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"I never saw it that way, back then," said Natalia.
"Neither did I," I said. "However, just for that, we should have had sex in Kiev. We wouldn't have felt then, that there had been something missing between us. We would have known with certainty, that what we already embraced apart from sex was that greatest thing in the world that sex wouldn't have made any greater. We would have been happier than, not that we weren't happy to know one-another."
"Oh, that had bothered you too?" she said.
"Of course it had," I said, "but meeting Jill in this wonderful way illustrated to me that we can leave those regrets of our history behind, because we had embraced in those days everything that mattered. I think what made Jill so special to me now that I got my eyes open, is the simple fact that when I look into her face, I see a light there. There is somebody home. In such circumstances, who really needs sex? Just look at us. We need so little of it that if the captain found out, he would get another fit of anger realizing that he made such a big fuzz over such a small thing."
Natalia seemed to agree fully. She just smiled and said nothing. "There is one more thing that I find wonderful about what has happened here," she added. She spoke with the same smile still, after a few moments of silence. "I find it wonderful that you haven't chosen just anyone to expand your world with. I had my eyes set on Jill a long time ago, for you, hoping that you would recognize her, and recognize her as someone quite precious, someone I felt you would love to know. Except, you had kept your eyes closed. It made me almost uncomfortable to be the only woman in your life. It made the world so small. But how would you react if Jill went a different road tomorrow and never wanted to see you again? Would you cry? Would you run after her?"
"I've been blind, I know," I said in response. "You are right on this one, and Jill helped me with that. She opened a door for me to our humanity. That door is open now. She has her place in my heart for that, and always will. What happens from tomorrow on will not change that, Natalia. Her life is her own. If she chooses to come though the door tomorrow that she helped open, I will rejoice. If she stays away for a week, or thousand days, or forever, I will still treasure her. I won't run after her and try to change her mind. I won't be like the captain is who tries to run everybody's life. I am sure others will come to this door sooner or later, that she has helped to open. Of course I think she will come back to this door too. She may even knock on the door and invite me to her own world, or somebody else will invite all three of us to other worlds of a kind we cannot even yet imagine. I think this is more likely to happen than not."
"I think you may be right," Natalia interrupted me. "It may well be that all of us haven't opened our eyes wide enough yet. You certainly hadn't for a long time."
"Ah, but you are at fault for the delay, more than I was," I countered her. "I couldn't embrace just anyone, you know. You had set too high a standard." I began to laugh. "You've been incomparable by a long way, so I stopped comparing. The field had become too narrow. Then a strange fellow appeared and talked to me in the observatory. He invited me to look at the universe. He showed me how vast and how empty it is. Suddenly I realized how infinitely precious we all are as human beings, and beautiful and complex. That realization widened the field of my vision by more than you can imagine. And then, suddenly there was Jill, two tables from me in the lunchroom. I wondered why I had never seen her before. I hadn't even known her name then. And you know what, I was scared that my being with her would hurt you. I was probably as scared about hurting you as I was shy in introducing myself to Jill."
"Oh you!" she interrupted me.
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Stories about
War
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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