The Time of the Uprooted (3 page)

“It’s very simple,” Lebrun said, gulping his scotch. “I need recognition and you need money. Number one: I’m the author. Number two: If I don’t like a particular page or a particular character, either you change it to suit me or you get rid of it. And then, and never forget this: silence from now on. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’ll be back on the street before you know it. Understand?”

Gamaliel started to get up and leave without bothering to answer, but Bolek stopped him, then whispered in his ear, “Pay no attention; he’s always like that.”

“How does he dare talk to me as if I were his servant?”

“He’s trying to impress you.”

“I’ll never write for someone who’s such an imbecile, and a bad-mannered one besides.”

“He’ll pay you well, and that’s all that matters. Just do your writing and you’ll never have to see him again. Give me the manuscript and I’ll deliver it. So for a few months at least, we won’t have to worry about paying the rent.”

Bolek was always the practical one. You had to admire that in him. And he was right. But now he put forward a different argument: “Suppose by accident you were to write a good book. You don’t know anyone in Paris, so you wouldn’t be able to find a publisher. Then either no one reads your masterpiece, in which case it doesn’t exist, or else it’s published, not under your name, but it exists.”

“Suppose it’s not good enough as literature?”

“In that case, you should be glad your name’s not on it. That said, I know you well enough to be sure you can’t help putting some good work into it. Would it be right to deprive readers of that?”

With nothing to lose but his self-respect, Gamaliel wrote a draft, taking his time about it, and handed it to Bolek. In Gamaliel’s opinion, his manuscript lacked everything that a good novel requires. It was kitsch. A tearjerker. You want cheap emotions, here they are. What was worse, he had made errors in syntax and spelling that made him blush. After all, his first teacher, Ilonka’s friend or customer in Budapest, was no magician: He would have needed more time to help Gamaliel master French. Don’t worry, Bolek reassured him; he knew a teacher at the lycée who was proud of his grammar. He would ask the teacher to correct the manuscript in return for a share of the money. Six months later, Lebrun was being hailed by
le tout
Paris as the most promising writer of the postwar years. Women adored him; their husbands despised him but did not dare show it. Gamaliel was amused by this hubbub in society, one that would surely echo in literary circles. He waited patiently for Lebrun, once he had calmed down, to seek him out and demand another masterpiece.

He did not have long to wait.

THUS, WRITING BECAME A JOB FOR GAMALIEL: A way to live better and to pay for comfortable lodgings. As a trade, it was fairly interesting, and it paid pretty well. No sooner had he finished an assignment than he would forget it: The sorry collections of clichés that he ground out as a writer for hire were of no further interest to him. He would return to his one true passion, the
Book of Secrets,
which made him forget all his frustrations. In it he would put everything he could draw from his memory and from his soul. In the characters he created, was he not unconsciously putting himself in the story? The Jewish painter Chaim Soutine used to say, according to a close friend of his, that for some paintings he did not have to call on memory, and yet those paintings portrayed nothing but his memories. Gamaliel sometimes wondered if the same was true of words. Words could be a writer’s best friend, but they could also be formidable opponents. He suffered like a sick man when the words would not submit, would not let themselves be tamed. But when his imagination was on fire and the words allowed themselves to flow, he would bless his happiness and all Creation. At times, his words would take root in a reddening sky; at others, they would sink into a cemetery haunted by malevolent shadows, as in the brain of a madman. Why did Gogol, back from Jerusalem, weep when he had finished
Dead Souls
? Piotr Rawicz tasted ashes as he was writing “The End” on the last page of his novel
Blood from the
Sky.
Does a writer love the words he writes, or does he reject them when they part company? Gamaliel believes, most of the time, that a word has a shadow that accompanies and stretches out from it; and the pain he suffers is inflicted by that shadow. But if he separates the word from its shadow, he will expose it in all its nakedness, and that is dangerous: Once on display, it will attract too many ears, too many knowing looks.

ONE DAY, BOLEK INTRODUCED GAMALIEL TO A sturdy old shopkeeper from Brooklyn. The man kept looking around suspiciously, as if he thought every passerby might be an informer. He was more straightforward than Lebrun:

“They tell me you know how to write. I don’t. Matter of fact, I hardly know how to read. Not surprising. My school was the ghetto, the war, the camp. I was a partisan in Russia. In the forest. Saw a lot, did a lot. Fighting the Germans, of course. Also their collaborators. I had my reasons, twelve of them. Twelve members of my family butchered in one morning. Right in front of our home. So write my story as best you can, if you can; write it your way and, of course, put your name on it. I’ll pay you well.”

A tempting offer. But though peace can be told in words, war cannot. Words can incite the murderous hatred that is war, but words cannot describe it. In principle, one should not be able to put it into words, this horror that is war, this blasphemy that is war, this grotesque agony, this licensed slaughter, this glorified butchery that is war. James Joyce knew that, as did Franz Kafka; neither wrote about the First World War. War kills the dream along with the dreamer: It blinds the mind’s eye so it cannot see the horizon.

Thus it was that although Gamaliel was moved to write the man’s story, he had to tear it up. He told him by letter:

“I do not know how to write your story. I do not know how to revive those haunted faces, those silent voices who, through you, would summon us to hear them tell of their deaths and perhaps our own. All I can do is tell you that I can’t do it—and shake your hand.”

A few years later, he sent the Brooklyn shopkeeper this quotation from a book by Maurice Blanchot he had just read: “And how can we agree not to know? We read the books about Auschwitz. The last wish of those who were there, their last charge to us, was: know what happened here, never forget, and yet know that you will never know.”

HE THOUGHT OF CALLING DIEGO. HE STILL HAD time before his appointment at the hospital.

Diego, with his jutting chin and black forelock over eyes that opened wide, as if he were forever hearing an unexpected sound. There was an air of challenge about the short, stocky Jew from Lithuania who claimed he was Spanish. Right now, he was probably guzzling his lemonade the way he did his wine ration under the African sun, while recalling his adventures in the Foreign Legion in Morocco and the Djebel of Algeria, or the time he spent locked up in Franco’s prisons and France’s internment camps. At times, he would pretend to be drunk and shout, “I am a free man!” And then, as if sobered by his own frenzy, he would add, “I’ll lay down my life but never my freedom.” He loved to tell about his skirmishes with French bureaucracy. One such tale, punctuated as always with laughter:

Paris, 1958. On a lovely, tranquil day, Diego went to the Bureau of Missing Persons at police headquarters. One place he didn’t have to wait in line. “Yes?” the clerk said irritably, without looking up, while putting aside his pen and inkwell. Diego waited for the clerk to look up. He wanted to see the man’s eyes. He hated to talk to someone who would not meet his eyes, who would conceal his expression. “So?” the clerk asked. “You want something?”

“Yes,” said Diego.

“Go ahead. I’m listening,” said the clerk, still looking down at his record books. “Who’s missing?”

“I am,” said Diego.

At that, the clerk finally lifted his head. His eyes lit up, but for only a moment. “The insane asylum is around the corner,” he said, and he pointed to the exit.

“Fine,” said Diego with a shrug. “I’ll see you there.”

At that, the clerk jumped to his feet and grabbed his visitor by the collar.“Keep that up and I’ll have you thrown in jail!”

Once outside, Diego scolded himself: How could you, knowing what it is to be stateless, risk your freedom just for the fun of taunting the bureaucracy? A man without a country is someone to be despised. Don’t you realize that? People throw you exiles away like old clothes, turn aside as if you smell bad. . . . Only barely do they grant you the right to talk to the birds, to the trees, to the wind, to the rocks . . . no, not the rocks. I hate rocks. So cold, indifferent, mute, they make me feel inferior: They’ll still be around when I’m gone . . . and they’re not afraid of that clerk in Missing Persons. Suppose the clerk had asked you for your papers, those documents you left at home? All the police in every country on earth demand your papers, in the same hostile manner, as if that were the only thing in life that interested them . . . your papers, your papers! What a world this is, Diego reflected. . . . To take a human being with all his triumphs and failures, his memories of love and war, and reduce him to a grimy piece of paper—well, only a cop or a bank clerk thinks like that. And then he remembered he had even come across a border guard who, studying his travel permit, read as if in surprise: “ ‘Diego Bergelson . . . stateless.’ . . . That’s a funny name.” And Diego replied, deadpan, “Do you like it? I’ll sell it to you.”

When he was out on the street, Diego burst out laughing. He was laughing mostly at himself: Why hadn’t he asked for French nationality when he was being discharged from the Legion? It would have been his with a stroke of a pen. Was it from a feeling of solidarity with his Spanish comrades who were still stateless? A youth in a silver-lined black leather jacket accosted him: “Hey, you, why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s funny.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“To my comrades who disappeared in the desert. They’re the only ones I talk to. Only they know how to listen.”

“Is that why you’re talking to yourself?” the young man said snidely.

Diego wanted to shake his hand, but the youth had already moved on.

GAMALIEL AND BOLEK HAD MET WHEN THEY were both standing in line at that same police headquarters. Two men, one heavyset, the other scrawny, neither of them young, were quarreling over who was first in line at the window. A very tall, husky young man was trying goodnaturedly to separate them. “Why are you butting in?” exclaimed the fat one. “Is it any of your business?” “Yes, it’s my business,” the husky young man said. “You know that mangy character?” “No, but I’m making it my business anyway.” So began the friendship between Gamaliel and Bolek.

GAMALIEL ORDERS A SECOND CUP OF COFFEE. HE relaxes; it’s a pleasant day. Students come and go, gulping down coffee, orange juice, a banana. Some of them seem in good spirits, others gloomy. It’s exam week. Gamaliel’s thoughts are far away. He is in Europe, long ago. Who could forget springtime in Paris? The carefree air of women who have cast away their winter cloaks, exuberant and attractive, their eyes sparkling with mischief or invitation. A light breeze gently caresses the trees. In playgrounds, children are dancing around and munching their chocolate snacks. In parks, people smile and talk to strangers. Under the bridges of the Seine, the clochards serenely turn their backs on the cynical ambition so prized by a supposedly normal society. The sky, so high, so clear, beckons. Oh, if only I could go up there, Gamaliel says to himself. So many are expecting me.

THERE’S A WOMAN IN A RED KERCHIEF AT THE hospital information desk. Behind her is an untidy-looking man with a thin black beard, a high forehead, and a receding hairline. He is watching me on the sly through heavy-lidded eyes. If I catch his eye, he looks away. I don’t know this man; I’ve never met him. Why is he staring at me with what seems like disagreeable curiosity? Whom is he here for, and why: to judge, to amuse, to torment? Now he’s nodding as if he knows me. I pay no attention: He is not the person for whom I chose to live. He smiles at me, and suddenly I do think I recognize him: Is he not the wandering man, that first madman of my childhood? Hardly has the thought entered my mind than it disappears when the stranger turns away.

Well, never mind. As far as I know, he’s not the one my appointment is with. . . . I’m here for a wounded woman, virtually mute, who speaks only in Hungarian. Does she know me? The man who issues visitors’ passes earnestly wants to know; you’d think his professional future turned on this information. He questions me as if I’ve come to rob the management’s safe. Strange country, America, obsessed with anything having to do with security. Without a photo ID, God Himself would be denied admittance. Here, before the strait gate to paradise—or perhaps to hell—anyone is entitled to interrogate you about anything. Soon they’ll be asking you if you believe in the immortality of the soul, whether you prefer Mozart or Schubert, whether your mistress is cheating on you with her second husband.

“So you’re a visitor?” the man says in a tone of authority.

“Yes.”

“You’re here to see a patient?”

“Yes, she’s Hungarian. Her name—”

“Show me your ID.”

I search my pockets, but find nothing, not even a credit card or a library card. I left everything on my desk. Maybe a driver’s license? But I don’t own a car and I don’t like to drive. What can I say? The guard sounds impatient: “Come on, let’s see that ID.”

I feel around in my pockets, but still I find nothing. “I’m very sorry,” I say in a tone calculated to melt the hardest of prison guards’ hearts. “I must have left my wallet in my other suit.”

The guard despises and distrusts me—that’s obvious. He finds me offensive, or perhaps he fears me. What does he think I am? A lunatic maybe, or a criminal who’s come to kidnap a wealthy patient, or to take revenge on an incompetent doctor. Is it the way I’m dressed? This old gray suit I’m wearing is my favorite. It dates back to the time of Colette—my first wife, also my last. It’s missing a button and looks as if I’d slept in it. On holidays, like today, I’ll change my shirt, but that’s all. Do I look like a Gypsy, or some homeless man? I prefer to play the part of the absentminded professor.