Free Night by Elie Wiesel

death mask. When he opened his mouth, one had a ghastly vi- sion of yellow, rotten teeth. Seated in the chair, I asked meekly:
    “What are you going to do, sir?”
    “I shall remove your gold crown, that's all,” he said, clearly in- different.
    I thought of pretending to be sick:
    “Couldn't you wait a few days, sir? I don't feel well, I have a fever…”
    He wrinkled his brow, thought for a moment, and took my pulse. “All right, son. Come back to see me when you feel better. But don't wait for me to call you!”
    I went back to see him a week later. With the same excuse: I still was not feeling better. He did not seem surprised, and I don't know whether he believed me. Yet he most likely was pleased that I had come back on my own, as I had promised. He granted me a further delay.
    A few days after my visit, the dentist's office was shut down. He had been thrown into prison and was about to be hanged. It appeared that he had been dealing in the prisoners' gold teeth for his own benefit. I felt no pity for him. In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him: my gold crown was safe. It could be useful to me one day, to buy something, some bread or even time to live. At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup— those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.
     
     
    IN THE WAREHOUSE, I often worked next to a young French- woman. We did not speak: she did not know German and I did not understand French.
    I thought she looked Jewish, though she passed for “Aryan.” She was a forced labor inmate.
    One day when Idek was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood. As I bit my lips in order not to howl with pain, he must have mistaken my silence for defiance and so he continued to hit me harder and harder.
    Abruptly, he calmed down and sent me back to work as if nothing had happened. As if we had taken part in a game in which both roles were of equal importance.
    I dragged myself to my corner. I was aching all over. I felt a cool hand wiping the blood from my forehead. It was the French girl. She was smiling her mournful smile as she slipped me a crust of bread. She looked straight into my eyes. I knew she wanted to talk to me but that she was paralyzed with fear. She remained like that for some time, and then her face lit up and she said, in almost perfect German:
    “Bite your lips, little brother…Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now…Wait. Clench your teeth and wait…”
     
     
    MANY YEARS LATER, in Paris, I sat in the Metro, reading my newspaper. Across the aisle, a beautiful woman with dark hair and dreamy eyes. I had seen those eyes before.
    “Madame, don't you recognize me?”
    “I don't know you, sir.”
    “In 1944, you were in Poland, in Buna, weren't you?”
    “Yes, but…”
    “You worked in a depot, a warehouse for electrical parts…”
    “Yes,” she said, looking troubled. And then, after a moment of silence: “Wait…I do remember…”  
    “Idek, the Kapo…the young Jewish boy…your sweet words…”
    We left the Métro together and sat down at a café terrace. We spent the whole evening reminiscing. Before parting, I said, “May I ask one more question?”
    “I know what it is: Am I Jewish…? Yes, I am. From an observant family. During the Occupation, I had false papers and passed as Aryan. And that was how I was assigned to a forced labor unit. When they deported me to Germany, I eluded being sent to a concentration camp. At the depot, nobody knew that I spoke Ger- man; it would have aroused suspicion. It was imprudent of me to say those few words to you, but I