When I Lived in Modern Times (25 page)

“Well, when the Change came, I found I was free of all that.”

“I mean the passion of dreams, of idealism.”

“Adolescent stuff. Now, it’s the stories that interest me.”

“I don’t care about them. I only care about
doing.
“

“It’s
why
, that I care about. I want to understand you.”

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“Don’t you wonder about your father? Don’t you want to find out anything about him? Don’t you want to know where your mother came from? Naomi is getting a visa to go to Latvia to try to discover how our grandparents lived.”

“Why are you so interested in the past? It’s the future that counts.”

“The past is everything. You’ll see.”

“You only say that because you haven’t got a future.”

She shook her head and lit another cigarette. “You don’t know this yet, but they really are very harmful.”

Her platinum blond hair was a terrible color. The penciled-in eyebrows were just awful. I wish I could be that age again, with all the advantages we have now of subtler shades and a less aggressive use of make-up. My own hair is tinted several different layers of gray and white and silver. I have had to explain, quite sharply, to my hairdresser here how it is done.

“Can I,” I said, “at least give you some make-up tips?”

But she turned away and looked up the street. She was waiting for Johnny, waiting for him to ride up on his Norton and take her to a movie and then bring her home and make love to her and whisper to her about how they were both freedom fighters and they were making a brand-new country which would show the world what the Jews could do when left to their own devices.

She was so proud. Proud and frightened and angry. I looked at her again before she faded away and I wanted to take her in my arms. I felt such envy for her, envy and compassion. I was envious of a wholehearted certainty I have never felt since, for a deep-seated knowledge that we were taking the right path to the future. I was so envious of beings who were whole of heart and could act from their hearts instead of the wriggling path of the intellect. But I felt compassion too, the compassion you feel for the pregnant woman who always thinks her child will be the best and brightest kid who ever lived, a child who will always love her and never disappoint her and is bound to grow up to be Einstein, not a thief or a serial killer.

But what can you do? If there is a story, there is going to be an ending and another thing life has taught me is that not many of them are about people who lived happily ever after.

The sun was down. The city was darkening. Mrs. Linz turned off the television. People were walking past our building from the theater where Mrs. Linz and I had been the previous week to see a play about atrocities committed by our soldiers in Gaza. I noticed a greasy smear on the wall from the incident last month when Hamas bombed a café and fragments of cake were hurtled through the neighboring windows. I went into the kitchen and poured us both a cold drink, for whatever else changed, after fifty years it was still hot, even in spring, and being a Latvian I’ll never get used to this damned climate.