Legends of Our Time Read online

  One morning a stranger telephoned. He was speaking Yiddish and his drawling, melodious accent betrayed his Hungarian origin. I was struck by his voice, which seemed familiar.

  “To whom am I speaking?” I inquired politely.

  If ashamed of his own name, he did not take the trouble to make up another. Instead, he had the skill of losing himself in generalities.

  “My name? Why do you ask? You don’t know me. Besides, it’s of no importance. What is in a name? A convention, a decoy. Tell me, what is more deceptive than a name? Even God has none, you know.”

  “He can permit himself that liberty,” I said, half-amused, half-irritated. “No one is likely to confuse him with anyone else.”

  “You don’t know a thing about it. Besides, who told you that that could not apply just as well to me? After all, I was created in his image, was I not?”

  I had heard this voice before, harsh, disturbed, disturbing: but where? when? under what circumstances? Could it belong to a forgotten friend? a friend returned to life? an old neighbor with an account to settle with me?

  “Do I know you?”

  “You amaze me: does anyone ever really know anyone?”

  I lost patience.

  “We’re wasting time, sir. What exactly do you want?”

  “I told you: to meet you.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Oh, none in particular. I’d like to see you, talk to you, understand you.”

  “You amaze me,” I replied. “Does anyone ever really understand anyone?”

  “You refuse? You don’t have the right.”

  He deigned to explain himself: he was what one might call an admirer. He claimed to have read certain of my works. He wanted to discuss a certain aspect which concerned him personally.

  I hardly enjoy playing the sage in direct communication with heaven. I do not live in the castle, the prince does not confide in me.

  “Then you refuse?” my reader insisted. “You don’t want to meet me, simply because my name means nothing to you?”

  I had heard that voice before, that accent.

  “Give me an hour. I absolutely must see you. It’s about your town. I think I recognize it.”

  I had not been mistaken. He came from a small town in my region. He remembered my native town, which he used to visit several times a year. He also remembered Moshe the Madman, who on two occasions had been engaged as the official cantor for the High Holy Days in the only synagogue in his village. I jumped: Moshe the Madman? Well then, that changed everything.

  “Really?” I shouted, excitedly. “You knew him? You heard him sing? When? How was he, what mood was he in? Did you speak to him? What did he say to you? When was the last time you saw him?”

  “You’re asking too many questions. We can’t talk over the telephone. It’s about him I wanted to question you. But your time is precious. Too bad. I’m sorry.”

  “Wait! I didn’t say that!”

  “I thought that …”

  “Forget what I told you.”

  Now I was the one insisting that we meet. When? As soon as possible. Right now? He was not free. This afternoon? Too busy. This evening? Already taken. He was playing hard to get: he could not see me before next week. I pleaded, he let himself be convinced: just to please me, he would free himself the next day. After his work, at seven. I invited him to my place. Too far: he lived in Brooklyn. For want of a better place, we agreed to meet at the public library on Forty-second Street. At the main entrance. All right? All right. To make doubly sure, I offered to describe myself. Unnecessary, he said.

  He hung up, laughing, and his laugh, even more than his voice, seemed familiar.

  And so I learned that in this stone-faced city someone else had kept alive the memory of that cantor who used to play the supreme fool, then the fallen fool, in order to provoke the heavens and to entertain the children.

  Who could he be? An old man retracing his steps one last time before condemning himself for good? His son, in search of the past, of old wounds? An orphan who wanted to understand? Tomorrow I would know. For the moment, the waiting was enough. I already felt less alone: my memory was no longer going to be a prison enclosing other prisons each more narrow and more suffocating than the last. The doors were going to open from the outside. At last I would have some corroboration that Moshe the Madman had really and truly existed, that he had not just forced his way into my imagination.

  I needed very much this tangible evidence, this testimony. For as a result of responding to his call, of hearing his breath, I had come to doubt his existence: I believed it a reflection if not an extension of my own. He had accompanied me so often and so far that I was ending up by confusing our destinies, our thrusts; I sang like him, I prayed like him, like him I tried to probe the silences of others, to oppose them with my own. I was he.

  It was thus with a feeling approaching gratitude that I thought of my unknown friend from Brooklyn: thanks to him, I would become myself again. Provided that nothing happened to him, that he did not die first, that he did not lose his memory.…

  Later, on my way home from work, a certain uneasiness suddenly comes over me: what if the Hungarian Jew from Brooklyn is not a stranger? I have to stop in the middle of the street and rest against the wall of a skyscraper. I review our conversation, which seems stranger now than it did that morning: why had he refused to give his name? to come to my house? Why had he waited until the last moment to mention the cantor’s name? And what had made him laugh? I am conscious of an obscure danger. If he is not a stranger, who is he? What does he want of me?

  I shake myself and start walking again. It is getting late, I am exhausted. I follow the river. Not a soul in sight. Yet, I keep stopping at every corner to look back: am I being followed? I hold my breath: nothing. Just nerves. A car comes, its headlights blind me, I jump back. It has passed. Who is driving it? Don’t think about anything. At last, my building. The porter opens the door for me and looks quizzically at me. He thinks I am drunk, I’m with someone. I go up to the twenty-fourth floor. My room. I am afraid to turn on the light. Groping, I move toward the bed, I undress in the dark. I feel I am being watched. To sleep. To hide myself in sleep. A thousand hands reach toward me and summon me: I am afraid, but I let them carry me away, I want to give myself up to that voice, to understand why it sounded so familiar; I am afraid, but I want to understand why I am afraid … and so round and round until I fall asleep.

  An hour before the rendezvous, I stationed myself at the entrance to the library. The department stores were pouring their shoppers out into the street, where wave after wave of them flooded the sidewalks. Pedestrians and drivers were engaged in their daily battle. There was no end to the congestion. The heat gave the passersby a dull look of resignation. Men and women, young and old, walked hand in hand. Some out of habit, others so as not to get lost. The crowd was getting larger by the minute.

  Standing motionless, to one side, I scrutinized those sweating faces: would I recognize the one I was waiting for?

  At precisely seven, a man came up and stared right at me. He had not recognized me. But I did recognize him. Those smoldering eyes, those puffy lips, that stooped back. The rest hardly mattered. His appearance did not count. In the past, he had been dressed only in rags. Now he appeared elegant in his light gray suit, with matching tie. In the past, he used to play the beggar; now he was playing the rich man.

  “Moshe,” I murmured in a choked voice.

  He held out his hand.

  “Hello. Glad to meet you. How are you?”

  His voice was grave, melodious. His gesture hesitant. And his expression disturbing, supplicating and mocking at the same time.

  I could not believe my eyes. My head was bursting. He was holding my hand in his and I did not have the strength to withdraw it. I thought: “You’ve got to think, and fast.” But I did not dare to think: who knew where my thoughts would lead me? If Moshe the Madman is alive, then all those who disappeared, lost in the mist, a
re alive, too; something has happened in the kingdom of night which we know nothing about, something quite different from what we think.

  He let go my hand and stared at me curiously, as if to test me.

  “You called me Moshe: why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Inadvertently, out of habit. It’s a name I like, it contains the history of our people.”

  It was he, my friend, the mad cantor, who was staring at me, no doubt about it. I had seen him go to his death and that was still the best proof he was alive: all those who entered, by night, the crucible of death, emerged from it by day more healthy and more pure than the others who had not followed them.

  Suddenly I understood why he had haunted me since the liberation: I saw him everywhere because he was everywhere, in every eye, in every mirror. The dead had come back to earth, all like him; he was the first link in this dynasty of madmen, he was destiny turned into man.

  He no longer had his pot-belly or his thick beard. He no longer wore his prayer-shawl, his talit katan, under his patched-up jacket. But it was the same Moshe who used to shout in the street, in front of the synagogue, at the hour of prayer: “I am burning, children, I am burning like fire! Look, children, look and see that it is in everyone’s power to burn without being consumed!” People thought he was drunk. He liked to drink. During the holidays he would go to various Hasidic groups, and interrupting their gatherings, would jump up on the table and in a single draught empty every bottle handed him. He was the king of clowns, the prophetic fool, free to do anything. The more he drank, the more his utterances gained in clairvoyance. “Yes, I’m burning, children!” he would cry. “Look at me and understand that it is with fire that one kindles fire, it is also with fire that one puts out the flame: but woe to the man who puts it out, woe to him who draws back from it. Look, children, look and see how I hurl myself down head first!”

  “Let’s go and have something,” my companion suggested.

  We found a kosher restaurant on Forty-sixth Street. The waiter placed a bottle of Slivovitz on the table. We clinked glasses. I said: “Moshe used to drink alone. I should have kept him company, but I was too young. Is it too late now? I wonder.”

  I filled the glasses a second time. A third. I emptied mine in one draught; he was nursing his, taking small sips. I thought: “He has changed, after all. In the past, he would have been impatient, he would have wanted to rush things. Is it possible that he has reached the end of his road?”

  “I read what you wrote about Moshe the Madman,” he said, grimacing slightly. “You seem to know him better than I.”

  “Better? Perhaps differently.”

  “No, better. The proof: you speak of him, he animates your writings. That’s why I was determined to meet you. What do you know about him? his background? his ambitions? his secret plans? Are you sure he was the way you describe him? that he didn’t use his madness to achieve an end known only to himself? And then, are you sure he was killed at Auschwitz?”

  I would have wanted to interrupt: “You’ve misunderstood me, I’ve expressed myself badly, I wrote badly and you misread me. Now I know the truth, and the truth is that Moshe the Madman isn’t dead nor will he ever die, just as his vision will never be extinguished.” But I said nothing and let his phrases rain down on me like a punishment I deserved.

  At last, when I could stand no more, I cried: “What do you want from me? What have I done to you? Who gives you the right to judge me, to accuse me? Moshe the Madman? He didn’t condemn anyone, but you do. In the name of what? of whom?”

  He placed his hand on mine to calm me.

  “You’re getting carried away, don’t be angry. I’ve offended you: I beg your pardon.”

  I thought: “Yes, indeed, he has changed after all. Moshe never begged anyone’s pardon, not even God’s, especially not God’s.”

  He took a swallow and continued, his voice a little lower: “I was so curious that I let myself take advantage of your kindness, do you understand?”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s drink up. The best way to evoke the cantor is to drink.”

  To gain forgiveness, he gulped down the contents of his glass; then, after a moment of hesitation, he continued: “One last question. Perhaps it will offend you. You speak of him lovingly. Always. You speak of him the way I do of my father. Why is that?”

  He wanted to tell me the story of his life, his experiences before, during, and after the war. I hardly cared to hear about them. I was becoming confused, I was beginning to lose my temper, my thoughts were getting tangled up, I was losing my way.

  “Let’s get back to your question. Why do I evoke his memory with love? Because nobody else does. Because he was no one’s father, no one’s son. Homeless, rootless, jobless: a free man, so to speak. Nothing outside tempted or frightened him. Unreliable, solitary, he made of his madness a contagious joy, a public good. A guide, he showed the way. A visionary, he never drank twice from the same cup, never invited the same experience twice. How could I recreate his image without love, his destiny without longing?”

  I could have gone on that way until morning, but I fell silent. Suddenly the idea came to me that we really knew nothing about him, except what he himself had forced us to see. Perhaps he had had a family in a neighboring village, had loved a woman, brought up children. What could we say, exactly? That he proclaimed himself a madman, that he confused happiness and poverty, lucidity and hallucination. But the rest? The side he would not show? I was beset by doubts. I took another look at the Jew from Brooklyn.

  “The truth,” I whispered. “I insist you tell me the truth. You have information I need. Give it to me. Who are you? Why does the cantor interest you? Could you be his brother? his friend? his murderer? his avenger? Could you be—his son?”

  My question seemed to surprise him. He flushed and began to blink, his eyelids seized with a nervous tic he made scarcely any attempt to control. After a moment of silence, he regained possession of himself and burst out laughing.

  “You’re joking! You’re wandering off! What an imagination you have! Me, his avenger! Me, his son!”

  “You laugh, but that proves nothing. You are laughing to conceal your little game, but I see through it. Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, in front of me. I must know everything, I tell you.”

  He became serious again and began to inspect his fingernails. My eyes clouded over.

  “Well? Nothing more to say? Too bad. If Moshe the Madman were here, he’d know how to conquer you. But he is no longer of this world. Moshe the Madman never was of this world. All the same, I knew him and have followed him to this very day. That must prove something, but I shall die without knowing what.”

  He was biting his nails, sweat was streaming down his forehead. I frightened him, that was clear. Because I was unmasking him? Or because he had just had a glimpse of the cantor’s other face? Or because he took me for Moshe the Madman himself? Sadly, he shook his head a few times, then got up suddenly to announce, in a dazed, staccato voice, that he had to leave.

  As if through a fog, I watched him make his way to the door; he stopped in front of the cashier, paid the check, gave the waiter a tip, came back to take one last look at me, then left. I should have held him back, run after him, forced him to admit everything. The cantor would have done that, but I was incapable: I had had too much to drink.

  I began to look distractedly at the other customers, who, fortunately, were not concerned about me. Young couples were smiling at each other and forgetting to eat; old people were eating in silence, as if out of spite. Little by little, the restaurant began to empty. In my turn, I got up and left, reeling. I soon found myself in Times Square again, that grim fair where the down-and-out come to unload their desperations. Bathed in neon light, numbed by music from jukeboxes, the lonely passersby drag themselves from one bar to another. I walked aimlessly all night. Then I made my way homeward, along the river, reinvigorated by the freshness of the morning breeze. The effects of the al
cohol disappeared, I regained my equilibrium, I began to see clearly. My behavior in the restaurant filled me with shame, I had made a spectacle of myself. After all, the Jew from Brooklyn, whose name I still did not know, was only a curious reader intent on meeting a fellow countryman. The rest had been the work of my sick imagination. He, poor fellow, had nothing to do with it.

  Blessed Moshe, I thought, smiling: you’ve played another trick on me. You will never change.

  And yet, I retain a question from this episode which I must add to all the other questions concerning the cantor from my town. Perhaps, in my drunkenness, I had seen clearly after all. Perhaps Moshe the Madman, being no one’s son, is the father of us all.

  10.

  The Wandering Jew

  No one knew his name or his age: perhaps he had none. He wanted no part of what ordinarily defines a man, or at least places him. Through his bearing, his knowledge, his way of taking various and contradictory positions, he aspired to embody the unknown, the uncertain: his head in the clouds, he made use of his learning to obscure clarity—no matter what kind, no matter where it came from. He liked to move fixed points, to destroy what seemed secure. He reproached God for having invented the universe.

  Where did he come from? What were his joys, his fears? What did he seek to attain, to forget? Nobody knew. At some point in his life, had he known women, happiness, disappointment? A mystery seven times sealed. He spoke of himself only to throw people off: yes and no had the same value, good and evil pulled in the same direction. Using similar tactics, he constructed and demolished his theories at a single blow. The more one listened, the less one learned about his life, about the world within him. He possessed the superhuman power of remaking the past for himself.

  He inspired fear. Admiration, too, of course. People used to say: “A dangerous character—he knows too many things.” Talk like that pleased him. He wanted to be alone, strange, inaccessible.