A Tale of Love and Darkness

I REMEMBER we used to argue a lot, Aunt Sonia says with our girlfriends, with the boys, with teachers at school, and at home too, among ourselves, about questions like what is justice, what is fate, what is beauty, what is God? Of course we also argued about Palestine, assimilation, political parties, literature, socialism, or the ills of the Jewish people. Haya and Fania and their friends were especially argumentative. I argued less, because I was the little sister, and they would always say to me: You just listen. Haya was big in the Zionist youth movement. Your mother was in Hashomer Hatsair, and I joined Hashomer Hatsair too, three years later. In your family, the Klausners, it was best not to mention Hashomer Hatsair. It was too far left for them. The Klausners didn't even want the name mentioned because they were scared stiff you might get a sprinkling of red just from hearing it.

Once, it may have been in the winter, at Hannukah, we had a huge argument that lasted off and on for several weeks, about heredity versus free will. I remember as if it were yesterday how your mother suddenly came out with this strange sentence, that if you open up someone's head and take out the brains, you see at once that our brains are nothing but cauliflower. Even Chopin or Shakespeare: their brains were nothing but cauliflower.