Don’t look down, Miriam, look straight ahead. Straight ahead at what? That was the trouble, instead of a curve of a railway track, a white farm-house and the plowed fields running halfway up the mountain to the edge of the pine forest, there was nothing to look at, absolutely nothing.
She realized now that although consciously she had known that she could not hold Max indefinitely, unconsciously she had gone on hoping that, not only would he not leave her, but that by some miracle, he would want her enough to go through all the bother of a divorce so that he could marry her.
She said suddenly to Erica, "Damn it, I thought I’d be a better sport than this!" Eric did not answer, she was listening to Marc and John. She would not have known what Miriam was talking about anyhow, for no one, not even Erica, knew how much Max had done for her. When someone does as much as that for you, the least you can do is not feel sorry for yourself all over the place, because he didn’t do more!
"Putting the whole blame on the German nation isn’t going to get us anywhere", said Marc, "It’s like treating a case of smallpox by cutting off a man’s leg because there happen to be more spots on his leg than anywhere else".
"You’re Jewish, aren’t you?"
What was John asking that for? She had told him the whole story of Marc, Erica and her parents when she and John had been pub-crawling one night the week before. Somewhere between the Mount Royal bar and the Colony Club, she had observed that John was about to start telling her how much he loved her all over again. Miriam always knew when he was about to start, because whatever he was feeling found its way to his face before he could get hold of the right words, and in order to stop him, she had hurriedly taken refuge in Erica and Marc and the behavior of her parents. She could not remember what she had said, exactly, but she had certainly told John that Marc was a Jew. After all, that was the whole point.
"Yes, of course", said Marc.
"Most of the Jews I know would like to see the entire German nation at the bottom of the Atlantic".
"Oh?" Marc looked briefly at Erica’s plate, remarked, "There’s no excuse for your leaving half your steak, darling, it hasn’t any bones in it", and then back at John again, he said mildly, "I’m not giving you a racial opinion of the Germans, if there is such a thing. I’m just giving you my own opinion, though as a matter of fact, every Jew ought to know by this time that Nazism isn’t a German monopoly. Given complete power over every possible source of public information, I’m inclined to think that you could make any nation believe anything in six months".
"I don’t agree with you", said John.
"Have you ever met anyone who’s actually lived under the Nazis?"
"Well, a lot of refugees".
"I don’t mean refugees, particularly Jews. I mean ordinary Germans. I met a lot of them coming back from Europe on the boat in 1937. They were just out on business and expected to be back in Germany in a few months. Anyhow, arguing with them was like arguing with someone in a nightmare, or arguing geography with a man who’s been brought up to believe that the earth is square. They’d been so consistently misinformed on every subject for so long that there was no common ground for discussion at all. It was hopeless. Every time you produced a fact, they produced a contrary fact, and neither of you could advance an inch".
"It’s a lot easier to convince the Germans that the earth is square than it is most people", said John.
Miriam saw Marc glance at him with a skeptical expression but he said nothing. Then she heard Erica remark, "It probably depends on whether the particular nation wants to be convinced or not".
"And what makes them want to be convinced?"
"I suppose a combination of certain historical, economic and environmental factors".
Miriam began to lose track again. Her mind was like a badly functioning radio transmitter; for a while the voices would come over quite clearly, then they would begin to fade, and finally there would be another interval of silence.
Some time later John’s voice reached her, asking if anyone minded if he smoked a pipe. He never smoked until he had finished a meal and Miriam glanced at him in surprise, then down at her own plate. Somebody, she remembered, had said something about steak, but all she herself had been aware of eating was a shrimp cocktail. On her plate, however, was half a French pastry.
"Just as a matter of interest, Eric", she said, "what entrée did I have?"
"Chicken".
"Well, well. I must be going nuts". Here, she added peremptorily to herself, pull yourself together. Hoping that they were still on the same subject, she said almost briskly, "There seem to be two theories about this war. One that it’s all the fault of the Germans and the other that it’s part of a-of a…"
She looked helplessly at Marc who said "…a historical process?"
"Yes, thanks".
He said to John, "We’ve got to a point where we recognize that the basis of government is the individual, but the individual is not yet the basis of the economic system, and until we produce primarily for consumption and not primarily for profits, democracy as a purely political system with almost no economic application is not going to work. We’ll just have another war if we blame it all on the Germans and try to revert to the status quo ante. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?" he asked, turning to Miriam.
"Er… yes", said Miriam.
"What are you two?" asked John, glancing from Marc to Erica across the table. "Socialists?"
"Must we be labeled?" asked Erica, making a face. She grinned at Marc and said, "I’m allergic to labels".
A cloud of smoke from John’s pipe floated over to an elderly woman at the next table who turned slowly and deliberately in her chair, directed a long look in John’s direction and slowly resumed her former position.
John put down his pipe and said resignedly, "Give me a cigarette, somebody".
He took one from Marc’s case and Miriam asked him rather curiously, "What do you think we’re fighting for?"
He said slowly after a pause, "I can tell you what the men in the Army don’t think they’re fighting for, if that’s any help. They’re not fighting for the kind of life they’ve been leading for the past ten or twelve years". He paused again, frowning, and went on at last, "The trouble is that so far, even after three years of war, their only definite ideas seem to be negative ones-they know they’ve got to beat Hitler, of course, but they seem to be fairly cynical about the post-war world. It’s not their fault; the people who do all the talking haven’t really said anything yet".
"Do you think the people who are in a position to do all the talking really know?" asked Erica.
"Maybe a few of them do, but all we seem to have got so far is a kind of mass consciousness of the way things are changing or ought to change, if we’re really going to get anywhere after the war. At least the English masses seem to be getting the hang of things, and I guess we are too, though naturally not to the same extent yet, because we haven’t taken anything like the beating they have. I don’t know about the Americans, though I’d be willing to bet that when capitalism is a dead duck in the rest of the world, the Americans will be the last nation to admit it".
"Why?" asked Erica.
"Because their attitude toward Government seems to be fundamentally different from ours. The further you get from unrestricted capitalism the more Government you have to have. So far as the war is concerned, for example, the Americans apparently get production in spite of their Government, half the time, and not because of it. It’s their individual industrial geniuses who work the miracles, not Washington. They still believe in rugged individualism and don’t believe in ’government interference,’ so rugged individualism works and Government doesn’t. Most of the Americans I know talk about their Government as though it was on one side of the fence and they were on the other. Good old-fashioned capitalism is the only economic system that suits that point of view".