The Testament (24 page)

If you must know the truth, my boy, I once was very upset. Your father had just finished a philosophical poem of which I didn’t understand one wretched word. Neither did the judge, but as was his wont, he congratulated your father, who abruptly turned his head, as though to hide
.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, Citizen Magistrate.”

“Don’t you feel well?”

“I do. Only … it hurts. I realize my son … my son will never read me.”

And I, who have no son, felt unspeakably sad. And I, who have never cried or laughed all my life, felt tears springing to my eyes. Is that when I decided to make off
with a few pages here and there and stuff them into my drawer where the devil himself couldn’t find a thing? You never know … is what I was thinking
.

The judge, clever as always, tried to placate your father. A writer, said he, must never think of his reader as he writes; all that should matter is his truth. So write the truth, Paltiel Gershonovich, that is your duty
.

Thus your father had at least two devoted readers. I liked the stories, whereas the judge focused on the names. Before I put away the notebooks I transcribed the names onto an alphabetical index I had to keep up to date. Inge, Paul, Traub, Pinsker … then the writers and poets, both the acclaimed and the unknown writers and poets of the Soviet Union—many in prison like himself
.

In this index, there was one name which, literally, made us fly into a rage; we came close to howling every time your poet of a father chose to mention, with glee, this incredible, impossible character whose hobby it seemed to be to appear unexpectedly, in the weirdest, most outlandish places, be it the market in Odessa or a brothel in Paris. You know who I mean: that David Aboulesia, if perchance that was his real name
.

If you knew, my boy, how many agents were set on his trail. For weeks and months they searched, never uncovering the slightest clue. Abakumov himself had signed the warrant to detain him, abduct him and bring him back at any cost. He was convinced, Abakumov, that your father’s friend directed an international network on a huge scale; that he had placed his accomplices even inside the Kremlin walls, perhaps even among the insiders of … Our services mobilized our finest sleuths. Result: zero. David Aboulesia mocked the world, and, in particular, all of us
.

Do you know that he even managed to follow your father into Spain—in the middle of the civil war?

I know this place, I know this sky, I know these walls, these courtyards, these trees. Searing, spellbinding, that was the thought that never left me, that obsessed me.

I was walking through the streets of Barcelona after training in Albacete, and the landscapes seemed eerily familiar. The hills overlooking the city. When had I experienced this blurred nostalgia—as I arrived or as I left? I ambled through the streets ready to halt before a window to converse with a woman who had smiled at me centuries earlier; I cut through cemeteries, my favorite haunts, and deciphered barely visible Hebrew inscriptions. These names, these numbers recording births and deaths, I remembered them as though they were linked to my past, to my life as a man.

I was sorry that I could not write my parents the truth; it was forbidden to me to inform them of my enlistment in the Brigades. I entrusted my letters to an emissary who carried them to France and posted them in Paris. My address: care of Sheina Rosenblum. Pity. I could not tell Spain to my father.

As a child I had studied the history of the Jews in Spain—the poets, the philosophers, the scholars, the ministers in their period of splendor, then at the time of their distress—and I had loved it. I rediscovered Abulefia of
Saragossa and his messianic divagations, Yehuda Halevy and his poetic visions, Shmuel Hanagid and his prayers, Don Itzhak Abravanel and his acts of faith. I saw myself among my brothers as they were being coerced into choosing between exile and disavowal; I took my place among those who left and those who remained. I understood them all: the ones who chose disavowal made me sad, the others made me proud, and both added to my sense of richness. I felt as much at home as back in Liyanov.

And this war—atrocious, horrible but imperative—in which I was involved was mine more than I realized.

Granted that every war is madness—civil war, fratricide, is the worst of all: it reaches deeper into ugliness, cruelty and absurdity. It is like a man lacerating his own flesh out of self-hate; he kills himself so as to kill the enemy within.

Oh, yes, I wished I could have told my father about it. Told him that the Jew within me was possessed of a memory more ancient than the Communist’s. The Communist conceded to the Talmudist. During the nights of waiting at the front lines, during the long watches, from Toledo to Córdoba, from Madrid to Teruel, I dreamed of the Jewish poets of the Golden Age more than of Marxist ideology. My first poem composed under the tormented skies of Spain addressed itself to Abraham Abulefia, that unfortunate false messiah who, unable to gain recognition from his brethren, traveled to Rome to try his luck with the Pope, whom he planned to convert to the Jewish faith, no less:

One morning, among the ruins of a cemetery, much gray on a background of dirty yellow, I came upon a tombstone whose inscription made me shiver:
Paltiel son of Gershon, born the 15th day of the month of Kislev 5118
^*
and returned to his ancestors the 7th day of the month of Nissan 5178.
^†
 …

To us Jews, all cemeteries seem familiar.

Contrary to my fears, Sheina did not make a big fuss when I announced my decision to enlist. She neither burst into sobs nor did she threaten to commit suicide. She did not pull me into her arms to dissuade me from leaving. Quite the opposite: she declared herself delighted and proud.

“You shall write poems,” said she, all excited. “You shall read them to me and we shall make love.”

“And if I don’t come back?”

“There’ll always be someone to read your poems—and to make love,” she answered laughing and inviting me to come closer to admire her lips.

She bought me a knapsack, underwear and shirts, handkerchiefs and—one of her whims—a pipe.

“But, Sheina, I don’t smoke a pipe!”

“You’re a poet, yes or no? Poets who go to war smoke a pipe, don’t you see?”

We elaborated a detailed plan to enable her to forward my parents’ letters and money orders.
Will I see her again?
Some day, Sheina, some day. After the war, after the victory. We exchanged promises and appropriate wishes, and one rainy evening I took myself to Austerlitz station.

As I boarded the “Volunteer Train” I recalled my departure from Berlin. There, too, no one had been on the platform to wish me bon voyage. The compartment was jammed, but I slept through the night.

Arrival in Perpignan. The hotel is pitiful. Again! Clearly it is written that I shall never see the inside of a palace.

It is forbidden to leave the room to mingle with the regular clients, to be noticed, to attract attention.

Amusing: my ancestors left Spain and I am returning.…

I wrote a letter to my father, informing him that I was doing well—as fabulously well as “God in France” as Jews were fond of saying in Odessa, or as “God in Odessa” as they said in France.

The “guide” called at the hotel shortly before midnight. There were some twenty of us who were to follow him, including two nurses, an American—he had seen my photograph in a Communist newspaper in New York—a few Germans, Austrians, a British journalist.… There were among us former soldiers, engineers, experts in explosives. But only one poet.

The “guide” knew his way in the Pyrenees as I knew mine in my father’s orchard in Liyanov. He was familiar with every path, every brook, every rock. He knew precisely
at what moment the border guards would appear and where; he seemed able to predict what subject they would be discussing and in which direction they would turn to relieve themselves. In five minutes we had crossed the border. Another “guide” took charge of us and escorted us to the camp at Albacete, where a first selection, according to skills and inclinations, took place. I had to start from scratch. Skills I didn’t have, and my value as a fighter was surely negligible. And so I was dispatched to the “Leningrad” camp near Barcelona, where I was taught the use of light weaponry, how to throw a grenade without damage to myself, and the Communist method of moving forward under fire without ever pulling back. I carried on as best I could in order not to embarrass Sanchez—my alias of the moment—but my instructors, soon discouraged, had to give in to reality: I was too clumsy, too inept in battle, I simply wasn’t made for the noble profession of soldier. I was assigned to the service of “Propaganda and Culture.”

Of the camp and all those who gave me shelter during my stay in Republican Spain, I have retained an abundance of memories, good and bad, depressing and exhilarating. I shall always be proud to have known these men and women who had forsaken homes and families to defend this land of freedom; one can never say enough about their spirit, their comradery and courage. Physicians and taxi drivers, academicians and cesspool cleaners, disillusioned intellectuals and idealistic laborers, romantic young girls and serious and devoted activists, they came from countries near and far, peaceful and tormented, to prevent Franco from trampling on this generous people in love with sun and sacrifice. Communists and libertarians addressed one another with the familiar
tu
, we helped each other, we shared everything. In the evenings we would sing around the campfires or inside the barracks, we would
sing alone or in groups, Flamenco and Russian, French, Yiddish and English melodies; we would get drunk with words, anecdotes and hope. We felt mobilized by history in its war against the barbarians; we yearned to be strong and pure like saints anxious to sanctify the cause that ordered them to kill and die: oh, yes, Citizen Magistrate, you are too young, you cannot know.… In those days, there was still room for hope and friendship.

But … there was also sadness and horror—even more than in earlier conflicts. This war fed upon itself. The battle was suicidal—the struggle of a people challenging its own existence. Naturally, there were fundamental differences in principles, faith, ideals. Our side was fighting on behalf of human dignity, the opposite side on behalf of spiritual slavery. Yet the cruelty on both sides was identical.

Near Córdoba, in a village reconquered by our men, I saw what the Fascists had done with their prisoners: I saw the obscenely mutilated corpses, piled up in the
casa del pueblo
, and I went on seeing them in my sleep for a long time, and, for a long time, when I was with a woman, all desire dissipated at the memory of that scene. Castrated men, disemboweled women. Three Reds drowned in the same well, heads down, their feet on the ledge. Never have I felt so sick. Never have I hated so much.

I saw a group of men buried up to their eyes. Three prisoners were hanging from the branches of the same plane tree. And there were those who had been driven insane by thirst or by pain. The Fascists played with their victims before finishing them off—debasing, sadistic games they prolonged even beyond death.

Being a good propagandist, I visited the
centurias
, the Brigades, and my hatred was contagious. Our cause is just, I proclaimed, for the savagery of our enemies makes man ashamed of his humanity.

To be fair, the Loyalists did not distinguish themselves by excessive charity. Churches in ruins, crucified priests, dismembered nuns: I have seen them. And I shall not forget.

A church of the Paloma, somewhere in the region of Teruel. I remember: the statue of the Virgin on the ground; next to it, a young woman, dead, her skirts in tatters, her thighs spread apart. Next to her, another statue. And another young woman, raped. And so on, from the portal to the altar.

The International Brigades, on the other hand, behaved honorably. Because there were such a large number of Jews among them? And because Jews seem less likely to commit certain ignominies, even when vengeance is involved? A Stern, a Gross, a Frenkel, a Stein, who had come from various dispersed communities of Eastern Europe, all were humane with the other side. Not that they would ever have attributed their aversion to cruelty to their Jewish origins; rather they would have related it to their Marxist ideology. But I am certain of what I say. I
know
it to be true. Ideology had no effect upon people. With all due respect, Citizen Magistrate, some Red militiamen, Communists though they were, indulged in the same kind of butcheries as the adversary. Court martials, summary executions, torture … I was appalled.

Yes sir, Citizen Magistrate. Both sides took part in a horrible and debasing cult in which the sacrificial offerings were men and women. The war chants were different but the results were similar:
Arriba España, No pasarán
, words charged with hatred, blood and death.

In battle, though, my comrades were admirable. Their behavior under fire was heroic. One against ten, rifles against machine guns, machine guns against cannons, they undertook large-scale operations and displayed incredible bravery. No situation was desperate; no position was relinquished
without a fight: a hill would change hands six times in a single night and our men would give ground only when they ran out of ammunition. That is what I saw; that is what I saw above all.

I admired their gallantry, their regal contempt for danger, but recoiled from their cruelty. I didn’t understand: Could man be great and ferocious at the same time? Be as inspired by evil as by good? As seduced by vengeance as by solidarity? I didn’t understand then; I still don’t understand. Though I saw both, I acknowledged Fascist terror, but rejected the concept of Red cruelty. The Russian comrades I met in Barcelona reassured me: “Back home, it happened differently. The Whites—Kolchak and Wrangel’s mercenaries—did not succeed in imposing their methods on us; the honor of the Red Army remained unsullied.” But then, why was it so different here in Spain? Was our mission here less lofty?