She remarked a moment later, "It’s amazing the way people can assume that they know what’s ’best’ for someone else-that they know better than the individual concerned what is going to make him or her happy or unhappy. Really, when you come to think of it, it is the most stupefying arrogance. I’m not talking about children, of course, but grown-up people who are obviously old enough to make up their own minds".
The music stopped again and in the pause he said, watching the band leader who was talking to one of the saxophone players, gesturing as though he were angry about something, "It’s not always as simple as that. Their assumptions may simply be based on what they know happened to everybody who tried breaking the rules, because they thought they were exceptions too".
"But surely there are exceptions, aren’t there?"
He said wearily, "For every individual who really is exceptional there are about fifty thousand who just imagine they are-until it’s too late, and they find out they aren’t after all".
She was too disturbed to notice that the other couples had left the floor and after looking at him blankly for a moment she said, "Let’s go to the bar. I feel like a drink and we can’t talk very well at the table with John and Eric".
The bar was all blue and silver, dimly lit by pin-pricks of light scattered over the low, dark blue ceiling. There were a few people sitting here and there, talking in low voices against the sound of the orchestra from the next room. Miriam and Marc sat down at a table in the corner beside a large, stylized plant which appeared to be made of some kind of metal.
It was another place where she had often been with Max, even oftener than at the little restaurant in which the four of them had had dinner. For some reason or other he had taken a liking to the blue atmosphere and the deep, comfortable leather-covered chairs, and there was an interval just after they sat down and before she or Marc said anything, when the past obliterated the present, like one picture dissolving into another on a screen. The room blurred, then slowly came into focus again, only it was very slightly changed, with the chairs and tables not where they were now but a few inches to the left or right where they had been last time, Tuesday night of the week before. Miriam had reason to remember that it was Tuesday in particular.
Max was sitting beside her in a dark suit, his legs straight out under the table and his head against the back of the low chair, running his fingers lightly over the inside of his wrist. His profile was outlined against the light drifting through the door down the wall. She had been talking about herself and Peter and the deep-rooted conviction of her own inadequacy with which she had had to go on living after her divorce. She was wondering why it was so easy to talk to Max when it had been so difficult to talk to anyone else, and she had turned her head toward that profile, on the point of asking him, when she saw that for the first time since they had known each other, she was boring him. She had told him too much.
She had forgotten that there are people who are born superficial, whose superficiality is usually related to ideas, to their attitude toward politics, economics, art, literature and the objective world, but also occasionally to their attitude toward other people. They prefer not to have to deal with more than a limited number of oversimplified ideas-they prefer the book reviews to the books, the headlines and the leading paragraph to the full report, the generalization to the facts, and the negative to the positive. For these people, more than a little knowledge is a burden; they don’t know what to do with it. They put down a book or a newspaper, turn off the radio, change the subject or break off a love affair, simply for fear of knowing too much and getting in too deep.
That was what had happened with Max. He had found himself getting in too deep. The basis of their relationship had been almost entirely physical and in her mistaken effort to broaden that basis, she had overlooked the fact that Max simply did not want it broadened. It suited him far better as it was. In telling him a lot of things about herself which, she realized now that it was too late, he did not in the least desire to know, she had given herself away for the first time in her life, and to the wrong person. Not knowing what to do with her, he had taken a week to think it over and had then, in effect, handed her back to Miriam Drake again.
She became aware of Marc’s greenish eyes watching her with an expression which was oddly incurious and understanding. She had no idea how long they had been sitting here, it probably wasn’t more than a few minutes but even so, if Marc had been John, he would have been all over her with bewilderment and sympathy by this time. She found herself thinking that she might still marry John sometime in the future, if she could get over her fear of his inexperience and if, in the meantime, someone would just tell her how you can manage to get through life with a man who has to have all but the most elementary emotions explained to him in words of one syllable.
"There’s your drink, Miriam", said Marc at last. "Would you rather go back?"
"No, I’m all right". She raised her glass, then put it down again, remarking, "I thought I was one of the exceptions, that’s all-one of your fifty thousand who think they’re smart enough to figure out what’s going to happen in advance so that it won’t hurt so much when the time comes. You know, a realist. Are you a realist?"
"I’m a super-realist", said Marc, grinning. "I know that no matter how bad I think something’s going to be, it will undoubtedly turn out to be a lot worse".
"Optimistic, aren’t you? Why don’t you marry Eric before you go?" she asked abruptly.
"And leave her to cope with the whole thing alone?"
She knew that she had had no right to ask such a question and was surprised at his giving her even that much of an answer. He had been definitely uncommunicative up till now.
A moment later he surprised her still more. He said, "Anyhow, I may not come back, and I’ve complicated Erica’s life enough already without going on doing it after I’m dead. Some day she might want to marry someone else and I’d rather it was the first time for her, not the second. If I were going to be here another six months it might be different".
After a pause he went on, looking down at his glass, "And apart from everything else, we’ve got to win the war first. I know that’s what a lot of people say but in our case it happens to be true. So long as there’s even one chance in ten that we don’t win, I couldn’t afford to take it, because naturally I couldn’t involve her in what would happen if we lost".
"Wouldn’t she be involved anyhow?"
"Not quite to the same extent", said Marc rather dryly. "I don’t know whether I have any right to involve her if we win the war and then lose the peace".
"What do you mean?"
"I mean if we get rid of the Nazis only to end up with the status quo ante. You know, a lot of the mud that Hitler slung at us from ’33 to ’39 is still sticking. Even when he didn’t succeed in stirring up active anti-Semitism, he managed to make almost everybody thoroughly Jew-conscious, even over here and in the States".
"Do you think things are worse here than they were before 1933?"
"Oh, yes. Much worse". He paused and said, "Erica doesn’t really know what she’s walking into. I do". His face lost some of its expression and he said, "Evidently your father does too".
"How do you know Eric doesn’t?"
"Because she can’t".
"Well", said Miriam into her glass. "At least Eric’s beginning to learn".
For the second time she was realizing that there was something inside Marc Reiser which you couldn’t change, and which, perhaps, he couldn’t even change himself. He had been born skeptical, and under ideal conditions, he might simply have gone on with the same degree of passive skepticism or it might even have been gradually reduced and eradicated finally, if not in his children, then in his grandchildren. But the conditions were not ideal; you might almost say that they were specially designed to work on that skepticism, to confirm it and enlarge it and ultimately to transform it into an active influence.