“Very well said,” his wife said.
Mrs. Stark said, “Shall we light the candles and have dinner?”
The conversation didn’t continue in this metaphysical vein, which was for the best. Why, ohwhycould I never be meek and silent? It would certainly have served me better tonight.
Where the conversationwent,though … Oh, dear.
First—over Mrs. Stark’s truly excellent and very moist chicken and vegetables, with not a burned spot to be seen—Mr. Stark said, “So. We now have East Germany and West Germany.”
The chicken in my mouth suddenly became rather dry. “Yes,” I finally managed to say. “TheDeutsche Demokratische Republik.The German Democratic Republic. Which will not be in the least democratic.”
“Your former home is in that zone, is that right?” the rabbi asked.
“Yes.” I couldn’t say any more. Oh, Dresden!
“On the positive side,” Mr. Stark said, “we also have NATO. That was an idea that showed up in the nick of time. Now that the Soviets have the bomb …”
Joe said, “Yeah,” and took my hand. I couldn’t even look up. If this came to another war—and how could it not?—wouldthe people of East Germany be forced to fight against the West? I thought of Franz, his leg lost in the Russian snows, so cheerful on his crutches. Franz hadn’t wished to fight a war at sixteen, and he hadn’t deserved to die in the rubble of a bombed city. How many young men would be lost this time? How many cities would be reduced to ash if Stalin decided to use his nuclear weapons, and was there anybody who believed he wouldn’t do it? Not I.
“This is an upsetting topic for Marguerite, dear,” Mrs. Stark said. Which was kind of her, wasn’t it?
“Yes,” I managed to say. “Thank you. I’m sorry; one should be able to discuss such things, of course, but … but I find this difficult. You must have had a very great fear for Joe, Mrs. Stark. You and Mr. Stark both. I understand that now, for I have the same fear myself. For Joe most of all, but also for the other young men we know, and for the boys of my country, many of whom were forced to fight before they could shave and may now have to fight again. And for what? For greed, exactly as before. For the sake of one man’s lust for power. Many in America don’t understand how terrible this would be, for war has never come to these shores, has it? Or not for a very long time. Before, you know, in Germany … almost everybody had lost someone dear to them, and many had lost everything: family, home, friends … I wouldn’t wish this on any nation, although, yes, I know this hardship was due to the German people’s own grave mistake in choosing such an evil man to lead them. And yet, you know, when you see a child killed …” I had to stop, but went on. “When Dresden was bombed, I kept thinking of the elephants in the Sarrasani Circus. Elephants always look so kind, don’t they? They all died, I believe, for the circus was badly hit.”
“The innocents,” Mrs. Goldstein said.
“Yes,” I said. “The innocents suffer too much. But perhaps the bomb is what will save us this time.”
Rabbi Goldstein said, “Ah. Because it makes the consequences so much more terrible, you mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you think this is so? Or is this … I believe there is a word—being a Pollyanna? One with a blindly optimistic nature? Like Dr. Pangloss also, you know, in Voltaire. ‘All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.’”
“And the answer to that is found in the same book,” Rabbi Goldstein said. “That one ‘must cultivate one’s garden.’ In other words: we each have a responsibility not to let the weeds grow unchecked, in our souls and our nations as in our flowerbeds. Let us hope that our better angels will prevail here, or if not, that expediency will do the trick. Nobody wants to live in a nuclear wasteland, do they?”
“Wow,” Sophie said. “You all have such elevated discussions.I’mthe teenager here, you realize. We’re the ones who are supposed to sit around and discuss the state of the world and the meaning of life. The rest of you are supposed to be too busy earning a living to ponder. Well, except you, Rabbi. I guess pondering is your job.”
He laughed. “Exactly.”
“So, Joe,” Mrs. Stark said in a determinedly light tone, “with your studies going so well, have you given any thought to where you might want to buy once you finish? The Sunset District seems to be the favorite spot for veterans, but it’s so foggy there, isn’t it?”
“‘The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,’” Mr. Stark said. “Mark Twain, I think. Too true.”
“And surely,” Mrs. Stark said, “you’ll want to be closer to work than that. The Inner Richmond might be nice.”
“By the park!” Sophie said. “You’re both crazy for taking walks—not that I get it, especially now that you have a car—and Marguerite likes old Victorians, though why anybody would want some pokey old house jammed up against theneighbors when they could have something modern is utterly beyond me.”
“Actually,” Joe said with a casualness I knew he didn’t feel, “we’re making other plans.”
“Oh?” His mother’s face still had a smile on it, but a frozen one now. “What would those be?”
“We’ve just signed a contract on a good-sized tract in the Woodside area,” Joe said. “I told Marguerite that I suspected it would become a hot area. Just look at San Francisco. Everybody wants to live at the top of the hill, right? We went and looked at it again today, because I started thinking about keeping a piece of it for ourselves and building on it, and Marguerite doesn’t seem wholly opposed to the idea.”
“But of course I wish you to live where you like,” I said. “And the area is really very lovely. To see the trees and the sky outside one’s windows is most calming.”
“I don’t even know where Woodside is,” Sophie said. “You’re not movingaway,are you? I know Mom and Dad can be hopeless, but really?”
“Nobody’s hopeless,” Joe said. “But Marguerite’s career is in the South Bay, we both like it there, and?—”
“And you think you can commute,” Mr. Stark said. “A good hour to an hour and a half each way, twice a day? You’ll get mighty tired of that.”
