The Oath Read Free Page B

found. I would have given much to lay my hands on his Book; but he had taken it with him, of course
.
    Through constant pursuit of the character, I succeeded in uncovering his tracks. Thus I learned that he was regularly received in some of the most elegant salons as well as in the Marxist student house. He patronized the North African Jewish restaurant and the Home for Aged Anarchists. He, whom nobody succeeded in knowing, knew many people. He was equally at ease quoting from the Talmud or Mao Tse-tung; he mastered seven ancient tongues and a dozen living ones. Haughty with the powerful, humble with the deprived. To professional philosophers he taught philosophy; to tycoons, the stock market. Young people loved him: he listened, teased, appeased. He made them understand what was happening to them; it was always more serious or simpler than they had imagined. They came to him, each with his problem, his small personal tragedy. He arbitrated their quarrels, ideological and other, andimposed sentence. The boys told him of their emotions, the girls discussed politics: a world upside down. Even when he scoffed at them, he was forgiven. Too old to envy success, too alien to this generation to judge it. His words were deeds; he had no ulterior motives
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    I approached, questioned many who had spoken with him. Unfortunately, they were of no help. Yes, all remembered him, but not in the same way; their portraits did not coincide. Some spoke of his round, puffy face while others described it as angular and expressive. They recalled his massive head, out of proportion to the rest of the body. And his eyes? Light and gentle, according to some; somber and penetrating, according to others. I would ask: What about his hands? For I myself still see them, see them drawing patterns in the air, accentuating this sentence, denigrating that thought. But they looked puzzled. What was so extraordinary about his hands? And what about his voice? I asked. Do you remember his voice? On that point, they all agreed: his had been a deep, resonant, often raucous voice
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    I discovered the small synagogue, deep inside the Jewish quarter, where he had taught Talmud in Yiddish to an audience made up of Polish and Hungarian immigrants. A first thought, crazy, absurd, made my heart jump. What if they all came from over there, from Kolvillàg? No, impossible. They were born elsewhere. Slobodke, Wizhnitz, Satmàr. Still, just in case, I did ask: Kolvillàg, does that name mean anything to you? Shaking their heads, they answered no. Kolvillàg? Don’t know, don’t know. Your teacher Azriel came from Kolvillàg, I would say. They opened their eyes wide. What, his name was Azriel? They had known him by another name: Katriel. Some smiled as they recalled him, others cried. But, in all honesty, they may have cried because of me. Or over me
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    The most striking fact about Azriel was furnished me by a youngish man with a delicate, moving face: “We had just finished the Tractate on Shabbat. As is the custom, the reader recited the
Kaddish d’rabbanan;
and our Master’s inflection was so singular, so heartbreaking that none among us answered amen, and yet we felt that all of creation was answering amen.”
     
    “I remember,” says the old man:
    Sitting on a stool next to the door, a woman dressed in black cries and cries in silence. On the table a candle consumes itself.
    “Why a candle in midday?” I asked my mother.
    “It’s for Grandfather.”
    “Where is he? Where is Grandfather?”
    “He is dead.”
    “What does that mean, dead?”
    “That means that he is gone, that he will not come back. Ever. You will not hear him sing again. He will not bless you again.”
    “Why did he leave?”
    “Because God has called him.”
    “And when God calls, one must come immediately?”
    “Yes, immediately.”
    “And what if one doesn’t feel like it?”
    “One goes anyway. One has no choice. One does not die at will. We are in God’s hand.”
    “Why does God