When we were over the ocean, the head flight attendant came to us and said that the captain, who had seen me on television when I talked about my new book, invited me and my wife to the pilot's cabin. We went up to the cabin of the Boeing 747. The captain's name is Commandant Klein, and when we left Cologne after we took off, he said: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Lufthansa flight zero zero five from Cologne to New York, this is your captain, Commandant Klein speaking… And I thought about Adam Stein and I said Commander Klein caught me in the air, but Renate didn't pay attention and I shut up. Klein, a nice enough man, was excited by the modern instruments he showed us, the up-to-date radar, the boards and the miraculous accessories, and the view from the pilot's cabin really was spectacular: you see the sky before you and you don't sense you're flying, you're up above, you're not aware at all of the plane behind you and beneath you, and below the ocean is spread out and you're alone before that stillness, a gigantic panorama of stillness and red and green lights go on and off and hum, we drank good coffee, we talked about politics and the fact that writers essentially lack understanding of problems that he as a captain and a practical man who "still remembers a thing or two," maybe understands no better, but surely different. We talked about economics, the Common Market, and then we parted with a warm handshake and a promise that when we flew over the state of Maine, we'd be invited back and could stay there until we landed in New York. That will be an unforgettable experience, promised the captain.
Later on, they showed some film and I fell asleep and didn't see it. Renate, who doesn't sleep much on airplanes, rented earphones and watched. I slept so soundly I didn't hear the head flight attendant come to invite us to the pilot's cabin. Renate decided not to wake me, and since she knew I wasn't as excited as she was by new technologies of pop-up toasters, automatic washing machines, transistors, and such instruments, and since she knew that the sight of the landing wouldn't be so important to me-and I could always imagine it and tell about it as if I had seen it, as she put it with a smile-she spared me the early rising and went up to the pilot's cabin without me. As she sat there drinking coffee Commandant Klein said we'd soon enter a strong storm. He showed her the radar screen, and she heard the voices on the radio, and as she told me later, she could see the storm right before her eyes. It was, she said, a gigantic black mass, like a threatening square at some distance in front of the prow of the plane. Renate said: But that can't be! The captain asked why not. (I'm quoting her because this letter is also addressed to Hasha Masha and I think Renate would want Hasha to know these things.) And Renate said, Because Ruth said the flight would be smooth as butter. The commandant laughed and pointed to the black storm at a reasonable distance from the prow, but Renate insisted, it was important for her to believe. Later on she told me she thought she was red as a tomato, and she said: No, it can't be, and when the pilot finished laughing, Renate told me, she buried her face and looked at the floor and thought of a beautiful Bible verse that Hasha translated for her from Hebrew to German, even though it's also in our Bible, but in Hasha's translation, the sting wasn't lost, she thought about King David, of whom it was said that he was ruddy but withal of a beautiful countenance. She liked the word "withal" in that context. The wind velocity above Boston at the moment is one hundred ninety knots, said Commandant Klein and he wiped his nose, but the plane didn't dance. Renate asked: What happened to your storm? and the captain said: Soon, the storm simply moved left a little, and Renate looked ahead and did see a storm and from above it looked like a gigantic black box moving left toward the ocean, and the captain said: Soon! But his voice, she said, wasn't so confident, and it continued like that until the landing in New York. The storm moved left, like a snake, six minutes before the prow of the plane, and when we landed in New York, Renate told me (I of course was sleeping), the wind at Kennedy Airport was six knots, while only ten minutes before it was eighty knots. On the way, traces of the storm were seen and as we were descending, cities and villages wrapped in snow could be seen, and because it had already grown dark the lights were seen sparkling after a decent washing, and the commandant wasn't laughing anymore. Renate had to give all the members of the crew Ruth's address and phone number and when she came back to me, she woke me up and said: We're here, Ruth was right, and I woke up, looked outside and saw the plane approaching the Lufthansa gate, and Renate told me the story, brought me coffee in a plastic cup and I smiled. She didn't tell me she gave them the address and phone number, because she knew that would annoy me. She knew that my enemies, the extreme rightists and leftists, would make mincemeat of me in their newspapers. They'd write about the staunch rationalist who went to a fortuneteller. For they wouldn't write that Renate went to Ruth on her own, but would weave my name into the plot and would brew up a proper brew.
For two weeks I was quite busy. Along with my editor and a few other people from Harper & Row, I flew to six cities in a row, appeared on television and radio, held press conferences, was interviewed, lectured, and our young attache, a handsome woman named Kristina, took Renate and me to a lot of cocktail parties, endless meetings; I even gave a lecture at the PEN Club in New York, I'm not complaining, in our day a writer has to play the clown, the portable philosopher, and I had to do that for myself and my publishers, my agent and Renate. I know that Schiller and Goethe didn't fly to public relations tours, but needless to say the times-and the people-have changed. After two crammed weeks I parted from the editor, the attache, our consul, from some American writers, a few of whom I had met before, we took our bags, and instead of going to the airport, we went to a small hotel in Greenwich Village, slept quietly one night, and in the morning, I called Lionel.
Lionel was glad to meet me. I told him how much I liked the Laments on the Death of the Jews. He told me that he had high regard for me, after all, he said, I wrote the first article about you in The New York Times. And indeed, I remembered that he had written and was amazed that I hadn't thought about that, and after mutual compliments, I on the Laments and he on the novella, and after he expressed amazement that his Laments were now being published in all the countries of Europe except Germany, I said I was indeed astonished.
On our way to him, we bought white wine (made in Israel) and Renate bought a bouquet of flowers, and at a temperature of two below zero, in the cold wind blowing from the river, we came to Lionel's house. I must tell you that I was more excited than I had imagined.
Lily opened the door and was exactly what I had expected her to be, some undefined femininity, something between a lion and a summer flower. On her face the sadness of polished matter clean of sediments, was smiling serene, both deep and bright. At the age of forty, she looked rare, feminine, and an almost Mediterranean olive tone slipped among the northern tones as if they were bold storms on a marble surface. In her eyes is a dark touch and they look very bright, and yet the elusive gloom made them mysterious. She held out her hand and said in English: Welcome, she invited us inside and when we took off our coats and the warmth spread in our bodies, we offered the wine and the flowers and we saw Lionel. Lionel is tall, but not too tall, thin, his hair is silver and short and his face is lit by that light many Jewish intellectuals have, some mischievous flash in the dark eyes, wrapped in dark eyebrows, reflecting an alien, ancient melancholy, and when I looked at him I thought of the sentence of Spinoza (and Lionel's eyes reminded me of his), that God is celestial harmony and that His laws of morality are universal and hence are not an imitation of the laws of nature. Confronting Lionel's eyes, I thought that only Jews, that stubborn and wise tribe, could have created such a sublime and unnatural idea. Who if not the Jews had to know in their flesh how impossible that idea is, but the persistence in believing that there is a moral law that is not synonymous with the laws of nature, grants Hebrew tribalism the exciting, but no less annoying greatness. There was also some savagery etched on Lionel's face, something that strives for personal freedom, and I thought about the expression frozen fire, I thought to myself: Maybe that's how Joseph Rayna looked, or at least something from Joseph Rayna was looking at me and I couldn't take my eyes off Lionel, who was wearing a blue cashmere sweater and thin corduroy trousers and his hands are delicate, but not unmasculine. Lily persisted in speaking English with us, even when Lionel, Renate, and I were speaking German. I loved her for that, and in my heart, maybe I was also angry. The apartment is beautiful, the garden looked gray under the thin shroud of ice, I loved the furniture and the pictures on the walls. Later on, Renate told me that something in the blend (as she said) of the physical furniture, the pictures, the books and the atmosphere, reminded her of your apartment, although the apartments are so different. She talked about color and form that turn into an echo.