And the Sea Is Never Full (5 page)

I make my first trip to Norway, a nation that will become important to me in my life as writer and activist. Must I mention the awful, embarrassing fact that in Sighet I knew nothing of this nation and its people? Norway for me was one of those places of which I didn’t even know that I knew nothing.

Invited by the publishing house Aschehoug to promote
The Jews of Silence
, I go there rather skeptically. No sooner have I landed than a journalist advises me to meet Johan Borgen. Who is he? And why should I make his acquaintance? The journalist explains that when
The Town Beyond the Wall
had come out a few years earlier, it was warmly received, largely because of a very favorable article by this great writer, the revered dean of Norwegian letters. “He is our own Mauriac,” the journalist tells me. “Evidently he has taken you under his wing.” This explains the presence of the large number of journalists at a press conference organized by Max Tau, my editor at Aschehoug. I speak of Russian Jewry’s plight; of their struggle, nonviolent but determined; of their hopes, nourished by their thirst for identity as much as by their need for freedom. The Norwegian people are always on the side of the victims, and I sense this among the listeners. Norway is one of the rare countries to have opened its doors to “displaced persons,” the sick ones who were rejected by the big Western powers at war’s end. It is easy to become attached to this country, to these rather reserved men and women who are respectful of your moods, your need for privacy and friendship. Like the British, they favor understatement. In Norway, reticence is a national virtue. (Do you know the story of the young Norwegian who was so in love with a woman that he finally told her?)

For me a city, a country, is first of all a face. Oslo has many.

Professor Leo (his friends call him Sjua) Eitinger is the author of an important study on the psychosomatic effects of the Holocaust on its survivors. I speak of him in
Night:
He was present at my knee operation at Buna concentration camp. He is a distinguished-looking man. His gaze is open, his voice authoritative. “I have read your testimony,” he says. “I believe we come from the same place.” Astonished, I ask: “From Sighet?” “No. From a place that could be called anti-Sighet.” “Auschwitz? Buchenwald?” I whisper. “Both.” Suddenly an image
comes back to me: the infirmary. That voice, I recognize that voice. “It’s you who …?” He smiles: “Possibly.” I tell him that I owe him a debt of gratitude. “For taking care of you?” No. For showing me that even
over there
it was possible to have faith in mankind.

During that same trip, I meet someone who is in fact from Sighet. Better: We attended the same
heder
. Surprised, I call out to him: “What are you doing here?” He bursts into laughter. “And you?” he asks. Haim-Hersh Kahan left with the first transport, together with the town’s rabbis and my two mad fellow disciples of Kalman the Kabbalist. After the liberation he returned to Sighet via Vienna and Budapest. How did he come to settle in Oslo? Like all survivors’ stories, his had much to do with chance. On his way to the United States, he went through Sweden, where he met a beautiful local Jewish girl, Esther. Haim-Hersh stayed in Scandinavia, went into business, and made a fortune; he now plays an important role in Oslo’s Jewish community. He still sings as he did long ago and tells stories of times that only he and I remember.

And so death did not triumph everywhere. Nor did evil. Old bonds are renewed, and new ones are formed.

Max Tau, my editor, is an original. Small, agile, and ever watchful, he appears to be in constant fear of missing something—a rumor, a thought, an encounter. To him I owe the Norwegian publication of my first books. He introduces me to my translator, Gerd Host Heyerdahl, poet and professor at Oslo University. Max, a writer and Jewish immigrant of German origin, had fallen in love with a Norwegian, Tove (taller and less talkative than he), and with Norwegian society.

Since I don’t know his language and he doesn’t know mine, he speaks to me in German and I respond in my Germanized Yiddish. In company he pretends to understand everything, but in reality he hears nothing for the simple reason that he’s deaf, which does not prevent him from participating in the conversation. He laughs at the right moment or becomes serious when required. What upsets him about me? My refusal to “forgive.” A Germanophile, he has introduced the important German writers to Norway and proclaimed himself an advocate of reconciliation with Germany. When he obtains a German literary prize for me and I tell him that I do not feel right about accepting it, he does not conceal his hurt.

We have a shared admiration for the great Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, author of
Zorba
, whom he has known and celebrated for
years, and about whom he tells me a thousand anecdotes and tales of adventure.

And then there is Johan Borgen, my ally, my friend. I owe him in Norway what I owe François Mauriac in France. Borgen lives two hours outside the capital and goes only rarely to the city. His house is isolated, protected. There are flowers everywhere. Several large, light-filled rooms. A few small cubicles—reminiscent of ancient monastic cells—are reserved for guests.

The friendship is instantaneous. From the first encounter, without preliminaries, we go straight to the essential. We speak of writing and of death, the eternal in the moment, the word and despair.

Long and thin, almost emaciated, Borgen radiates an air of rigor and flawless character: Nothing, neither honors nor adversity, can bend him. His intelligence is sophisticated, demanding.

His wife, Martha, is strange. People tell me that she was once one of Oslo’s most beautiful women. Now she insists on dressing like a witch, possibly to chase away the demons she believes in and whom, in order to blunt their evil powers, she hides in secret places in her enchanted garden. She lives only to protect her husband—from the living, of course, as well as the demons. After my second visit she confesses to me that her love for Johan is absolute and that she will do anything to keep it intact. I have the feeling that she sees a rival in every being her husband might love. In short, she is jealous of everybody, including me.

They have a beautiful daughter, Anne, a novelist who lives in Oslo. Her brother, Espe, does not leave his father’s side. Borgen tells me that years ago Espe was the victim of a serious accident. His body broken, his brain damaged, he lay day and night without regaining consciousness. The doctors said he would never recover, but Johan rejected their verdict: The word “never” did not suit him. Riveted to his son’s bedside, he held his hand. Day and night, he clasped his dying son’s hand in his own. How is one to explain the transfusion of energy and strength that occurred? Slowly, Espe came back to life.

And here he stands before me, smiling as he gazes at his father. There is between them a bond of tenderness, trust, and wisdom that I feel privileged to witness.

Johan is already ill when we first meet. How does he manage to be stronger than the cancer that is gnawing at him? He suffers in
silence. And when we walk along the beach, we speak of other things. He is not religious, but the words we use are. He seems to know how to cope with the body’s failings. But the failings that attack the soul, the evil inherent in life—how is one to banish them without denying life itself? Could the saints possibly know secrets that are inaccessible to mortals? Is that what saintliness means: the art of freeing oneself from all temptation, therefore, from all human traits?

I am told that before he died, Borgen asked for a glass of champagne. He raised it to his family, turned his eyes toward the absent or perhaps toward absence, and emptied the glass after uttering the usual
skol
.

It was his last word.

In 1970 the free world is stunned and outraged by the Leningrad trials.

A quixotic episode. Heroic as well? No doubt. A group of young Russian-Jewish daredevils decided to hijack a commercial Aeroflot plane to Scandinavia. From there they intended to continue to Israel. Their effort was part of a larger plan devised in Jerusalem in hopes of attracting world attention to the plight of Soviet Jews. It was a dramatic but dangerous idea: You don’t play games with the KGB. The group was awaiting the green light from the Israeli authorities, when an informer who had infiltrated the dissident movement gave them away. The group’s members were arrested, imprisoned, judged, and condemned by a Leningrad tribunal. Several death sentences were pronounced, provoking waves of protest in all the capitals of the West. The largest demonstration took place in Brussels in February 1971, bringing together eight hundred delegates from thirty-eight countries. At the head of the Israeli delegation was David Ben-Gurion—an imposing presence, regal but melancholy. The lion of Judea was too old. Though physically still vigorous, he was barely coherent. Many of us regretted that he had been pulled out of retirement.

In my brief address I told a Hasidic tale: Rebbe Uri of Strelisk knocks at the door of his friend Rebbe Moshe-Leib of Sassov and asks for his help: He is collecting funds to enable a poor young girl to get married. However, since he himself knows only impoverished people, he has been unable to gather the required sum. Could Rebbe Moshe-Leib offer him some advice or help? And the Rebbe answers: “I, too, beloved brother, meet only those in need; I don’t know any rich men. Therefore I cannot give you any money. All I can do for you is dance.
And that should be sufficient.” “In conclusion,” I said, “let me tell you that on Simhat Torah in Moscow, I have seen these young Jews dance. It was indeed sufficient.” I speak of their courage wherever I go. In Paris I find myself seated next to filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and his young colleague Efrem Sevella, just arrived from Moscow. In flavorful Yiddish the young man recounts the struggle of the scientist Mikhaïl Sand in confronting the Soviet regime. Sevella explains that his comrades had all pitched in to enable him to “ascend” to Israel. He speaks with emotion and conviction. But a few years later, Sevella publishes in France a vicious book,
Farewell Israel
. Every possible negative statement about the Jewish state can be found there.

These demonstrations of solidarity were not in vain. They succeeded in obtaining the commutation of death sentences. In time, all the accused arrived in Israel.

These events have left me with a manuscript, an unpublished novel called “The Trial of Krasnograd.” Together with my diary, it remains in my
private genizah
. Soon I begin work on the story of Paltiel Kossover, the proud but star-crossed hero of my book
The Testament
, which deals with the Communist experience, not the Holocaust. You see, mostly I keep my word. I stay away from the “forbidden theme.”
^*
At this moment I am also working on
Souls on Fire
, a book I live and retell with joy. I put into it everything I received from my grandfather Reb Dodye: his love of his people, his passion for songs and stories. As I write, I see him on a Friday night as he enters the light-filled house with dancing steps. He sings and I sing along with him into my very prayers and silences. It is with him and his youngest daughter, my mother, in mind that I compose my Song of Songs in homage to Hasidic tradition; it was their tradition and it remains mine. This explains why that particular book occupies a special place in my work and in my life. More than my fictional tales, it is linked to my early life, to my childhood. I have said it often: Hasidism is a world that is mine; it contains my murdered dreams but also my efforts to bring them back to life.

How to define Hasidism? A group in revolt against the establishment? A mystical sect? A religious movement with social overtones?

In my novels Hasidism becomes framework and vantage point; the Besht (the Baal Shem Tov) or Rebbe Levi-Itzhak of Berditchev
comes to the rescue of my characters, just as they responded to my requests long ago.

A strange destiny, that of the Hasidic movement. It survived the Holocaust, whereas the majority of its followers became its victims. The killers succeeded in assassinating millions of Hasidim but not the ideal of Hasidism, which is now popular once again, especially with the young.

As the apotheosis of an evolving humanism, Hasidism places the emphasis on the sacred aspect of man and that which makes him human. In a society dominated by the awesome magic of technology, young people discover with wonder the Beshtian precept that the mystery of the universe resides in man, just as the secret of life resides in life itself.

And then, let us not overlook the sociophilosophical elements: Our generation resembles that of the Baal Shem Tov. Just as in his time, it is necessary today to build on ruins, to hold on to something—another human being, a faith. Hasidism? An antidote to resignation. What is its lesson to its disciples? Is it difficult to sing? Never mind. It is because it is difficult if not impossible to sing, to pray, to hope that we must try. Even if living in a world dehumanized by its own guilt is difficult, never mind. Let one person, just one, extend his hand to a beggar, a fugitive, a refugee, and life will become meaningful for others. Evil exists? Death is triumphant? Never mind. Nothing is as whole as a broken heart, said Rebbe Mendel of Kotzk.

There is in Hasidism a quest for nature’s beauty, a glimpse into its secrets. In his youth, the Besht was a tutor. He accompanied children to
heder
and taught them not only to sing but also to see. He prevented them from moving too quickly. Look at this tree, he would say; and the sky; and these mountains. At a time when Jewish children were used to walking fast, fearful of being assaulted by hooligans, the Besht made them slow down, to take in the beauty of the landscape. A human being in God’s universe, that is a thing of beauty.

Yes, I do like to celebrate the movement that personifies celebration.

But celebration of what? Of Torah? Yes. Of God? Yes again. Of life? Even if it is made of poverty, misery, and suffering?

These are troubling questions that I discuss in another volume,
Somewhere a Master
. In it I describe the great Masters’ challenges to the sadness and despair in which they and their disciples lived. How did
they succeed in overcoming the pain they must have experienced as they listened to a barren woman, a father reeling under the burden of debt, the parents of a dying child? How did they manage to keep their faith intact as they confronted the injustices that befell their followers and the entire Jewish people?