The Testament [antikvár]

One of the Just Men came to Sodom, determined to save its inhabitants from sin and punishment. Night and day he walked the streets and markets protesting against greed and theft, falsehood and indifference. In the beginning, people listened and smiled ironically. Then they stopped listening: he no longer even amused them. The killers went on killing, the wise kept silent, as if there were no Just Man in their midst. One day a child, moved by compassion for the unfortunate teacher, approached him with these words: Toor stranger, you shout, you scream, don't you see that it is hopeless?' 'Yes, I see,' answered the Just Man. 'Then why do you go on?* *ril tell you why. In the beginning, I thought I could change man. Today, I know "I cannot. If I still shout today, if I still scream, it is to prevent man from ultimately changing me.' From One Generation After I FIRSTMET Grisha Paltielovich Kossover at Lod airport, one afternoon in July 1972. A plane, just landed, was rolling down the runway. Outside, groups of welcoming relatives, friends, reporters stopped chatting and stood waiting. Reunions here do not erase the past, woven as it is of uprootings, of absences, of yearnings. I often go to Lod to witness the most astonishing in-gathering of exiles in modem times. Many of these men and women I had met before, in Soviet Russia, in the realm of silence and fear. Had I told them then that a few years later I would be welcoming them on the soil of our ancestors they would have looked at me reproachfully: 'Don't make fun of us, friend; false hopes are painful In the crowd I would sometimes recognize a young student or a Pioneer girl with whom I had stmg and danced, one Simhat Torah eve, in front of the Great Synagogue of Moscow. Once a shoemaker from Kiev burst into tears on seeing me. Another time, a university professor from Leningrad embraced me as though I were his brother, lost and found again; and, in a way, I was that brother. I like Lod at the hour when the Russian Jews are arriving. They have a way all their own of setting foot on the ground. As if awaiting a signal, an order, they do not dare move forward. For what seems an interminably long moment they stand rooted in front of the plane, gazing up at the blue sky laced with clouds; listening to the muffled sounds coming from the government buildings. They are looking, looking, seeking proof that this reality exists and that they are part of it. No scenes, no effusiveness - not yet; in an hour, perhaps, when the first couple locks in a first embrace, when father and son, uncle and nephew, camp-mates and battle comrades recognize each other. For the moment the two groups remain separate. Tense, nervous, the new arrivals restrain themselves: they do not cry out, they do not call - not yet. They hold back their silence before shedding the