Heart the Lover (16)

‘But you’re such a funny guy.’

‘I know it.’ He widens his eyes in bewilderment and we laugh.

‘So that wasn’t why Sam noticed me?’

‘No, it was a little before that. And I noticed you. First.’

I look back down at the menu. I’m worried my blushing is making me sweat. I take a sip of the iced tea then blow into the glass and the air comes back cool on my face.

The waitress returns with two beers and takes our order. I hand back the paper menu quickly, hoping he doesn’t see it shaking.



‘So what happened back home?’

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

‘Weren’t you going to work for your uncle at the paper?’ His uncle Percy works at the Knoxville News Sentinel. He told me once that Uncle Percy was like George Willard from Winesburg, Ohio, a newspaper man with big dreams stuck in his hometown forever. But when Yash gave him the book and suggested the similarity, his uncle said, ‘You’re way off base, son.’

‘Yeah, I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be there.’

I thought there’d be more of a story.

He tells me he got a letter from Ivan in Dublin. ‘His first line was “I’ve seduced the landlord’s daughter.”’

‘Don’t tell me. He was incredible.’

‘Yes, he was. Off to Poland next, in time for the election.’

The elections in Poland are a source of contention on Pye Street. Solidarity is poised to defeat the Communist Party and possibly leave the Eastern Bloc. ‘The Marxists in my house are not happy,’ I say.

‘Marxists are never happy. There’s never quite enough purging or mass graves for them.’

‘Hungary could be next. Do you think it’s possible that it will all just collapse?’

‘And the wall comes down and everyone, even the Marxists, live happily ever after?’

‘More happily, at least.’



‘Maybe. For a little while. And then some new force will appear to make them miserable again. We’re not exactly improving as a species.’

‘Yes, we are.’

He laughs. ‘No, we are not.’

‘How can you say that? All of literature rests on the promise that we change, we grow, have epiphanies, become better, understand our flaws.’

‘Too late. Have you ever noticed that? It’s always too late. Oedipus, Macbeth, Raskolnikov.’

‘For them. But not for us. We have gotten better. Ethically. Morally.’

‘We haven’t. Human behavior doesn’t change.’ He is so certain of this.

I insist it does and give the obvious examples of the spread of democracy, the abolition of slavery, increasing religious tolerance, women’s rights.

He counters with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Gulag, Vietnam. More people have been killed in this century in wars and by their own government than in all previous centuries combined. If killing another person is any measurement of ethical behavior, he says, we are worsening. I argue that it is the technology of war that has changed and that the majority of people have a wider sense of fairness and a belief in freedoms, and perhaps these wars are more ethical than the ones in the past that were for land and lucre. ‘You don’t think these wars are for lucre? Yes, cultural norms and fads bring temporary progress here and there, but that’s not a change in human morality. Inside we are all exactly the same as we have ever been and will always be until we extinguish ourselves soon enough. To believe otherwise is just a story you tell yourself to sleep at night.’

‘I don’t think I could live without a belief in moral progress.’

‘And I can’t feed myself lies. There’s a lot of beauty along with the pity and fear, as Aristotle said, in it all. Our famed condition.’

‘Is that what life is to you, a tragedy?’

‘Of course it’s a tragedy. A very silly one. The absurdity is as great as the despair.’

‘No room for hope?’

‘Not much.’

‘I wouldn’t want to live without hope.’

‘Well, I do. I like it here.’

We realize the waitress is stalling in the doorway with the dessert menus.

She moves toward us. ‘I didn’t want to get in the middle of anything.’

‘We were having our first fight,’ he says, looking down at the choices. ‘Arguing about whether humans as a species are improving or not.’

‘Oh yeah? Let me guess who’s the Pollyanna.’ She points to me.



I raise my hand in confirmation.

‘That’s a keeper, hon,’ she says, patting Yash on the shoulder as she walks away.

We study the desserts.

If Sam and I had this conversation, he’d ask for the check and not speak on the way home. But Yash looks up and grins and asks me if I like bread pudding.

Back in the Nova he says, ‘Where to now, Pollyanna?’

I don’t want to go home. I don’t want the night to be over. When the night is over he’ll find a job and a sublet and I might not see him till September 2nd. ‘Don’t Answer?’

This surprises him. He smiles and starts the car. We pull out onto the road back to town. He is driving slowly. When we crawl up to a deserted intersection, he comes to a full and very long stop.