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By Root 790 0

tape again. It was warming to see the tawny hues of the Sinai desert while rain tapped on the windows, and he crowded closer, like a man to a fireplace. He reached into his jacket for cigarettes, and before he remembered that he had given them away he had pulled the letter from his pocket. He could count the number of letters he had received from his father. One a month while Arkady was in Pioneer camp. One a month when the general was in China, at a time when relations with Mao were fraternal and deep. All those missives were brisk, militarylike reports that ended with instructions for Arkady to be hardworking, responsible and worthy. About twelve letters altogether. He received one more after choosing the university over officers’ school. He was impressed because his father had cited the Bible, namely the episode in which God demanded from Abraham the sacrifice of his only son. This was where Stalin improved on God, the general said, because he not only would have allowed the execution but would have been glorified by Abraham all the more. Besides, there were some sons, like weak calves, who were fit only for sacrifice. Too much blood? For his father there was never enough.

The father renounced his son, the son renounced his father, one cutting off the future, the other the past, and neither daring to mention, it occurred to Arkady now, the one point in time where they would always dwell together. At the dacha, boy and man had stared from the dock at feet caught in the drowsy, warm river that ran by the edge of the dacha’s lawn. The feet were bare, and they neither floated up nor plunged down to deeper water; instead, they lazed beneath the surface like underwater flowers. Farther down, Arkady could make out his mother’s white dress billowing and swaying in the current, to his child’s mind waving good-bye.

Dhows tipped and cruised the waters of the Nile. Arkady realized that he had stopped consciously watching the television. He replaced the letter in his jacket as delicately as if it were a razor, then punched the Egyptian tape out of the VCR and pushed in the one from Munich. He paid more attention now because in a rudimentary way he understood German, and because he needed to focus on something besides the letter. Of course he watched with Russian eyes.

“Willkommen to München …” the tape began. On the screen was an etching of medieval monks watering sunflowers, turning a spitted boar, pouring beer. It didn’t look like such a bad life. The next image was of modern, rebuilt Munich. The narration managed to be boastful of this phoenixlike accomplishment without directly mentioning any world wars, suggesting that a “sad and tragic” plague had reduced the city to rubble. Munich had been liberated by Americans, and there was the plastic feel of an American mall to the images on the screen. From the figure of the belled jester turning in the Marienplatz clock tower to the checkerboard walls of the Old Court, every historical site was sterilized to quaintness. Virtually every other image was of a beer garden or a beer hall, as if the brew were an anointing oil of innocence—Hitler’s beer-hall putsch aside, of course. Yet Munich was undeniably attractive. People looked so wealthy and well dressed that they seemed to be shopping on a different planet. Cars looked inexplicably clean and sounded like the brass horns of a hunt. Swans and ducks flocked to the city’s lakes and river; when was a swan last seen on the Moscow?

“Munich is a city with the stamp of royal builders,” the narrator intoned. “Max-Joseph-Platz and the National Theater were built by King Max-Joseph, Ludwigstrasse by his son, King Ludwig I, the “Golden Mile” of Maximilianstrasse by Ludwig’s son, King Max II, and Prinzregentenstrasse by his brother, Prince Regent Luitpold.”

Ah, but do we get to see the the beer hall where Hitler and his Brownshirts started their first premature march to power? Will we see the square where Göring took the bullet meant for Hitler and in so doing captured der Führer’s heart forever? Will we tour Dachau? Well, Munich’s history is