At the beginning of April Michel received a long letter from his
parents, saying that they were happy that he had chosen a bride, and
blessing the young people. They said that in Palestine everything was in
flower, that the orange season was drawing to a close, that the heat
would soon begin, and that several new communes had been established.
Everything was calm in Tel Aviv, they said, and they were going to
enlarge the house for the reception of Michel and his bride. Just
outside their windows, the young couple would have a large veranda, so
that they could sleep outdoors in the summer.
His parents had enclosed an official letter in English authorizing their
son, Michel Levy, to marry Mlle Ursula Martin.
The letter to Ursula’s mother came back marked “Unknown at this
address,” and Ursula sent a second letter to another address in
California that she had found among her papers. They were waiting only
for this response before beginning their formalities at the consulates,
their respective armies, and the registration office.
* * * * *
Michel had a tiny room in the city, a cubbyhole filled with books.
Ursula often went to meet him there. But sometimes, while he was waiting
for her, he would fall prey to his pessimistic moods. Once all three of
us had a rendezvous there, and I arrived a little before Ursula to find
him looking strangely depressed. That time he overcame his reticence,
and talked to me. Sometimes, he said, when he was waiting for Ursula, he
couldn’t help asking himself, What’s the good of all this? What use is
it to study and to get a degree, what use to dream of marriage, when
after all nothing in the world has changed? Have I found any answer—the
answer that I sought in Switzerland? Men are still fighting like idiots,
and there is no end to the war. And after the war, what will be the
answer? What’s the use of going around in circles, and even of trying to
construct something? What’s the use of all that, if it’s only in a world
of hatred and destructiveness? One might as well die and be done with
it.
It seemed to me that the God in whom he trusted so obscurely, and whose
face he had never seen, was perhaps rather a yearning in his spirit than
a belief.
He thought of Ursula and wanted to weep over her, for she was so young,
and so hungry for love, and for knowledge, and for happiness. What did
he have to give her? He thought of Ursula’s friends. He thought of all
of us—young women in search of love and of happiness, and in the end,
what could we have? What hope was there for us in a world bent on
self-destruction?
And yet, he said, none of us made great demands. What strange confidence
we had in this life that ceaselessly deceived us! For we wanted to live,
and we were satisfied with our little ersatz loves and with our few
years of difficult life, which would in the end lead only to death. And
then our children would begin the whole thing all over again.
Yes, Michel was very young, and pessimistic sometimes to the point of
melancholy. I thought at the time that, like all of us, he would grow
less heavyhearted with age. But his pessimism was more profound than the
general unhappiness of the young in the face of mankind’s inhumanity. “I
am a hypocrite,” Michel declared. “I ought to cry out the truth, tell
all of you what I really think, tell everyone of my inner despair. Of
what use is it that I, too, should lie to you, and Ursula, and Mickey,
and Jacqueline? Instead of saying what is true, I talk to you about the
future, about love, about reconstruction and peace, when I don’t really
believe in that at all. And you have faith in me. It’s shameful.
“If there were only a man, a man like Christ,” he cried out. “If only
once more there would be such a miracle, that a man would rise up and
speak to the multitude as Christ had spoken! But even that—what use
would it be?”
Christ had spoken and his disciples had betrayed him and his church had
been betraying him for centuries, and his brethren the Jews would not
even recognize him as one of their own, as their greatest teacher. And
all this too was part of the immense comedy that had been playing in the
world since time immemorial.
Michel felt that he had no right to deceive Ursula about his inner
beliefs, and yet he loved her, he wanted her to be happy. At least he
could give her a short while of happiness.
The evening arrived gently, stealing in through the window and covering
Michel’s books. There was a knock at the door, and Ursula entered,
looking at him with her limpid eyes. Michel took her in his arms,
pressing her against him.
I knew that this was somehow to protect himself as well as her, somehow
to keep himself from showing her his deepest bitterness. I knew too that
he drew force from her, against his wish for death. She said, “Michel,
Michel, I’m happy!”
He smiled gently, kissing her girlish round cheeks, caressing her long
glossy hair. In Ursula’s eyes I could read an elation that said, He can
do anything! He will do great things! And in Michel’s eyes there was the
effort of all humanity, it seemed to me, to try to live.
As I saw them together, something unknotted in me. I wanted to cry, and
at the same time I knew that I was healed of all the doubt and fear that
had come into me through these years of living in the barracks. Mickey’s
marriage had seemed to me to contain mostly the excitement of war. But
these were the pure in heart. I would no longer be ashamed of seeking
what was pure. I knew that someday I might hope to feel love like
theirs, and I could wait.