Now this must be clear to you: I don’t want you Bruria because I cannot imagine life without you, I want you because life is nicer, better, fuller, nearer to perfection with you than without you. More about this: you can make, and in some respects you already made a better man out of me, this of course only if you will find the right approach, and believe me dearest one, I can help you in bringing about the changes you wish to see in yourself, if you will open yourself to me not only with logical decisions, but with the tenderness of your feelings locked somewhere in the depth of your shell. There is never too much love if we are ready to take it, not for its own sake but for the sake of our belief in an ever blooming, glorious march of the human race towards that to-morrow that sings in our hearts.

There is nothing more I can say that you don’t know already, I shall not use the word your name conveys me its content: My Bruria, Your Marcell[31]

«Я слишком легкомысленно отнесся к тому факту, что ты в меня не влюблена», – отмечает едва ли не мимоходом молодой муж; назревает гражданская война, вскоре начнется война за независимость, в муках рождается государство Израиль, а двое молодых людей пытаются понять, не совершили ли они оба роковую ошибку.

Чувства Брурии оставались запертыми в створках ракушки, но в целом они чудесно друг другу подходили. Краеугольным камнем их общей веры была одна великая личность, тогда еще живой и здравствующий человек, которого звали Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили. В письме от 11 января 1946 года Брурия рассказывает:

I was discussing with a boy of nineteen about current problems. Whenever I mentioned the word «Democracy» he made a wry face and murmured: «Again an empty, common-place word» – He is a student in the university, took up mathematics. His world was shaken during the last few years and every expression which for us is full of meanings, because there is action behind it, for him is an empty phrase. So was it when I mentioned a book by Stalin. Here he retorted: «You too are contaminated with this blind adoration of a man?» You see, he is an intelligent boy. Not a Zionist. Not narrow-minded. But altogether detached from the life of the simple people, the majority of humanity, from whose lap he himself grew. He is afraid to see meanings behind expressions. He is afraid to decide where to take a place. He is a typical petty-bourgeois intellectual[32].