I re-read what I wrote above and laugh. Dear girl! What is left of you, of your warm laughter, of your good unhurried kisses, of the arms you lazily wrap around my neck, what is left of you in this writing that complicates you, comments on you, changes you?
She has a receptive sensibility, is obedient and well behaved, and she struggles to suppress her tremors beneath the virginity she defends against both herself and me. I know her body, suffering in expectation, I know the line of her hips curving so lazily, with such melancholy, beneath her dress.
No, there are no big questions. It is the small certainties that concern her and are illuminated in her presence.
7
The lines written in recent days about Marga concerning what I ironically call ‘big questions’ are unutterably mediocre. If I had not once and for all decided to stop being foolish, I’d rip up the page. But keeping a diary would be too easy a job if you could modify it afterwards, correcting what was misconceived in the first instance. You can’t correct without dissimulating. And that’s not what I want.
But I was humiliated with the shame of it, cringing at the limitations of those thoughts, at their triteness and complacency, I was ashamed yesterday evening in the street when, turning a corner, I found myself in the middle of a revolution. I don’t know exactly what had happened. There had been a local meeting of workers and in the end the police intervened. People didn’t want to vacate the hall, or vacated it too slowly, or somebody shouted out some revolutionary nonsense and then the confrontation began. I arrived too late to see the fight in full swing – and I wouldn’t have seen much anyway, as the struggle occurred inside, in the hall, and the exits were too few and too narrow for those packed inside to escape.
Now it was almost over. Most of them were being escorted away between bayonets, tattered and torn. Several were stretched out on the footpath, bleeding. There was one who was groaning terribly, his head under a frozen pipe that was thawing and dripping slowly. I felt as if something within myself had been crushed underfoot. It wasn’t revolt or indignation, but a terrible sense of powerlessness in the face of pain, and I admit my first thought was that it was my tough luck to have been there, as I’d rather not have witnessed the unhappy scene, rather not have known it existed, seen it, heard it. But, once there, I couldn’t pass it by, it wasn’t possible, not because it’s not in me to be cowardly, but because I had an acute feeling that I would never have forgiven myself, that I would have crossed a personal boundary, there in secret, and never been able to go back.
I felt the need to make a gesture of solidarity with those unfortunates, to shout – I don’t know – ‘Long live the revolution!’ or ‘Down with the bourgeoisie!’ or ‘We want higher wages!’ or whatever it was I had to say in order to be beaten along with them, taken away with them – though, at the same time, I realized how laughable I was, how sentimental and philanthropic I was in my good intentions. I was utterly ridiculous there, with my little intellectual crisis, in the middle of the street, among people – the brawlers and the beaten – who amounted to something, had a cause, a calling. I felt alone, unarmed, useless, in a wave of life that was passing me by implacably, throwing me aside, and taking the others on forward with it.
I returned to my empty room, my drawing boards of no interest to me, my meaningless books. Tomorrow or the day after I will recover my foolish pride at being solitary. And will again be an intellectual, a pen pusher.
*
The joy of being at the heart of the crowd, like a tree in the sleeping greatness of the forest, the feeling of partaking and participating in the great chain of life, by which you are transcended and absorbed into the wider, inchoate physical current of the species …
This is something I have never known and never will. ‘Me’. Everything I do, all I think, all I suffer is circumscribed: ‘Me’. And I have the deplorable audacity to be proud of this infirmity, to consider the window from which I view the world as a ‘vantage point’ rather than a mere refuge. The audacity to believe that my solitude is a principle, when it is only an inability.
How poorly, how pathetically I confess this sin – and for all that it is no less real. I am a tree that has fled the forest. A tree with pride – a disease which does not kill violently, but attacks patiently from below, at the roots, at the very foundation of life.
Yesterday’s events, which caught me unawares and left me baffled, demonstrate starkly the sad state of the class of people who call themselves intellectuals, to whom I belong. Strange perversion: to stand by the roadside watching those who pass and events, and from this drama – which excludes you, the spectator – to arrive at ‘ideas’, which you neatly record. To call this ‘the conflict between thought and action’ would be to be too kind to myself, as if we were talking about two separate, incompatible domains, each with its own validity. But this misrepresents the real problem – making it too abstract and easy on myself. The real problem is the intellectual’s inaptitude for real life, methodically cultivated through reading, thinking and dialectic. It is deformity by stages, a systematic habituation, day by day, a slow atrophying of the reflexes and instincts, a step-by-step destruction of the natural vital power that allows us to pass untroubled through storms.
I don’t believe any intellectual has ever done anything decisive in human history, when it was not a matter of culture but of actually saving the species. History should be re-examined from this perspective: I’d be surprised if I were mistaken. What can you do with such houseplants that wither in fresh air?
And the situation of the Jewish intellectual is certainly worse, as he stands at two removes from the active game of existence; firstly as an intellectual and secondly as a Jew.
I was reading in Şapsă Zwi’s history, sold to me in December by Abraham Sulitzer, my friend from the train, that in 1646 tens of thousands of Jews were butchered in Poland and Russia, hundreds of villages and towns were wiped from the face of the earth, and while the towns were burning, while the spilled blood was pouring like lava from a still active volcano, in the synagogues, among flames and blood, they discoursed over Talmudic texts.
And the historian relates this terrible thing with pride, as a heroic fact, while it seems to me a sinister refusal to live, the undermining of the vital impulses, a shameful retreat from the law of nature.
*
I couldn’t have bumped into Sami Winkler at a better moment. ‘Just the man I need,’ he said cheerfully. I’d recognized from afar his great square boxer’s shoulders in the corner at the National, where he’d stopped to pass the time. I hadn’t seen him since early December, on the day I went to the student dormitories and found him arguing with S. T. Haim, his ideological enemy.
I like Winkler’s sturdy calm, the suggestion of physical strength, and the rough appearance which in fact obscures how much he has learned by applying himself methodically and painstakingly. Someone once pointed out to me a report in a foreign Zionist magazine which Winkler had submitted on behalf of the Romanian delegation at the annual Zionist congress in Basel: the subject did not interest me, but I noticed how much work he had put into it, his sense of order and great ability in organizing documentary material.
‘A bureaucrat with a heart’ is how S.T.H. dismisses Winkler. S.T.H. is too passionate and unfair. And in the end I think Winkler’s worth lies not in what he is but in what he is not. He’s not a lunatic, or a metaphysician, or crippled with doubt, or poisoned by complex intellectual crises. To not be all these things, and yet be a Jew – there’s a challenge. I have the impression that Winkler is well up to it.
So, seeing him again, it
occurred to me that he would have the answers to the questions troubling me lately – and though I have neither the appetite for nor practice in opening my heart, I talked about the events of recent days, of all my thoughts about the isolation of the Jew, and particularly of the Jewish intellectual, his isolation from the masses, and how poorly adapted he is for social reality and even life in general.
‘You believe in Zionism and working to found a new country. Has your conscience never grappled with this sterile feeling of Jewish aloneness? Don’t you feel this collective effort you’re mixed up in is somehow contrary to the nature of the Jew, who is destined to live an interior life and to be unable to break the shackle that holds him back from the world?
‘Forgive me, I realize what I’m saying is too abstract and pretentious, but follow me anyway. I’ll try to be clearer. Look, I think that in an enterprise like this, which involves building a country, an absolutely epic adventure when you get down to it, what really matters are not the practicalities – industry, economics, finance, raw materials – but something else, something in the realm of psychology or metaphysics, if that doesn’t alarm you. A bit of madness, a certain self-confidence, even a little recklessness. I wonder if we’re bringing too many problems with us, to a place where you should go with your sleeves rolled up for work. I don’t know, I’m not well informed and don’t try to be, because I don’t have much faith in figures, but without having thought deeply about Zionism, I believe it originates in an attempt to overcome our own futility. It’s really a tragic stab at salvation rather than a natural return to the land.
‘In recent days I’ve felt so ridiculous, having suddenly come face to face with life and these crowds, that when I think that there are young people like me who’ve put their books aside and gone to work with a pick-axe, in some terrible Palestinian colony, I ask myself if their departure is an act of heroism, as you probably believe, or just one of desperation.’
‘I don’t believe anything,’ replied Winkler. ‘I listen to you and see you don’t understand. Too much psychologizing, and I’ve no time for psychologizing. I’ve never had these kinds of doubts, to be completely honest with you.
‘I’ve always seen things clearly – I’ve always known what to do. I look at you, the way you get worked up, I look at S.T.H., how he chews things over, I look at lots of people and I just don’t understand. You worry about rebuilding the country and I don’t know how to respond. Maybe you’re right, maybe not, I’ve no idea. To me, the matter is natural, healthy and straightforward. I have no doubt that it’ll all work out, but I’m not in a hurry either. I work and wait.’
He stopped speaking, as though the discussion had come to an end, then, several beats later, added:
‘Listen, if you want to find out more, come with me on Thursday evening, to Jabotinski’s conference. He’s a dissident Zionist, terribly at odds with the central leadership as a result of his violent actions. He’s a strange sort, as you’ll see for yourself. During the war, he organized a Jewish military legion to fight to take Jerusalem. Come and hear him, maybe he can clear things up for you.’
*
I listened to Jabotinski, and he didn’t clear things up for me. But Winkler was right: he’s a sort. He has a clipped, unemotional style of speech that is at the same time lively and lucid and reveals that he is a natural fighter. Not much in the way of gestures, few smiles or frowns. A certain roughness of bearing, a lack of expressiveness even, which may well be deliberate. Lots of facts and figures, but enclosed within a few simple – vehemently simple – ideas. I’m no expert on Zionist politics, but I think I understood the main thrust of Jabotinski’s position regarding the movement’s official leadership.
‘The executive imagines,’ he said, ‘that Zionism can prevail through diplomacy. It starts with a legal fact: England’s mandate to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This term “homeland” strikes me as vague and unengaging. I’d prefer them to clearly say “state”. But, moving on. The central Zionist office thus believes that this legal document may provide a basis for its dealings with England, perhaps enabling it to gain land, to gain certain advantages and gradually achieve the movement’s political and national objectives. The strategy is simple: the Jews behave themselves, and the English will be magnanimous.
‘Well, this policy of haggling and hoping is for me the slow strangulation of the movement. Suicide. A national movement that hangs on a piece of paper is a recipe for death. We won’t become strong through a diplomatic pact, but through an inner creative spirit. With Lord Balfour’s letter or without, with a British mandate or without, it’s all the one to Zionism. Without the desire to create, without strength of will, Zionism amounts to absolutely nothing.
‘“But what is it you want to do?” ask the prudent Jews who’ve heard it whispered that I want to raise an army and start a war, or something to that effect. “Do you want to bring Great Britain to its knees? Do you want to destroy the English navy?
‘“Do you want to fight against submarines, torpedoes and the admiralty’s battleships?”
‘These Jews of ours are pretty smart, as you can see for yourself. But I can be smart too when needs be and this is how I answer: I don’t know what I want. I don’t know and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t sit and wonder what will work out and what it will be like. I just feel that things aren’t happening and the movement has to shift from international affairs to our own affairs. That we need purely spiritual strength rather than the backing of the force of law. That, in the end, the riskiest struggle for self-realization is a thousand times more productive, even when it fails, than the politest call for foreign goodwill, even when it succeeds.’
… And so on, for two hours. It was not a success. There were a lot of people, but they were disturbed, afraid even, of the speaker’s boldness.
In the end, in the street, Winkler clapped my shoulder and said, ‘Well?’
I didn’t know what to say. The man interested me, but the issue remained just as clouded. As it happened, we bumped into S.T.H. in the hall, and the three of us went to a café on the boulevard to talk.
S.T.H. was relentless.
‘A fascist, that’s what he is. And don’t ask me to consider him any less of a fascist because he’s a Jew. The idea of a Palestinian Jewish state, created through an act of national will – what an absurdity! And at the same time, what savagery! Don’t you see the machinations of the English in this whole business, a capitalist venture, which the massacred native Arabs and the Jewish proletariat of the colony will pay for, their very blood exploited in the name of the national ideal? Great Britain needs a right-hand man to guard the Suez Canal, so it’s invented this myth of a “Jewish homeland”. “Homeland” is too nice a word. No doubt some Quaker or Puritan came up with it. But millions of sentimental Jews have taken it at face value.
‘I can practically hear that Jabotinski. “You don’t make a country out of practicalities.” Oh really? So what do you make it out of? Out of spirit? Perhaps with spirit, but before that comes the fact of geography, which you can’t charm away with lyrical words, the way you can charm a roomful of kindly Jews. Land makes its own terrible demands: so many square kilometres of land, this many mountains, this much rain, this much drought. How are you going to colonize a land the size of three counties with 15–17 million people?
‘And what will you do with the indigenous Arabs, who also have the right to a natural death, rather than an abrupt one by Zionist extermination? How will you bring to life an artificial conglomeration of people brought from every corner of the earth through a so-called national process, while ignor
ing the bloodiest problems of the proletariat, social class, falsified political economy? I’d like to know if this Mr Jabotinski has heard of Palestinian labour unrest, of a Palestinian proletariat, of Palestinian finance. And I’d like to know how he proposes to accommodate them.
‘In fact, I don’t need to know. Because I know without him telling me.
‘I can almost hear him saying it: “The problem of social struggle is subordinate to the national imperative.” Not even Mussolini talks that way. Not even German counter-revolutionaries. Not even Nicholas I, the Tsar of all Russians.
‘Jewish national unity is an absurdity. I don’t know any Jews: I know workers and the bourgeoisie. I don’t know of a Palestinian national problem. I know about a practical economic problem involving Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, which is not any more interesting than the problems of Cuba, Indochina and Eastern Rumelia. The rest is a myth, an idyll, a chimera.’
S.T.H. is an incurable Marxist. It’s gone beyond a system of political thought and is now a complete inability to understand life in any other terms. Anything that’s not expressible in figures is for him not real. For every fact there is a document, every proof a counterproof, and beyond that everything else – as he puts it with terrible finality – is an idyll …
I was afraid Winkler would be provoked and feel compelled to make counter-arguments. I don’t know if he’d have lost the battle – polemicists like ST.H. put up a stiff fight – but I know we would have spent a wasted evening. Winkler would have produced a set of figures, demonstrating the viability of a Jewish Palestinian state, and S.T.H. would have produced another set of figures to demonstrate the exact opposite.
For Two Thousand Years Page 7