The Time of the Uprooted by Elie Wiesel

Author:Elie Wiesel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307429469
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

6

GAMALIEL WAS LUNCHING WITH HIS PALS ON A DANK and gloomy autumn day. They were all about the same age, retirement age. Together, they were an informal rescue committee—to needle the anti-Semites, they called themselves the “Elders of Zion”—which helped out refugees and the neediest of immigrants, those who had no one they could count on and who counted for no one.

Their usual table was off in a corner. All were present but Gad, the Israeli, who was suffering from angina. Yasha: athletic build, shaved head, bushy eyebrows over twinkling eyes. He’d made a name for himself on Wall Street. Often away on business trips, he was said to be a Don Juan. Diego: the fighter, especially for lost causes, and quick to anger, particularly when one didn’t agree with him that communism was as great a danger to the world as fascism. His friends would often raise their glasses and toast in Hebrew: “L’chayim!” And each time, Diego would reply in French: “Death to boredom! ” Bolek: bony features, high forehead, elegant, always dressed in a gray or blue suit with red pinstripes. A onetime lawyer, he was reticent with strangers, jovial with his pals. Gad and Bolek were married, more or less, had children, and were relatively happy. Gamaliel and Yasha were divorced, and Diego was a confirmed bachelor. Although they had become American citizens, they all remembered the past, the time when they were emigrants in search of paradise lost. They liked to gather together to celebrate the solidarity of the uprooted and the divine power of laughter.

They enjoyed a cozy ambiance of camaraderie. Gamaliel, closed off in what was now a willful isolation, nursed a romantic faith in friendship. It was his passion, his anchor, his reason for living, his protective circle, his barricade. The tragedy of Moses and Socrates, he would often say, was that while they had disciples and lieutenants, they had no friends. He liked to recall the beautiful passages in Cicero about friendship, or quote the Sage in the Talmud who cried out, “Friendship or death!” Or he’d quote the Hasidic Teacher, according to whom “God is not only the Judge and the Father of His creatures; He is also their friend.” That was why, Gamaliel believed, no death was so awful as that of a friendship: God Himself would mourn it.

“Hey there, you!” called out Diego, draining his wineglass and already tipsy. “You look to me as if you have the blues. What’s the matter, Gamaliel? Did the little boats in your bathtub sink?”

Gamaliel replied only with a shrug.

“I feel like laughing today,” Diego announced. “Come on, friends—I’ll buy a drink for anyone who makes me laugh.”

So Gamaliel told a story he claimed to have heard recently from a Yiddish writer. “Do you know the one about the idiot father who told his son to close the door because it was cold outside? And the kid says, ‘So if I close the door, will it be warm outside?’ ”

Yasha made a gesture of mock disgust.

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