Empire

Nobody forgot things like this in the Balkans. Such injuries were nursed generation after generation. So when Reuben came home from Ohio State with a Croatian girl, and then left her with his family while he went off to begin serving his ROTC obligation to his country, his parents were appalled.

She won them over completely. It was hard to believe that anyone could get past Father’s cast-iron hatred of Croats, but Cessy had insisted that she’d do just fine, now go off and be a soldier for a while. And when Reuben came home on leave the first time, it quickly became clear that not only did his family like Cessy, they liked her a lot more than they liked Reuben. Oh, they said they still loved him best, but he knew it was just to make him feel better. They adored Cessy.

And that was fine with him. “You should be our U.N. ambassador,” he told her on that first leave. “You could get Hutus and Tutsis to be friends. You could get Israelis and Palestinians to hug and kiss. Hindus and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, Shia and Baha’i, Basque and Spaniard—”

“Not Basques and Spaniards,” she told him. “That dates back to when there were still mastodons in Europe. That’s practically like Cro-Magnon versus Neandertal.”

“I want our babies to be as smart as you and as tough as me,” he said.

“I just want them to look like me,” said Cessy. “Because having daughters that look like you would be cruel.”

Their daughters did look like Cessy, and their sons had Reuben’s lean, lithe body, and all in all, their family life was perfect. That’s what he came home to every day from school; that was the environment in which he studied. That was his root in reality that kept calling him back from the brink of getting seduced into the fantasyland of academia.

Until Averell Torrent decided he wanted Reuben’s soul.

Reuben had been goaded by professors before. He goaded them by wearing his uniform to every class on the first day. They took it as a personal affront. Why shouldn’t they? That’s how he meant it.

Some of them simply ignored him the rest of the semester—until his coursework forced them to give him an A. Others declared war on him, but their ham-handed attacks on Reuben always backfired, winning him the sympathy of the other students as Reuben answered all the attacks with unflagging courtesy and quiet good sense. Many of the others would begin defending him—and, by extension, the military. Thus Reuben would quietly lose all the classroom battles for the hearts and minds of the students, but win the war.

With Torrent, though, as they worked their way through the ancient long-lived empires—Egypt, China—and the ancient republics—first Athens, now Rome—it became for the other students a class in watching Torrent and Reuben spar with each other. They weren’t angry at Reuben—they knew that Torrent always initiated their long, classtime-consuming exchanges—but they still resented the fact that Reuben Malich had hijacked their only class with the great man.

Can’t help it, Reuben silently answered their huffish attitudes. He calls on me. What am I supposed to do, cover my ears and hum loudly so I can’t hear his questions?

Though he was getting tempted to do just that. Because what Torrent was saying about America and empire made perverse sense. While the other students sidetracked themselves into a discussion about whether Torrent’s statements were “conservative” or “liberal,” “reactionary” or “politically correct,” Reuben could not shake off Torrent’s premise—that America was not in the place Rome was in before it fell, but rather in the place where Rome was before civil war destroyed the Republic and led to the dictatorship of the Caesars.

So when Torrent had finally silenced the other students’ attempts to put his remarks into one or another of present-day political camps, Reuben was ready to speak.

“Sir,” he said, “if civil war is a necessary precursor to the end of democracy—”

“The facade of democracy.”

“Then it means our republic, such as it is, is safe. Because we don’t have warlords. We don’t have private armies.”

“You mean ‘so far,’ ” Torrent said at once. “You mean ‘that we know about.’ ”

“We aren’t Yugoslavia,” said Reuben—the most obvious example, for him at least. “We don’t have clear ethnic divisions.”

Again, a storm of protest from the other students. What about blacks? Hispanics? Jews?

They debated that for a while, but Reuben was determined to stay on track. “We can have riots, but not sustained wars, because the sides are too geographically mixed and the resources are too one-sided.”

Torrent shook his head. “The seeds of civil war are always there, in every country. England in the 1600s— nobody would have believed that those pesky Puritans could provoke a Royalist versus Puritan civil war, and yet they did.”

“So where do you think America might divide itself into two factions that could fight a sustained civil war?” Reuben demanded.

Torrent smiled. “Red state, blue state.”

“That’s cheap media graphics. You might as well say rural versus urban.”

“I do say that. But the geographical division is still clear. The Northeast and the West Coast against the South and the middle, with some states torn apart because they’re so evenly balanced.”

“No one’s going to fight over those differences.”

Torrent smiled his maddening superior smile. “The rhetoric today is already as hot-blooded and insane and hate-filled as it was over slavery before the first Civil War—and even then, most people refused to believe war was possible until Fort Sumter fell.”

“One thing,” said Reuben. “One tiny thing.”

“Yes?” said Torrent.

“The U.S. Army is absolutely dominated by red-state ideals. There are some blue-staters, yes, of course. But you don’t join the military, as a general rule, unless you share much of the red-state ideology.”

“So because the red-staters control the Army, you think there can’t be a civil war.”

“I think it’s unlikely.”

“Don’t hedge on me.”

Reuben shrugged. He wasn’t hedging, he was specifying; but let Torrent think whatever he wanted.

“What if the White House were in the control of blue-staters?” asked Torrent. “What if the President ordered American troops to fire on American citizens who fought for red-state ideals?”

“We obey the President, sir.”

“Because you’re thinking you’d be called to fire on neo-fascist militia nut groups from Montana,” said Torrent. “What if you were told to fire on the Alabama National Guard?”

“If Alabama was in rebellion, then I’d do it at once.”

“If,” said Torrent. “We just got our first ‘if’ from Soldier Boy. You would obey the President ‘if.’ ” Torrent grinned in triumph. “Civil wars are fought when leaders find out what those ‘ifs’ are and exploit them. I would only shoot at my neighbor ‘if.’ And then a politician tells you that the ‘if’ has happened.”

They all regarded Torrent in silence, waiting for the clincher that they knew was coming.

“The ideology doesn’t matter. You’re right, no one cares enough. So here’s when you’ll get ready to shoot your neighbor: When you’re convinced that your neighbor is arming himself to shoot you!”

Reuben well knew how that worked. Few Serbs, Croats, or Muslims in the old Yugoslavia even imagined they could go to war—the intermarriage rate was so high that it was obvious you could never sort out one group from another.

But all it took was a handful of nuts with guns shooting at you because your parents were Croats, even if you never cared. If they’re attacking you because you’re part of a group, then when you fire back, you do it as a member of that group. “You get forced onto one side or the other whether you want to or not,” said Reuben, “once the bullets start to fly.”

“The bullets don’t even have to fly,” said Torrent, nodding. “You just have to believe they’re trying to shoot you. Wars are fought because we believe the other team’s threats.”