New Face in the Mirror, page 15
I wrote to Peter. I write to Peter every day. And I’m always afraid that the postman, when he comes, will not have with him those square blue envelopes which are Peter’s.
And I must write to my mother and father. Must? I want to.
There is a piano concerto coming through the radio. All is quiet. The window glass separates the noise outside from the silence within. Only the dim roar of the waves belongs on both sides. And the beam of light revolving steadily.
I do want to write to my parents. The words seem to stream out.
Very dear Father and Mother; and a warm kiss to Gal,
I don’t quite know how to begin, realizing as I do that I have never before really written a letter home.
But when you sit at the end of the earth, and of a period, and become so aware of yourself as to face your own image—more than that, your real God—then, somehow, you also become aware of truth. It’s only now that I begin to see things as they really are and not as they were reflected in mirrors selected at different periods to match my own desires.
I could very easily, now, as I never dared before, run with open arms and kiss you and say I love you and be proud of my love, of tears, of homesickness, as I’m proud of being alive, of looking upon something beautiful, of believing in things and people.
It has taken me a long time and many teasing experiences and great effort—excuse me a moment. I must put some more wood on the fire—You see, Mother and Father, one creates other people in the image that suits one best. Or that is what I have been doing. I thought it easier to believe in Father’s hardness than in his love for me, so I ignored the love. And you, Mother, it was easy to believe you to be weak and in need of me, when really it was I who was in need of you; and you, perhaps, the strongest of us all.
It was easy to say to myself that I never had a real home, and so to blame and accuse instead of trying to justify and defend myself. What is a home? I think it’s something within one. There were times when I could feel at home in camp, in my room. There have been times when I have felt at home here, in this cottage. Home is hardly a matter of choice. It is not something one builds with stones and mortar. It is a natural thing like the earth, like the foam of the sea, like the roots of a tree sending up shoots. Home is a good meal and a bath after a long day, and bed, and the small group of people who love one whatever one may do or be. Home is the laughter in Gal’s eyes, and Daddy’s kiss when I come in, and Mother’s sorrow. None of us is above that, or under it, or merely an observer of it-positions in which I so often tried to put myself.
It was easy for me to think of you, Daddy, as busy and remote and stiff. It made it easier for me to acquire a sense of independence that I now realize I didn’t want; to believe in a “personality” I never really achieved, to set myself up as a person in my own right, independent of family and environment.
The beam of light from my lighthouse, here in Finistère, has done much to clean my thoughts.
Mother, now that I have taken the mask off, perhaps I am the Ariel you carried in your arms twenty years ago. Daddy, I think I have become the girl you used to read children’s poems to. I am not the girl who left angrily, or the one who said in a quiet voice the other night: You didn’t give me a home and therefore I have no duties there. I was foolish. There are no duties, no rights between you and me. You just are, both of you; and that being you, and my being your daughter, is all.
I must switch on some more light. The winter nights here are long, and there’s a wind howling outside, and from the radio comes a piano concerto.
You know, darlings, I believed once, long ago it seems to me now, that discovering your faults would justify my own. Nothing that others do or don’t do justifies anything. I have had to pay dearly for all the wrongs I did and, perversely, even for the few good things I did.
It’s never too late to do some things. It’s never too late to plant a seed in the ground, to bear a child, or to admit wrongs. All the tears I have shed—not on your comforting shoulder—all the hours I have spent wandering about in search of warmth, when I could have had it close by, in you—all the years I spent building up a tower of control and strength—only to break it down in one night: all this was not wasted. You see, I sit now and write this letter.
Gal will be asleep, probably seeing himself a pilot in his dream. You’ll bend over him and adjust the blanket and kiss him good night. You don’t know it, maybe, Mother, but you’ll also be kissing me tonight. And Father’s rough hand will stroke my hair.
The fire dies slowly. There is a long night ahead. I shall sleep well.
All my love,
Ariel
I put the letter aside, feeling tired and curiously quiet. And threw off my dressing gown …
My love of the sea is like my love of Israel’s Negev, with its wide, still plains and narrow wadies. The sea and the desert put one in one’s place—a place of dignity, though.
Through the window I can see the Atlantic breaking against the Finistère cliffs—something that goes on forever and forever, eternally; the rock breaking off slowly, bit by bit, year after year, century after century; the flow and the ebb of the inexhaustible tide, the waves folding in and withdrawing back into the sea.
The earth outside my cottage is salty. Nothing grows there. No trees rise between me and the sea’s horizon. I lead a quiet life of habit, rising early in the morning to walk along the cliff, reading, writing, preparing a lunch of fish, resting afterwards; and then the incomparably beautiful hours of early evening, the wood fire burning, the warmth, the mind falling into memories or stretching forth to plans; or simply quiet, without thought, merely conscious of the sounds, body and spirit relaxed and united in the joy of being alone and untroubled.
And then I realize that there is no end to the happiness of the utterly free person taking conscious joy in the cool morning air, the taste of good fish, the reading of a perfect stanza in a poem, the friendliness of a room, the rough touch of woollen pajamas after a hot bath, the warmth of the bed. All these things fit into a small, bounded space that I can point to and say: “This is Ariel, at home.”
It grows late. It always seems late soon after nine o’clock, when there is a deep silence over the village and no sounds except the wind and the sea. One wants everything to stop, to remain just there, at that moment. Perhaps I feel this way because I feel I am at home. Some wretched screw that has been ticking and turning vainly inside me for the past two years may now have found its place, become fitted and still, and by finding its place may have set the machine working smoothly.
I close my eyes for a few minutes and see people circling around me, constantly changing; but all at once I know that they are not changing, are not circling. They are still and it is I who change and circle, twisting and turning until, in my vision, it seems that those about me are the agitated ones.
Just as we make our own values and then create a god to match them. But now it seems that my self-made values have gone and the gods, too; and no longer can my shadow stop me, check me along my paths, and claim to share a god with me. And new values come, which are really not new at all but as old as the stones of the Negev and the waves of the sea, and requiring a new, but old and eternal, God.
As I think this out I feel a tear on my cheek; but a good tear, a proud one; and I let myself cry softly, soundlessly, humbly …
About the Author
Yaël Dayan is an Israeli author and political figure. Her father, Moshe Dayan, was the military leader who oversaw the stunning capture of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. Like her father, Dayan served in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, of which she was a member for ten years with the Labor Party. An outspoken activist, Dayan has been involved with Peace Now and other organizations fostering the peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians. She has written five novels, including Three Weeks in October, about the Yom Kippur War. Among Dayan’s nonfiction works are Israel Journal, a memoir about the Six-Day War, and My Father, His Daughter, a biography of Moshe Dayan.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1959 by Yaël Dayan
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9862-8
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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YAËL DAYAN
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Yaël Dayan, New Face in the Mirror
