As for Grete, it was a period of indecision and depression. Her life in Jerusalem was coming to an end, and as yet she could form no coherent plan for the future. Once or twice she thought of returning to Ras Shamir, but a sense of shyness, of inhibition, seemed to paralyze her.
It was in one of these moods of dejection that she set out one day for the monastery by the Mount of Olives where Father Gaudier lived and worked. She had some difficulty in running him to earth, but at last succeeded in penetrating to the walled garden where he was busy pruning an apricot tree. He looked down from the ladder with his uncertain smile, wiping his hands in his soutane, and mopping a sweaty forehead with his sleeve.
“I expected you,” he said, somewhat surprisingly. “I don’t know why, but I did.”
Grete held the ladder while the little man climbed down.
“I suddenly felt the need to talk to you,” she said.
The priest nodded and said, “Come.” She followed him down the pathway with an expression of puzzlement on her face.
“It seemed to me,” she said, “that you alone knew all about me — you knew almost more about me indeed than I myself know. Therefore, I might consult you with profit. I’m at a loss about myself. I don’t know what to do, where to go, or whom to love.”
Father Gaudier did not appear to be listening. He hummed under his breath as he led the way to a small study which he unlocked with a key.
“Well now,” he said, “sit down and I’ll make you some sage tea.”
Grete sat with her hands in her lap and gazed into the blue eyes of the little man.
“I am glad you are not surprised to see me here, though it was only yesterday I suddenly remembered you. But I have been feeling recently that I needed to talk to someone — to talk about the whole of my life to someone, in order somehow to get back my will to live. I wanted, needed, to re-articulate my past life, so that perhaps I could see in it some sort of pattern which would allow me to make a decision, to plan for the future — for clearly I must soon decide, from a practical point of view, what I should do. I have considered every choice without any result — even the more drastic choices…
Father Gaudier turned off the kettle and poured out the boiling water into the little tisane cups. “The most extreme would be suicide I suppose, or entering a convent. I somehow don’t see either of them as being suitable for you.”
She laughed with relief. “You seem to know everything about me.”
“No,” he said. “It is just that you are like everyone else. It is pardonable to feel one is original, but you know that in moments of stress or loneliness most human beings react in the same way. I know much, of course — all that your husband had to tell me; but there are also gaps. Some I have filled in with the help of a mutual friend. Miss Peterson of Ras Shamir.”
“You know her?” she said with surprise.
“I consulted her about you — before,” he said.
“What did she have to tell you?”
“About your experiences in the camps and elsewhere. To me, it seemed most comprehensible that you should still feel the grave shock of all those horrors. That alone would be enough to make you unstable, afraid of yourself. If one is bound in this way by a feeling of guilt, it is practically impossible to make deliberate choices; one tries to force reality, and one pays for it with the wrong decision. That is why I always tell people to wait until reality refines itself down and leaves only a single way out.”
“It is easy to say.”
“I know it is.”
“But you are right. I do feel guilty after what I have been through — guilty because there was always a way out. I could have committed suicide, could I not? Yes, but I was too much of a coward. I prayed for the courage, but I never found it. But since I endured and did not kill myself, I am indeed guilty, am I not?”
“Of course. But you must stop regarding it as a very exceptional or original matter. The extent of human guilt is boundless, endless, without horizons. I live and pray my wretched life away here, imagining that I am free from it. But I know I am as guilty as anyone, as guilty as you. In fact, from my point of view, your case is a perfectly ordinary one, and it is sheer stupidity for you to allow it to ruin your ordinary life. You are a victim of false pride, Grete, that is all. Your life is not ruined, as you think… He broke off.
She stared at him, or rather stared through him, through the wall, the streets, through Jerusalem to Germany, to her childhood. She drew a deep breath.
“False pride?”
“Yes. This is what has ruined your power of choice, and made you believe that you are worthless, no good to anyone. You said a moment ago that you did not know whom to love — this is why. As a matter of fact it is not life around you which has changed — it is your own angle of vision. You are seeing things through a mist of false self-esteem! Nothing in fact has changed; life is still before you. You have much to offer, much to give in both life and love. But you must make some little effort to understand why you are paralyzed… I apologize for the paradox. But there it is.”
“Yes,” she said, and suddenly her tone had changed; she half rose from her chair and smiled at him. In some curious way everything felt changed and renewed by this conversation — as if these few words had knocked down a wall which had been preventing her entry into a part of herself, her own heart and mind.
“What insight you have,” she said at last, almost under her breath. “It was for this that I came. I am so grateful to you.”
The priest made a grimace. He rose and said negligently, “I must be going I am afraid. Will you come back if and when you feel the need to talk to me? I am always available except on Tuesdays.”
“I will,” she said on a note of calm resolution, but something inside her told her that she would not — that he had given her what she had needed. He grinned as he showed her to the great oaken door and let the dazzling sunlight into the cool entrance hall of the monastery.
“A word in good time is as strong as a blow,” he said. “Or so the Arab proverb has it.”
He stood watching as she walked down the street. Grete looked about her with new eyes. All of a sudden a strange new elation had seized her; everything seemed pristine, newly created. Jerusalem with its tones of apricot stone, soft green olives and blue sky had never seemed so beautiful. It was as if all the potentialities of life had suddenly been rescued, become viable again. She felt she was on the edge of some new adventure which would decide everything once and for all. And so she was…
It was through the long window of Wagner’s Pharmacy that she caught sight of the long sinewy form of Peterson… as if she had been suddenly conjured up by the conversation Grete had just had with the priest. The kibbutz secretary held a long slip of paper, a shopping list, in her hand. She was busy ticking off the items on it. Grete turned aside swiftly and entered the shop.
“Pete,” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
Pete grabbed her in her wiry arms and planted a kiss on her nose.
“Aha,” she said. “Fancy seeing you. I’m doing a bit of shopping for the camp. Look.”
She handed Grete the list — it was composed entirely of medical stores: bandages, surgical spirit, scalpels, morphia…
“For the clinic?” Grete said and Peterson nodded, grinning.
“Yes, but we are getting into position to deal with much more than our normal intake. Have you time for a coffee? I must leave for Ras Shamir in an hour or so.”
She turned, and in her brusque harsh voice gave instructions for her battered little lorry to be loaded up with the materials she had ordered and for which she now paid in cash from her old tattered crocodile-skin wallet. Grete was astonished by the sum.