I put down the doughnut. “I’m sorry. It’s truly a most beautiful legend, and the lighting ceremony very beautiful as well. The line of Judaism is very long, isn’t it? Hitler talked of a Thousand-Year Reich, yet it lasted only twelve years. The joke’s on him; isn’t that what one says?”
“Not much of a joke,” Mr. Stark said.
“Of course not,” I said. “I haven’t phrased this correctly. But this is the way of many such regimes, I’ve come to believe. They arise from the worst impulses in people, their lust for personal power and treasure, and require that others either embrace the evil, resist it, or succumb in a most terrible way, and thus they arezwangsläufig …How do I say this, Joe?”
“Inevitably,” Joe said. He was smiling at me, and holding my hand under the table.
“Inevitably,” I said, sounding the word out carefully, “destroyed from within and without. Such a regime, no matter how oppressive, cannot help but fail eventually, no? For the people do not benefit enough. Thus the Thousand-Year Reich has vanished into thin air, with all its symbols and pageantry,poof!Whereas a Jewish temple was first built in Jerusalem … when?”
“In 960 B.C.,” David said, “by King Solomon. It stood for four hundred years until it was destroyed by the Babylonians. The Second Temple, the one in the Hanukkah legend, was built only sixty years later, and stood for more thanfivehundred years until it was destroyed by the Romans. One part remains: the Western Wall. The most sacred site in Judaism.” I’d been right; he was very much like a professor.
“And it was under the Romans, I believe,” I said, “that the Jews began to move into Europe.”
“You’re well informed,” Mr. Stark said. “Yes, that was the timing. They first migrated to southern Europe and gradually moved outward, east and west and north, arriving in what is now Germany around the twelfth century.”
Mrs. Stark still looked tense. Why? Was this too much like discussing religion and politics, when I thought I was merely discussing history?Theirhistory? It was the sort of conversation my father had most enjoyed, though, and my ability to think logically on such matters had always been the attribute he most appreciated in me. Jews were very great scholars, so surely such a discussion would be allowed?
Perhaps I hadn’t made myself clear enough. I tried again. “Hitler and those around him,” I said, “must have been spurred on by envy of these accomplishments, I think. What other explanation can there be for his unreasoning hatred? The Germans only began to build true cities around that same time, you know, two thousand years after the Jews had begun to do so. Perhaps they were able to build such cities partlybecauseof the skills and abilities of the Jews. The Jews were very great merchants, and bankers as well, and public works require a great deal of financing, don’t they? They were full of learning, also. This is one reason Germany was fated to lose the war, I believe. Dr. Becker told me that fifteen percent of doctors in Germany were Jewish in 1933. What folly to dismiss so many medical men just before engaging in such a war! And all the professors, too, especially the men of science who escaped to America and helped build your atom bombs. So foolish, but envy is a most powerful emotion, is it not? In the Catholic Church, we number it among the Seven Deadly Sins. I don’t know whether you have this.” I turned to Mrs. Stark. “But I am discussing religion too much, perhaps, in attempting to understand this history. Is this allowed?”
“It’s certainly unusual,” she said, “for a young married woman to speak her mind so freely.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is it being young that is the problem, or being a woman? Or being amarriedwoman? Am I meant to let my husband speak for me, or to be entirely quiet? This, I don’t believe I can do.”
“Well, Mom,” Sophie said, “you did tell us she was opinionated. Boy, oh, boy, is she ever. This is sure more exciting than most of our holiday dinners.”
“Sophie,”Mr. and Mrs. Stark said together.
I said, “I don’t wish to offend, truly. I find many things interesting, but in Germany—” I stopped.
“In Germany what?” David asked.
“It’s better not to speak of how things were in Germany,” I said. “This was explained to me, but I forgot.”
“Who explained that?” David said. “As a psychiatrist who worked with our troops over there, I’d sure like to understand how things were in Germany, and why. The ‘why,’ now—that’s an enigma that’s going to take wiser men than me a lifetime to work out.”
“You say that,” Barbara said, “and yet you’re working every night over those notes of yours. You’re too modest, David.”
“Oh, are you writing a book?” I asked, eager to leave the subject of my unfeminine conduct. “What is its subject?”
David flushed a little. “The psychological effects of combat, broadly. More narrowly, the distinction between soldiers of an authoritarian state and those of a democratic one in how they perceive their service and how they react to the stress of combat.”
“But that is most interesting,” I said.“Mostinteresting. The American soldiers indeed had a … a sort of lightness to them, and an independence, that the Germans most assuredly did not. I believe a great many people will buy your book.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” David said with a smile.
“Oh, this is a very good saying,” I said, after digesting it. “I must remember it.”
“Yiddish,” Joe said. “Well, Mom, this was another great meal. I would’ve given my eyeteeth for chow like this in those foxholes.”
“Yes,” I said. “What a very great treat.” Joe was eating the remainder of my doughnut, fortunately; I still had a horror of wasting food. “So many tastes I recognize. It feels almost like coming home.”
Mrs. Stark didn’t say, “Youhavecome home,” but then, I didn’t expect her to. She said, “I’m glad you enjoyed it, dear.”
“Would you be very kind,” I said, “and give me the recipes for these dishes? I’ve been working hard at cooking, but the outcomes are not as delicious as I’d hoped. Some of that is no doubt my lack of skill, but I think that the soup from a tin is perhaps not the best choice as a sauce? And this sweet sort of gelatin powder, too, in the packets, that one sees in many advertisements; this is not a pleasing dessert, and putting fruit or vegetables into it doesn’t make it more appealing, I think? For I tried the lime flavor with celery and carrots and green olives with pimento added, you know, as suggested in a recipe, and it wasmostodd.”
“Goodness,” she said. “No, I would definitely avoid those things.”
“I’m very glad to know it,” I said, “for the sake of Joe’s stomach.” She actually smiled a tiny bit, which was progress, and I jumped and said, “Oh! I nearly forgot. Joe, would you bring me the special thing from our suitcase, please?”
