One Generation After Read Free Page B

I want to stop one of them, anyone, and entrust him with a message: Go and tell all those people, your companions and mine, tell them they’re taking the wrong road, they’re turning away from their future; tell them that danger lies in wait, that mankind is at their heels, hungry for their blood and their death.
    But I keep quiet. I am afraid lest that person reply: I don’t believe you, I don’t know you. Lest he shrug his shoulders and continue on the road straight to his tomb up there, his tomb veiled in incandescent clouds. I want to shout, to scream, only I am afraid of waking him. It is dangerous to wake the dead, especially if their memory is better than yours; it is dangerous to be seen by them, especially if they have robbed you of your town and childhood, the beginning you are remembering for the last time.
    Sighet. A Rumanian, Hungarian, Austrian province. Occupied by the Turks, the Russians, the Germans, coveted by all the tribes in that part of the world. Despite the diversity of tonguesspoken, despite the variety of regimes succeeding one another, it was a typically Jewish town, such as could be found by the hundreds between the Dnieper and the Carpathians. Thanks to its dominantly Jewish population, it cleansed itself for Yom Kippur, fasted and lamented the destruction of the Temple on Tishah b’Av, and celebrated Simchat Torah by getting drunk.
    You went out into the street on Saturday and felt Shabbat in the air. Stores were closed, business centers at a standstill, municipal offices deserted. For the Jews as well as their Christian neighbors, it was a day of total rest. The old men gathered in synagogues and houses of study to listen to itinerant preachers, the young went strolling in the park, through the woods, along the riverbank. Your concerns, anxieties and troubles could wait: Shabbat was your refuge.
    The day before, on Friday afternoon, you could already sense the approaching Shabbat. To welcome it, the men plunged into the ritual baths. The women cleaned house, scrubbed floors, bustled about in the kitchen and prepared their prettiest dresses. Coming home from school, the boys recited the Song of Songs. Then, at the very same moment, the same chant went up in every house:
Shalom aleikhem malakhei hashalom
—Be blessed, O messengers full of blessings, enter and depart in peace, O angels of peace …
    Everyone, rabbi or illiterate, prosperous storekeeper or porter, employer or employee, everyone addressed the angels of Shabbat with the same words, expressing the same gratitude.
    “The angels, who are they?” I once asked my grandfather, whose Wizsnitzer melodies overwhelmed me, so violent and tender was the joy they expressed.
    By way of response, he leaned toward me and whispered into my ear a secret which has remained with me to this day: “The angels, my child, the angels are all of us sitting around this table—and other tables like it—covered with a white cloth and transformed into an altar. You, I, all our guests. Therein lies the force and grandeur of Shabbat: it makes it possible for man to fulfill himself by renewing his bonds with his beginning.”
    And then I heard heavenly wings fluttering above my head—yes, I did hear them, I swear. But since I left you, Grandfather, since I stopped singing your melodies, I have not seen the angels any more, that too I swear. In truth, Grandfather, I think they stayed behind, in our forgotten little town buried in the mountains, invisible like you and me, like all of us.
    My grandfather lived in a small village: Bichkev, or Bocsko in Hungarian. There Dodye Feig led the peaceful existence of a farmer. I loved his stories, his songs. And his silences too.
    An indefatigable worker, he did everything himself. He fed his cows, tilled his land, and climbed the trees to pick plums, apples and apricots. Every day he waited in the twilight for darkness to fall before lighting the oil lamp. Sitting on his porch, he allowed night and stillness to