SKI
There Paweł I write like a chicken but at least I can write. My hands are just about moving but not my legs. I expected nothing better from you never there when you are needed. Well, fine. Don’t think you and Ewa that I can’t do anything without you. There are other people who will give me support. Pass my greetings to your wife Mirka and remind her that a heart attack is better than a stroke. As to your son I share your regret. What on earth has he done your Trotskyite? Do not forget that I spent eight years in Polish prisons and another five in Russian prisons. I don’t suppose a French one is any worse. Three years is not a long sentence especially when he is still young. In today’s Western prisons they serve coffee in the mornings change the bedlinen once a week and put a television in the cell so the prisoner does not get bored. That is more or less what I myself have now with all my medals only the television is in the corridor.
Rita
21. May 1988
F
ROM
E
WA
M
ANUKYAN’S DIARY
How deep seated all this is in me! Not only do I regularly go to see Esther as if going to confession to receive absolution of my sins, I even have to write it down. The sad truth is that I cannot free my head of all the accusations I have been storing up against my mother all through my life. I have long ceased to experience the fury and indignation she used to make me feel when I was young. I feel infinitely sorry for her. She lies there pale and dry, like a shrivelled wasp, and her eyes are like headlamps, full of energy. But, Lord have mercy on us, what kind of energy is it? Distilled, concentrated hatred. Hatred of evil! She hates evil with such passion and fury that evil can rest assured. People like her make evil immortal.
Looking at Rita, I have long found social injustice preferable to the struggle against it. When she was young, she had cosmic ambitions. They scaled down over time until now she seems to be fighting the injustice of fate toward herself. Before her stroke, she concentrated her fire on the director of the old people’s home, fat, bald Yohanan Shamir. First she quarrelled with him, then she started writing denunciations of him until a commission of some description arrived. After that, I don’t know all the details, he retired. On my visit this year, Yohanan visited her while I was there and she talked to him amicably enough. That was all before her latest stroke. She is already back to talking a little now but cannot get out of bed, of course. In fact, she can’t even sit up on her own at present.
When she had the stroke I thought, with relief, that the poor woman would now finally die. Then I was ashamed of myself, and now I’m even more ashamed. Did I really want her to die? Now I don’t want anything for her. I just keep thinking how odd it is that she is still able to torment me. Why, from morning till night, do I think, not even about her but about my attitude toward her? Of course, she thinks I am a bastard, and has told me as much on many occasions. Now, however, I have to agree with her because I cannot forgive or love or feel sorry enough for her.
Esther listened to all my ramblings and then said, “There is no advice I can give you. We are fated to feel this way. Those left behind always feel guilt toward those who have gone. It is a matter of time. A few decades from now your Alex will tell somebody close to him how guilty he feels about not having loved you enough. It’s like some basic chemistry of human relations.” Then she said very firmly, “Be at peace with yourself, Ewa. What you can and need to do you should do, but what is beyond your ability you should not attempt. Allow yourself that. Look at Rita. She cannot be different, and you let yourself be the person you are. You are a good girl.” Her words left me feeling happy.
22. 1996, Galilee
L
ETTER FROM
A
VIGDOR
S
TEIN TO
E
WA
M
ANUKYAN
Dear Ewa,
A few days ago Noami brought me a letter Daniel sent her some 20 years ago when she was bedridden in a sanatorium for six months being treated for osseous tuberculosis. It is one of the few extant letters he wrote so I am sending you a copy.
You have no idea how many people come to ask me about my brother: journalists from various countries, an American professor, a writer from Russia.
Milka sends you her best wishes. If you decide to come to Israel, we will be glad to put you up.
Avigdor
1969, Haifa
C
OPY OF A LETTER FROM
D
ANIEL TO
N
OAMI
My dear, good Noami,
Can you believe it? A certain very attractive individual, very fluffy with very green eyes, has drawn me into her life and is demanding that I should adopt her three children. Here is what has happened. We have no locks on the monastery cells. We don’t really have anything for anyone to steal, and in any case, outsiders are never allowed into the monks’ living quarters. My door does not close very tightly and no effort is needed to open it. Anyway, imagine, I came home late one evening and saw the door was ajar. I went in, washed without lighting a candle, sat on my chair, and started pondering. It is a habit I have had since I was young: before going to sleep I spend a little time thinking over what I have done during the day and about the people I have met or, indeed, not met. For example, you. I haven’t seen you for more than a month, and very much miss your sweet little face. So, there I am sitting in the dark quietly thinking about one thing and another when I suddenly sense that I’m not alone. There is someone else and I am certain it is not an angel. How can I be so sure? Although I have never met an angel, I am just sure that if one did appear, I would be in no doubt about it. I don’t think anyone would be likely to confuse the coming of an angel with the arrival of the gardener or our hegumen. Be that as it may, there was someone there. I stayed motionless and did not light a candle. It was a very strange feeling, with even a slight suggestion of menace.
Outside the moon was bright, so the darkness was not so much dark as rather gray. I cautiously looked from side to side and saw somebody lying on my bed, someone small and round. Very carefully, scarcely breathing, I went over to the bed and found there an enormous cat. She woke up, opened her eyes, and they shone with a terrible light. You know yourself how animals’ eyes glow in the dark. I said hello and asked her to let me have my bed back, but she pretended not to understand. Then I stroked her a little and she immediately started purring loudly. I stroked her some more and found that she was not just a cat but an exceedingly fat cat, and one which was very quick on the uptake because she promptly moved over to make room for me. I tried to explain to her that I was a monk and there was no way I could share my bed with a lady, so would she mind moving to the chair. She refused. Then I had to put my sweater on the chair and her on the sweater. She did not resist, but as soon as I lay down, she got back on to the bed with me and delicately settled down on my feet. I gave in and fell asleep. When I woke in the morning she had gone, but that evening she again appeared and showed she was quite unusually clever. Can you imagine, I found her sleeping on the chair, and when I got into bed she again settled herself on my feet. To tell the truth, I found it rather pleasant.
For five days she would be there on the chair in my room every evening, and when I went to bed she moved over to join me. I never did get a good look at her, because when I awoke she had already gone. In any case, I’m always in a hurry in the mornings and had no time to go looking for her in the monastery or the orchard, which is fairly large.
Anyway, picture the evening when I came back and didn’t find the cat on my chair. I wasn’t sure whether I was feeling disappointment or jealousy. Where had she gone? To whom had she transferred her affections? I even wondered about it during the day. I was stung by her infidelity!