The Time of the Uprooted (13 page)

Gamaliel, unable to master his embarrassment, hurriedly threw on his clothes and fled.

“It’s dangerous to look where we’re not supposed to,” the doctor comments. “That’s why we close our eyes when we’re making love. You learned that afterward, didn’t you?”

“I learned a lot of things,” Gamaliel replies. He’d like to touch her hand, her arm, caress her hair, her neck, her face, offer her his lips, come to terms with life and with the living, but he’s afraid he’ll make a fool of himself. Hell, what’s the worst that could happen to me? Be rejected? My life’s been nothing but a series of rejections. When I spoke, they told me to shut up. When I was silent, they wanted to make me speak. I have never been able to be myself, not even in love.

He leaned toward Lili, but she shook her head. “Not like that, not now, not here.”

Then where? And when?

5

“NOT HERE,” GAD HAD SAID.

“Why not?” asked Diego, professing surprise.

“There’s a time and place for everything. It would be unseemly to talk of hatred now in this place. Be careful, my friends.”

Hatred and contempt. The hatred of the world for us and man’s contempt for himself. Anti-Semitism reappearing in various guises. Gamaliel often discussed it with Bolek, Diego, Gad, and Yasha now that they had found one another in New York. They had gotten in the habit of meeting at a cafeteria near the old
Jewish Daily Forward
on the Lower East Side. There, in a setting of reassuring camaraderie, they would share their nostalgia, their regrets perhaps, and also times of noisy partying. Gad, the closemouthed Israeli, who smiled only when he was playing his violin, was the youngest of the group. He was lean, well built, alert, with searching eyes. When his friends asked why he said so little, he invariably replied, “I’ve learned to be careful.”

The five once-stateless men had met in Paris in the early 1960s, at an annual reunion of Jewish refugees, where the talk was about getting residence permits extended, obtaining working papers, and applying for visas to the United States or Canada. They had taken a liking to one another, and now that they were all living in New York, they would get together every so often.

“I know about hatred,” said little Diego while he stirred sugar into his lukewarm coffee. “Back then, in Valladolid, that was all that kept us going. Sometimes I’d even pray for it. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, give us this day our daily hate.’ God Himself had become the God of hate.”

“That’s worse than blasphemous; it’s crazy,” Bolek said. “God may hate, but He can’t inspire hatred.”

“What do you know about hate?” asked Diego in irritation. “First of all, I’m a free man! As free as God. We were created in God’s image, so if He can hate, so can I. Besides, you talk about God as if He were a buddy of yours, maybe an accomplice. . . . You don’t have some racket together, do you?”

“Take it easy,” said Bolek. “Your nice Lithuanian accent is turning into bad Yiddish.”

“Mind your own business! If I want to get mad, I’ll get mad. If I feel like cursing, I’ll curse. Understand? And if I feel like hating, I’ll hate. I learned how in Spain. Over there, we were free—free to hate.”

“Like God,” Bolek said sarcastically as he scratched his head.

“Yes, just like God! Not all men may be worthy of Him, but I am, because I believe that He wants us to accept the freedom that He in His audacity offers us.”

“Freedom to do anything at all?”

“In any case, anything I want to do.”

“You’re going too far,” said Bolek.

“Be careful,” Gad put in. “You’re talking too much.”

“And you’re not talking enough!” Yasha exclaimed.

“Yasha, do you believe in God?” Bolek asked.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“How about your cat, Misha? Does he believe in God?”

“Misha is the God of cats.”

Why does the conversation keep coming around to God, even though the group is made up of agnostics and unbelievers? Gamaliel wondered. He recalled Chesterton’s saying that when men stopped believing in God, it was not because they believed in nothing but, rather, because they would believe in anything. Should he quote the line? He decided instead to cool the conversation down by telling a story.

“You remember Ilonka, the singer I lived with and to whom I owe my survival? ‘I’m afraid,’ she’d often say to me at night when she came home from the cabaret. ‘I’m afraid and I’m ashamed.’ One day, a Nyilas officer she knew dropped in unexpectedly. He was in a bad mood. So was she, but I understood the reason for her low spirits. The Russians were approaching Budapest, and yet the militias were still going from house to house, searching cellars and attics, flushing out hidden Jews, whom they would beat to death and toss in the Danube. Among them were neighbors she had known. All in the river. But the officer was in a bad mood for a different reason: He hadn’t arrested enough Jews.

“ ‘You have to help me,’ he told Ilonka. ‘I’m sure you know people who are hiding those Yids. Give me their names and addresses; I have to come up with lists.’ To distract him, she kissed him on the forehead, on the lips. They were already embracing on the bed when she saw me. ‘What’re you still doing here?’ she shouted angrily. ‘Get out of here and be quick about it! Go to your room!’ I stood there paralyzed with fear. At that, the officer jumped to his feet and shoved me out of the room so hard that it hurt. That’s when I came to hate him. Not so much because he was killing Jews—that was beyond me at the time—but because he was coming between Ilonka and me. I hate him to this day.”

“I’m opposed to hating,” said Gad, who was usually content to listen. “Anyone who gives in to hate can no longer function; he becomes stupid and vulnerable. In Israel, the commandos who went on missions with hatred in their hearts weren’t likely to return in one piece.” He paused, then added, “Same applies to the secret service.” There were rumors, legends, about Gad. As an agent of the Mossad, he had survived any number of dangers and outwitted as many traps in order to bring vital military information to the Israeli government. It was whispered that this son of German refugees in America had traveled to Arab capitals, posing as a German businessman and former Nazi. He himself said nothing. He was married but never spoke of his wife. He preferred to talk about music. He adored his violin, his constant and faithful companion; like Yasha with his cat, Gad saw in his instrument the perfect confidant, something that would never let him down. When solitude weighed too heavily on him, he would make his violin speak low, shout, sing, tell stories, and weep without tears.

“I told you that hatred can be dangerous when we let it control us,” Gad continued. “There are certain schools where they teach you how to suppress or postpone your hatred. But there’s one kind of hate that’s harder to tame.” Contrary to his usual custom, Gad, his features tense, seemed to feel a need to unburden himself, as if his confession of vulnerability could no longer be put off after so many years of silence. “Hatred? What you’re concerned about is your own hate, not the kind that hits you over the head.” He stopped, hesitated a moment, as if wondering whether he had the right to go on. “Oh, I know, anti-Semitism, you’ve all suffered from it, even you, Diego. Well, I haven’t. But to be hated for no reason at all, not even because you’re a Jew, that’s an altogether different thing.” With that, he asked for a cigarette, this man who hardly ever smoked. Diego lit one and handed it to him. His friends, consumed with an uneasy curiosity, watched him in expectation of a dramatic tale of heroic deeds. “At the time, I was living in an Arab country,” said Gad. “Think of a Nazi Don Juan—that’s who I was. I was rich, single, a big spender. I kept company with a set of officials who liked me for the money I would throw around in nightclubs and jewelry stores, money that supposedly came from Jews who ‘disappeared’ during the war in Europe. They found that amusing.

“One night in a chic restaurant in the capital city, I was introduced to a foreign journalist, a woman who was a correspondent for a French magazine. I knew her name from reading her articles when I would pass through Paris. I knew she was gifted and intelligent, but her appearance surprised me. I don’t know why, but I’d expected someone older, more solidly built, almost masculine. I certainly wasn’t prepared for her inviting smile, for the challenge in her gray eyes. What was my reaction? You can probably guess. I cursed the life I was leading; I told myself that in normal times in some other place I could have fallen for her, and, who knows, made her my wife. That night, everyone was speaking English, but with different accents. Mine was German. I know she found me intriguing, because at a certain moment she turned to me and asked me who I was, where I came from, what I was doing in that city, how long I’d been there. To avoid answering her questions, I asked her if her curiosity might by any chance be connected to the fact that she was working undercover for the Jewish nation. Then one of the party, an air force major, whispered a few words in her ear. Immediately, her expression changed. She looked at me with hate in her eyes. It took my breath away. I didn’t realize that such intelligence and such hatred could coexist in one person. ‘Listen to me, Mr. Nazi,’ she shot at me in fury. ‘I’m not Israeli, I’m not even Zionist, but I am Jewish. My parents were survivors of the camps. I never knew my grandparents. They were slaughtered in Poland. I do not sit in judgment on your people; I don’t believe in collective guilt. But you, you disgust me. It makes me sick to see you free and happy in this country.’ She jumped to her feet and, turning to her host, said, ‘Please don’t hold it against me, but I refuse to sit down to dinner with this individual. I’m sure you understand.’ It was the most dangerous moment of my career as a secret agent. With my entire being, I wanted to hold her back, to send her an urgent message: ‘Don’t go by appearances. I’m a Jew, like you. I’m entitled to love you and be loved by you.’ But fortunately, I was well trained. I didn’t even blush. I looked down and in a loud voice said to my best ‘friend’ among them, ‘You see, these Jews, they live on hate.’ He apologized for her and for her behavior. But as for me, that misunderstanding made me suffer such pain as I hope you’ll never have to experience. So stop bothering me with your stories of hatred.”

After a long silence, Diego, a romantic when he was in the mood, asked, “Did you ever see her again, that young journalist? After you left the Mossad, did you try to look her up? Tell us, did you make love to her?” Gad said nothing, but Diego persisted: “Come on, amigo, you want me to go to my grave without knowing the rest of the story?”

“There’s no more to the story.”

“You didn’t go back to Paris?”

“Yes. In fact, I took a plane to France the day after I resigned from the Mossad. I called the magazine where she worked and asked to speak to her. I was told it was impossible. I explained that it was urgent; then an editor came on and said, ‘She cannot be reached.’ When I insisted, he said, ‘Where have you been, my dear sir? Don’t you know that our colleague is dead?’ I didn’t know. ‘Did she die on assignment, in the Middle East perhaps?’ I asked. ‘No. It was just cancer.’ Yes, that editor did use the word
just.
” Gad wiped his brow. “What hurts the most is that she died without knowing who I was.”

Gamaliel tried to reassure him. “Someday you’ll tell her.”

“Are you making fun of me? I just told you she’s dead.”

“And I’m telling you you’ll see her again, in the next world. I believe in it. I don’t know if God’s there, but I know my parents are, waiting for me. And that journalist is there, too, waiting for you.”

Yasha was straddling his chair, as he always did when he was keyed up. He came back to the topic of hatred. “The enemy’s not the one we hate the most; it’s someone close to us. It’s the friend who lets us down, the brother who betrays us, the neighbor who turns us in.”

LATER ON, GAMALIEL WOULD RECALL, AS AN echo to what Yasha had said, Gide’s line: “Families, I hate you.” Had his wife, Colette, adopted the famous curse as her own? She’d loved her husband only when she thought he didn’t love her, in order to make him the guilty one. Yet he had never hated her, nor their two daughters, either. Their estrangement remained a sorrow to him. Yes, only sorrow endured.

Sometimes he felt he could take no more. His cup of silent tears was overflowing. When he was younger, he’d been strong enough to pull himself together, but now that he had used up his strength, he could no longer manage it. Too much, it was too much. Too many times he’d fled, too many disappointments, too often exiled, and too much remorse, as well. Too often doubted or not understood. Too many barriers that would not go away. Too many times he’d felt powerless, as if facing a dark mass that was coming at him, sometimes to toss him in the air, at others to crush him to the ground. Too much remorse when he thought about his two daughters. To this day, they cursed him. He was sure of it.

And yet.

Sometimes the words of Rebbe Zusya would come to his mind, like lessons in solace: “The High Priest Aaron lost his two sons, Nadab and Abihu, and he remained silent.

“Job’s children died, but he waited in silence seven days and seven nights before he spoke.”

Or the old Sage would quote the great Rebbe Menahem Mendel of Kotsk: “ ‘It is when you feel that you want to cry out that you must suppress the cry.’ ”

Or else these words from a survivor of the camps: “To be silent is forbidden; to speak is impossible.”

Another memory plagued Gamaliel. “Papa?” Sophie had asked when she was still a little girl.

“Yes?”

“Why are you sad?”

Gamaliel did not feel sad, but she was very perceptive. “How could I be sad when I have you in my lap?”

“That’s just it. I’m with you, and you’re sad.”

“How could I be sad when you love me?”

“That’s just it, Papa. I love you, and still you’re sad.” She stopped and put her tiny right hand on her forehead as she always did when she wanted to indicate that she was thinking. “I think I know why. You’re sad because I love you.”

He leaned over and kissed her eyes.

Just when did the break happen? He couldn’t tell exactly. It was the outcome of a slow process, one that was imperceptible but inexorable. Sophie, by then a teenager, had given him a strange look one overcast fall day when she was getting ready to go to school. That was when it began. He’d wanted to hug her, but she muttered, “I’m late,” and hurried out the door. It was raining. He thought she might catch cold, but it was too late to call her back. Without knowing why, he felt a pain unlike any he had known. And a fear.

He’d been trying to hide it for some time. He told himself he shouldn’t read too much into it, shouldn’t torment himself. Why worry over a shrug of the shoulders? It’s ridiculous, he thought. I’m too thin-skinned, too quick to see a symptom of unhappiness or betrayal in the merest trifle. On the surface, everything seemed as usual. They went about their daily routines, exchanged everyday conversations, left home and came back, at ease with each other. Little Sophie—now no longer so little—would smile at him. As always, or almost so. But deep down, Gamaliel was no longer sure of it. Something had changed between them. Sometimes she treated him as an enemy; or worse, a stranger. Should he talk to her? Ask her to explain her hostility? He vacillated for a while, waiting for the right moment. It came on a June evening. They were at home alone. Sophie was in her room doing homework, some tedious paper on the Jansenists, while Gamaliel was sitting at the big dining room table, trying to work on a manuscript but getting nowhere. Unusual for him, he couldn’t seem to concentrate. Suddenly, he froze. He heard the sound of sobbing from Sophie’s room. He hastened to her door, opened it as furtively as a burglar, then hesitated a moment before pushing it all the way with infinite precaution. Was that really his beloved little girl, collapsed in tears at her desk, books in front of her, head on her arms? He had never seen her in such a state. He touched her shoulder and said softly, “What’s happened to you, my little duckling? You’re hurting? Tell me about it. When you’re suffering, I feel like dying. Who did this to you?” She went on sobbing. He stroked her neck. “Why these tears? Where does it hurt?” And then more urgently, he asked, “Who made you cry? A boyfriend? A pal who turned against you? Tell me.” At once, she stopped sobbing. The silence in the room grew heavy. Sophie took a deep breath and buried her head in her arms. “It’s you,” she said in a low voice. “You’re the one who’s making me unhappy. Me and Katya and Mother—you’re making us all unhappy. You’re sacrificing us all. Don’t you understand that?” Gamaliel staggered, as if he had been clubbed over the head. He felt as if he were suffocating. He opened his mouth to try to breathe, to stay alive. But he no longer wanted to live. To what end? he wondered. I was blind. I lied to myself. Sophie detests me. I love her and she pushes me away. So does her sister. And so does everybody. What have I been doing with my days and nights to make those I love the most in the world hate me so? Was there something lacking in my love? A more trenchant question followed: Was I the one who was first to hate, and is their hatred the bitter rotted fruit of my own? Why didn’t I know enough to pay attention to what was going on around me?