EVENTS EARLY OCTOBER, 1942. ENTRY OCTOBER 8, 1942. N.L. Ever since the loss of Stefan, I have been wondering what would become of Halinka. I believe she was quite devoted to young Mazur: at any rate, I have never had reason to doubt that she was. But she is so utterly feminine, so soft and dependent, such a man’s woman, that I have had no doubt that she would very soon make an arrangement of some kind—preferably one that would not interfere with her deep and dramatic mourning of Stefan. So now that she has done just that, I am not surprised at the fact: I am amazed at her choice. I expected her to fall into a readily available situation: with Berson, for instance, or Menkes, and I have even imagined…but all sorts of wild thoughts pass through one’s head in these disturbed days.
The solution she has found, however! Rachel saw it coming. A week ago….
EVENTS OCTOBER 2, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Halinka is bored. She throws herself about tragically, moaning after Stefan. But really the trouble is that she is bored with hiding at the bakery, Rachel says. She is used to high life among the police. A trivial girl.
EVENTS OCTOBER 3, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Rachel was right about Halinka. Today, when Rachel suggested that Halinka might like to do some Hashomer work, the pretty sister jumped at the chance for some entertainment. When Rachel warned that the work might be dangerous, Halinka said she would rather die in peril than die (how precisely right Rachel was!) of boredom.
So Rachel took Halinka around to a Hashomer recruitment meeting. After the meeting Rachel introduced her sister to Zilberzweig. He seemed very cordial, Rachel says.
EVENTS OCTOBER 8, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Cordial! I see, on looking back, that in ENTRY OCTOBER 3, I wrote that Zilberzweig greeted Rachel’s new candidate cordially. It appears that Zilberzweig took a personal interest in the candidate. He found her work (suitable work for a light-framed girl) as a checking clerk in the Bonner factory, on Mila, where a Hashomer man has some influence. He whisked her through her peripheral training in a matter of hours, where it might take a plain girl several weeks. He put her to work, unusually quickly for a neophyte, on personal errands for himself. Apparently Halinka’s temperament is cut just right for Zilberzweig: the two laugh constantly when they are together. Halinka began calling the Hashomer leader Hil within two or three days—whereas Rachel, who has worked closely with Zilberzweig for many months, still addresses him formally.
Last night Zilberzweig invited Halinka to come and stay at his apartment. She has accepted and will move this evening. Zilberzweig told Rachel that he had invited Halinka because he understood that conditions were exceedingly crowded at the bakery, but of course he did not say why it had not occurred to him to ask Rachel, whom he knows very well, rather than Halinka, with whom he is barely acquainted. Halinka’s report of Zilberzweig’s reason for the invitation is slightly different. She says Hil is lonely. There are, it happens, eleven people, mostly Hashomer workers, living in the apartment with him; but he is lonely. And she is sorry for him. He works so desperately hard and he is so lonely. He has told her—and she is delighted to tell all comers—that he is lonely for the company of someone lighthearted like Halinka, someone with whom he can both work and play.
[NOTE. N.L. What should I think of this? These informal household arrangements are so prevalent now that one cannot with any humor make a scandal of this one. It is hard to say what moral sanctions we respect any more. We expect death at any moment. We love life very much. We want to cram as much as possible into our remaining hours. Appetites are exaggerated. Flirtation is hurried. Courtship is telescoped. In conversation, even, we come quickly to the point. We live as if by telegraphy….And yet something about this liaison makes me uneasy. (I do not mean a selfish, childish something; I do not mean an irrational, unfounded jealousy.) What makes me uncomfortable here is a kind of disappointment in Zilberzweig, a feeling that he is cheapening himself. He has no right to be a man: he is the leader of Hashomer. Hundreds of our young people look to him. The underground organizations are preparing themselves—for what, it is hard to say: he has to dedicate himself to these preparations, he cannot relax now. What is really disappointing, I suppose, is that the events we have lived through have not magnified Zilberzweig. He is no greater than He was: Zilberzweig is still Zilberzweig. I remember Rutka’s remark when she was describing to me her hectographing of Zilberzweig’s editorial on the German attack against Russia (ENTRY JUNE 24, 1941), to the effect that she felt something sensuous about this man; she felt his temptation to caress her. I suppose I am after all too demanding. And in one way I have to admire Zilberzweig. He is forty-four years old, and one is obliged to say that this tennis ball is losing some of its fuzz and bounce. All the same, he is the one who now lies with Halinka, and not one of our handsome young men, our Bersons and Menkeses.
Next: what of the effect of this affair upon Rachel? For months she has been working with complete selflessness for Hashomer and personally for Zilberzweig. All of a sudden, within a few days, her shallow sister is trusted just as much as she is, Halinka is given work precisely like Rachel’s; to say nothing of Halinka’s more basic inroad. How can Rachel help feeling put out? Yet she has shown nothing. Rachel is a woman of admirable control. She is our Little Mother.]