And the Sea Is Never Full (9 page)

But then why this shadow in her gaze?

And then comes another blow. My sister Hilda loses her husband, Nathan, a gentle, infinitely kind man.

Hilda tells me: They were on the road. Nathan was driving; suddenly he stopped and asked for a piece of candy—he who had not eaten sweets since childhood. The next moment he was dead.

Born in Tarnów, Poland, he had emigrated to France between the wars. A fervent Zionist, he dreamed of living in Israel. He will be buried there.

Bea calls me from Montreal; she does not feel up to attending the funeral. She asks me to understand; she is afraid. Of course I understand: Cancer is frightening, and so are cemeteries, even to someone as brave as my sister. “Explain to Hilda that …” No need to explain. Hilda understands. I accompany her to Israel; I am at her side at the cemetery. The entire Israeli family is there.

By chance, at the cemetery entrance I meet Moishele Kraus, the former cantor of Sighet. At my request he sings the prayer for the dead at the open grave. A distant relative gives a brief eulogy. It is my first time attending a burial in Israel. I didn’t know that here men are buried only in their
talit
, without a coffin. It is also the first time that I hear the Kaddish recited here, so different from the one said by the orphan every day of the first year of mourning. It seems heavier, harsher. It is frightening. I am glad Bea did not come.

In the United States, the presidential campaign is in full swing, noisy as ever. And this time around, mean.

Robert Bernstein, head of Random House, is intent on my meeting one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination, the senator from South Dakota, George McGovern. Marion and I are invited to dinner in a quiet restaurant.

The senator makes a good impression. He appears to be a man of integrity, obsessed not with power but with the use he might put it to. He speaks softly without moving a muscle in his face.

I ask him: “Why do you want so much to be president? The campaign is harrowing; it depletes you. After all, you are an influential and respected senator. Wouldn’t it be wiser to strengthen that position, which is unanimously respected?”

McGovern responds: “Nixon must be defeated. He is evil incarnate. And I am the only one who can beat him.”

How naive of McGovern. He did not realize that he was the only one who could not defeat Nixon.

Moreover, the sitting president is doing rather well. The Watergate scandal is still to come. Foreign policy dominates the news. Sure planes are bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, but isn’t it Nixon who, together with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, makes historic visits to China and Moscow? Not only will Nixon take the elections, he will win by a large margin.

The night the results are announced, I see young students weep.

It was in 1973 that
Le serment de Kolvillag (The Oath)
was published in Paris. It is a bleak novel, devoid of hope. With the exception of the later novel
The Forgotten
, it is without doubt the most depressing fictional tale my pen has ever committed to paper. While working on it, I am deep in a depression that on the surface seems unwarranted. Things are going well, both professionally and personally. Marion has become my translator, so I no longer worry about the English-language editions of my work. Our one-year-old son’s smile delights me. Teaching is exciting; my books are being bought by an increasing number of publishers abroad. Robert McAfee Brown at Stanford University, John Roth at Claremont, Harry Cargas in St. Louis, Lawrence Langer in Boston, and Irving Halperin in San Francisco all incorporate my books into their programs. And yet I sense disaster. As the writer Cynthia Ozick observes: “It is as though, in your novel, you foresaw the Yom Kippur War and the exasperating solitude of Israel.” In truth, never has the Jewish state been so close to catastrophe.

Why did I set the action of this novel at the beginning of the twentieth century? To dissociate it from my personal experience, to distance it from the era of
Night
?

The theme: A young stranger wishes to die, and it falls to a wandering old man named Azriel to dissuade him. What can he tell the young stranger that will renew his will to live? He tells him a story—his own, the one he had vowed never to reveal.

Through this story Azriel describes the life and destiny of an
annihilated Jewish hamlet. It is all there: friendship and hatred; fanaticism and terror; the chroniclers and their fate; the tensions between societies, religions, and generations; testimony and silence; silence above all; silence as means and as end.

October 5, 1973. The Yom Kippur War, terrible and shattering. We learn the news during services. Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, dressed in white as was the high priest of long ago, asks the congregation to pray with increased fervor. In the middle of the
Musaf
service I am called outside: I must urgently call the Israeli Mission. I remove my
talit
and go to the synagogue office. A diplomat requests a statement for the press. Is it true that the Germans often chose the Day of Atonement to heighten their campaigns of brutality against the inhabitants of the ghettos? As a rule I am wary of such analogies. But today I say: Yes, the Germans knew the Jewish calendar and used it against us. I return to my seat. The congregation is deep in prayer, reciting the
Amidah
. And I realize that this is the first time since liberation that I have violated the sanctity of the holiest day of the year.

The year 1973 contains more bad omens than promises. Yasir Arafat is reelected to head the PLO. In Chile, Salvador Allende is assassinated by the enemies of democracy. In Southeast Asia the war continues: Tons of explosives fall on Laos and Cambodia. In Paris the negotiations between Henry Kissinger, representing Nixon, and Le Duc Tho, Ho Chi Minh’s emissary, seem to be going nowhere. In America, the general public follows the news from the various fronts with resignation. But there is a new interest: Watergate. And the forced resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, indicted for accepting bribes from private companies.

And now, the war against Israel.

This one is unlike the others. In past wars, the Israeli army had always imposed its own rhythm, its own strategy. In this war, the adversary managed to deliver the first blow, unleashing a striking offensive.

Depressing days, oppressive nights. I have trouble concentrating as I face my students. Rebbe Nahman and his princes, the Besht and his legends, no longer hold my thoughts, which leap toward Suez and the Golan on fire. The news reports from Israel are crushing. What am I to do? How could I help? Write articles, make speeches? The time for that is past.

As always, when Israel lives through a crisis I feel like the medieval poet Yehuda Halevy, who said that his heart was in the East though he himself lived far away, in the West. Though I reside in Manhattan, my thoughts are elsewhere, across the ocean, in the land of our ancestors.

I spend hours listening to the radio, reading the newspapers, watching television. I play with Elisha, sing him his favorite melodies, drink in his smile, but not even he can lighten my mood.

Less than a week before the start of hostilities, Palestinian terrorists had attacked an Austrian train transporting Russian-Jewish emigrants. Was it meant as a diversion? There were rumors to that effect. The incident forced Golda Meir to make a quick, unpleasant trip to Vienna to meet Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, who, she told us, didn’t offer her so much as a glass of water. Another rumor: An Israeli spy in Egypt was said to have sent secret information about a planned Syrian-Egyptian invasion. Were his Israeli handlers too preoccupied with the crisis in Vienna to react? Third rumor: The same spy or another highly placed agent of the Mossad was said to have sent on Yom Kippur eve even more precise information, specifying that the offensive would be launched on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. It appeared that a low-level officer, having misinterpreted the information, took the initiative to designate 6 p.m. as zero hour, which was four hours too late. It was whispered that the staff generals were still with Golda and Moshe Dayan when the Egyptian artillery opened fire on the defenses along the Suez Canal.

At the time these rumors were not known in Israel, at least not by the public at large. Overwhelmed by the gravity of the news coming from the battlefields, Israelis felt, once again, isolated and abandoned.

Western Europe was a disappointment. Not a single country—not even France, Great Britain, or Germany—authorized the giant American planes, crammed with arms, to refuel at their airports. An unforgivable stance. On every front the war favored the aggressors. There were terrible battles on the Golan, a bloody retreat in the Sinai. On land and in the air, Tsahal (the Israeli army) was enduring unprecedented losses in human lives and equipment. And the world let it happen.

One more rumor, a persistent one: It was said that Golda had given the order to ready the ultimate option. That was why the White House suddenly gave in to the Israeli government and established an aerial bridge for military use between America and Israel … to prevent
the first nuclear conflict since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, Israel has always denied possession of atomic weapons.

A Socialist leader told me that he had witnessed a London meeting of the Socialist international leadership urgently called by Golda Meir, shortly after the Yom Kippur War. A frosty silence hung over the hall when she began to settle accounts with her ideological and political comrades: How could they have betrayed the only democratic state in the Middle East? How could they have turned their backs on the sole Socialist government of the region? She ended with a few words that sent shivers through the audience: “What did you think?” she asked. “That confronted with death, Israel would go down alone?” It seems nobody applauded Golda. Nobody came to pay their respects. Had she shamed or frightened them by alluding to the nuclear capacities of Israel?

In the end, after the tragic failures of the early days, Tsahal astounds the world with its military genius. The invading armies are defeated. After crossing the Suez Canal, Ariel Sharon’s tanks advance toward Cairo. And in the north, Israeli troops push to within thirty-seven kilometers of Damascus.

And yet the mood in Israel is oppressive. The evening news shows the handsome faces of the many fallen soldiers and officers. Never before has the State of Israel suffered such losses. Sadat’s surprise attack has shaken the Jewish state to its core.

At the very onset of hostilities I decide with Sigmund Strochlitz, my survivor friend from Connecticut for whom Bendin remains as alive as Sighet is for me, to show our solidarity by organizing a trip to Israel for a group of influential American Jews. The plan is to bring along medical supplies for the army, which, according to press reports, are dwindling fast. We draw up a list of some hundred names among the wealthiest and most respected of the American Jewish community. Forty decline immediately. Twenty promise to think about it. Thirty say: Maybe. In the end, Sigmund and I are the only ones. Marion would like to go, but then decides to stay with Elisha.

The El Al flight is filled with Israelis going home. The first rows are occupied by Abba Eban and his entourage. They work throughout the flight. From time to time a crew member brings them radio dispatches.

Silence falls over the plane as we land. Our first visit is to Sigmund’s relatives, children of survivors. He rings the doorbell. The
door opens and, not expecting his visit, they almost faint. They mention names: This one is in the Sinai, another is en route to the Golan. As for me, I go to see no one: I call no cousin, no friend. I would be ashamed to tell them that I have come for just one day, one night.

We take rooms at the Tel Aviv Hilton. It looks empty and dark. In the morning we join a group of foreign journalists heading for the northern front. Our escort is a young officer I know only by name, the future minister Amnon Rubinstein. On the bus someone calls out my name. I look up and see André Schwarz-Bart. By a strange quirk of fate, we are always together, André and I, whenever there is reason to testify for those who live within us.

I whisper my impressions into my pocket recorder. They are meant for Elisha. If he listens well, he’ll also hear the sound of mortars.

I want to go up to Jerusalem to meditate at the Wall. Impossible. A quick trip to the Sinai? Impossible. Ask friends to intercede? Surely they are mobilized. The only planned visit of our lightning trip is to the military hospital Tel-Hashomer, to hand over the medical supplies to my friend Dr. Bollek Goldman, codirector of the hospital. Bollek takes us on his rounds. Before the severely wounded, he describes their heroic military feats. He introduces me to an officer from a prestigious tank division. From between his bandages his eyes are scrutinizing me. He whispers unintelligible words. Bollek leans over him. “He has read your books,” he says. “He wishes to shake your hand.” I hesitate. “Go on,” Bollek urges me. I step forward and hold something resembling a hand. The wounded man’s lips are moving. He whispers to me and no words have ever moved me so much.

Back in New York, I intently follow the aftermath of this war that the Israeli press has
dubbed Hamekhdal
, the war of incompetence. People are angry. Golda wins the elections but loses the confidence of her party. As a result she must resign to make room for her young ambassador to Washington, General Yitzhak Rabin.

The wounds of this conflict have never healed. Headed by Justice Agranat, president of the Israeli Supreme Court, a High Commission of Inquiry was named to assess the responsibilities of those who failed to foresee and prevent the aggression. This commission responds to a real need; the country is confronting a crisis of confidence. Every day it is shaken by a new “affair.” Politicians accuse one another, generals justify themselves. Israel no longer trusts its leaders. Did it also lose pride in its army?

•   •   •

Two years later, Marion, Elisha, and I are staying at the Sharon Hotel at the beach in Herzliyya. One day I get a call from General Eleazar, “Dado,” as Israelis fondly call him. I had met him at the home of General Haim Bar-Lev, his predecessor and faithful companion during the Six-Day War, but I hardly know him. The Yom Kippur War had marked the end of Eleazar’s glorious military career, the Agranat Commission having forced him to resign as commander in chief of the army. “Are you also avoiding me?” he asks. “Of course not,” I protest. “I respect your privacy, that’s all.” He wants to meet. “When?” I ask. “Right now,” he says.