The Fifth Son Read online

Dear son,

  Your mother is sick and I despair. Incurable, say the doctors. She will not get up again. I imagine Job’s wife without Job and it is your mother I see.

  With you, she was still playing these last weeks; she will not play again.

  How long has she been like this, dead among the living, believing herself dead among the dead?

  Difficult to establish, answer the specialists. But I know: a long time. Since the ghetto. I mean to say: since that night in the ghetto, since the night of the separation. That is the appropriate word for it, my son: a separation between beings, words, moments.

  Nothing was going right: that is what we thought in the ghetto. All the calculations were wrong. The forecasts, the illusions, the assurances: a cosmic error had insinuated itself into the crevices of life and mind.

  That night, in an act of primal uprooting, your mother broke with all of us, and with herself.

  We did not realize it until later.

  Now.

  Is she at least closer to you?

  Your father

  My son,

  Do you know that I am looking at you? I would so like to listen to you, but you are silent. Are you afraid to break the silence? Are you afraid to speak to me? Afraid to frighten me? But, son, nothing frightens me anymore. Even death only oppresses me. I look at it and I am glad that it is mute. What would I do if it began to speak to me, to speak to me of you?

  I look at you, my son, my gaze is seeking yours. Your eyes make mine sparkle, your eyes glow in mine. What do they see? A limited, impoverished future? A sullied, desecrated eternity? Speak and I too shall speak.

  Of the two of us, you are the one who has the right to say anything. You have measured the frailty of so-called immutable laws, you have plumbed the depths of the abyss. You have seen and endured man’s truth. Have you seen God, tell me?

  I think of you, my son, and I am troubled: my knowledge comes between us as a wedge. It keeps me alive and relegates you to the distance. A private insight into the future? You are my future, my son. “And mine?” you might well ask me. But you ask nothing. Your silence both drives me away and attracts me and I seek refuge near my Master whose philosophy would surely amuse you.

  As for me, I recognize the value of meditation suspended in time; to meditate on something is to renew it. Only I am afraid, I write to you and I am afraid. I speak to you and I am afraid. In me, nothing but fear renews itself

  Your father

  My son,

  Can you explain the mystery of death to me? It is as difficult to understand as the mystery of survival.

  Why me? Why your mother? Our parents must have entrusted us with a message when they left us: I should like to retrieve it. Or at least locate it. Make it mine. Make it me.

  I am speaking to you, my son, in order to convince myself that I am still capable of speech. The silence within me at times becomes so heavy that my heart comes close to bursting. But the fact is: I don’t want to part with this silence. I am searching for a special course: one that lies between words and silence. As I am searching for a special time: one that lies between life and death. No, let me correct myself: between the living and the dead.

  I am searching for you, my son.

  But I have never done anything but search for you. I search for you in the void that rejects me. I search for myself in you whom I have, however unwillingly, abandoned.

  Your father

  MY MOTHER, yes, my mother. What can I say? My poor unhappy mother. He is awaiting her recovery, her return to society, to life, while knowing all the while that her prison is of a special kind: the kind one never leaves.

  I think of my mother often, yet I never speak of her for fear of hurting my father: why reopen his wounds?

  I was six at the time of our separation. I remember: the white-coated doctor, the efficient orderlies, the ambulance, the stretcher; the neighbors in the street whispering about the drama, the tragedy of that poor Rachel Tamiroff who … And my father, pale, his lips white and trembling, his gaze that of a beaten and humiliated man. And my poor mother complaining that something was lacking, lacking: “What is it you are lacking?” the physician is asking her. “Is it air? Money?” She does not hear him. While the orderlies bustle about the room, she goes on whispering that she is missing something, something.… As for me, overwhelmed with pain and also with shame, I sit in my corner and watch, I become my own gaze, I feel that my gaze is torn from its source and is leaving me just as my mother is leaving me.…

  And now she is gone, my mother. Without my having had a chance to tell her that simple, unequivocal truth: that her solemn beauty upset me, that her anguish tore me apart, that her delicate fingers, her long eyelashes drew me toward her as to a shadowy shore. Did she know, does she know, that I needed to see her fine, impassive face to defeat the demons that lay in ambush? Yes, my mother allowed herself to be carried away without my having had a chance to confess my love to her.

  Never will she know the tenderness or the violence she inspired in me. True I was small but I knew how to love and my memory is good.

  Leaning against the table in the big living room, her back to the window overlooking the noisy avenue, she proved to be astonishingly clever at repairing a torn piece of clothing, a twisted candlestick, a broken watch. She knew how to concentrate on whatever she was doing, except that sometimes, abruptly, as though struck by an invisible whip, she would freeze. And then, a shiver would run down my spine.

  Yet I loved to watch her. Unbeknownst to her, from afar, troubled, tense, I would look at her hands, stare at her throat. At times she would smile and my heart would turn cold. Who was she smiling at?

  Whenever I spoke to her I blushed. The fear of giving myself away made me clumsy, incoherent. I pursued and fled her foolishly. She intimidated me and, strangely, I seemed to intimidate her too, though I was just her five- or six-year-old boy. Like criminals we would turn away the moment our eyes met. To show me her affection, to demonstrate my love to her, we each needed a pretext, an alibi. She kissed me only when I was sick. Since she left, I have rarely been sick.

  Now it is she who is sick. I do not know the cause of the illness that is draining her. I only know that she is in treatment, that she is allowed almost no visitors, that the physicians are pessimistic—oh, I know a great deal about that: I know that I am living her years as well; I feel them being added to mine; my father knows it too but we have both chosen not to speak of it.

  Why? Out of simple respect for her? For fear of aggravating her condition? I have a vague feeling that my father’s silence is not unrelated to me. I may be wrong, I may be exaggerating; I may be inventing my faults so as to punish myself and thus participate in his torture from afar. In any case, one day I asked my father the question:

  “Her illness, when did it start?”

  “Not today and not yesterday,” he replied.

  And, after a moment of awkwardness, he went back to the Meditations of his beloved Paritus. I had the impertinence to insist:

  “Forgive me, Father, but couldn’t you be more specific?”

  When, finally, his eyes came to rest on me, I read in them so many tormented thoughts that I understood: it was better to acquiesce.

  Still, I do remember an incident which, though undoubtedly insignificant, could, after all, provide a small clue: my mother looks at me but does not see me; she does not see me but she speaks to me. It seems strange but that is how it was; the image is clear in my mind.

  It is Friday evening. Father is in the House of Study next door. He will be home soon. The living room: welcoming, bright, the whiteness of Shabbat … the majesty of Shabbat … and, above all, the peace of Shabbat.… My mother, who has recited the blessing over the candles, sits down and stares at the small flickering flames. Overcome by a new emotion, I dare not move. I lean against the wall, I admire my mother’s hair, my mother’s dress. Deep inside me I know that her beauty, her serenity, spring from her love, from her love for me. And so I take one step forwa
rd and another, I sit down at her right, I place my arm on hers, I want her to look at me. She looks at me, she speaks to me, she uses words that should make me happy; they are so gentle and tender; but they evoke in me a nameless sadness, for I know, I feel that she does not see me.…

  I am about to burst into tears when the door opens and my father appears: “Good Shabbos,” he greets us with the smile he reserves for Shabbat. We do not answer. His expression changes when he sees my mother who is still speaking to the flickering candles. “Go into your room,” he whispers to me. “I must be alone with your mother a moment.” He comes for me an hour later. During the meal, I observe my mother. She no longer looks at the candles. But neither does she look at us. She looks at nothing. From that moment on, her gaze is empty.

  Must I say how saddened I was by her “departure”? Is it really necessary? I found myself roaming from room to room in the apartment like some fugitive, jumping from activity to activity, hovering in corners, seeking refuge under the table, never allowing my father to leave me. I followed him like a shadow, to the library, to the supermarket, to the House of Study. I helped him do the housework, rearrange the books on the shelves. I was panic-stricken at the idea of remaining alone, abandoned.

  To make things worse, my mother’s “departure” coincided with the Passover holiday. Brooklyn welcoming spring is like an orchestra tuning its instruments. Everything is moving, changing, the street is but one long resounding laugh. Not this time. Not for me. No sooner was I outside than I would begin to anxiously pull at my father’s sleeve: “Let’s go home quickly. Someone may be waiting for us.…”

  I shall never forget that Passover. Together, my father and I had bought the wine and the traditional foods. We had refused our neighbor’s invitation, having decided to celebrate the Seder at home. Inside me a small obstinate voice said: “She will come back and won’t find us.” And then too, like every year, for every holiday, Simha-the-Dark, my father’s friend, had joined us to share our solemn repast.

  Before blessing the wine, my father looked me straight in the eyes and placed his hands on my shoulders:

  “The Law orders us to celebrate this holiday with joy,” he said. “Make an effort.”

  “And … Mommy?”

  “Do it for her.”

  “But … what about her? What is she doing right now? Promise me that she too will be joyous during the coming week.”

  My father took a deep breath but said nothing. Simha-the-Dark spoke for him:

  “Your mother is a good Jew, she knows the laws; she knows that we have no right to hide from joy.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said through my tears.

  “Never mind,” said Simha-the-Dark. “The Law does not require us to understand, only to live in joy.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Imagine,” said Simha-the-Dark, “imagine a joy that, for almost four thousand years, is waiting for you to be received; without you, it would roam like an orphan in search of a home.”

  “I cannot imagine. As soon as I begin to imagine, I see Mommy, I see nothing but her.”

  “Let us say Kiddush,” said my father, beginning the prayers. Then came my turn to ask the traditional four questions: In what way is this Passover night different from any other night of the year? In the book of the Haggadah, my father read the response: For we were slaves, long ago, in Egypt. But that was not the real answer. I knew the real answer: this night was different because my mother was in exile, far away. And Simha, Simha-the-Dark, nodded his agreement.

  “Yes, you are right. Your mother is in exile. Just like the Shekhina who is also in exile. That is why your joy is not complete and neither is ours. And neither is the Lord’s.”

  According to tradition, Father was to narrate the Exodus of our people toward freedom, but Simha chose to tell me another story first:

  “The Shekhina is a beautiful and sad woman crowned with a halo of shadow and light. One meets her at midnight wherever Jewish children call her to heal the sick and console the wretched. One day a Roman officer glimpsed her hovering over the ruins of Jerusalem. Dazzled by her somber beauty, he fell in love. He moved toward her but could not reach her. It was as though he were treading water; all he could do was look at her from afar. It broke his heart. Then and only then did she smile at him. And because of that smile he remained in Jerusalem till the end of his life. To his friends he explained: since the woman cannot be mine, I shall content myself with her shadow.”

  When Simha expounds on his favorite subject, he accedes to the sublime; I would gladly listen to him from morning till night. As he speaks, his eyes light up and shine with a special, disquieting brilliance. His delivery is slow and spellbinding; he discards the words as if they were green fruit; but he strokes and warms them before he parts with them.

  “Do you know the story of the great Rabbi Haim-Gedalia of Ushpitzin?” he asks me another evening. “He interceded with God in favor of an innkeeper who was notorious for his many sins. ‘Very well, I forgive him,’ said the Almighty. Whereupon, pleased with his success, the Rabbi began to look for sinners to defend in heaven. Only this time he could not make himself heard. Overcome with remorse, the Rabbi fasted six times six days and asked heaven the reason for his disgrace. ‘You were wrong to look for sinners,’ a celestial voice told him. ‘If God chooses to look away, you should do the same.’ And the Rabbi understood that some things must remain in the shadows, for the shadows too are given by God.”

  Dear Simha. Does he really think that I believe his shadow stories? I am no longer a child, but in his presence I become one. Even today I feel like a very small boy when he speaks to me or when he listens to me. With my father, it is different. With my father I sometimes feel old, very old, don’t laugh: I feel older than he.

  And as resigned.

  Like now, in this German station, on this German train. I call on him to be my witness and speak to him almost as his peer:

  “I am like you after all. As incompetent as you, and as ineffective. My head in the clouds. Incapable of accomplishing a mission. Incapable of endowing the deed with a redeeming purpose. Don’t tell me I should not have come, I know that. Haven’t you ever done things you shouldn’t have? Haven’t you ever made journeys that led nowhere? Haven’t you followed this same road, Father? Admit it, admit without fear or shame that we have failed together. Together we shall taste defeat.”

  The train is picking up speed. Sounds of windows being slammed, doors being opened, fugitives being shot: it is a flight, a flight from slavery, a race toward freedom. Suddenly I forget the train, I see myself running side by side with my father, breathless, terrified, I question him: Mother where is Mother I want to know I must know but I shall know nothing. Another change of scene: Passover eve we are recounting, chanting, the ancient tale of our ancestors’ departure, a wild, exhilarating race, I am looking for Moses and Moses is looking for us and the Egyptian soldiers are hounding us, driving us into the sea and they are following us into the sea and it is victory and like the angels I love to sing and like the angels I am reprimanded by God one does not sing in the presence of death one does not sing of death and I say to God thank you thank you Lord for having killed our enemies thank you for having killed them yourself thank you for having spared us that task and God answers one does not say thank you in the presence of death one does not say thank you to death.

  But then, Father, when does one say thank you? And to whom?

  I REMEMBER another Passover. Once more there were two of us reciting the Haggadah. Simha-the-Dark for once was silent. Suddenly he interrupted us:

  “Reuven,” he said to my father, “fulfill your duty as a Jewish father.”

  My father looked at him perplexed but did not answer.

  “The Haggadah,” continued Simha, “tells us of the four sons and their attitude toward the question. The first knows the question and assumes it; the second knows the question and rejects it; the third endures the question with indifference;
the fourth does not even know the question. There is, of course, a fifth son, but he does not appear in the tale because he is gone. Thus, the duty of a Jewish father is to the living. When will you finally understand, Reuven, that the dead are not part of the Haggadah?”

  “And you,” said my father with a forced smile, “when will your ears finally hear what your mouth is saying?”

  “It’s different for me,” said Simha. “Hanna lives in my thoughts, but she does not dominate them. And then too, Reuven, you know it well: I am not anybody’s father.”

  My father looked up at him briefly and without answering, continued the reading of the prayers and poems as though he had never been interrupted.

  After the meal, he turned to his friend and said:

  “You may be right.”

  And to me:

  “I’d like to tell you something of my youth.…

  “In the beginning, I was like the first son. Faithful to Jewish tradition, I obeyed its laws with fervor. I had but one desire: to resemble my father, a simple, upright man, a man of flawless integrity. Then came the demon who seduced me: like the second son, I rebelled against our people. Like him, I said: your history does not concern me. Like him, I listened to the Egyptian prince who, in James Joyce’s Ulysses, beseeches Moses not to renounce his luxurious way of life, the grandiose adventures and the civilization that the Pharaoh’s kingdom reserved for its intelligent and privileged citizens. Whatever would he do with this poor tribe in the immense and deadly desert? A logical and convincing argument that Moses had the courage to reject; not I, I found it attractive. That’s the truth, my son: the Jews left Egypt but I chose not to follow them. Instead I followed a friend who had left our village to continue his studies in Davarowsk.

  “I was fascinated by that friend. His original and blasphemous theories succeeded in demolishing everything while attempting to explain everything. His theories propounded not only the right but the duty of Jews to repudiate their ancestral bonds, to assimilate, to forget their heritage. To forget so as to be able to become assimilated, that was his motto. He observed none of the commandments, bowed to no interdiction, celebrated no holiday. As far as he was concerned, Napoleon and Kant had dethroned Moses and Joshua: down with religious dogma, long live emancipation. A pragmatist and opportunist, he had himself baptized and tried to convince me to do the same. A young missionary had persuaded him. With me, they failed. The image of my parents protected me: there was a limit to the humiliation, the pain I could inflict on them. I defined myself as an agnostic. Hoping still to win me over and convert me, the young missionary arranged for my admission to the University of Davarowsk. There, I immersed myself in the study of the classics. I discovered One-Eyed Paritus to whom I devoted myself body and soul and soon they were predicting a brilliant academic career for me. My essay on Paritus made a splash in the capital; it was widely discussed in the press.