And the Sea Is Never Full Read Free

intrigues me as a man. A practicing Jew, he had opened the Kastner trial with his head covered by a
kipa
. But then suddenly, toward the middle of the trial, he appeared bareheaded. My question: What had precipitated the religious crisis revealed by this act? What had provoked it? A word of the accused, a gesture of the prosecutor, the tears of a survivor? Or perhaps a point made by Shmuel Tamir, former officer of the Irgun and future minister of justice under Menachem Begin?
    He does not answer. Instead he asks
me
a question in strictest confidence. Begin has offered him a seat in the Knesset. What to do? Forsake justice for politics?
    Who am I to advise him? The skeptic in me distrusts politics and, even more, politicians. In the end the judge succumbed to temptation. And came to regret it.
    The Côte d’Azur. I love that place of bliss. I love the climate, the atmosphere, the free spirit of its inhabitants. We frequently go there to spend a few days or weeks in the small villages around Nice, Monaco, or Cannes. Hours spent reading, walking, listening to music. The saying is true: One can live like God in France—that is to say, not badly at all.
    We settle down to spend the summer in a house Marion found in Roquebrune. I am working on
The Oath
while at the same time preparing my Hasidic lectures. The writer Manès Sperber and his wife, Jenka, spend some peaceful moments with us. I have already spoken of my ties to Manès. I love to listen to him, and he loves to teach. Adler, Trotsky, Silone: He knows so much on so many subjects. Thanks to him, I make considerable progress in oenology. I also owe Manès everything I know about the behavior of mosquitoes, though I still don’t know why, even in the middle of a crowd, I remain their chosen target. To console me he says, “It is always the females that bite. And then they die.” Of happiness?
    Marion has discovered a villa close to ours, “La Souco,” where Malraux lived during the Occupation. She would love to buy it. I discourage her, and that’s a mistake. I have come to realize often that her instincts are good, her intuition infallible. Had we followed them more often, her husband would be a wealthy man today.
    For a change of scenery we drive to San Remo, where Yossel Rosensaft and his entourage of Bergen-Belsen survivors welcome theirIsraeli, English, and American friends. They sing and laugh, laugh and sing, even as they evoke their dark memories of long ago.
    I rise before the others, around 6 a.m., to go down to the Hotel Royal’s swimming pool, where the instructor gives me lessons I desperately need. I tell myself that if one day I have a son, it will be incumbent on me, in accordance with the injunction of Rabbi Akiba, to teach him to swim. Best to be prepared. I am a poor student and tend to flee as soon as I hear steps approaching. Consequently I still don’t know how to swim.
    The past resurfaces. I remember the day when I first discovered the Côte d’Azur. The immensity of the sea at Bandol. My first trip as a journalist. The immigrants who came from the displaced persons camps. A young girl named Inge. My excessive shyness. My first journey to Israel. All that was long ago, in 1949.
    Marion is eager to go home. So am I. We must return to New York, where little Jennifer is anxiously waiting for us. Marion’s daughter is often sad, but it is easy to make her smile, so easy.
    Here I am, a married man, responsible for a family. For the first time, at age forty, I experience daily life with a woman. In the old days, in Sighet, people married at eighteen. A twenty-five-year-old single woman was considered a spinster, and a thirty-year-old unmarried man a confirmed bachelor. What was the hurry? Were they really mature enough to lead independent lives at such a young age? For me, the discovery of life as a couple includes a series of challenges and traps. I must unlearn certain habits, acquire new ones, learn to bring together two sets of friendships,