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Coup de foudre, the French call it, the lightning strike. Love is partly what we feel about the other person and partly how that other person makes us feel about ourselves.
In March, Germany had annexed Austria, but many people thought they had been within their rights to take back territory that had once been theirs. And if Hitler was running amok in Germany, that was their problem, not ours. So we thought. That was the time, the brief time, when French and German soldiers could still sit peacefully opposite each other in a café.
“That madman,” Charlie muttered. “Why don’t the Germans get rid of him?” “He promises them work,” Ania said quietly. “He promises that he will make Germany great. And they believe him.”
Like all children who had grown up cowed by too much adult authority, who had spent as much time as possible huddled over
a book to escape into other worlds, her spine rounded when she was relaxed.
War was something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?
“You Americans are so funny. You believe so much in freedom, in deciding your own way. Here, it is different. We marry to suit our families and then we . . .”
Ania looked at me as if I had just said the world was flat.
The worse the economy grew—and in Europe and the United States it was growing worse by the day—the fancier the balls became. It was fairy-tale time, as if truth could be ignored.
. . . as if the reality that was Hitler could be ignored.
When reality threatens to become unbearable, we make believe. Children do, and adults, too, except their make-believe is more expensive, in terms of either dollars or emotional cost, because real...
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It was mad, this ignoring of reality just as reality was about to turn horrific. There were so many things we should have been paying attention to, newspaper headlines, a look of fear in some people’s eyes, a restlessness like that in a herd before lightning strikes. We were the passengers on the Titanic, still hoping that the thud and shudder of the ship was just a large wave, not an iceberg.
When you plan revenge, you must dig two graves.
divisive. Bundists marched regularly in Times Square, demanding that all “foreigners” be sent back to their own countries and no more admitted;
“Ninety percent [of women] are afraid of being conspicuous and of what people will say. So
they buy a grey suit. They should dare to be different.” Her last commandment was to the point: “And she should pay her bills.”
