The Forgotten Read online

  “So the voice realized it had lacked manners, and introduced itself: ‘I am Rabbi Zadok, the first rabbi to have the honor of serving this holy community; for three and a half centuries now I have watched over it from this grave.’ Well, I wanted to tell him what I thought of that: You have a funny way of watching over your community, my good rabbi; go take a stroll around town. But I didn’t say it. You understand, by the nature of my job I have to show respect for rabbis. So I just said, ‘I’m happy to meet you, and what can I do for you?’ Well, believe it or not, he had work for me. ‘Do you know the last rabbi’s house?’ he asked me. Well, sure I knew it. I told him, I’ve been there a thousand times in connection with my job. ‘Good,’ said Rabbi Zadok. ‘Go into the room he used for an office. In the closet, on the left, you’ll find an old cane that used to be mine. Bring it to me.’ Tell you the truth, I was scared silly. As long as I was at the cemetery, in the dark, I felt safe. But outside? Outside, there were Germans. And Hungarian police. And wild Nyilas. And the worst of them all, Zoltan, may his name be blotted out. Why run dangerous risks? But the first rabbi of our holy community calmed me down: ‘Don’t be afraid, Hershel. You’ll be safe, I promise. And you must know that I always keep my promises. Go and do what I ask of you.’ How could I get out of it, a poor little gravedigger like me?

  “So I stood up, pulled down the cap I inherited from the last gravedigger, sent a quick prayer up to God and headed for the gate. I opened it carefully and took a look in the street. Deserted. Good for you, Hershel. Let’s keep going, Hershel. I moved out even more carefully, hugging the walls. It was pitch black, but I can see in the dark. It’s the third house after the great synagogue. There’s the synagogue, there’s the house. Nobody around? Nobody. Some police in the yard, maybe? The yard is also deserted. And the stairway? I’m all alone. Hey, watch it, I tell myself, you may bump into a burglar in the rabbi’s apartment. No. Not tonight. All’s quiet. I go into the living room. It’s empty. I mean, really empty—looted, cleaned out. The bedroom: the same. So the looters must have taken the cane! No. It’s there. It waited for me. That amazing first rabbi, four centuries ago, he’s somebody. He knows what he’s doing. The cane’s right where he said it would be. I take it in both hands and carry it like a dead baby, like that, out in front of me, to the rabbi’s grave. I set it gently and respectfully on the tombstone. ‘Thank you, Hershel,’ says the now familiar voice. You’re welcome, I say, ready to flee. ‘No, no,’ says the voice, ‘your job has just begun. Take that stick and go knock on Rabbi Mordecai’s tomb, and Rabbi Yehuda’s, Rabbi Israel’s, and the tombs of all this community’s rabbinical judges. Tell them that Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim summons them to his presence tomorrow at three in the morning. Tell them in my name that it is a matter of our people’s survival.’

  “I don’t much like this, it’s not my line of work, but do I have a choice? I do what the voice told me to do. I take the cane and make my way through the cemetery. Of course I know every lane, and where each tomb is, and how each stone tilts. I can predict the exact moment when a leaf will fall, and how long it will take to reach the ground. So there I am walking around waking the dead. I come to Rabbi Mordecai’s tomb and I knock on it with the cane and I say, ‘Rabbi Mordecai son of Shalom, forgive me for troubling your sleep, but this congregation’s first rabbi, Zadok son of Chaim, sent me. He summons you to a special meeting at three in the morning. It’s about saving our brothers and sisters.’ I wait around for a while to see if the message has been received. A murmur rises from the depths of the earth. I could hardly hear it, but oh, did it scare me: Yes, the message has been received.

  “I move along to Rabbi Yehuda’s resting place and knock three times with the cane and say, ‘Rabbi Yehuda son of Joshua, I’ve been sent by Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim.’ I do the same thing and say the same words for all those summoned by the congregation’s first rabbi. And then I go back to report on my mission: they were all invited, they’ll all come. Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim says he’s pleased, and adds, ‘Don’t run off, Hershel; I still need you. A rabbinical court cannot sit without a shammes, a beadle: you’ll be our beadle.’ Well, that was all I needed. Me, a beadle? Not on your life. Not for anything. But how can I turn down the first rabbi of a congregation I’ve seen live and grow and die? At your service, good rabbi, I tell him. ‘Thank you, Hershel,’ says the voice. ‘And now rest. It is after midnight. You have less than three hours to restore your soul. To enjoy repose.’ Easy for him to say, enjoy repose. On one hand, I have all these Jews disappearing and on the other, all these illustrious rabbis gathering, and he wants me to enjoy repose. Well, all right, I think, I’ll try anyway. If my friend the first rabbi wants to help me out, I’ll fall asleep. It can’t do any harm. So where are you, angel of sleep?

  “I woke up just before three o’clock. No: something woke me, and I don’t know what it was. A strange sound, or the feel of a hand tugging at my arm. Maybe a drop of rain, or dew? Whatever, I was at my post on time. Suddenly Rabbi Zadok’s voice rose over the cemetery: ‘Beadle,’ it intoned, ‘are all the participants present?’ I answered timidly that I don’t know. How would I know? I can’t see the dead. ‘Call the roll!’ Well, all right, I could do that. I knew the names well enough. I can recite by heart every name on every tombstone. Rabbi Yehuda. Rabbi Shalom-Shakhna, head of the rabbinical court from 1880 to 1914. Rabbi Israel and Rabbi Mordecai. So I called them all, one after another, in the same order as Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim, and one after another they answered, ‘Present.’ Our village’s first rabbi said, ‘I took the liberty of calling you together to ask your help: our community is dying, and it is our duty to save it.’ Someone answered, ‘God of Abraham, I didn’t know. I was asleep.’ Another echoed him: ‘God of Isaac, I was lost in my studies.’ And a third lamented, ‘Why is this punishment visited upon our sons and theirs?’

  “Then came a learned discussion, too learned for me. They all chimed in, each one with a different thought. Everybody knew how to revoke the decree. And there I was, listening but not understanding. How much time passed while they debated? I don’t know. I only know that the color of night faded and dawn was about to break. The council realized this, too, because Rabbi Zadok called to me, ‘Hershel, listen carefully. It is too late now for us to go into town, but we’ll go tomorrow night. You will guide us. We want to enter every house of study or prayer, in all the synagogues, and find out firsthand what the enemy is planning for the people of Israel. We also want to visit the homes of its children. You will show us the way, and you will point out the most deserving among them, so we can bring help and consolation to our descendants. Do you understand what I have told you?’ Well, like the fool I am, instead of saying, Yes, yes, good rabbi, I heard it all and understood it all—I had the gall to give him advice. ‘Why don’t you ask one of your companions to be your guide? Go and ask Reb Malkiel Rosenbaum. He’ll explain the situation. What he suffered, very few of our martyrs suffered; what he did, no one else will ever do; he knows what’s going on. Let Reb Malkiel guide you along the pathways of Jewish torment.’

  “I was sure the whole council would blast me in all its authority and all its wrath; who was I to tell them what to do? But to my great surprise, the illustrious Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim spared me the thunder of his displeasure. For an endless moment he said nothing, so I wondered if he’d even heard me, if I’d actually spoken the words I shaped in my head. And then, with a sweetness unheard of, infinite sweetness, a sweetness that moved me to tears, he said to me, ‘You’re right, Hershel. I did not think of Reb Malkiel; I should have, but I forgot him. May he forgive me. I’ll ask him to join us tomorrow night. You’re right, Hershel; he is the perfect guide.’ And then, after such kindness from an illustrious tzaddik that I’d never met before, I couldn’t hold back the tears. And I who never cry, I sobbed like an orphan on his father’s tomb.

  “Instead of disappearing into the woods with the partisans, I slept all the next day. I was exhausted. Too many emotions and too many happ
enings; my poor head couldn’t take it all in. I wasn’t hungry and I wasn’t thirsty. I was sunk in the deepest sleep, and I dreamed, but I can’t remember my dreams. I only remember that before midnight I was back at Rabbi Zadok’s tomb. They were all there, Reb Malkiel included. First he led us to the great synagogue; it was full of excrement, and it reeked. And Rabbi Mordecai, the one they call the tzaddik with the broken heart, cried out avinu malkenu, our father and our king, Your enemy profaned the sanctuary, what is left to us to do? Then Reb Malkiel led us to the hasidic shtibl of Wizhnitz; the sacred scrolls lay in the dust. And Rabbi Israel, the one they call his people’s ardent soul, uttered a cry that must have pierced the heavens: ‘God of our fathers, are we guilty? Could we have prevented this scandal, this shame?’ The Reb Malkiel led them to every other synagogue in the town: the tailors’, the dreamers’, the traveling salesmens’. All pillaged. Broken windows, smashed pulpits. And Rabbi Yehuda, the one that the poor particularly adored, began to sob: ‘Is there then no place for You, O Lord? In this city of sin, who will console You?’ And Reb Malkiel opened the doors of all the empty homes in the ghetto, to find a moldy crust of bread, a child’s slipper, a prayer book with torn pages. But where are our children? cried the rabbinical council. Where are their parents and their teachers? And all the council wept, and cried out in pain—all but Reb Malkiel, whom the enemy had already rendered mute. Then I went up to him and said, ‘You can’t speak, Reb Malkiel, so I’ll speak for you; in your name I say that one day the children of these children will come back here and take their revenge; they will punish this city that did not resist evil.’

  “I wonder if the people sleeping in that city heard us. The dead made a noise not of this world, believe me. It wasn’t noise but something else, something beyond. A quake: not an earthquake but a time quake. Thunder so powerful that the living, suddenly deafened, confused it with silence. My head was splitting. You don’t know me, but you can believe me when I say that nothing impresses me. That night I wasn’t myself. Our procession marched through the shadows with more zeal than any since the world is world. Have you ever seen dead people walking and talking at the same time? Dead people imploring the living to stay alive, dead people who want to become avengers? That night I saw dead people—I who have seen many—who filled me not with pity but with admiration.

  “Shortly before dawn Rabbi Zadok, surrounded by his companions, stopped and asked if he could speak in their name; they answered yes. ‘God of our ancestors,’ he cried, ‘in the name of who have guided this holy Jewish community, I say again what teacher Moses said to You one day in the desert: Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of book which Thou hast written.’ Well, believe it or not, he’d hardly finished talking when a bolt of lightning split the sky over the cemetery. ‘Too late,’ murmured Rabbi Yehuda ‘Too late,’ acquiesced Rabbi Mordecai. And suddenly I heard myself, bolder then I ever dreamed I was, saying, ‘No, it isn’t too late. The Jews in the last convoy aren’t dead yet. They’re in the train on their way to death, but they aren’t dead yet. They can still be saved.’ You won’t believe this, but all those rabbis who sit there near the throne, they congratulated me for showing them the way. ‘And if we go to the train?’ asked Rabbi Mordecai. Rabbi Zadok said, ‘A good idea, but impossible; you know we cannot leave this city until the Messiah comes.’ A discussion broke out: from the Halakic point of view, could they or could they not soar from here to the train? Rabbi Zadok gave his opinion: ‘The law is the law.’ ‘No,’ said Rabbi Yehuda, ‘the law applies only to the living. But we may ask God to blot our names from His book if the Jews on the train aren’t saved.’ ‘Too late,’ said several indistinct voices. On the horizon, night was already withdrawing behind the mountains. ‘Woe unto us,’ said Rabbi Zadok in a low voice. ‘We are the dead rabbis of an extinct congregation.’

  “At dawn, after visiting every empty home, after weeping over every vanished soul, they returned to the cemetery. Like a good beadle, I followed them at a distance. At the tomb of Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim they gathered in silence for a minute or an hour or more. Then Rabbi Zadok turned to Reb Malkiel and said, ‘Now then, Malkiel: is it really too late?’ And Reb Malkiel nodded his head, which was as it had been before the beating: Yes, it is too late. And all cried out, Woe unto us, it is too late! And Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim said in a clear strong voice, ‘God of our fathers, there will be no more prayers to You from this city! The voices of children reading Torah will never again be heard within these walls! The hearts of these people will never again yearn for their Redeemer! Is that what You wished?’ I’m sure God heard him; I’m even sure God answered him, though I never heard God’s voice. I heard Rabbi Mordecai’s voice, murmuring, ‘Since the enemy has taken our children and their parents into captivity, since he has delivered them unto death, how can I find sleep again?’

  “Now dawn was breaking in the east. ‘We must go back now,’ said Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim. ‘Stay where you are, Hershel, and as you are. You must deliver the sentence. Every night except the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, you must come here with my cane. You will knock at the tomb of Reb Malkiel the Martyr. And the sleep of this city’s burghers will be broken.’

  “You may take me for a fool, but that’s just what I do, every night. Except once, when I decided to go and knock somewhere else: on the door of a real son of a bitch, the worst … I really wanted to put him to sleep for good.”

  He swallowed another glass of tzuika and began laughing and sobbing at once. Malkiel thought, There we go, he’s drunk. I’m spending my day with a drunkard. Malkiel was sure he had made a mistake, as if someone at a crossroads had given him bad advice and sent him down the wrong road.

  The gravedigger leaned toward Malkiel and breathed, “And you, Mr. Stranger—what are you doing in the cemetery at midnight?”

  “But I’m not in the cemetery at midnight,” Malkiel protested.

  “That’s what you think,” said the gravedigger, laughing louder. “You can cheat the others, but not me, and not the dead. We’re keeping a close eye on you. Tell me, what are you looking for, at the grave of Malkiel the Martyr? What’s your mission? And who sent you on it?”

  Tell him the truth? Admit everything? Tell him about Elhanan’s illness? Explain his true mission, his need to rescue Elhanan’s memory? Tell him the story he could not know, the story of Elhanan and his shrinking universe, a universe expiring from moment to moment, from memory to memory? “I don’t sleep well,” he said at last. “I have insomnia. So I take walks. I wander around.”

  The gravedigger pounded the table with both hands, upsetting the glasses. “That’s a good one! You don’t sleep well! But in this damn town everybody sleeps badly. That was the wish of Rabbi Zadok son of Chaim. As long as this cane is in my hands, the people of this town will not sleep at night!”

  Malkiel shuddered. “And later on? When you’re gone?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Somebody else will take my place.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, aren’t you nosy! I have faith, I do. Rabbi Zadok will find someone, believe me. He can even do without someone if he has to. The cane will do the job all by itself.”

  “And it will come and tap on your grave, too?”

  “And on yours,” said the gravedigger. His face was visibly swollen, a clown’s face, the face of a monstrous, gleeful giant. And his eyes: red, wild, fierce. They were glaring at the tavern, the street, the whole town, from every tree, every roof. His eyes were the stars. If he closed his eyelids the whole town would sink into shadow. And not just the town. I am beginning to understand, Malkiel thought. And if forgetfulness was linked to fear?

  An image: hunched over an ancient book, my father called to me. He was upset, and his breath was labored. I sensed that he was more distressed than usual. “Did I ever tell you the story about the Rabbi of Apt?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one about his promise.”

  “No, Father.”r />
  “Before he died, the famous Rabbi Abraham-Joshua of Apt made a strange promise to his weeping disciples: to do all he could, up there in heaven, to hasten the coming of the Messiah. ‘know,’ he added, ‘that other masters have made the same promise. The first, transported directly to paradise, naturally forgot his promise. The second, drunk on divine light, forgot it on the threshold of paradise. The third, knowing what had happened to his predecessors, swore to his followers, “I shall resist: I shall make my plea heard the instant I leave you here below, before I have even glimpsed the gates of paradise.” And indeed he held fast against the angels who wished to take him before the celestial court. “I will not move a step,” he said. “My people have suffered too much and too long, and they deserve deliverance. If the Messiah will not descend to earth, then too bad, I refuse to budge.” At that, the angels had an idea. They half opened the gates of paradise; that way the Rabbi could hear the other sages studying Torah in fervor and with love; what he heard seemed to him so beautiful, so original, so true, that he ceased thinking about anything else, and he forgot his promise.

  “ ‘I shall not forget,’ promised the Rabbi of Apt.

  “Apparently, he too forgot,” said my father. “But he had a good excuse: he was already dead. I have no excuse; I’m not dead and yet I’m forgetting True, I made no promises. But you, my son, you made a promise to me. I’m counting on you.”

  Have I been a good son? Malkiel stood before the house of his father. Most of the time surely yes, but not always. There were his affairs, his journeys, his mistresses. Inge. He shouldn’t have. Leila. He shouldn’t have. A wave of remorse broke within him. Was that why his father had sent him here? To repent?