance of the place, and find a trace of a certain woman whose name and address he did not know. Then he planned to go back, see his father and reconcile with Tamar. He could not have foreseen that his visit would extend for weeks.

  The weather was fine that Thursday. The day promised to be mild, almost warm, with a clear sky and an invigorating breeze. In the distance pines bowed as if listening to a story. The dewy fields smelled sweet, fresh and rich. The familiar sights and sounds were those of a village waking: a bucket clattering up from a well, livestock being led to the trough. Outwardly, it was just another one of the villages that the traveler passes through between the Dnieper and the Carpathians. Cockcrow at morning, shepherd’s flute at evening. Haughty horsemen, their hair flying; stooped and careworn laborers. Harsh-featured widows, old men with empty or suspicious glances.

  Malkiel looked for someone to ask the village’s new name. He chose a humpbacked, toothless peasant. Unfortunately, the man did not understand the question. Malkiel tried German; nothing. A word of Romanian? The peasant shrugged, muttered an unintelligible phrase and departed. Malkiel went on his way. He passed by the railway station and discovered, with some emotion, a sign: BOZHOI. It was his great-grandfather’s village.

  To one side the valley with its earthen cottages, to the other the shadowy mountain, at once shielding and shattering. They slept when the mountain slept, they lay awake, huddled, when the mountain set its wild beasts howling in the storm. Then, young and old, men and women, believers and infidels, all took on the same face, hunted, resigned; they waited for the lull, to close their eyes and dream until the next day came with its pains and its pleasures; they showed their faith in nature’s kindness.

  Before leaving the village, Malkiel came upon a peasant woman talking to her cow. Which answered her. Farther along, a schoolboy, half asleep, emerged from his cottage and walked along close to the walls. Seeing Malkiel in his fancy rented car, the boy fled without looking back. There you are, Malkiel thought, you frighten children.

  Finally he saw the town. From afar it seemed drowsy. Nearer he was surprised by all the activity.

  Malkiel reached his hotel and filled out the obligatory form. Profession: journalist. Purpose of trip: to study the inscriptions on old tombstones.

  Grandfather Malkiel, if you can hear me, heed my words. They are meant to be an offering, a prayer. They come from far off, a message of faith from your son, who needs your intercession above.

  Let his health be restored, let his past not slip away. Grant him the power to break his solitude, and me the power to bear it.

  Your son is devoted to you; he told me that so I would know, so I would remember.

  If you can see, look at me: my father’s memories are mingled with mine, his eyes are in my eyes. His silences, born of dread, frustration and despair, live in my words. My past has opened to his, and so to yours.

  Your son is still alive, but can one call that living? He is walled into the instant, cut of from before and after. He no longer gazes at the heights, and his soul is a prisoner.

  It wo
uld be indecent of me to feel pity for my father; but you, Grandfather Malkiel, take pity on your son.

  That is what I have come to tell you. That is why I have come so far.

  If I could gather a minyan I would happily say a prayer for your soul; but there is no minyan. So all I can do is beg you to come to his rescue.

  “I waited for you,” Lidia said. “Then got tired of it. In this country we spend half our lives waiting.”

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “Ah, that’s my secret,” she said provocatively. “I have a right to secrets, too, haven’t I?”

  Malkiel’s face clouded. She was trying to make herself interesting. Was she working for the secret police? Too bad if she was. That was a game they could play without him.

  A languid breeze wafted spicy odors from the river. Malkiel caught a few and offered them, in spirit, to his distant lady friend. Tamar liked to say that she took in the world through her nostrils. Arriving in a new place, she sniffed the air before she even looked around.

  “All right, I’ll explain,” Lidia said, taking his arm in a familiar gesture. “Obviously you’re overcomplicated. The simple things go right by you. And yet everything is simple. I knew you’d go to the cemetery just like every day. And I decided that one of these days you’d be fed up with talking to the dead, or listening to them. To relax, you’d take a stroll along the river. Everybody does that here.”

  “I could have taken a stroll in the park.”

  “Too crowded this time of day.”

  “The garden behind the municipal auditorium?”

  “Too near the police.”

  “In a nearby village?”

  “Too far. Logical, no?”

  “Absolutely. Logical.”

  They took a few steps in silence.

  Behind them, in the little town with its gloomy streets and alleys, people were eating and drinking and laughing, stopping to scrutinize an unfamiliar doorway, to admire a woman, to make sense of their longings. A pair of lovers, close by. Secret police, perhaps? The boy was pointing to a sky streaked with violent color; the girl turned to look at the impassive river. Lidia was calm. Malkiel was not. A dozen times a day he felt an anguish that stopped his breath: he couldn’t tell now if it was a weakness or an act of courage to call upon memory. Was it easy to let memory slip away? For his father it was not at all easy: he had watched it glide away inaudibly, smoothly, abandoning him to his emptiness, his heartbreak. Poor Father, wanting fiercely to pin time down, enclose it, tame it.