Directly or in veiled, metaphoric terms, we discussed political issues, and he told me once that according to a very clear-minded philosopher, whom I would not be able to read since he wrote his works in English, what is important in human societies is not that the majority have as much right as the ruling minority. That's just how it is, and it's inevitable. But if this were the only social principle regulating societies, there would be only strife in the world. There would be no possibility of reaching any agreement between individuals or societies. But we know that this isn't so. And the reason for that is that there is also an infinite goodness in this world, and everyone without exception, rulers as well as subjects, would like to have an equal share. This goodness exists, he said, because our desire for equality, symmetry, and harmony is as strong as is our lust for power, our need for total victory over a foe. And we must understand that the lack of this symmetry and harmony in us is also evidence of the existence of this goodness.
I couldn't then have possibly remembered, let alone understood, this complex thought, but later, when I came upon the book of this very significant philosopher, I rediscovered it with a surprise that took my breath away.
And if now, after so many years, I take out these photographs and spread them before me, I am again reminded of this same, seemingly complex thought, and begin to suspect why I shied away from the symmetry that other people found so very attractive in my grandfather's features.
Grandfather's straight, almost rigid posture, which gave an unpleasant first impression, need not be taken as a peculiarity of his own. It has as much to do with the fashion of his day as with his profession, which made this kind of bearing almost compulsory. And there may have been another reason for the stiffness: in those days the long exposure time of cameras demanded that, with the help of all sorts of invisible supports, the subject be completely motionless. However, there are also two snapshots among the photos. One of them was taken at the Italian front in an improvised trench. They must have picked part of a ravine for the purpose, because you can see that two sides and the bottom of the trench are made of flat, layered blocks of limestone. Sandbags are piled on top of the stones, and you can tell the bags are loosely filled, they probably didn't have enough sand. Flanked by two fellow officers, my grandfather sits in the foreground of the picture. His long legs, elegant even in heavy boots, are crossed, his torso is bent forward, and his arms are supported on his elbows; with his mouth slightly open and his eyes wide, he is staring into the camera. The faces of the other two, lower-ranking officers are worn and haggard, their uniforms seem neglected, but the look in their eyes is fearlessly determined, if somewhat artificial. In this setting my grandfather looks like a self-indulgent playboy who can enjoy himself even in such circumstances because he has nothing to do with anything or anyone there. The other snapshot is one of the nicest pictures I have ever seen. It must have been taken at sunset, on top of a hill where only a single puny little tree stood. In between the sparse leaves, the sun shines right into our eyes, or rather into the lens of the long-gone amateur photographer. Grandfather is chasing two young girls in long dresses and straw hats; they are my aunts. One of the girls, my Aunt Ilma, has apparently gotten away; waving her ribboned hat, she is running, on her way out of the picture. Her triumphant grin is therefore very blurry. The other little girl, Aunt Ella, is in an odd pose, leaning out from behind the slender tree, and Grandfather catches her just as the photographer clicks his shutter. Grandfather is wearing a light summer suit, he either unbuttoned his jacket or it had opened by itself. He is coiling out from behind the tree while still clinging to it, like a well-groomed but momentarily disheveled satyr. In this picture, too, his mouth is half open and he is wide-eyed, but not only is there no sign of pleasure in his eyes, it almost appears as if he were carrying out some painful duty, although in the snatching, clutching movement of his hand there is something of the supple greed of a predator. In other photos, I can see only his harmoniously motionless face, photographed frontally, concealed by his rigid posture.
In old novels such faces are called ovoid. It's a full, well-proportioned, oval face, strongly, smoothly articulated, easing into a forehead framed by irrepressibly wavy locks of hair. His high-bridged nose has sensitive nostrils, his eyebrows are dense, his lashes long, his irises surprisingly light, almost luminous, against the generally dark tones of his features. His lips are almost vulgarly thick, and on his aggressively protruding chin there is the same hard-to-shave cleft I have on mine.
The face, like the brain or the whole body, has two hemispheres. The common peculiarity of these two hemispheres is that their symmetry is only approximate. The unevenness discernible in a person's body or face stems from the fact that impressions received by our more or less neutral sense organs are separated in two unevenly developed hemispheres of the brain, and which side of a person's body or face seems more striking to us depends on which side of the person's brain is more developed. The right hemisphere processes the emotional connotations of the impressions, while the left hemisphere deciphers the meaning of the same impressions, and only afterward, as a second step, does the brain establish a direct relationship between the intellectual and emotional aspects of the same impression. One perceives a phenomenon with one's eyes, ears, nose, and fingers as an unprocessed whole, then breaks it down to its components and, based on the relations between the different components, re-creates for oneself the whole that one first came to know through sensory perception. But, because of the uneven development of the brain's two hemispheres, the perceived whole can never be identical with the analyzed and assimilated whole, which in turn means that there is no such thing as a perfectly harmonious emotion or a perfectly harmonious way of thinking.
Anyone can observe this phenomenon in himself when talking to another person. People in conversation never stare directly into one another's eyes — only madmen do that — rather, they move their eyes from one hemisphere of the face to the other, back and forth. The glance oscillates between thought and feeling, and if it is fixed on any one point, it will inevitably be the left side of the face, the one expressing emotions, it is this side of the face that the neutral glance, taking in the whole of the impression, uses to check whether the words it comprehended mentally are identical with the emotions elicited by the interlocutor's words.
Language, in certain set phrases, also follows this functional peculiarity of the human body. If, for example, referring to a given phenomenon I say that I couldn't believe my eyes, what I'm admitting is that neither intellectually nor emotionally could I process the received impression as a whole, or more precisely, I tipped so far toward either a mental or an emotional evaluation that I could no longer establish a connection between the two poles. I saw something but could not reconcile it with my inner sense of order and balance; therefore, although I may have seen it as whole, I could not comprehend it whole, therefore could not assimilate it. The reverse phenomenon takes place when we say that we are trying to stare somebody down. In this case the searching glances of the speakers come to an absolute standstill. For two reasons. Either the glance finds harmony, perfect agreement between the emotional and intellectual spheres — and harmony always comes as an unexpected surprise, for it is a theoretical whole with, theoretically, no differentiated parts. Or, since the contradiction is irreconcilable between the emotional and intellectual aspects of the phenomenon, it intends to settle at the dead center of this unachievable harmony, fixed on the other person's neutral organ of perception, his eyes, trying to deprive itself of any further impressions and, with its impassivity, to force the other to decide in which direction it wishes to tip its own scale.