Elie Wiesel Read Online Free PDF

grave, they talked and talked; and Elhanan’s father advised and advised. Only Elhanan did nothing. He watched and he listened. He did not understand: why were they so worried? It was as if they expected the end of the world. At one point, his father had raised his head: “If all these rumors are true, it may be the end of the world.”
    In any event, the pogrom did not take place, thanks to Berl Brezinsky. You don’t know Berl? That’s odd; in the village everybody knew Berl. In short, Berl, who was rich and remarkably strong, went to find the head thug and said to him, “Listen, you, you have a choice. Either you hold back these bastards, and I give you ten thousand lei, or you refuse, and I beat you to a pulp.”
    Elhanan remembered Berl, as he remembered all the prominent men of the community, and also the less prominent. He felt close to Shammai, who told him, “It’s hopeless, it’s laughable,” without ever explaining what drove him to despair. And to Yohanan, who confided to him, “I feel guilty and I don’t know why; maybe you know?” And to one fool who spoke in a singsong: “People, people, are they annoying! Into the garbage with their fine words and their rantings and their pompous orations! The time for words is ended, and all that matters is the following fact: the world as it is does not deserve to survive.” And to a beggar who told him of his grief one Sabbath afternoon in the synagogue, drowned in shadow: “I’m ugly, I realize that; it’s poverty that makes me ugly. Tell me, you who are kind enough to listen, what becomes of my smile when I stop smiling?” And to a poet who said anything to anybody: “Ah, how I miss her, the woman I haven’t met yet, the woman I’ll never meet.”
    Dreaming of his childhood, Elhanan became a child again and rediscovered a naive language, sometimes prophetic and sometimes nostalgic.
    There was an even more bizarre character. Something about him frightened people. Despite the warmth of the House of Study, the
beit ha-midrash
, where Elhanan had seen him the evening before, he sat bundled up near the hearth and seemed to be freezing; his lips moved, but he made no sound. Flushed and feverish, with a sickly gaze, he lookedwithout seeing. Elhanan asked him, “Are you in pain, sir? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
    The stranger did not answer.
    “Would you like us to call a doctor?” Elhanan could not seem to catch his eye; the man seemed to be moving through an unreal world, bewitched, beyond reach. “Who are you, sir? Where do you come from? From what hell have you escaped?”
    Nothing.
    “Who is tormenting you? Who wishes you harm?”
    Still nothing.
    At first he had gone unnoticed in the town. They were used to these wanderers, messengers bearing secrets, who appeared and vanished without a word of explanation. They gave them lodging in the vestibule of the
beit ha-midrash.
To feed them, the shammes sent them to well-off families, who gave them one meal a day. Some spent a night in the village, others seven years; the village accepted them all and respected their liberty.
    Elhanan loved to talk with them, to draw them out; through them a distant, turbulent, altered world offered itself to him; thanks to them he roamed the earth from end to end without ever leaving his little village.
    But this vagabond was not like the others. He seemed more a returning ghost. His beard and brows tufted, his arms scarred by burns, he might have survived a blazing fire.
    At the evening meal Elhanan spoke of him to his father, who advised him to let the stranger be: “He may need silence and solitude; don’t impose your curiosity on him.”
    Elhanan saw the man again the next day: seated on the same bench, in the same hunched position, with the same stare.
    The boy watched him during the morning service; thestranger took no part whatever. He never even stood up for the
Kedushah.
After the service, Elhanan approached him again and offered to help.
    “Stop nagging me, boy.