Cette nuit by Joachim Schnerf (review)

Salomon is a widowed Jew who recounts his own and his family's life through memories of real and imagined Passovers they have spent together. He survived Auschwitz. His two daughters and their husbands want to know more about his life in the camp; his granddaughter is angered that his experiences did not make him a more radically engaged intellectual; her younger brother thinks his awful Holocaust jokes are funny. The presence of the Final Solution looms large in the novel; there are even passages on well-intentioned but terrible art inspired by the Nazi genocide (129). Yet the novel's true focus is elsewhere. Cette nuit is the story of Solomon's love for his recently deceased wife, Sarah. She never experienced concentration camps, and it was perhaps for this reason that after the war she could serve as a haven for Solomon, someone able to help restore his shattered sense of human decency. Passover evokes the memory of the Hebrew captivity in Egypt and the triumphant exodus from this oppression due to divine intervention. For the secular Jew who is Solomon, it brings to mind his suffering in Auschwitz and then his return to life through Sarah's efforts. Passover is also the only time of the year when this couple's rambunctious family reunites: their two daughters who represent the female version of Cain and Abel without the violent finale, their sons-in-law, one suffering from logorrhea, the other from chronic diarrhea, and the two kids for whom the adults are at once a source of annoyance and amusement. Only Sarah could maintain the semblance of harmony at these family gatherings. She achieved that equilibrium partly through kindness and firmness, but mostly because her love soothed temperaments longing to be roiled. As the novel opens, a very nervous Solomon is trying to prepare for what will be his first Passover without Sarah. Unbeknown to him, it will also be his last. For days he has been plagued by persistent knocks at the door; when he opens, nobody is there. He is also concerned about the distribution of Sarah's bequest to the family. If the nighttime banging on the door evokes memories of Nazi rafles, it also suggests the most welcome death coming for Solomon. His decision to turn his wife's bequest into the purchase of a maison de campagne where his family can be happy and secure conjures up the image of an idealized Israel where his people will enjoy their lives in safety. While Pessah is part of a tradition which reminds Jews of their enslavement and emancipation, for Solomon its references are more immediate. The most famous line in the Seder ceremony, "pourquoi cette nuit est-elle différente de toutes les autres?" (13) recalls to Jews around the world their people's escape from Egypt. For Solomon it is an expression of his persistent mourning for his recently deceased wife, a bondage from which he will soon be free.