Free The Oath by Elie Wiesel Page B

who had personified for him the messianic dream in all its ardor and serenity. He had never showed his truest smile, saving it for the great day; he had never sung his purest song, reserving it for the same occasion. He died, my mad friend, without knowing that the great event was not the one he had expected; it was a conflagration and not a celebration. But I do know—and what good is that? Tomorrow I shall die and my knowledge will die with me.
    What then is the significance of this mute testimony deposited within me? An invisible force compels me to walk a stretch of road, my head bowed or held high, alone or at another’s side—and we call that life. I look back, and we call that conscience. Someone smiles at me and gives me his hand, and we call that love. Someone offers me his support and his complicity, and wespeak of friendship. I close my eyes, and that is called questioning. And then if one finds oneself a few steps ahead, a few encounters later, at the side of the road, at the entrance to night, at the edge of the precipice, one says: That’s it, it’s over. And all the wealth of this existence, all the mystery of the
I
vanish in one sweep: a man has lived.
    Is that why you want to put an end to your life? To prove—prove to whom?—that you are not like the others, that you withdraw from the game whenever you choose? You want to write the last act of the scenario? As for me, you see, I have no need for that sort of proof. I am older than you, but I go on. Step by step I move closer to the abyss, behaving as though death itself is part of the adventure, as though, beyond death and in spite of it, eternity exists inside me, around me, as though it were me. I eat, I sleep, I walk, I search, I read, I question the days and the nights, I answer the curious who want to know whether old age is a blessing or a malediction and whether I am frightened at the thought of death. No, it makes me ashamed. A key word, one more: shame. If you die, I shall not feel guilty, but ashamed. I think of Kolvillàg and shame comes over me. An understandable, normal reaction. Man is incapable of imagining his own death; he imagines that of his fellow-man. The survivor resents his survival. That is why the Christians imagine their Saviour expiring on the cross. They thus situate him outside the circle of shame; he dies before the others, instead of the others. And thus the others are made to bear his shame. The Messiah, as seen by the Jews, shows greater courage; he survives all the generations, watches them disappear one after the other—and if he is late in coming, it is perhaps because he is ashamed to reveal himself.
    For us, the living—therefore the survivors—the great shame is that we claim to be brothers when we are nothing but wild,solitary beasts. I could force you to accept life, but you would remain alone. I could save you from death, but not from yourself. What are you to yourself: savior or wild beast? Both perhaps? You are proud and ashamed at the same time? One does not cancel the other, I know. But then, where is the solution? I don’t know. Perhaps there is none, but what of it? Is that sufficient reason to want to die? Who says that the solution lies in death and not in the refusal of death?
    When I was your age I already knew that the world was guilty and doomed; I was already convinced even then that man labored against man and that the Messiah himself was against him. Don’t you think I wanted to die? Only I couldn’t. Worse—I had no right to speak of dying.
    I remember the last time I let my eyes wander over the landscape plowed by death, ruins over which a black and pestilential smoke still hovered like a network of highways encrusted in the clouds. I was leaning against an oak. I could not tear myself away. My legs were riveted to the ground, my eyes fixed on the dying embers. The fiery wind had run out of breath, and was now retreating. What was left was a devastated, ghostly cemetery. I gazed at the