26. August 1965, Haifa
L
ETTER FROM
D
ANIEL
S
TEIN TO
W
ŁADYSŁAW
K
LECH
Dear Brother,
Thank you for the books. I have just received the parcel. Unfortunately, at the moment I have no time at all for reading, or even to reply properly to your letter. I therefore promise to write a long letter with “explanations.” You were right in intuiting that a certain internal process began shortly after I arrived in Israel and a great many of my old views were shaken. This is a country of incredibly intense living, social, political, and spiritual—a word I don’t care for because I don’t accept the distinction between life on a higher and lower, a spiritual and a material plane. I would formulate the question which so agitated me after my arrival in Israel as: what was the faith of our Master? The issue is not what he preached, but what precisely he believed in. That is what is of supreme interest to me. I can’t promise to write to you with my thoughts on this matter in the immediate future, but will not fail to do so eventually.
I send you my best wishes on this festival of the Transfiguration. I served Mass on the top of Mount Tabor yesterday. There are two temples there, one Catholic and one Orthodox, and and they have railings fencing them off from each other. We found a place on the mountain slope slightly below the summit. I believe it was the very spot where the apostles fell to the ground blinded by their vision. Then we prayed. There were two Anglican women and several Orthodox in addition to my regular parishioners. It was a great joy.
I even dreamed about that rusty railing separating those two churches. It is dividing Peter from Paul, and in such a place! I couldn’t stop thinking about it and, since pondering matters at great length is not my style because I am quite impulsive, I have already written a petition to the Latin Patriarch seeking permission to create here in Haifa a Christian union of all the denominations for communal prayer. I am also turning over in my mind the possibility of a common liturgy. If we work toward that, we could see it during our lifetime. I am not mad. I am well aware how many obstacles there are on that path, but if God wills it, it will come to pass.
With brotherly love,
Your Daniel
1 March 2006, Moscow
L
ETTER FROM
L
UDMILA
U
LITSKAYA TO
E
LENA
K
OSTIOUKOVITCH
Dear Lyalya,
I have something unexpected to tell you. Back in November, in Vollezele, with a telephone which had been cut off, a computer which didn’t work, and a landlady who spoke only Flemish, in a room with a meditation mat of Indonesian tapa, I realized that what I want most of all is to write about Daniel. Not a gripping mythological theme, not Imago, which is already partly written. None of that, only about Daniel. However, I have completely rejected the documentary approach, although like a conscientious slave I have studied all the documents, books and papers, publications and reminiscences of hundreds of people until I know them by heart. I have started writing a novel, or whatever it will be called, about a person in those circumstances, with those problems today. With the whole of his life he raised a heap of unresolved, highly inconvenient issues which nobody talks about: the value of a life turned into mush beneath one’s feet; the freedom which few people want; God for whom there is ever less room in our life; efforts to extricate Him from archaic words, all the ecclesiastical garbage, and life which has closed in on itself. Have I packaged that temptingly?
From the day I met Daniel I have been circling around this and you know how many times I have attempted to make contact with it. Well, I am making another attempt, only this time I shall try to free myself from the pressure of documents, of the names of real people who might be offended or harmed, and to retain only what has “non-private” significance. I am changing names, inserting my own fictional or semi-fictional characters, changing the setting and time of events, being disciplined, trying not to be capricious. In other words, I’m interested only in complete truthfulness of utterance, although as always I retain the right to fall flat on my face. That is perhaps the greatest luxury an author can afford in this age of market relations.
Be that as it may, I am sending you the first part of what I have written so far. I don’t believe I can cope without your support, friendship, and professionalism. I have told you a lot about this before, but you will meet completely unfamiliar characters I have just invented, so that they are still soft and warm like new-laid eggs. Did you know that inside the hen an eggshell is far softer than after it emerges from the cloaca? Birds, my dear, do not have a backside but a cloaca. That is one of the remnants of my biological education.
How are the children and your Andrey? My Andrey has flown to Zürich in the wake of his works. The children are fine and not giving me too much trouble. The big news is that I will have a second grandchild by the summer.
Love,
L.
PART TWO
1. September 1965, Haifa
L
ETTER
F
ROM
H
ILDA
E
NGEL TO HER
M
OTHER
Dear Mother,
Happy birthday! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to phone you because Daniel and I were in Jerusalem for a few days, going around to see officials at the Ministry of Religions and the Latin Patriarchate. We even had to see a Russian archimandrite. It is all in connection with an amazing plan. I don’t know whether it will work out, but I very much hope that it does. I will tell you all about it in detail later. But first, about you.
From your last letter I know your most recent analyses have been normal. Thank God! It is dreadful that you were so ill, but even from that something good has come. We have never before been so close. During the month I spent with you I came to understand you far better, and I feel you understand me better, too. Is it always necessary to pay such a high price before we can understand each other?
You asked me to explain in more detail what I am doing here, but that is quite difficult. I am rushing about a lot, but by no means all of it makes sense. Brother Daniel—the more I know about him the more I want to tell you—is always laughing and teasing me. He says I spin my arms like a windmill but what spills out of me is not flour but handkerchiefs, purses, and ballpoint pens.
Last week I did lose my purse again, but it had only 15 lirot in it. Fortunately I had taken 300 to a needy family that morning and transferred 800 for a young woman’s studies. Last month we received a donation from Germany and were able to pay the electricity bill. We pay for the electricity in the Arab church. They have their service in the morning and don’t need to put the lights on, but ours is in the evening and we can’t do without light. Since they allowed us to hold our services in their church the cost of electricity has gone up fourfold.
Now, about our plan. Some time ago we went on a trip to Mount Carmel. Daniel took a group of 10 or so of our young parishioners and of course I went too. It was a wonderful place, an ancient Druze village. You have probably not heard about the Druze. They really are a unique people, quite unlike anybody else. Daniel said that they were originally Muslims, but venerate a saint called al-Hakim whom Muslims do not recognize but who in many respects resembles Jesus. Just like the Christians they live in expectation of the Second Coming but keep their faith profoundly secret. They venerate the Torah, the new Testament, and the Quran, and also have some secret books of their own. They even have a special principle, I’ve forgotten what it’s called, which requires them to conceal their true views and adapt externally to the morals and religion of those around them. As always, Daniel talks about them very interestingly. We did not go into their village but climbed on up the mountain.