104
PARTISAN REVIEW
suction him up and fly away with a yell of demoniacal exultation?
I looked at Rabbi Mellakh, longed to cry out a warning, but I saw
his beautiful hand stroke his white beard and on his forehead I
read so perfect a calm that the outcome of the duel at once became
apparent; good would conquer evil. Many years after his death I
would still torture myself over the perfect balance of his spiritual
life, because of the private salvation he so definitely seemed to
have attained.
If
today I see him so vividly, it is because I saw him
die as he lived, free from all torment, from all doubt. That is what
he was like and doubt had never tainted his soul. He had conquered
his will and for him this conquest was a key to the universe aud to
the future, and everything outside his private salvation was vanity.
But I am wandering from my story....
When I heard Rabbi Mellakh chant, I lost all idea of place
and time. Yet, there was no great loveliness in this chanting with
its broken, ambiguous rhythms, but the tones of his voice and the
strange rumble of the words fillipped my imagination, peopled my
mind with heavenly apparitions. When he blessed the bread, his
ritual gestures conjured up for me the primitive dances of the birth
of the centuries, and when he sang "Today is blessed above all
other days" I expected God to come down and be among us. Pic–
tures formed out of the canticle, a natural, intoxicating inspiration
possessed me from the psalms. I too sang, a dumb song about
forests, rainbows, steep cliffs that bathe in the sea, flowers that
drink the sunshine. We were the singers of this world.
* * * *
About an hour and a half later, I was preparing to go home
when a woman's shrill cry pierced the atmosphere, heartrending
with anguish. It cut into the room through the walls and the win–
dows simultaneously, long, sustained, as though it had a concrete
material quality. Almost immediately, footsteps thudded in the
dark passage and the door yielded under a strong push. A man
stood still, legs wide apart, booted to his knees, the
papaha
pushed
back on his head, his right arm clutching an automatic pistol.
Other men were outlined behind him, shrouded in the darkness.
With them, the black North wind poured into the room. I
shivered. I noticed Rabbi Mellakh get up quietly, and he held out
his arm as though in a Roman salute and he said:
"Peace be with you."
