Legends of Our Time by Elie Wiesel Page B

not give the soup back to my father. I did not hurl myself at you and tear from you your eyes and your tongue and your victory. Yes, I was afraid, I was a coward. And hunger was gnawing at me: that’s what you had counted on. And you won.
    Has the accused anything to say in his defense?
    You always won, and sometimes, at night, I thought that maybe you were the one who was right. For us, you were not just the whip or the ax in the murderer’s hand: you were the prince who played the game of death, you were its prophet, its spokesman. You alone knew how to interpret the rages of the executioner, the silences of the earth; you were the guide to follow; whoever imitated you, lived; the others would perish. Your truth was the only valid truth, the only truth possible, the only truth that conformed to the wishes and designs of the gods.
    Guilty or not guilty?
    Instead of rejoining the ranks of the victims, of suffering like us and with us, instead of weeping without tears and trembling before the incandescent clouds, instead of dying like us and with us, perhaps even for us, you chose to reign over the work of darkness, proclaiming to whomever wanted to hear that pity was criminal, generosityfruitless, senseless, inhumane. One day after the roll-call you gave us a long lecture on the philosophy of the concentration camp: every man for himself, every man the enemy of the next man, for each lived at the other’s expense. And you concluded: “What I am telling you is true and immutable. For know that God has descended from heaven and decided to make himself visible: I am God.”
    How do you plead?
    The judge hears the stifled moans of the witnesses, living and dead; he sees the accused beat up one old man who was too slow in taking off his cap, and another because he did not like his face. “You, you look healthy to me,” says the accused, and punches him in the stomach. “And you, you look sick to me, you’re pale,” and he slaps his face. Itzik has a heavy shirt: the accused takes it away from him. Itzik protests and he is already writhing in pain. Izso has held onto his old shoes: the accused claims them. Izso, clever, hands them over without saying a word. The accused takes them with a contemptuous smile: look at this imbecile, he does not even resist, he does not deserve to live.
    Well, then? Guilty or not guilty?
    And what if everything could be done over again? What are you now compared to what you were then? Tell us about your repentance, your expiation. What do you tell your wife when she offers you her pride, when she speaks of the future of your children? What do you see in the eyes of the passerby who says to you “good morning,” “good evening,” and “
shalom
,” “peace be with you”?
    “Well?” yells the driver. “How many times do I have to tell you we’re here?”
    He looks at us in his rear-view mirror, shouts louder. Our inertia is too much for him. He turns around in his seat and shouts again: “Boy, you must be deaf! Don’t you understand Hebrew?”
    My prisoner pretends not to understand any language.He sleeps, he dreams, transported somewhere else, in another time, the end of another line. He is waiting for me to make the first move, to break the curse that separates us from other men. As in the past with his masters, he will follow, he will obey.
    The driver is getting angry. These two speechless and immobile phantoms apparently want to spend the night in his bus. Do they think they are in a hotel? He gets up, grumbling, “I’ll show you, you’ll see.” He moves toward us, looking furious. My prisoner waits for him without flinching, indifferent to whatever may happen. I touch his arm.
    “Come on, let’s go.”
    He complies mechanically. Once down, he stands stationary, and wisely waits for me on the sidewalk. He could make a dash for the dark little streets that lead to the ocean. He does not. His will has defaulted. He is not about to upset the order of things, to speculate on