And the Sea Is Never Full Read Online Free PDF Page B

remember my promise.
—For a long time?

—As long as possible. All my life perhaps. But … why do you laugh?
—I want you to remember my laughter too

—You’re lying. You laugh because you’re going mad.
—Perfect. Remember my madness
.
    •   •   •
    —Tell me … Am
I
making you laugh?
—Not just you. No, my little one, not just you
.
    I make my first trip to Norway, a nation that will become important to me in my life as writer and activist. Must I mention the awful, embarrassing fact that in Sighet I knew nothing of this nation and its people? Norway for me was one of those places of which I didn’t even know that I knew nothing.
    Invited by the publishing house Aschehoug to promote
The Jews of Silence
, I go there rather skeptically. No sooner have I landed than a journalist advises me to meet Johan Borgen. Who is he? And why should I make his acquaintance? The journalist explains that when
The Town Beyond the Wall
had come out a few years earlier, it was warmly received, largely because of a very favorable article by this great writer, the revered dean of Norwegian letters. “He is our own Mauriac,” the journalist tells me. “Evidently he has taken you under his wing.” This explains the presence of the large number of journalists at a press conference organized by Max Tau, my editor at Aschehoug. I speak of Russian Jewry’s plight; of their struggle, nonviolent but determined; of their hopes, nourished by their thirst for identity as much as by their need for freedom. The Norwegian people are always on the side of the victims, and I sense this among the listeners. Norway is one of the rare countries to have opened its doors to “displaced persons,” the sick ones who were rejected by the big Western powers at war’s end. It is easy to become attached to this country, to these rather reserved men and women who are respectful of your moods, your need for privacy and friendship. Like the British, they favor understatement. In Norway, reticence is a national virtue. (Do you know the story of the young Norwegian who was so in love with a woman that he finally told her?)
    For me a city, a country, is first of all a face. Oslo has many.
    Professor Leo (his friends call him Sjua) Eitinger is the author of an important study on the psychosomatic effects of the Holocaust on its survivors. I speak of him in
Night:
He was present at my knee operation at Buna concentration camp. He is a distinguished-looking man. His gaze is open, his voice authoritative. “I have read your testimony,” he says. “I believe we come from the same place.” Astonished, I ask: “From Sighet?” “No. From a place that could be called anti-Sighet.” “Auschwitz? Buchenwald?” I whisper. “Both.” Suddenly an imagecomes back to me: the infirmary. That voice, I recognize that voice. “It’s you who …?” He smiles: “Possibly.” I tell him that I owe him a debt of gratitude. “For taking care of you?” No. For showing me that even
over there
it was possible to have faith in mankind.
    During that same trip, I meet someone who is in fact from Sighet. Better: We attended the same
heder
. Surprised, I call out to him: “What are you doing here?” He bursts into laughter. “And you?” he asks. Haim-Hersh Kahan left with the first transport, together with the town’s rabbis and my two mad fellow disciples of Kalman the Kabbalist. After the liberation he returned to Sighet via Vienna and Budapest. How did he come to settle in Oslo? Like all survivors’ stories, his had much to do with chance. On his way to the United States, he went through Sweden, where he met a beautiful local Jewish girl, Esther. Haim-Hersh stayed in Scandinavia, went into business, and made a fortune; he now plays an important role in Oslo’s Jewish community. He still sings as he did long ago and tells stories of times that only he and I remember.
    And so death did not triumph everywhere. Nor did evil. Old bonds are renewed, and new