I read your letters and I'm almost afraid to believe them: they contain so much tenderness, anxiety, pain, longing, determination and despair. We have so little time and yet it flies at its age-old speed and we don't even manage to tell each other what has happened over the past hours let alone what has happened in the course of our lives. But love is not measured in minutes. What is it measured in? Completeness? Or devotion? Or the extent of longing? Or intimacy? What is completeness? How far does devotion extend? Giving one's life for another. Being frank with them. Standing by them in suffering. Not abandoning them even at moments when they seem quite distant. Thinking about them every moment. Saying not a single word to hurt them. Having patience. Knowing how to listen. Knowing how to understand what seems incomprehensible. Knowing how to wait. How to forgive. What is intimacy? There must be several degrees of intimacy and which of them is the highest degree, the most special, I am not able to say.
Something else occurs to me: the fact that you yearn to live in love means
you are closer to Jesus than those who pray every day yet call for revenge or harbour hatred in their hearts.
I'm talking like a preacher again. But I love you so much that I lose for a few seconds at least the feeling of guilt that pursues me almost unceasingly.
What will become of us?
Love, Dan
Dear Dannie,
We're having an Indian summer out here in Oregon and it's our second year fighting for the survival of the salmon. I've had loads of work as we've been repairing the house and changing the heating system, apart from which we've taken in my mother-in-law. She is eighty-five (see, there are even older grannies than me) and a bit confused. The other day she took the old pendulum clock off the wall, weights and all, and started to fiddle about with it. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she was changing the batteries. I told her that that was something we all needed — to have our batteries changed — but unfortunately (for the time being anyway) it's not possible. So I have to shoulder everything here. My Bob can just about manage to trim branches and mow the lawn, but he's helpless in the house, even though it's his mother and he loves her.
Re. what you told me about Dad: I don't know what to think, I've been away for twenty-five years (a quarter of a century, brrr!). As far as his moral conduct is concerned I don't think he had too many scruples. He two-timed our mother. He thought Mum didn't know, but she did and she let me in on it (though probably not you), and she actually used to write to me about those women. She used to call them 'Daddy's tarts'. But I don't condemn Dad. In fact, I might have a teeny bit of understanding for him. He was a good-looking guy and women were crazy about him. I noticed it in the hospital. Mum was from another world, he must have had to live like a hermit with her. I don't think he and she hit it off too well, but since he was basically a nice guy, he never abandoned her. On the other hand, he lost a lot of years of his life. Maybe you don't know, but when they arrested him they held him for eight months in solitary. Can you imagine how horrific that was? And they beat him up. But seemingly they didn't manage to beat anything out of him, which is why they jailed him afterwards. What
happened after I've no idea, but I can understand that when he got back from there he wanted to make up for everything he'd missed. Or to experience something really powerful that would exorcize the horror of it. I expect I'm talking about something other than what you wanted to know, but then again, maybe not entirely. I don't know what's worse: to betray people you don't know, or betray your own folks. I understand your desire to clear Dad's name insofar as it's in jeopardy. I've always been pragmatic to a fault and it seems to me that when someone is that long dead, it's best to let him rest in peace. Those who loved him will go on loving him as long as they live. Those who didn't are not going to be swayed by you anyway. And in the end we'll all be forgotten, along with all the good and the bad things we did on earth.
I wrote that Dad was a good guy and like you I don't believe he wanted to hurt anyone, or ever did.
Do you remember how they stopped you from attending grammar school when the poor guy was in jail? And how they admitted you when he was released. Maybe the two things were connected. The best thing is to say: it's a closed book.
There goes the mother-in-law ringing for me again. She rings for me at least twice a day, but at least it's cheaper than when she calls her friends on the East Coast or in London. She does that all the time, unless she happens to be eating, sleeping or ringing for me.
We're planning a trip to Europe next year so maybe we'll see each other. What's new in my dear homeland? Have our films, hamburgers, chewing gum and tourists reached you yet? Poor country!
Give my love to Hana and the kids.
And a big kiss for you, saintly man!
Love, Rút
Dear Dan,
It's Sunday morning, the sun is not yet fully awake and the rest are still asleep so I'm actually all alone. The garden is beneath my window. The grass is full of leaves that give off a scent of mould. There is music playing. Heaven must be something like this. Forgive me for such a banal image of
heaven in which I rejoice in the song of the birds instead of the nearness of God.
I started to write to you because I need to be with you, yet I don't know when I'll see you again in the flesh. On the radio they were just reciting some poem by a Lebanese poet. Among other things it said: if love gives you the signal, obey it; also, love not only crowns you but also nails you to the cross. So I ask myself: is there within me a love that crowns and also crucifies? Do I have the self-discipline and patience to accept from it both the exaltation and the torment?
I had a bad day yesterday and the cross was almost unbearable again. My dear spouse had a headache and declared that it was because of me, that all his ailments were because of me. I wanted to know why. He said he was tired of explaining it to me all the time. I apparently lack any sense of order. I was playing music when he was trying to concentrate. I slammed the door and disturbed him. I splashed the water in the bathroom too loudly (!!). When he needed me to do a transfer of a plan I wasn't home (I'd gone shopping). So many crimes in one day.
I told him that none of it was important. What was important was that I was with him. He started to shout that I didn't understand a thing and one day I'd kill him, unless he killed me — or himself — first.
That's how things have been with us for years now, but every time I shiver like a cur. All it takes is for him to give me a little smile and a look (not a kind one, just a look) and straight away I suck up to him again.
Am I really so terrible? Do I really ruin my husband's life? What am I like, tell me? I have the feeling that you can judge, that you can be a judge of people because you have it all within you: patience, humility, kindness, a yearning for freedom and a sense of duty.
You write about a sense of guilt that pursues you. You ask what will become of us? It will come to an end, because everything on earth comes to an end. But just this once I'm not thinking about the end, I'm not thinking about the consequences of our actions, I don't want to think about what will be, I want to feel what is now. I think about you with tenderness and only wish that you'll be all right, and that I can help you to be, even from a distance.
I also want to tell you something I've never told you. My husband was never concerned about what I felt when we made love, in those far-off days when