On these wheelchair tours of his apartment what he was feeling was stingingly apparent: What will happen to all this when I am gone? There's nothing that I can take with me into the grave. These beautiful objects which I bought in Japan, in Europe, and New York, far and wide, with so many deliberations and discussions with experts and friends…. Yes, Ravelstein was going down. You might not have guessed, seeing him in his rolling chair, tucked into the plaid with a wide stooped back and the honeydew-melon head tipped far to the side, how physically impressive he was, and how little his quirks, tics, and idiosyncrasies, and recent infections counted. Years ago, visiting my country house in New Hampshire, Ravelstein asked whether I had any proprietary feeling for the fieldstone house, the old maples and hickory trees, the gardens. The truthful answer was that though I liked them all well enough, I did not identify myself as the owner of these acres and objects. So that if the worst were to happen and a local armed militia were to descend on me and drive me out as a Jewish alien, their offense mainly would be against the Jew, not against the landowner. And in such a case my concern would be for the U. S. Constitution, not for my investment. The rooms, the rocks, the vegetation had no hold on my vital organs. If I were to lose it, I'd live on elsewhere. But if the Constitution, the legal foundation of it all, were to be destroyed, we would return to the primal chaos, he used to warn me.
On that visit, Ravelstein had come down to see me from Hanover on Interstate 91, risking his life in a rented car. He was far too un coordinated to be safe on the highways-he jittered at the wheel. He had no connection with vehicles except as a passenger, and was too nervous. And he disliked the country.
He said, repeating the opinion of Socrates in the _Phaedrus__, that a tree, so beautiful to look at, never spoke a word and that conversation was possible only in the city, between men. Because he loved to talk, to think while talking, to lean backward while the bath of ideas overflowed-he instructed, examined, debated, put down errors, celebrated first principles, mixing his Greek with a running translation and stammering madly, laughing as he embroidered his expositions with Jewish jokes.
In the country he never set off on his own across a field. He _looked__ the woods and meadows over but had no other business with them. Somehow Rousseau, who was so fond of fields and woods, was at the back of Abe's mind. Rousseau botanized. Plants, however, were not Ravelstein's dish. He'd eat a salad but he couldn't see the point of meditating on it.
He had come to the country to see me, and the visit was a concession to my unaccountable taste for remoteness and solitude. Why did I want to bury myself in the woods? It was a safe assumption that he had examined my motives from more angles than I could ever think up if I brooded over them for an aeon. It is also possible that he was curious about my then-wife Vela-those were the pre-Rosamund days-still trying to understand why I had married such a woman. Now _there__ was a question for you. He had real intelligence, you see, a working, persistent mind, whereas I was only occasionally, fitfully, intelligent. What he thought out, and thought through, sat upon a foundation of tested principles.-How shall I put it?… As birds went he was an eagle, while I was something like a flycatcher.
He knew, however, that I could understand his principles-they didn't even need to be explained to me. If he had a single illusion it was that somehow I was capable of accepting correction, and he was a teacher, you see. That was his vocation-he taught. We are a people of teachers. For millennia, Jews have taught and been taught. Without teaching, Jewry was an impossibility. Ravelstein had been a pupil or, if you prefer, a disciple of Davarr. You may not have heard of this formidable philosopher. His admirers say that he is a philosopher in the classical sense of the term. I am no judge of such things. Philosophy is hard work. My own interests lie in a different direction altogether. Within my mental limits I think of the late Davarr with respect. Ravelstein talked so much about him that in the end I was obliged to read some of his books. It had to be done if I was to understand what Abe was all about. I used to run into Davarr on the street, and it was hard to imagine that this slight per son, triply abstracted, mild goggles covering his fiery judgments, was the demon heretic hated by academics everywhere in the U. S. and even abroad. As one of Davarr's chief representatives, Ravel-stein was hated, too. But he didn't at all mind being the enemy. He was anything but faint-hearted. I didn't much care for professors as a class. They haven't had much to offer us in the unbearable century now ending. So I thought, or used to think.
It is pleasant to consider the week of Ravelstein's country visit. Quiet New England in long, narrow frames-sunlight, greenery, the bed of orange-red poppies next to the red-and-white peonies.
Glancing through the Venetian blinds (he separated and widened the slats with shaking fingers) he saw the blossoms-just then the azaleas were coming into bloom-and found it all very well but the drama of the season lacked real interest. Not to be compared to the human drama.
He asked, "Is your wife always like this?"
"Like what?"
"_'What__,' the man says. Fourteen hours a day bolt upright with her books and papers, Vela shut away in her country-cupboard room."
"I see what you mean. Yes. That's the way she is about her chaos physics."
"To sit without budging-without even breathing. You never see her breathe at all. How does she manage not to suffocate?"
"She's preparing her paper. She's supposed to attend a conference to comment on somebody's research."
"She must catch up on her breathing-in snatches. I've watched her," said Ravelstein, "and I don't think she inhales except in an underground way."
Of course he was exaggerating. But there were facts to support him. Moreover, he had maneuvered me into accepting his way of speaking about her. Before I could consider whether to agree or disagree he had already persuaded me. What he was suggesting was that I didn't have to accept Vela's behavior. When we went to the country she locked herself up in her room. Two solitudes were then created. That was what our summers in New England were like: under one sun, on one planet, there were these two separate existences. Vela was especially beautiful when she was silent. Silent, she seemed to be praying to her beauty. Ravelstein may have been aware of this.
He came to New Hampshire to be with me very briefly, and he immediately understood what I had gotten into. He detested the rural scene, but for my sake he put his life on hold. He didn't like leaving his city switchboard command post. To be cut off from his informants in Washington and Paris, from his students, the people he had trained, the band of brothers, the initiates, the happy few made him extremely uncomfortable.