The Time of the Uprooted (22 page)

Poor Colette, her own victim.

And Gamaliel, hapless victim of the victim.

Then came Eve.

EVE AND HER INHIBITIONS. A LOVE DESPERATE AND despairing. Dazzling and humbling. For one as well as the other? “I’m bad luck,” she would say with a clear, cool certainty that was almost superstitious. “You mustn’t love me,” she added, “and I’ll do my best not to love you.” One day, she used one of Colette’s favorite phrases: “I’m telling you this for your own good.” But coming from Eve, it was a warning, not a threat. “In my case,” she asserted, “love always includes something evil, something harmful.” And yet every moment he spent with her, when they were listening to music, or reading, or just riding the bus, had been a time of fulfillment. Then suddenly, Samaël had appeared on the scene. Had she made him unhappy, too? Gamaliel wondered later. But no, Samaël was incapable of happiness or unhappiness. What he did was make others unhappy. Eve had resisted him strongly and valiantly, but in the end she succumbed. Eve and Samaël, Eve and Gamaliel: Was she the same woman?

Gamaliel was ready to give up everything for her. Even to marry her. Despite the memory of his failure with Colette. Once again, Eve dissuaded him. “Why endanger a relationship that feels good as it is? In what way would marriage make our happiness greater?”

He persisted. “We’d do the same things, but under another name, differently.”

“ ‘Differently’? What do you mean?”

He didn’t know how to explain. In any event, they were already like a married couple in the eyes of those who knew them. No one would invite one without the other. What happened to one involved the other. Gamaliel asked her one day, “Could we live the rest of our lives like this, even though we’re not married?”

“If it is written on high that we’re destined to live like this till we die, it matters little whether or not we’re legally or religiously joined. One has to know how to read the Book of Life, that’s all.”

“And I suppose you know how to read that book?” he said, trying to provoke her.

“You’re the writer, not I.”

“The writer writes so the reader may read. So go ahead and read it.”

“But the writer has to know how to read before he can learn how to write.”

So be it, Gamaliel thought. Why not let her have her way? She has her reasons, and to her they are no doubt valid. Does her reticence grow out of her first marriage? Stop! Minefield ahead: no trespassing. We will live together “as if” we are married, he thought. As long as we’re in love.

Eve went on, “We’ll live together, provided we’re not married.”

“With love?”

“No, Gamaliel, without love,” she said with a smile. After a brief kiss, she added, “Love isn’t everything. You should know that.”

“Go on.”

“There is something above love and beyond it.”

“And what is that?”

“The secret.”

“What secret?”

“The secret that gives us humans the ability to transcend ourselves in good as well as in evil.” Another kiss ended the discussion. Gamaliel conceded defeat; Eve was superb in these debates. She always won, and that didn’t bother him. Quite the contrary: With her, nothing bothered him. Besides, “winning” and “losing” had no place in their relationship. With Eve, Gamaliel was always seeking just the right word.

Wondrous days, spellbinding evenings of discovery and sharing. Who said one can’t be happy among the gigantic towers of stone that huddle together on the Manhattan skyline?

Walks in Brooklyn, picnics in Central Park, open-air musical evenings, excursions to the Catskills. Could he have known the same happiness with Colette had she not lost both her spirit and her sanity? Does happiness, like man, resemble the one who gives it birth?

“Sometimes you’re off with a ghost, somewhere far away,” Eve observed one day. “Tell me, can you still see me?”

“Of course I see you. In fact, you’re all I see.”

“Impossible. You can’t see two beings at the same time with the same pair of eyes.” She paused to kiss him, then asked, “Can you speak two words at the same time?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Prove it.”

“I can say one word that contains another within it. Some words are like Russian dolls.”

“I forgot that you spend your time opening those Russian dolls.”

“Not all my time. I also spend time looking at you.”

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful, very beautiful, a beauty that is whole.”

“That’s all?”

“Almost all.”

“What do you know about me?”

“I told you: You’re beautiful.”

“But it takes more than that to define or express who a person is,” she said, pouting.

“Oh? Who told you that?”

“I don’t know. I know it from people.”

“So change people.”

“From living.”

“Change your life.”

“I know it by instinct.”

“You’re not listening very well. You have to be a good listener in order to love. And the opposite is also true: You must love in order to be a good listener.”

“Stop it!”

“I didn’t say I love you; I just said I love beauty.”

And they loved each other.

Gamaliel also got the upper hand when they discussed a subject on which their opinions turned out to be diametrically opposed. They never raised their voices, but their disagreement almost led to a break that would have been irreparable. Gamaliel was sitting on the sofa with Eve’s head in his lap. They were talking about the news of the day— politicians’ debates, AIDS, feminism, militancy—and then the conversation turned to Gamaliel’s trade. Eve hated it. “Aren’t you deceiving the reader when you write a book that has someone else’s name on it as author? Aren’t you lying to him?”

“No, Eve. I’m doing the job of a banker: I lend words to those who need them. As it happens, I have an ample supply of them in the secret drawers of my desk. I look around among them, I choose a few words, and I lend them out for a reasonable fee.”

“And afterward you take them back?”

“Precisely. I take them back, and then I rent them out to other clients, but arranged in different patterns.”

“But that’s dishonest!”

“Dishonest? You’re exaggerating.”

“You’re forgetting the reader; you’re talking as if he didn’t exist! He doesn’t know about this game you’re playing. He doesn’t realize it’s nothing but a business deal.”

“So what? Provided it’s a good book, will his pleasure be any the less for it?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“What do you know about it? You don’t read that kind of book.”

“Indeed I don’t. But that’s just it: I want to read what you yourself write. I’d like to read books to which you’re not ashamed to sign your name.”

“What’s more important—the book or the name on it?”

“The book, obviously. But why should I read something the author’s not proud of?”

“But . . . how else would I make a living? Who cares what I have to say? You have to be realistic, Eve. Be sensible. Understand me: Yes, I live in a wonderful country. Yes, I have a passport in my pocket. But in my heart of hearts, I’m still a refugee. And maybe my words are also refugees, and that’s why they hide in other people’s books.” According to an unspoken rule between them, he now stopped to kiss her before resuming. “But I know when I’ve had it, and then I take refuge in another person.”

“In me?”

“Yes, in you.”

“I understand you,” said Eve, biting her lip. “At least I’m trying to. But I don’t like it.”

“What don’t you like?”

“Serving as your shelter.”

“Even if I need it?”

“I don’t like your needing me as a place to hide. I like to think that we’re free and equal human beings.”

“In principle, you’re right. But we can’t live in principle.”

“Exactly. That’s just what I don’t like.”

“And that’s what you call lying? Like ghostwriting is lying?”

The young woman’s face clouded over. “I know that in the real world you’re right,” she said, her voice tinged with bitterness. “When we don’t have the wherewithal, money becomes an obsession. But I thought you were different.”

There was a sudden distance between them. It was the first rift in their relationship. Eve’s head was still in Gamaliel’s lap, but now she was beginning to weigh on him. In any event, Eve sat up, then moved away, as if she were preparing to leave. To relax the tension between them, Gamaliel asked her to sit down, and then he said, “I’ll read you a page from what I’ve written. All right?”

“A page of your own? That you’d sign your name to?”

“Yes. Would you like that?”

“Of course I’d like it!”

He stood and went to riffle through the papers on his desk. He remained standing. “Here is the first page I came upon.”

It was a page from the novel—so coveted by Georges Lebrun—that he had been writing over the years:

“The character who is speaking is close to me. His name is Pedro or Michael, Gregor or Paritus. He’s a doctor and a philosopher. He meets a young dreamer, the ‘Blessed Madman,’ soon after his attempt at mysticism had resulted in disaster. The young man wants to die, and the doctor is trying to give him the confidence to go on living. Listen to what he tells him:

“ ‘ “I know what you’re experiencing. You’re to blame because you’re alive. Therefore you stand convicted. But didn’t you set your sights too high? A little humility, my dear revolutionary mystic. It’s necessary. Think of Moses, the humblest of men. Did he consider himself guilty because he had gone away at the very time his brother and his people were making the Golden Calf? You tried to overthrow the existing order of things, and you were defeated. Henceforth, try to live far from the world and its deceiving lights, far from the sight of God, in the privacy of your thoughts. I’m so advising you in order that one day you may be able to start over.” ’ ”

Gamaliel looked for another page, then said to Eve, “Listen to my doctor. He’s with a sick child in Budapest, in a Jewish hospital that the Germans have taken over. He feels overwhelmed, on the one hand by exhaustion, on the other by the need to keep fighting off the death that is hovering over the child’s bed. He is thinking:

“ ‘What is to be done when the human condition is as evident in the remedy as it is in the ills that afflict us? Man’s destiny is tragic not only because it can only end in death but also because all he does seems like a negation of the time on earth for which he is responsible. There would be no problem if it were only a matter of the body, or if it were only the soul. But man is both body and soul, body versus soul, soul the enemy of the body. So in his life—this life he was given, though he never asked for it—the two are always in contradiction. The body clings to the passing moment; the soul refuses to linger there. The soul seeks eternity, but the body cannot attain it. One can imagine a soul confined by the body; one can also imagine a body tortured by conscience. But no torture inflicted on the body will make the soul any wiser. Body and soul: Which gives the other its meaning? That’s the quintessential question, the question within which all others are contained. Nostalgia is the soul’s lament for a past denied it by the laws of the body. But in fact, the soul also needs the body: If memory does not give us back the pleasure we once enjoyed, but only saddens us, it is because to relive the past is once more to go on living by the rules of a frail body and of an impossible love.

“ ‘So the soul is forever feeling bullied, dissatisfied, unhappy. Its hunger for eternity could be appeased if it could escape from time. But all it seeks, all it is able to seek, is an infinite prolonging of the body’s fleeting moment. So, confined to that moment, the soul is imprisoned by its own chains. Here is what man is as seen by a dreamer or a visionary mystic: a stranger in a hostile land who encounters another stranger without realizing that it is God. And God says to him, “Since we are alone here, let’s walk together, so we may arrive at some destination. And even if we do not, each of us will have helped the other not to despair.” So, my child, try to resign yourself to this: If God accepts reality, you must do the same.’ ”

Eve sat still, listening, a frown on her face. “More,” she said softly. “Please go on. Was the sick child able to say anything?”

“No, he was too sick to do anything but listen. But the reply came from a fearless old man, who, from a distance, reprimanded the doctor: ‘You picked a poor time to philosophize. Don’t you see that the child is suffering? While you’re making speeches? You should be telling him a story!’ ”

“I’d like to be in that child’s place,” Eve observed. “Go on.”

The seriousness in her voice gave Gamaliel pause. “Very well,” he said. He leafed through the manuscript, first forward, then back, till he found the passage he wanted. “This is another passage from the same manuscript, my
Book of
Secrets.

“ ‘The door opened as if of its own accord. Big

Mendel stood in the doorway, laughing. Crossing and uncrossing his arms, he kept on laughing. Shoulders, chest, face, and voice—his whole body was shaking to the point that his young Master no longer recognized him. “What’s happened to you, Mendel?” he asked. “Come in and tell me about it.”

“ ‘They had been apart since the previous evening. A surly priest had appeared in their room at nightfall and gestured to the Jew to follow him. Hananèl had stepped between them, but the priest had pushed him back so hard that Mendel said angrily, “Don’t lay hands on him, understand?” The priest said nothing, and Mendel added, “I’ll go with you, but don’t touch him, or you’ll have me to deal with.” And to the young Master, he said, “No doubt they need a hand with the horses. Let the Rebbe not worry. I know how to take care of myself.”

“ ‘Hours of anxiety had followed. Where could Mendel be? Hananèl tried to open the door, but it was locked. Heart heavy, lost in his thoughts, he paced around his prison, bumping into the walls, afraid to sit in either of the room’s two chairs. So distraught was he that he almost forgot the evening prayer of Maariv; it was almost midnight when he recited it. He knocked on the door; no one answered. He knocked harder and harder, but in vain. He tried to calm himself so that his spirit could ask the Almighty about his beadle’s disappearance. Was he still alive? As usual, the familiar celestial voice replied, “Yes, Reb Mendel is alive. But . . . do not hasten to rejoice over it.” Hananèl quickly asked, “Is he in pain?” “No,” the voice answered, “he is not in pain. But that is not a reason to be reassured.” Hananèl awoke with a start, and, as if in a trance, he began to recite, in the order set out by a twelfth-century Kabbalist, the Psalms of David, which rescue man from distress.