Short Century by David Burr Gerrard Page A

tongue. This was not such a bad life, really. I would never have to work if I didn’t want to. I could stay in hotels like this one, but that weren’t this one. That were much more luxurious than this one, in fact. I could marry a girl like Emily and laugh all the time. I could ignore politics. People who didn’t ignore politics usually got into trouble, and they often got a lot of other people in trouble as well. It was frequently said that the only reason you got involved in politics was to distract yourself from personal problems. And it was true that you could consign your life to politics and get everything wrong. But you could just as easily consign your life to personal matters and still get everything wrong. You could think you were advocating for democracy and actually be advocating for the death camps. Or you could fling open every closet of regret and desire in yourself and the people you loved, and still there would be one closet you missed, and crouched in that closet, never to see the dark of day, would be your most crucial self. Maybe these were synonyms for private and public: the unspoken and the unspeakable.
    Our mother opened the door wearing a dress identical to Emily’s and holding a half-eaten pear. She hugged me, and past her I saw discarded fruit lying on the floor: apple cores, banana peels, orange peels. It had become a ritual when we were at the Chappine, one that we never acknowledged, to discard fruit on the floor. Not even Emily and I talked about it. How this ritual got started, I can’t say, but one of the first things my mother did whenever we arrived at the Chappine was order a bowl of fruit from room service, and over the course of the day we all dropped fruit on the floor.
    â€œBright young lad!” my mother said. “Welcome to the Chapp!” Then she dropped her pear and, careful to step around the fruit, disappeared into the suite’s master bedroom with the small, aggrieved, but unobtrusive steps that were her trademark.
    While she was making her retreat, my father greeted me, not moving his crutches. By this time my father was spending more time in Washington than in New York, so I hadn’t seen him in some time. He had a habit of giving a weary little laugh whenever he saw me, as though I were the punchline to a very long joke.
    â€œI was at the protest against Mrs. Johnson’s speech,” I said. Immediately, I knew that saying this this way made me sound like a child leaping at the chance to offend. I expected sarcasm and dismissal, but instead I got delight.
    â€œGood! Maybe you’ll end the war. Mac Bundy thought he could bring freedom to Vietnam, but the problem with freedom is that when people have it, they do what they want to.”
    This comment hit me hard, and I thought about it often as my thinking evolved. I have often wondered whether the anti-war left secretly agrees with my father, and is secretly uncomfortable with the idea of freedom, particularly for black and brown people.
    â€œThe only good thing the Defense Department does is make bombs,” my father said. “Bombs are a marvel created by a human race otherwise unworthy of them.”
    I had heard my father talk like this before. The aesthetics of bombs was one of his favorite topics, and it always led directly into the main speech of the afternoon.
    â€œArthur,” Emily said, pulling me away. “I want to show you that new sweater I was telling you about.”
    â€œThe human race is horrible, but if it has to survive, it should at least survive with a Huntington stamp.” He picked up a pear from the fruit bowl and now there was no stopping him, and now there was no question that we would all have to listen. Even my mother emerged from her room and stood in the doorway. We knew he was ridiculous but there was something arresting about him as well, as he leaned against one of his crutches, holding aloft a pear and discussing the end of the