Free The Testament by Elie Wiesel Page A

other way round. If the rich had no one to exploit, nothing would be left of their fortune. Conclusion: the wealth of the rich is just as scandalous as the poverty of the poor.”
    Our nocturnal meetings became more and more frequent. I helped him distribute his tracts; sometimes, quite as a matter of course, I accompanied him to other synagogues. We were a team, but he had still not confessed to me his adherence to the clandestine Party. We talked of mysticism and liturgy, history and poetry, everything but ideology. I helped him because he had become my friend; he was my friend because he allowed me to take action. We were friends because—because we were friends.
    Together we believed that ultimate redemption depended only on us, as our ancient texts kept affirming. God had created the universe and made man responsible for it—it was up to us to shape it and make it resplendent. In helping our neighbor, we were helping God. In rousing the slaves and invoking their pride and dignity, we were accomplishing God’s work on His behalf. That was how we reconciled divine omnipotence with human freedom. In His omnipotence, God has made us free; it is up to us to restore the primordial equilibrium by returning to the poor what they had had to yield to their exploiters; it was incumbent on us to change the order of things—that is, to start the Revolution.
    “Don’t you understand?” Ephraim cried, eyes ablaze. “We must start the Revolution because that is God’s command! God wants us to be Communists!”
    In spite of all Ephraim’s explanations, I still didn’tknow what that word meant, just as I didn’t know that it linked us to the Soviet Union. I didn’t even know that in Liyanov, among our God-fearing Jews, there was a clandestine Communist Party.
    I was very naive, Citizen Magistrate. I was a Communist and didn’t know it.

While washing the dishes in the communal kitchen, Raissa eyed her son, who stood in the doorway, ready to return to the attack:
    “Please, Mother—tell me about my father. Now we’re allowed to talk about him, you said so yourself.”
    “Don’t you see I’m busy?”
    She was irritated, as usual. Her irritation was contagious.
    “You’re always busy. And when you’re not, you’re upstairs with Dr. Mozliak.”
    “Are you starting again?”
    Grisha seemed about to run off, then turned back. What good was it to get angry? That was no way to make her talk.
    “Please, Mother. I hardly know my father, I don’t know him at all. It’s not normal. A son should know his father, even if his father is no longer alive.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Everything.”
    A pot in her hand, a kerchief on her head, Raissa seemed to resign herself. Grisha found her pretty, vulnerable. A melancholy smile, like a memory of her youth, brushed her lips.
    “Everything?” she asked with a smile. “And what does that mean—everything?”
    Grisha hesitated. His assurance left him. In his mother’s presence he had for some time felt himself both accuser and accused. Why was she making him suffer? Why was she so evasive? And—why was he so insistent? Because he loved her or because he didn’t?
    “Yes, Grisha, what is—everything?”
    Grisha blushed. His mother was right. Everything—what a stupid word—meaning one thing for the living, another for the dead; another for Mozliak, and yet another for Kossover. For the living, it was perhaps the sunbeam dancing across the kitchen, playing with the dust; or the noise of chairs being moved on the first floor; or certain silences tormenting an abandoned child.
    “Tell me—was he happy?”
    “I think so. Sometimes. Why do you ask?”
    “I told you. I want to know everything about him.”
    All of a sudden it was vital for Grisha to know whether his father had been happy. And only Raissa could tell him.
    “He was happy, Grisha. Like most people.”
    “I don’t like that answer. My father wasn’t like most people.”
    “That’s true, Grisha.