Legends of Our Time by Elie Wiesel

precisely seven, a man came up and stared right at me. He had not recognized me. But I did recognize him. Those smoldering eyes, those puffy lips, that stooped back. The rest hardly mattered. His appearance did not count. In the past, he had been dressed only in rags. Now he appeared elegant in his light gray suit, with matching tie. In the past, he used to play the beggar; now he was playing the rich man.
    “Moshe,” I murmured in a choked voice.
    He held out his hand.
    “Hello. Glad to meet you. How are you?”
    His voice was grave, melodious. His gesture hesitant. And his expression disturbing, supplicating and mocking at the same time.
    I could not believe my eyes. My head was bursting. He was holding my hand in his and I did not have the strength to withdraw it. I thought: “You’ve got to think, and fast.” But I did not dare to think: who knew where my thoughts would lead me? If Moshe the Madman is alive, then all those who disappeared, lost in the mist, are alive, too; something has happened in the kingdom of night which we know nothing about, something quite different from what we think.
    He let go my hand and stared at me curiously, as if to test me.
    “You called me Moshe: why?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Inadvertently, out of habit. It’s a name I like, it contains the history of our people.”
    It was he, my friend, the mad cantor, who was staring at me, no doubt about it. I had seen him go to his death and that was still the best proof he was alive: all those who entered, by night, the crucible of death, emerged from it by day more healthy and more pure than the others who had not followed them.
    Suddenly I understood why he had haunted me since the liberation: I saw him everywhere because he was everywhere, in every eye, in every mirror. The dead had come back to earth, all like him; he was the first link in this dynasty of madmen, he was destiny turned into man.
    He no longer had his pot-belly or his thick beard. He no longer wore his prayer-shawl, his
talit katan
, under his patched-up jacket. But it was the same Moshe who used to shout in the street, in front of the synagogue, at the hour of prayer: “I am burning, children, I am burning like fire! Look, children, look and see that it is in everyone’s power to burn without being consumed!” Peoplethought he was drunk. He liked to drink. During the holidays he would go to various Hasidic groups, and interrupting their gatherings, would jump up on the table and in a single draught empty every bottle handed him. He was the king of clowns, the prophetic fool, free to do anything. The more he drank, the more his utterances gained in clairvoyance. “Yes, I’m burning, children!” he would cry. “Look at me and understand that it is with fire that one kindles fire, it is also with fire that one puts out the flame: but woe to the man who puts it out, woe to him who draws back from it. Look, children, look and see how I hurl myself down head first!”
    “Let’s go and have something,” my companion suggested.
    We found a kosher restaurant on Forty-sixth Street. The waiter placed a bottle of Slivovitz on the table. We clinked glasses. I said: “Moshe used to drink alone. I should have kept him company, but I was too young. Is it too late now? I wonder.”
    I filled the glasses a second time. A third. I emptied mine in one draught; he was nursing his, taking small sips. I thought: “He has changed, after all. In the past, he would have been impatient, he would have wanted to rush things. Is it possible that he has reached the end of his road?”
    “I read what you wrote about Moshe the Madman,” he said, grimacing slightly. “You seem to know him better than I.”
    “Better? Perhaps differently.”
    “No, better. The proof: you speak of him, he animates your writings. That’s why I was determined to meet you. What do you know about him? his background? his ambitions? his secret plans? Are you sure he was the way you describe him? that he