‘Yes.’
‘What did you find there?’
‘It was nine years after World War II. You know what I found there.’
‘You didn’t just go there to take funny pictures of them, did you?’
‘Sure I did. And I was good at it.’
‘You hated them, didn’t you? Each and every anti-Semitic one of them, didn’t you? You went to look into their souls to see it for yourself. To document it, because you couldn’t put them in a rifle sight and shoot them.’
‘Where do you come up with this stuff?’
‘I had time on the boat.’
‘You want to know what I found in Europe? I found silence. An awful, dreadful silence. There wasn’t a single Jewish voice left. None of our children. Just a couple of meek, shell-shocked hangers-on who hadn’t left or been murdered. And Europe just closed up the wound. Filled that silence with their Vespas and Volkswagens and croissants, like nothing had happened. You want psychology? OK. I probably pissed them off to let them know I was still there. To get a reaction from them.’
‘What did this have to do with Korea?’
‘Everything! It made me proud. It made me proud to be American. It made me proud to have fought for my country. It reminded me that the tribes of Europe will always be just that. Tribes. You want to call them nations? Go ahead. But they’re a bunch of petty tribes. America isn’t a tribe. It’s an idea! And I’m part of that idea. And so are you. How have I been? I’ve been proud that you’re fighting for your country. That you’re defending the dream. My son is defending the dream. My son is an American. My son has a rifle in his hand and is facing down the enemy. That’s how I’ve been.’
Saul did not answer right away. Sheldon did not fill the lull.
‘Where are the pictures?’ Saul asked.
‘What pictures?’
‘All the pictures you took.’
‘They’re in the book.’
‘Those are the ones you picked. Where are the rest?’
Saul heard his father pause, just slightly, before answering. Normally, his comments were ready, fired out the second there was an opening. This time, Saul had caught him off guard.
‘I’m the photographer. I decide what’s a picture and what isn’t.’
‘If it isn’t a picture, what is it?’
‘Did you do any work on that boat at all?’
‘I want to see the other photos.’
‘No.’
‘Maybe someday?’
‘I didn’t say there are any more.’
‘Has Mom seen them?’
‘She hasn’t been sitting on a boat long enough to come up with the question.’
‘What made you come back?’
‘You were the one who was away. Why are you asking me all these questions? I feel like I’m on
‘You took a thousand photographs across a half-dozen countries. Then, one day, you come home. Why?’
‘You want to know why?’
‘I really do.’
‘Because the war was over, and everyone was dead. I couldn’t go back to the war, and my friends weren’t coming out of it. So I grew up and moved on.’
‘Which war?’
‘Enough, Saul, please.’
Saul tried to fill in the ideas that his father couldn’t or wouldn’t express. ‘They weren’t coming back from Korea,’ he began. ‘But you also mean the ones who went off to fight in 1941. Who left you behind in America. You watched it all happen when you were a kid. The older brothers of your friends. Your cousin Abe. You were the youngest, and you were left behind. And so you signed up to go to Korea.’
‘Saul,’ said Sheldon, growing quieter. ‘I didn’t go off to the wrong war. I went off to the next right one. The communists killed millions. Millions and millions of people. When I joined up, Stalin was running the Soviet Union and developing nuclear weapons to be aimed at us. The only reason we don’t think of Stalin with the same hatred as we do of Hitler is because we were subjected to a massive propaganda campaign during the war, trying to convince us that “Uncle Joe” was a hero for giving us a second front. But Uncle Joe had signed a secret pact with Hitler, and Russia was only on our side because Germany attacked it. They weren’t our eastern front. We were their western one.’
‘Mom said you used to cry sometimes when she held me as a baby.’
‘You’re really going too far.’
‘Why?’
‘Who taught you to talk like this?’
‘People my age talk. Just tell me why.’
‘Because when I looked at your mother hold you, here in America, I could see the women in Poland who clutched their own infants to their own naked chests in the gas chambers and told them to breathe deeply so they wouldn’t suffer. Babies who still smiled at their executioners. Held their fingers in line to their own deaths. And it filled me with rage.’
‘You came back from Europe because there was nothing you could do,’ said Saul.
Sheldon nodded.
‘What do I do now, Dad?’
‘We’re alive because of this country. All its madness. Its history. Its problems. It’s still our champion and our future. We owe it our very lives. So we protect it from harm and help it grow up right.’
‘I know,’ said Saul.
‘And this country is at war.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not sure how to honour our dead if we don’t protect the only place that gave us shelter. If we don’t work to make it a better place.’
‘I’m gonna go to my room now.’
‘OK.’
‘I love you, Dad.’
Sheldon just nodded.
Less than a week later, Saul was gone, and shortly after that he was dead. He’d left a brief note on the kitchen table, saying that he’d signed up for a second tour of duty and was going to be reassigned to the same crew. He’d write, and it was wonderful to have seen them both. He loved his parents. He hoped his father was proud of him, and he looked forward to the day when the war was over.
Chapter 17
‘I killed my son, Bill. He’s dead because he loved me.’
‘He loved you very much.’
‘I’ve always remembered that morning as a fight. I guess it wasn’t.’
‘No. He wasn’t looking for an argument. He didn’t have a side to argue.’
‘I don’t know how to talk without arguing.’
