The Sonderberg Case (17 page)

Hans’s face had turned ashen. But Werner went on.
“Shall I tell you something else? My father died of a cancer, but it is you who killed him. He couldn’t bear your hatred of all things noble in the world. Clearly, he knew everything about you. He knew you were a fugitive. Knew that you deserved society’s contempt, and prison, if not something more drastic. Your son regretted being born, regretted being the fruit of your seed; the cancer that undermined him was the ‘you’ he had inside him, the memory of you, of your blood and your past. And now you’re so brazen as to think I’ll forgive you? If that’s the case, you’re crazy.”

Hans, transfixed, suddenly seemed frightened. Werner wondered by whom or by what: Was he afraid of the truth, or of being hunted and alone in the world, in the midst of a humanity that repudiated him?

“Yet,” he said in a hoarse voice, “I loved your father. I had other children, but he was my favorite. It was he I chose to be my heir. He was everything to me. It’s because I was thinking of his career, his future power, his conqueror’s destiny, that I took the path you abhor; it was in order to brighten this new era with pride, a pride unprecedented in the history of the human race, that I donned the black uniform. Yes, it was for him that I was intent on following Adolf Hitler and supported his plans of extraordinary conquest and glory. I wanted your lives to be pure and strong like a black diamond. Your father didn’t want to believe me and now, like him, you, too, refuse to understand.”

Werner was unable to control his indignation. “So it’s for me and my father that you slaughtered Jewish children and
their parents in the Ukraine and Poland, for us that you tortured and tormented thousands and thousands of martyrs! You repel me! And it’s disgust with you that generated the illness that was to kill my father! I hold you responsible for his death!”

Then the old man completely lost his composure. His body began to shake, his face turned pale, and his grandson wondered whether this was the effect of lost dignity or of rage.

“You were my last chance, maybe my last pride,” Hans whispered.

“You were mistaken,” Werner replied. “I repudiate you. I disown you. In my own way I disinherit you. I extirpate you from my life; I erase you from my memory.”

The old man shriveled up; his face darkened.

“So you’re saying I fought for nothing?”

“You fought for hatred, for evil and death.”

“That’s all you have to say to the German patriot I’ve always been? And that I’ll always remain?”

“Yes. That’s all. I pray that God will remove you from my path forever.”

“So I lived for no one,” Hans stammered. “And for naught.”

On the horizon, the sun had yet to set. A stronger wind shook the trees. Hans stood up and turned his back on his prosecutor and judge. Werner walked away from him with a heavy tread and offered him not even a farewell glance.

——

His grandfather’s death wasn’t a murder but a suicide, Werner told me. The autopsy revealed that he had had a lot to drink. Had it been an unintentional fall? Possibly. Perhaps Werner was responsible for his grandfather’s decision, consciously or unconsciously. Perhaps not.

So: Guilty or not guilty?

WHAT DID WERNER SONDERBERG
expect from me? Did he want me to comfort him and provide him with the arguments with which he could forgive himself? But for what crime, what offense, what mistake? Didn’t his tormented conscience testify to his innocence? And why had he chosen me as his confidant or confessor? Did he want me to tell him that if I had come across his grandfather in those days, I wouldn’t have survived? That he would have shot or gassed me, without giving it a thought, when I was a month or a year old, so as to enrich the hypothetical existence of future generations of Germans?

Suddenly, the image of my own “grandfather,” the descendant of Rabbi Petahia, loomed before my eyes. So generous, so human. He knew how to deal with his own suffering and bereavement; but what does one say and do for other people’s? What advice would he have whispered into my ear? That I show empathy for the assassin’s grandson, he, too, a victim of the Nazi curse?

I gave Anna an embarrassed smile and looked at her husband
with a sort of melancholy, as I understood that, in a sense, I had been luckier than he. I could think of my relatives without shame, whereas he had to keep struggling to free himself of his past and find a modicum of peace, if not happiness, in life. Wasn’t it my duty to help him rather than keep him at a distance? An old Hindu text was suddenly called to mind: sometimes the earth, collapsing under the burden of passions and the fear of its inhabitants, asks the gods of all humanity for forgiveness.

Overcome by a strange emotion, I did something that I had never done before: I started talking to them about my grandfather.

But I don’t remember which one.

When I returned home, I found Alika in tears.

“Dr. Feldman called; he wants to see you tomorrow.”

I then felt oppressed by a muted anxiety: the medical exam of a week ago. I’d never thought about it again.

Tomorrow is yesterday in Israel. Should I warn my two sons?

The doctor was both optimistic and preoccupied. The news wasn’t disastrous, but it wasn’t particularly good, either.

I have an enemy in my body. War has to be waged against it. Bah, I’m used to it.

THOUGH I DIDN’T KNOW IT
, for a long time I was an orphan, Yedidyah said to himself. Actually, I have always been one. And now that I know this, how can I continue to live the same life as before? How am I to let my sons know that, for some time, their father has loved them more and more? That he’s felt closer to their mother? That, yes, the grandparents they had loved so much had actually been strangers, but that they must love them, too? What more is there for me to do or undertake in this cold, cruel world in which, superficially, I am linked to so few things, so few close relatives, for they themselves are tied to a person who isn’t me? A faint glow lit up in my mind: What if I surrendered to the nihilist impulses that every man harbors in his heart? Or, on the contrary, what if I devoted my remaining years to helping others who feel they should track down their buried memories, seek out living ties, the branches of one same oak? Running until I was out of breath, ripping off masks but consoling bereaved souls, seducing seducers, laughing with old men and crying with children, stealing
from the thief, seeking serenity in one place and fervor in another? For a prisoner of fate, who dreams of freedom and solidarity, isn’t being present a sufficient motive for saying yes to humanity?

Yedidyah remembers: for reasons, at times obscure, at times crystal clear, he often wanted to be elsewhere, to run away. He wanted to go somewhere and return to an unknown past and an elusive imaginary world where someone could tell him what life was: An escape? An imposture? An error?

No, he was not going anywhere, at least not yet. Everything in its own time. He couldn’t abandon his home, his wife, Alika, the mother of his children, his “parents,” his “brother,” his “uncle,” the memories of his “grandfather.” But how is one to live inside quotation marks?

Under a cloudy, rainy sky, he sat under a tree where he often went when he was young to reflect about his more or less chimerical theatrical ambitions; he opened the diary that he kept assiduously in those days and read:

And now, sitting at the kitchen table while Alika is sleeping or pretending to sleep, he keeps turning the pages, then stops at random.

He looks for a blank page and writes:

The years go by and leave moments like scars. Angst and hope persevere in their tireless struggle.

Yedidyah is worried, troubled: he has understood that he might not have much of a future: he is no longer young, his memory is feverish, his body has trouble withstanding the weight of the years. What will the doctor say tomorrow? How much time does he still have ahead of him? How is anyone to know? Do we ever know? An assessment? Not yet. This applies to Anna and Werner, too. We don’t live in the past, but the past lives in us. Sooner or later, man rejoins those who preceded him. His two sons will live their lives in the Holy Land: there, too, one day Jews and Muslims will learn to build peace. And Alika? Her passion for the stage will not die down. She’ll continue on the path she mapped out for herself. She will have to choose her parts, her friendships. She will forget.

Is the life of man a tragedy, or a farce with no real beginning
or end? Is it the Creator’s sin or error? The memory of a memory, the dream of a delirious fit? Wise Men compare it to a speck of dust, a leaf fluttering in the wind, a world in ruins. Fine, I accept the lesson, as a warning. But have I made mistakes? Errors? Who pushed me to make them? To prove what? Isn’t a failed destiny still a destiny? In any case, in the end it will be fulfilled. God is patient, says the Koran. God is silence, says a medieval Jewish mystic. God is. He is in the wait.

In the meantime, the point is to live the truth every instant. To hope, so that others will hope in turn. The hours will be added to the hours, the nights to the nights, the masks to the faces. The sun will not be snuffed out and the blind, regardless, will walk in their darkness. God and Satan will continue to quarrel over the souls of men. As for Yedidyah, he will string words together. The angel with countless eyes will wait in the wings. The soul keeps its own chronology: Can one choose one’s previous history? One’s roots? The “father” becomes Dad and the “mother” Mom. God alone does not change. There is only one path known to a human being who lives in time: to live in the present using up all his resources, all his resilience. To make each day a source of grace, each hour an accomplishment, each wink of the eye an invitation to friendship. Each smile a promise. So long as the curtain has not fallen, everything remains possible. Somewhere on earth, each person is acting in his own play; here or there, it makes one or another stranger weep or roar with laughter. Their link is the poet’s
reward. Is life a corridor between two abysses? A Wise Man makes this suggestion. But then, what is the good of putting in an effort? One way or the other, eternity is contained in the instant that vanishes.