See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

human values, the purely human values, thus re-creating and redeeming one’s self.” Neigel, with a stubborn smile: “I chose the other way. I ‘chose’ to start killing! You can’t tell me that isn’t choice. Have you any idea how much effort of will goes into a choice like that?” Wasserman: “Ai … One does not choose to begin killing, Herr Neigel, but continues to do so, just as one does not begin to hate one’s fellow man, or torture him … but continues to do so. One must rather make the conscious choice not to kill … not to hate … This is the root of the difference, I believe …”

Also see under: DECISION

BIOGRAPHIA

BIOGRAPHY

A composition describing a life.

In Neigel’s opinion, a major flaw in Wasserman’s story was his failureto account for the Children of the Heart between the time of their disbanding and their reunion. “Take Fried, for instance,” Neigel complained. “I hardly know anything about him! Where’s your sense of RESPONSIBILITY [q.v.] as a writer, Scheherazade?” And Wasserman, reflecting a moment, read out of his empty notebook: “Our Dr. Fried, oldest child of a physician father and an amateur pianist mother, was born in the year——, but what is the point of these wearisome biographies?! The same chaos in strange and diverse forms takes hold of all the characters, and is oftentimes unworthy of man … and so let it be said: For seventy years Dr. Fried has been running between the double file of cudgelers.”

[Editorial comment: A key to understanding Fried’s character was offered by Paula, who said, “Some people stretch when they get up in the morning. My Friedchik contracts.”]

BRIG, OTTO

The Polish Catholic leader of the Children of the Heart both times around. An epileptic. Otto is, in Marcus’s words, “one in a million.” He can do anything. Marcus: “Our Otto, nothing is too difficult for him! Can he run a zoo? you ask. Of course. But he can also draw shadows on the wall with his fingers, or hypnotize a leopard cub by swinging a gold chain; or make wine from apples and jam from com; or make a coin vanish by rubbing it into his palm; or calm a stray dog with one long whistle; or midwife a frightened giraffe in the midst of a bombing raid so that the calf is born alive; or carve a charming figure out of a potato; or build the kind of kite birds flock to; or play the harmonica … As I said, there is nothing of value our Otto can’t do. And there’s his wonderful laugh, too, his slow, contagious laugh, and though he doesn’t speak much, everyone listens. And so generous, yes, Otto has a great big heart. He never studied in a university, and I don’t know if he ever read a book from start to finish, but he has a brain in his head, and he always knows the right thing to do.” It should be noted that it was Otto who reconvened the band for one last mission [see under: HEART, REVIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF THE], and who first discerned that Kazik needed a wife [see under: ZEITRIN, HANNAH].

GUF, HAOBYEKTIVIUT SHEL HA

BODY, THE OBJECTIVITY OF THE

As Kazik matured, he came to feel more and more dissociated from his body. Wasserman offers this analogy: Kazik saw his body as the suitcase anonymously thrust into the hand of his soul, as he climbed aboard the ship bound for our world. At first his plaintive soul had hoped someone would come and take the suitcase when the ship arrived at its port of destination, but there was no one waiting at the dock, and his soul could not get rid of the strange suitcase with its thousands of pockets and drawerfuls of unwanted gifts, gifts of suffering to be slowly deciphered throughout one’s life, and also, of course, a little gratuitous pleasure. But because the soul cannot master it, even pleasure degrades it, enslaves it, and derides it on its way. Much to his amazement, Kazik discovered that all his life he was fated to drag his left foot, that one eye could barely distinguish shapes and colors, that the older he got the more of those ugly brown spots appeared on the backs of his hands, and the more hair and teeth he lost. He followed these changes as though reading a story about somebody else, but the pain came from within and tortured him: the pain of deterioration, the pain of separation. Blue varicose veins suddenly covered his left thigh, and he bent down as if to read the map of an unfamiliar region. His eyes watered whenever he came near fresh hay, he got diarrhea from eating cherries and strange rashes after crossing the zoo lawn, and his right eye twitched in moments of emotional stress; all this gradually made his life a misery. As time passed, he was forced to pay more and more attention to the suitcase, which left him with less and less energy for the things that really mattered to him. Then he began to think he had made a big mistake: that perhaps the suitcase was the important thing and the soul was subordinate to it. By this time (around 1330 hours of the following day, when he was fifty-seven years old), Kazik was already so exhausted, and suffering so much physical pain, that he lost interest in finding an answer.

Throughout his life, because he had been given the agonizing ability to perceive the processes of growth and decay simultaneously, Kazik was keenly aware of the misery of his friends, the artists. He saw their futile efforts to hide the defects they had no part in creating; he saw that physical flaws can produce the kind of misery that consumes aperson’s vitality; that an entire lifetime can go by in a tortuous struggle to condition the person to his