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By Root 1210 0

the states and armies and secret polices, and only after that will it be possible to start gradually creating equality between rich and 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 to say to us, a dangerous medicine, a strong medicine that you have to take drop by drop until the body becomes accustomed to it. Anyone who tries to swallow it all at one go only causes disaster, sheds rivers of blood. Just 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 Shulhan 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.

Opposite the chyorny khod there grew a beautiful kashtan, a magnificent old chestnut tree that looked a bit like King Lear, and underneath it Papa had a bench put up for the three of us—we called it the "sisters' bench" On fine days we used to sit there and dream aloud about what would happen to us when we grew up. Which of us would be an engineer, a poet, or a famous inventor like Marie Curie? That was the kind of thing we dreamed about. We didn't dream, like most girls of our age, about marrying a rich or famous husband, because we came from a rich family and we weren't at all attracted by the idea of marrying someone even richer than we were.

If we ever talked about falling in love, it wasn't with some nobleman or famous actor but only with someone with elevated feelings, like a great artist for example, even if he didn't have a kopek. Never mind. What did we know then? How could we possibly know what scoundrels, what beasts great artists are? (Not all of them—definitely not all of them!) Only today I really don't think that elevated feelings and suchlike are the main thing in life. Definitely not. Feelings are just a fire in a field of stubble: it burns for a moment, and then all that's left is soot and ashes. Do you know what the main thing is—the thing a woman should look for in her man? She should look for a quality that's not at all exciting but that's rarer than gold: decency. And maybe kindness too. Today, you should know this, I rate decency more highly than kindness. Decency is the bread, kindness is the butter. Or the honey.

In the orchard, halfway down the avenue, there were two benches facing each other, and that was a good place to go when you felt like being alone with your thoughts in the silence between the birdsong and