Winkler called them over and bought a paper.
‘I brought nothing to read on the trip.’
Indeed, he had brought no books. Not a single one. Then again, books were never really his thing.
We shook hands. I would have liked to embrace him, but I was afraid of the disruption such a show of feeling would have injected in our self-controlled parting. We shook hands.
*
I would like him to prevail, but I find it hard to believe in his victory. I hope he finds peace among his Palestinian orange groves, the peace we have sought in our own ways; S.T. Haim in Jilava Prison, Abraham Sulitzer through journeys and books, Arnold Max through poetry, me on the site, building. The boat cutting through the waves to Haifa will perhaps mark the direction towards a new Jewish history. Will it take him towards a Jewish peace? I don’t know. I don’t believe so. I don’t dare to.
Two thousand years can’t be overcome by leaving for somewhere. They would have to be forgotten, the wound cauterized, their melancholy cut to the ground with a scythe. But the truth is that there are too many years for us to be able to forget them. We live always in the troubled memory of them. The memory reaches far back and hangs like a haze over the horizon of our future. Only rarely, through this history of warfare, victories and kingdoms, does any light pierce the mist. Is it possible to build a new history from such material?
*
Winkler has many fights ahead — and he will win them all. But there is something he must let go of also, and I don’t know if he will succeed. He must let go of his habit of suffering, he must let go of his vocation for pain. This aptitude is too well developed and the instinct too entrenched to yield even before such a simple life. This bitter root can withstand every season and will always be ready to bear its sad fruit, even in the gentlest summer, with the soul lulled by dreams of eternal peace. You will face yourself again in a moment of terror and will learn once again that old lesson you keep forgetting: that you can escape from anywhere, but you cannot flee your own self.
3
I wish I could reproduce word for word, like a stenographer, the discussion I had yesterday evening with Mircea Vieru.
He had visited me at work. Blidaru’s house is of interest to him too. Mostly he’s interested in it as my building — the first one I’ve done alone. He doesn’t want to make any criticisms. He very much wants to see me bring it all to a conclusion, on my own — which both delights and intimidates me. I’m not certain that I’m really getting it right. Sometimes it all seems inspired, clear and coherent. At other times, the contrary; it’s all lifeless, cold and schematic. I invited the professor, but he didn’t want to come.
‘No. Carry on, do what you want, work how you want. That’s what we agreed. When you’re finished, let me know. Until then, the house is yours.’
From the site, I went with Vieru to the Bucharest road to have dinner. It’s been a full five weeks since I’ve been out of Snagov.
‘I never see you in town any more. Why?’
‘Because I’m fed up with it. It’s the tense, poisonous mood. At every street corner, an apostle. And in every apostle, an exterminator of Jews. It wears me out, depresses me.’
He didn’t reply. He reflected for a moment, hesitating, a little embarrassed, as though he wished to change the subject. Then, probably after brief private deliberation, he addressed me in that determined manner people have when they want to get something off their chests.
‘You’re right. Yet there is a Jewish problem, and it needs to be solved. One million eight hundred thousand Jews is intolerable. If it was up to me, I’d try to eliminate several hundred thousand.’
I was startled. I think I failed to hide my surprise. The one person I had believed utterly incapable of anti-Semitism was he — Mircea Vieru. So, him too. He noticed my distress and hurried to explain.
‘Let’s be clear. I’m not anti-Semitic. I’ve told you that before and abide by that. But I’m Romanian. And, all that is opposed to me as a Romanian I regard as dangerous. There is a corrosive Jewish spirit. I must defend myself against it. In the press, in finance, in the army — I feel it exerting its influence everywhere. If the body of our state were strong, it would hardly bother me. But it’s not strong. It’s sinful, corruptible and weak. And this is why I must fight against the agents of corruption.’
I said nothing for a few seconds, which was not what he had expected. I could have responded, out of politeness, to keep the conversation going, but I failed to.
‘Do I surprise you?’
‘No, you depress me. You see, I know two kinds of anti-Semites. Ordinary anti-Semites — and anti-Semites with arguments. I manage to get along with the first kind, because everything between us is clear-cut. But with the other kind it’s hard.’
‘Because it’s hard to argue back?’
‘Because it’s futile to argue back. You see, dear master, your mistake begins where your arguments begin. To be anti-Semitic is a fact. To be anti-Semitic with arguments — that’s a waste of time, a dead end. Neither your anti-Semitism nor Romanian anti-Semitism has need of arguments. Let’s say I could answer those arguments. What then? Would that clarify anything? Taking into account that all the possible accusations against Romanian Jews are just local issues, while anti-Semitism is universal and eternal. You don’t find anti-Semites only in Romania. They’re also in Germany, Hungary, Greece, France and America — all, absolutely all, in the context of interests, with their own methods, with their own temperaments. And there haven’t only been anti-Semites now, after the war, there were anti-Semites before the war, and not just in this century, but in the last one and all the others. What’s happening today is a joke compared to what happened in 1300.
‘So, if anti-Semitism is indeed such a persistent general fact, isn’t it useless to seek specific Romanian causes? Political causes today, economic causes yesterday, religious causes before that — the causes are too numerous and too specific to explain such a general historical fact.’
‘You’re very crafty,’ interrupted Vieru. ‘Aren’t you trying to make anti-Semitism inexplicable by making it eternal? And declaring Jews innocent?’
‘God forbid! Not only does anti-Semitism seem explicable to me, but I believe Jews alone are to blame. Yet I wish you could recognize at least that the essence of anti-Semitism is neither of a religious, political nor an economic nature. I believe it is purely metaphysical in nature. Don’t be alarmed. The Jew has a metaphysical obligation to be detested. That’s his role in the world. Why? I don’t know. His curse, his fate. His problem, if you like.
‘Please believe me. I don’t say this out of pride or defiance. On the contrary, I say it with sadness, weariness and bitterness. But I believe that it’s an implacable fact and know that neither you nor I nor anybody else can do anything about it. If we could be exterminated, that would be very good. It would be simple, in any case. But this isn’t possible either. Our obligation to always be in the world confirms it over so many thousands of years, which you know have not been merciful. And then you have to accept — look, I accept it — this alternation of massacres and peace, which is the pulse of Jewish life. Individually, each Jew can ask in panic what he has to do. To flee, to die, to kill himself, to receive baptism. Resolving one’s personal affairs involves endless pain which you, certainly, as a man of feeling, will not ignore — but this is nothing more, however, than “resolving one’s personal affairs”. Collectively, though, there is only one path: waiting, submission to fate. And I think this, rather than being an act of reneging on life, is one of reintegration with nature, with the awareness that life goes on after all these individual deaths, they too being part of life, just as the falling of leaves is a fact of life for the tree, or the death of the tree to the forest, or the death of the forest for the vegetation of the earth.’