21st of February, Jerusalem, 1946
Bruria my Darling.
So I have started both things: the laboratory and the job in the morning. I can’t tell which of them is the worst. In the lab I am sometimes wondering how can somebody with so little knowledge, as I have got, start chemistry. It is like an adventure. Still I will have to complete all my deficiencies, if you will be here, the study will go easier. I am taking off the rust from my brains, so my heart can send some fresh blood into it.
The job is not so bad only I have to sleep somewhere in town otherwise I won’t be able to be there in time. There are about 14–16 machines to be washed. When the night is dry the job is easy, but when wetness covers the machines, I am having a hell of a time. Not only it takes double time, but it is never nice enough for the customers who don’t spare their voices and vocabulary to tell me what they think.
The party takes the heaviest toll. There is no excuse for me. We are approaching the X Congress. I shall try NOT to be a delegate so I can quietly study at least during those three days without being chased from one «extraordinarily important session» to some other action where I am «indispensable». Slowly I am convincing the Secretary about me being a student also for studies and not only for political activities in the University.
I was looking for a room in the neighbourhood of my working place but I couldn’t find anything good for us. Still I hope that in the worst case we can stay in the students home. I demanded permission for this from the Students organization and in principle there is no opposition. The trouble is that there is not much privacy in such students homes and I don’t see why should I share those very few moments I can have with you with two dozen strangers.
Say Bruri, what’s your opinion about getting married in the course of Hanuka! There is a whole week, when the University is closed and outside study I can have a spell of time to be with you more than five minutes a day. We can have a couple of days in Tel Aviv or Haifa too. If not in Hanuka I can’t see when next there will be such an occasion. Don’t forget to convey my greetings to Naama, and don’t forget that I love you more than ever. If your eyes are getting tired, go to an eye specialist at once, the glasses won’t spoil your beauty. I shall be in Tel Aviv on the 6th in the afternoon.
Marcell[30]
Как, должно быть, лестно было внимать этим обжигающим словам, ощущать наплыв любви, переживать неимоверную пылкость слепого обожания, но – увы, в конце концов слишком горькой оказалась эта легкая победа. Три месяца спустя Марцелу приходится признать, что «чувство, сметающее все на своем пути» привело его в «смятение». Молодой муж, душа поэтическая, но на первый взгляд такая рациональная, вынужден осознать: хоть он и вооружился не опровержимой логикой, которой овладел благодаря чтению Маркса, Энгельса, Ленина и Сталина, этих гигантов мысли, факты сильнее любой логики. Но он не страшится горькой правды: «Потому что ни у тебя, ни у меня нет твердой почвы под ногами и потому что я уже потерял всякую связь со своей прошлой жизнью». Не сдаваться в данном случае не значит ничего иного, как со всего размаху биться головой о непроницаемую стену молчания. «…Я любил тебя, даже когда еще был отрезан от всякой надежды, что когда-нибудь мы снова встретимся». И как замечательно формулирует он в конце своего письма задачу на будущее: ему хочется добраться до «таящихся в глубине нежных чувств» Брурии, хочется взломать наглухо замкнутую «ракушку», в которой они запрятаны.
19th of March, 1947
Bruria Darling!
There are three months since we married. It is time to make some observations although I do not dare to pretend to know more about the future of our relation than my own hopes for its perpetuity. To begin with, it is something we both know: all marriages are, or better, have got their difficulties at the start, still our case being a special one, we made the mistake of underestimating the dangers. I have taken too lightly the fact that you were not in love with me; you have been too daring in expecting from yourself to be able to cope with all the demands and possible complications of marriage in case of marrying anybody (anybody from the point of view of the sentimental attachment).
We both were mistaken and we both did not give up. This is the «deus ex machine», the surprise for me and for the sceptics as well. We did not give up because this would have been a mechanistic attitude.
We did not give up because there is not guarantee that something better or at least as good as that and not worse, waits around the corner.
We did not give up because we BOTH need love, and both of us genuinely hope that there is a possibility for changes, for a development to put it better.
The trouble was and partly goes on to be, that we had such a different attitude towards love, owing to our diametrically opposed background and practical differences, that we were unable to compromiseon the sentimental ground although logical decisions have been taken in this respect.
The question remains if only the form is divergent or the content of love is so altered in each case that no development, say no compromise will be able to patch it up?
I think this view is mistaken: love is a natural necessity common to all normal and healthy people, those then, whose soul has not been crippled under the existing social conditions. That much for what I think is common ground. Now for me alone: I must confess to-night that I became too strongly involved in this affair. Too strongly because there is no solid ground under our feet and I already lost the touch with my previous life. It is true I loved you even in my being isolated from all hope of meeting you, but this love never obliged my thinking, planning and carrying out – my full self; it only affected my sentimental half or quarter. To-day it is overwhelming and therefore confusing. Please don’t take this for blackmailing you with my sentiments. It hurt me terribly when you asked in Ben Shemen last Thursday if I shall commit suicide in case you will leave me. The amount of love is not weighed by desperate deeds. I am sure that I am strong enough to stand any blow may this bring the greatest pain and the longest suffering.
In the past I experienced this in a very concentrated form, you know the fate of my beloved ones, this has shaken me out of my track for some time, but I got back and carried on.
Now this must be clear to you: I don’t want you Bruria because I cannot imagine life without you, I want you because life is nicer, better, fuller, nearer to perfection with you than without you. More about this: you can make, and in some respects you already made a better man out of me, this of course only if you will find the right approach, and believe me dearest one, I can help you in bringing about the changes you wish to see in yourself, if you will open yourself to me not only with logical decisions, but with the tenderness of your feelings locked somewhere in the depth of your shell. There is never too much love if we are ready to take it, not for its own sake but for the sake of our belief in an ever blooming, glorious march of the human race towards that to-morrow that sings in our hearts.
There is nothing more I can say that you don’t know already, I shall not use the word your name conveys me its content: My Bruria, Your Marcell[31]
«Я слишком легкомысленно отнесся к тому факту, что ты в меня не влюблена», – отмечает едва ли не мимоходом молодой муж; назревает гражданская война, вскоре начнется война за независимость, в муках рождается государство Израиль, а двое молодых людей пытаются понять, не совершили ли они оба роковую ошибку.
Чувства Брурии оставались запертыми в створках ракушки, но в целом они чудесно друг другу подходили. Краеугольным камнем их общей веры была одна великая личность, тогда еще живой и здравствующий человек, которого звали Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили. В письме от 11 января 1946 года Брурия рассказывает:
I was discussing with a boy of nineteen about current problems. Whenever I mentioned the word «Democracy» he made a wry face and murmured: «Again an empty, common-place word» – He is a student in the university, took up mathematics. His world was shaken during the last few years and every expression which for us is full of meanings, because there is action behind it, for him is an empty phrase. So was it when I mentioned a book by Stalin. Here he retorted: «You too are contaminated with this blind adoration of a man?» You see, he is an intelligent boy. Not a Zionist. Not narrow-minded. But altogether detached from the life of the simple people, the majority of humanity, from whose lap he himself grew. He is afraid to see meanings behind expressions. He is afraid to decide where to take a place. He is a typical petty-bourgeois intellectual[32].
Пишет она товарищам в Бейрут, где провела до этого несколько лет, первые годы своей взрослой жизни: там она училась на медсестру в Американском университете, в интернациональной компании, в невиданной красоты средиземноморских краях, которые потом называла попросту Раем. Там учились армяне, иракцы, сирийцы, американцы, евреи; во время войны жизнь в «средиземноморском Париже» была поразительно свободной, и они смаковали каждую минуту. Вернувшись в Палестину и поступив на работу медсестрой в одну из иерусалимских больниц, она чувствовала себя на родине как в ссылке, и это ощущение изгнанничества впоследствии уже никогда ее не оставляло – впрочем, как и страстного молодого человека, который вскоре попросил ее руки. Она чувствовала себя чужой в своем родном городе, где каждый день наблюдала п