“You know, I now realize why I didn’t remember you. Back then, at university, you were thinner and even more weaselly …”
The surprised journalist laughed, then let out a sigh.
“Don’t remind me of how thin I was. Those days are gone forever. But you haven’t changed at all — and I don’t mean just your looks. You still carry a shell on your back, ducking into it when anything touches you … though at least you now admit what I told you over the telephone. We actually did take several philosophy courses together. Not that I remember you because of anything particularly clever or foolish that you said. It’s because of a gorgeous girl. Don’t ask me why, but she kept coming on to you.”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Who was she? What happened to her?”
“What do you care? I suppose you’d like to put her into your story, too. Maybe your photographer can follow her around at night.”
“There, there! You needn’t be so offended. I was asking as an interested citizen, not a reporter …”
“When do you ever stop being a reporter? I’ll bet you look for scoops in your dreams.”
“That’s putting it a bit strongly. But if it’s what you think, I must have really upset you. Listen, let’s make up. Honestly. I’d like to offer you an apology … an official one …”
The emissary was taken aback. For a moment he shut his eyes and bowed his head.
“But tell me,” the weasel asked, his natural curiosity again getting the better of him, “where did you disappear to? Did you drop out after your freshman year or just switch majors?”
“I re-enlisted in the army.”
“In what branch? Manpower?
“Of course not. I was second-in-command of a combat battalion.”
“With what rank?”
“Major.”
“That’s all? You should have stuck it out longer. Don’t you know that in the Israeli army you can tie any major to a tree and come back ten years later to find that he’s a colonel?”
“I guess I didn’t find the right tree.”
“Still. What made you leave the army?”
“I was too much of an individualist. Large organizations don’t suit me.”
“Then why not something more intimate … a small commando force of your own, for example?”
“What for? To be the dead hero of one of your articles?”
“We’re back to my articles! I beg you to believe that I have other things in life.”
“So I’ve heard. I’m told you’ve been working forever on a doctorate.”
“Ah!” The weasel blushed. “I see you do come out of your shell sometimes.”
“Apparently. But what’s your subject? Why has it taken you so long?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Do we have anything better to talk about?”
“I’m writing on Plato.”
“What’s left to say about him?”
“With such a complex philosopher, anyone with a little patience and common sense can always find a new angle,” the journalist said, and added dourly, “not that that’s why my dissertation is stuck. Our wretched reality simply keeps distracting me from it.”
“Reality is only an excuse.”
“You’re right.”
“What is it about?”
“You’re sure you want to know? Or are you just trying to pass the time?”
“That too. But I’m curious to know how your mind works. I don’t want to be surprised by you again.”
The journalist let out a lively laugh. “It’s you who are surprising. Like yesterday, for instance, when you suggested this trip, or just now, when you agreed to a detour.”
“Well, I suppose I can be unpredictable, too.” The human resources manager liked the idea. “But you’re avoiding my question. What is your dissertation about? A specific Platonic dialogue or something more general?”
“A specific dialogue.”
“Which?”
“You wouldn’t recognize the name. It’s one you’ve never heard of and never will.”
“Is it one of those we discussed in our course?”
“It’s Phaedo.”
“Phaedo? No, I don’t remember it … unless …”
“It’s on the immortality of the soul.”
“No, that’s not the one I’m thinking of. There was another … you know the one. The famous one, the one about love …”
“If you’re thinking of The Symposium, alias The Banquet — no, there really are no angles left there. Platonic love has been mined to exhaustion.”
But the resource manager persisted. A friendly intellectual conversation, he thought, if not too personal, would help keep the journalist on his best behaviour. He himself remembered little of the famous Platonic dialogue, only that he had been favourably impressed that love could be discussed so candidly in a philosophy course. All that remained with him of the text itself was a story or parable about a man (but who? Adam? Everyman?) who was cut or divided in two (mistakenly? accidentally? deliberately?). Hence the human desire to reunite with one’s missing half, also known as love …
The consul, listening from the front seat, doffed his red woollen cap and remarked:
“Even a peasant like myself knows that story. Whenever I slice an apple I feel its halves wanting to reunite. That’s why I keep slicing them into smaller and smaller pieces …”
The human resources manager guffawed. His inner tension easing, he listened affably to the weasel’s rebuke:
“That’s the most superficial and obvious aspect of The Symposium. It’s no wonder that people like you always remember it. But for such a simplistic metaphor there was no need for Socrates and his friends to gather in Agathon’s house. Nor would their conversation have gone on enchanting us for thousands of years. Its real point is more profound.”
“Tell us.” Both the consul and the emissary were eager to know.
“Are you really in the mood now, in the middle of the night?”
“We have nothing better to do.”
And so, while they sat in the dark cavern of the armoured vehicle with the two drivers in front bathed in the luminous green glow of its haphazardly working dials, the journalist strove to expound the essence of love, his voice rising above the roar of the engine as the vehicle laboured up a steep winding road. Had I known that this detour would involve such precipitous climbs, the human resources manager thought, I would never have agreed to it.
“Love,” declared the weasel in high Platonic style, “bears witness to our finiteness, but also to our ability to transcend it.”
Human desire ascends by rungs like those of a ladder from love’s lowest manifestations to its highest, from its most concrete to its most abstract, from its most physical to its most spiritual. To have the world of true form revealed to one is the reward of the wise lover — who, freed of the physical object of his desire, realizes that his pursuit is of something more essential. The more he searches for it, the more he realizes that the ultimate beauty lies not in the body but in the soul …
“The soul …” The consul, perhaps reminded of his soulful wife, roused himself.
“That’s love’s secret,” the weasel continued as the vehicle slowed to take the hairpin bends. “There is no formula. Each person has to find the secret for himself. That’s why Eros is neither god nor man. He’s a daimon, thick-skinned, unwashed, barefoot, homeless, and poor — yet he links the human to the divine, the temporal to the eternal …”
The vehicle came to a halt on the steep gradient. Worried that the trailer might break free on the long climb, the elder brother went to check the tow-bar. The sudden stop woke the boy who turned from his place amid the luggage to glance quickly back at the trailer, now awash in the beam of a torch held by the resourceful technician. Soft snowflakes danced in the bright light as he circled the coffin worriedly, examining its ropes and knots. Even this did not put his mind to rest; re-entering the vehicle, he took the wheel from his brother, trusting only in his own sure touch.