The Cross of Redemption (31 page)

Israel, October 8

Stood on a hill in Jerusalem today, looking over the border: the Arab-Israeli border. There is really something frightening about it. There is something insane about it, something which breaks the heart. I’ve been wandering up and down Israel for a couple of weeks now, have stayed in a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip, have been in an art colony near Haifa, wandered through bazaars; and indeed all of this, all I have seen, is Jewish—if you like. But it is really the Middle East, it has that spice and stink and violence and beauty, and it is not Jewish so much as it is Semitic; and I am very struck by the realization that the Semites were nomads and this is still, somehow, the atmosphere of the entire country.

What
is
a Jew? An old question, I know, but it presents itself to one with great force once one is in this country. Jehovah, Christ, and Allah all came out of this rocky soil, this fragile handkerchief at the gate of the Middle East. And the people—the Jews—of this beleaguered little
country are united, as far as I can tell, by two things only (and perhaps “united” is too strong a word). One is the experience of the last world war and the memory of the six million—which is to say that they are united by the evil that is in the world, that evil which has victimized them so savagely and so long. But is this enough to make a personality, to make an identity, to make a religion? (And
what
, precisely, is a religion? And how dreary, how disturbing, to find oneself asking, now, questions which one supposed had been answered forever!) But one is forced to ask these kindergarten questions because the only other thing which unites the Jews here is the resurrection of the Hebrew language.

The most religious—or, in any case, the most orthodox—people here are the Yemenites, who are also the most lively, and who seem to produce the only artists—well, that is not quite true; but it is almost true: they produce the only artists who can be said to be working out of the Jewish or Semitic or nomadic past. They are also at the bottom of the social ladder, coming from the most primitive conditions—having been, in fact, only yesterday transported from the twelfth century. Well. In spite of the fact that the nation of Israel cannot afford, and is far too intelligent, to encourage any form of social discrimination, the fact remains that there is a tremendous gap between a Jew from Russia or France or England or Australia and a Jew but lately arrived from the desert. Is the resurrection of the language enough to bridge this gap? And one cannot help asking—
I
cannot help asking—if it is really desirable to resurrect the Jewish religion. I mean, the Jews themselves do not believe in it anymore: it was simply one of the techniques of their survival—in the desert. Lord, I don’t know. One cannot but respect the energy and the courage of this handful of people: but one can’t but suspect that a vast amount of political cynicism, on the part of the English and the Americans, went into the creation of this state; and I personally cannot help being saddened by the creation, at this late date, of yet another nation—it seems to me that we need fewer nations, not more: the blood that has been spilled for various flags makes me ill.

Perhaps I would not feel this way if I were not on my way to Africa: what conundrums await one there! Or perhaps I would not feel this way if I were not helplessly and painfully—most painfully—ambivalent concerning the status of the Arabs here. I cannot blame them for feeling dispossessed; and in a literal way, they have been. Furthermore, the Jews, who are surrounded by forty million hostile Muslims, are forced
to control the very movements of Arabs within the state of Israel. One cannot blame the Jews for this necessity; one cannot blame the Arabs for resenting it.
I
would—indeed, in my own situation in America, I do, and it has cost me—costs me—a great and continuing effort not to hate the people who are responsible for the societal effort to limit and diminish me.

Someone said to me the other day that the real trouble between Arabs and Jews has to do with the fact that their idea of a nation—the Arab idea, the Jewish idea—is essentially religious. For the word “religious,” I read “tribal.” Is it not possible to hope that we can begin, at long last, to transcend the tribe? But I will think about this more another day. Whether I want to or not.

Anyway—Jerusalem, God knows (!),
is
golden when the sun is shining on all that yellow stone. What a blue sky! What a beautiful city—you remember that song? “Oh, What a Beautiful City!” Well, that’s the way Jerusalem makes one feel. I stood today in the upper room, the room where Christ and his disciples had the Last Supper, and I thought of Mahalia and Marian Anderson and “Go Down, Moses” and of my father and of that other song my father loved to sing: “I want to be ready/To walk in Jerusalem/Just like John.” And here I am, far from ready, in one of the homelands which has given me my identity and on my way to another. To ask oneself “What is a Jew?” is also, for me, to ask myself “What is a black man?” And what, in the name of heaven,
is
an American Negro? I have a gloomy feeling that I won’t find any answers in Africa, only more questions.

Turkey, October 20

In great haste, far from my own desk. A virus, Mideastern, & trouble, account for my silence. News from Paris bad, Algerian situation unutterable; & Paula, especially as my sister, much too close to it, & frightened. (“Fear,” she says, “is an awful thing.”) Well. More of this in a real letter.

I have an awful feeling that I’ve only moved Paula from a ghetto to a developing
plastique
battleground.

But have been working, steadily, just the same, & will send a batch of stuff, finally, including contracts, before I finally leave here.

Hold on, hold on. Don’t be mad at me, if you are, this is a fearful passage.

Turkey, November 20

I am seeing Kenyatta’s daughter sometime this week—she is in town; and this encounter, along with the news of the famine in Kenya, may take me out of here at a moment’s notice. But I hope not, it would be extremely awkward for me now. I’m barreling ahead with the book, because I want the book in NY before I go to Africa. I dare not predict, again, the time that it will take; but I’m very close to the end.

I am also working on “Down at the Cross.” It’s my hope that God will be good and that it won’t take too long to hammer into its final shape. For I also want
that
in NY before I leave here—I particularly want it to be finished before I try to deal with Africa. The Israeli notes are still disorganized, and the Israeli story—for reasons which have nothing to do with the Israeli character, really—is fairly disheartening. But I must do it. And I am also preparing an essay on Turkey. With these last two, I can only hope to have everything down, and up-to-date, before I take off.

My actor friend’s military duties have taken him to the Turkish Siberia, and I’m staying with his sister and brother-in-law. I had meant to move to a hotel, but they all considered this to be an insult. They’re very nice people. There’s something very sweet, for me, and moving and rare in feeling their impulse to make life as easy as possible for me, so that I can work. I’ve gained a little weight here and this is taken, apparently, as an enormous justification for Turkey’s existence. Well, I exaggerate, of course—but life
has
been, after my prolonged storm, very restful here. The only trouble is that you do not know how you can possibly repay such people. Perhaps it is important to learn that there are some people who don’t think of payment—time, perhaps, for me to learn how to take. If you don’t learn how to take, you soon forget how to give.

Best to Anne, Alison, Freddie, you. I hope Freddie’s having some hard second thoughts about that business of being a writer. But he sounded pretty definite. Your trials with me, dear friend, may prove to be but a weak rehearsal for what’s coming.

Love. Write.

Turkey, December

I’ve just cabled you to send money to me here, so I can get out, and money to meet me in Paris. I thought I had explained to you—but perhaps I didn’t, I’ve been so goddamn swamped and upset—that I am going, now, Saturday, from Paris to Dakar and Brazzaville. I have temporarily
eliminated Kenya mainly because I wanted to have my novel finished before I went to Africa (have you received it and have you read it? anxiety is eating me up); and then because Kenyatta seemed never to be in Kenya; and finally because Turkish currency regulations do not allow one to buy traveler’s checks or take any money out of Turkey; so that I would have had to arrange to stop somewhere else, anyway. I first thought Athens, and then decided on Paris—at first because I thought Paula was still there, and now because I’m indescribably weary and depressed and weary of new places. Mary will be in Paris, I’ll spend the holidays with her, and take off at the beginning of the year. I’ll be there a month, and be in NY in February. I’ll certainly turn in one, possibly two, of the
NYorker
articles, and return to Africa in the spring and finish up their assignment in the summer. Then, back to NY, and the play. (I’m in correspondence with Gadg [Elia Kazan], he’ll be in Athens next month, but I, alas, will not be.)

This is one of the reasons I jumped at the Grove Press invitation: it gives me a deadline to get out of NY. For I must say, my dear Bob—though I am perhaps excessively melancholy today—one thing which this strange and lonely journey has made me feel even more strongly is that it’s much better for me to try to stay out of the U.S. as much as possible. I really
do
find American life intolerable and, more than that, personally menacing. I know that I will never be able to expatriate myself again—but I also somehow know that the incessant strain and terror—for me—of continued living there will prove, finally, to be more than I can stand. This, like all such decisions, is wholly private and unanswerable, probably irrevocable and probably irrational—whatever that last word may mean. What it comes to is that I am already fearfully menaced—within—by my vision and am under the obligation to minimize my dangers. It is one thing to try to become articulate where you are, relatively speaking, left alone to do so and quite another to make this attempt in a setting where the terrors of other people so corroborate your own. I think that I must really reconcile myself to being a transatlantic commuter—and turn to my advantage, and not impossibly the advantage of others, the fact that I am a stranger everywhere. For the fact won’t change. In order for me to make peace with American life, as it is now lived, I would have to surrender any attempt to come to terms with my own. And this surrender would mean my death.

In fact, I’m probably suffering from a species of postnatal depression. Something very weird happens to you when a book is over, you feel old
and useless, and all that effort, which you can’t, anyway, remember, seems to have come to nothing. But I’ll feel less grim, probably, when I write you again, from Paris, and I’m pushing ahead with the essay and will get it to you before I leave for Dakar.

Loèche-les-Bains, February
1962

Got to Paris, late, as you know, and began tracking down debts and possessions—no easy matter—with the intention of leaving almost at once.

Anyway, partly because I was running around Paris without a winter coat, I came down with the grippe, which rapidly developed into a heavy and painful bronchitis—I thought it was pleurisy, and had visions of pneumonia. The doctor filled me with drugs and told me that, fantastically enough, there was nothing seriously wrong with me, except the bronchitis, but that I was terribly run down and ought not go on to Africa in my exhausted state. I was glad enough to hear this, in a way, I was certainly tired and sad; and so I came here, to the mountains, to the village where I finished my first novel, ten years ago. And Lucien, very much as he did then, came up with me to help me get settled—and he has now gone back on the road (he is a salesman) to feed
his
robins.

So, I meant to write you sooner, but at first I simply could not get myself together enough to do it, and then couldn’t stay awake long enough: the French notion of medicine is to knock you out. Then, when I got to the mountains, all I did was sleep—the mountain air, I guess. I feel much better now, ready to start again—though I also feel very still and sad.

This is not quite the tone I meant to strike when writing you, for I know that you tend to worry about me, but it seems to be the only tone I can manage—but please do not worry, everything is much better now. And in fact, Paris was the only really bad spot and that might not have been so bad if I had not fallen ill. Though, in another way, I think that that might have been lucky.

I am again reworking the interminable “Down at the Cross,” and will send it off to you as soon as I’ve sent the rewrites to Jim. You’ll see, I imagine, when you read it, why it has been so hard to do, and it probably also illuminates some of the unsettling apprehensions which have so complicated this journey.

Which brings us to the third point: I’ve kept, as I’ve told you, a kind of incoherent, blow-by-blow account of this trip, and I intend, before I
leave the mountains, to get at least the Israeli section out to you, so that you can send it to [William] Shawn. Again, I think that this will make clearer than any of my letters can, how complex, once I got to Israel, the whole idea of Africa became. It became clear to me at once that I could not hope to manage that confrontation with an exhibition, merely, of journalistic skill. I could deal with it only in an extremely, even dangerously personal way, and try to make the reader ask his own questions and make his own assessments. And this sorrow, if I may call it that, was deepened in Turkey, where the whole somber question of America’s role in the world today stared at me in a new and inescapable way; and the question of America’s role brings up, of course, the question of what the role of the American Negro is, or can be. Well. I suppose the Israeli piece will cause some people to think I’m anti-Semitic, and God knows what the reaction to the Turkish chapter will be. But they are part of the African book, they must be.