The Oath by Elie Wiesel Page B

unstable in matters of premonitions.
    “You’re making fun of me,” she complained as she wiped the table. “You’re wrong. I know I’m only an ignorant woman. I know my head is empty. But my heart is full …”
    I smiled. She was telling the truth. She was kindhearted, compassionate, warm. She had taken care of me and the house since my mother’s death. I loved her. Very much.
    “I know men of whom one could say the opposite, Rivka—full heads and empty hearts. I prefer you to them.”
    “You only say that.”
    “Because it is true.”
    “Then why do you make fun of what my heart predicts?”
    She seemed vexed. I apologized and rose to go. “Will you be in a better mood when I get home?”
    She shook her head, refusing to answer. Fate took it upon itself to answer in her stead.
    God needs man to manifest Himself, that we know. Whether to affirm His power or His mercy, He does so through man. Heuses an intermediary to express Himself and an emissary to punish. We are all messengers.
    The one He designated as the instrument to chastise my little town was called Yancsi—a troublesome youth who loved wine and the outdoors, animals and girls. And whatever he loved he felt compelled to hurt. When he was five he plunged a knife into his mother’s arm; she was late preparing his food. When he was ten he roamed the streets at night assaulting solitary strollers. He loved to frighten, he loved to hurt.
    He was not an enemy of our people, no more than of any other. He was a far greater foe of the birds, who, I remain convinced, were aware of it. They avoided him. No sooner did he appear than the sky became empty. But Yancsi pursued them, caught them, tortured them and threw their mutilated bodies into the brackish, poisoned pond.
    And so when he disappeared and there was talk of murder, my first thought was: It’s an act of reprisal, vengeance. The birds had surely condemned him to death. Now they had carried out the sentence. Which would explain the disappearance of his corpse—the executioners had carried it away.
    Unfortunately, the authorities leaned toward a less judicious explanation. For the first time in her life Rivka the maid had accurately foreseen the terrors to come. For the first time in her life her premonitions were about to take shape.
    It’s an old, old fable. And a foolish one at that, though it has proved its worth. So black and blinding was its baseness, that wherever it was invoked, bloodshed followed. In its aftermath, love of God turned into hate of man. A hate that fell into the same pattern everywhere, nurtured by a variety of instincts, superstitions and interests, constantly adapting itself to the requirementsof the times and the environment. Nothing has changed since the first “ritual murder.” Again and again the same corpse served as pretext; over and over the same child has been assassinated to provoke the same abominations.
    This time there was a difference. Usually these slanderous rumors began to circulate around Easter time. And this was October. We had just finished celebrating the last of the High Holy Days, that of the Law, Simhat Torah. And then, too—there was no corpse here.
    There was only the disappearance of a hoodlum, the fourteen-year-old son of a stableman. After going for an outing with the horses two weeks earlier, Yancsi had not returned home. When it was reported that the horses had been seen in a neighboring village, a cursing Dogor went to bring them back.
    At first people thought of it as an escapade. What schoolboy, particularly a dunce, does not dream of running away? Surely he would show up, meekly anticipating the thrashing that Dogor, his colossus of a father, a gruff and bloodthirsty man, would not fail to give him. But Yancsi had not reappeared.
    When another three or four days had elapsed without his being able to punish his son, the stableman took issue with his wife, who obviously was responsible, for without her this cursed bastard would not have