What was the secret of Grandpa’s charm? I began to understand only years later. He possessed a quality that is hardly ever found among men, a marvelous quality that for many women is the sexiest in a man: He listened.

He did not just politely pretend to listen, while impatiently waiting for her to finish what she was saying and shut up.

He did not break into his partner°s sentence and finish it for her.

He did not cut in to sum up what she was saying so as to move on to another subject.

He did not let his interlocutress talk into thin air while he prepared in his head the reply he would make when she finally finished.

He did not pretend to be interested or entertained, he really was. Nu,
what; he had an inexhaustible curiosity.

He was not impatient. He did not attempt to deflect the conversation from her petty concerns to his own important ones.

On the contrary: he loved her concerns. He always enjoyed waiting for her, and if she needed to take her time, he took pleasure in all her contortions.

He was in no hurry, and he never rushed her. He would wait for her to finish, and even when she had finished, he did not pounce or grab but enjoyed waiting in case there was something more, in case she was carried along on another wave.

He loved to let her take him by the hand and lead him to her own places, at her own pace. He loved to be her accompanist.

He loved getting to know her. He loved to understand, to get to the bottom of her. And beyond.

He loved to give himself. He enjoyed giving himself up to her more than he enjoyed it when she gave herself up to him.

Nu, what: they talked and talked to him to their heart’s content, even about the most private, secret, vulnerable things, while he sat and listened, wisely, gently, with empathy and patience.

Or rather with pleasure and feeling.

There are many men around who love sex but hate women.

My grandfather, I believe, loved both.

And with gentleness. He never calculated, never grabbed. He never rushed. He loved setting sail, he was never in a hurry to cast anchor.

Your grandfather was a Communist in his heart, but he was not a red Bolshevik. He always considered Stalin to be another Ivan the Terrible. He himself was, how should I say, a kind of pacifist Communist, a narodnik, a Tolstoyshchik Communist who was opposed to bloodshed. He was very frightened of the evil that lurks in the soul, in men of all stations: he always used to say to us that there ought someday to be a popular regime common to all decent people in the world. But that first of all it will be necessary to eliminate gradually all the states and armies and secret polices, and only after that will it be possible to start gradually creating equality between rich an d poor. To take tax from one lot and give to the other, only not all at once, because that makes bloodshed, but slowly and gradually. He used to say: Mit aroapfalendiker. Downhill. Even if it takes seven or eight generations, so the rich almost don’t notice how slowly they’re not so rich anymore. The main thing in his opinion was that we had to start to convince the world at last that injustice and exploitation are a disease of mankind and that justice is the only medicine: true, a bitter medicine, that’s what he always used take drop by drop until the body becomes accustomed to it. Anyone who tries to swallow it a ll at one go only causes disaster, sheds rivers of blood. lust look what Lenin and Stalin did to Russia and to the whole world! It’s true that Wall Street really is a vampire that sucks the world’s blood, but you can never get rid of the vampire by shedding blood, on the contrary, you only strengthen it, you only feed it more and more
fresh blood!

The trouble with Trotsky and Lenin and Stalin and their friends, your grandfather thought, is that they tried to reorganize the whole of life, at a stroke, out of books, books by Marx and Engels and other great thinkers like them; they may have known the libraries very well, but they didn’t have any idea about life, about malice or about jealousy, envy, rishes, or gloating at others’ misfortunes. Never, never will it be possible to organize life according to a book! Not our Shulharz Arukh, not Jesus of Nazareth, and not Marx’s Manifesto! Never! In general, Papa always used to say to us, better a little less to organize and reorganize and a little more to help one another and maybe to forgive, too. He believed in two things, your grandpa: compassion and justice, derbaremen un gerechtigkeit. But he was of the opinion that you always have to make the connection between them: justice without compassion isn’t justice, it’s an abattoir. On the other hand, compassion without justice may be all right for Jesus but not for simple mortals who have eaten the apple of evil. That was his view: a little less organizing,
a little more pity.