Read Elie Wiesel for Free Online Page B

falling on the city. The Hudson’s waves flowed slower. Tamar was quiet.
    The moment Elhanan saw her he went rigid. His breath stopped. He muttered, “Not possible, not possible!”
    Tamar went straight to him and kissed him on both cheeks. She’d hardly arrived but felt at home, in spite of his agitation. “Not possible, not possible,” Elhanan repeated.
    “What’s not possible?” she asked.
    “The resemblance,” Elhanan murmured. “The quality of your beauty.”
    “Now, don’t tell me you want to marry me.” Tamar smiled. Lost to the world, Elhanan did not hear her. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?”
    Malkiel spoke up immediately. “Father, this is Tamar. My colleague. You’ve read her articles.”
    Elhanan seemed to wake up. “Ah yes, of course. I remember. How happy I am to see you in my home!”
    Elhanan had worn his blue suit. He wanted her to like him; she liked him. Tamar knew how to draw people out; soon she had him talking. About his students and his patients. She admired his erudition and his gift for analysis and introspection. A glowing Loretta served coffee. Tamar complimented her and meant it: “It’s better than what theyserve at the White House.” “Tell the President,” Loretta replied, “that I’ll come give him a hand when he has important dinner guests.” Malkiel excused himself to phone the newspaper. Elhanan took advantage of his absence to repeat, “Not possible, it’s really not possible. You’re beautiful, very beautiful … as my wife was once.” Malkiel was back, and Elhanan spoke to him: “What are you waiting for, my son? Marry her! Hurry up!”
    “I adore him, you know,” Tamar told Malkiel when they were in the street again. “He’s someone very special.”
    Thank you, Tamar.
    “Do you see?” Tamar said, as they walked arm in arm down Broadway, looking for a cab. “Our parents consent. When shall we marry?”
    “And your work?”
    “I know myself: I’ll be a good wife and a good reporter at the same time.”
    “I don’t doubt it.”
    “I want children, lots of children.”
    “And your work?”
    “Don’t be a nuisance. I can be a good mother, a faithful wife and a great reporter.”
    “But—my father?”
    “We’ll take care of him. I can be a good daughter-in-law, a good wife—”
    “I know, I know.”
    “Well, then? All right? All right with you? You’ll give me babies? Five? Ten? If you knew how I love children … I love to watch them run along the sand, and dirty their hands, and make funny faces while they eat ice cream cones; I love them even when they’re not really lovable. Promise me we’ll make a lot of them.”
    “I don’t promise anything.” Children! By what right dowe bring them into the world? And what a world! Can we be sure they won’t curse us for having given them life? “I knew a man,” Malkiel said, “who didn’t want children. Not because he didn’t care for them, but because he loved them; he felt sorry for them. He thought of their future and said, ‘Better let it come without them.’ ”
    Tamar blazed into anger. “Stop it! That’s too stupid!”
    In his apartment he tried to take her in his arms; she slipped away. “Listen,” she told him. “Do you think I’m not afraid? I’m afraid of growing old, and ugly, and sick; I’m afraid of dying. But as long as I’m young I want my youth to make me happy; as long as I’m beautiful I want my beauty to intoxicate you. Of course everything’s ephemeral in this life. But to say that because the future is threatening and death exists we have no right to love, and to life, is to resign yourself to defeat and shame, and I won’t do that, ever.”
    “But—”
    “Be quiet. I know: you think of your father and you despair. From now on I’ll think of him, too, but I’ll think of him so as
not
to despair. He’s alone? But he’s alive. He’s melancholy? But he reacts, light gleams in his eyes. He’s sinking into old age? We’ll