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By Root 635 0

to feel this way, I think of the curators in the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad. They were starving, hiding themselves in the museum while unimaginable horrors were going on outside. People selling human flesh in the black markets—you can’t even imagine. But the curators stayed on in the museum. The great paintings had been taken away, hidden. But they took each other on imaginary tours, pointing to the empty spaces on the walls where their beloved paintings had been. They described them in detail to one another, knowing that some of them might not survive, that the paintings might not survive, and that at least the memory of them should be preserved, somehow. To me, these people were heroes. The kind of heroes that help me live my life.”

And walking down Riverside Drive, waiting to meet Miranda for their last time in the park before they go back to school that September of 1967, Adam feels at peace. He will serve the world through his music; Miranda will serve it through protesting the horrible unjust war.

Then in September Miranda asks him to come with her to the demonstration at the Pentagon. It will be a great event, she says; it is necessary that everyone participate; it is their moment in history. Not to go would be like not standing up to Hitler. Adam thinks of Henry Levi, who left Germany because of Hitler. Henry Levi left and his parents did not. Henry Levi lived and his parents did not. But Henry Levi tells him he must not participate in demonstrations because if he were beaten, if something happened to his hands, if they were injured, there would be no hope for a career. He suggests that Adam try to organize other music students to present concerts in protest against the war. But he must not go to demonstrations himself. He must not put himself in danger.

Adam sews (he will not ask Miranda to sew for him) a black armband onto the sleeves of all his jackets so that wherever he goes and particularly if he is performing in public he can be seen to be opposing the war.

He knows this isn’t enough for Miranda; she praises him, but he can hear the reservation in her praise. And she can hear that her political friends disturb him; he doesn’t trust them, he thinks they love violence because they are confusing it with something else, some other romantic category: courage or sex. The boys with their uncombed hair and dirty jeans talk about stockpiling guns in basements, about blowing up banks or laboratories. And Miranda’s friends look up at them adoringly, and then invite the boys with their uncombed hair into their beds.

He doesn’t tell Henry Levi that refusing to accompany Miranda on the march will put him in another kind of danger. The danger of losing her. Whom he is not afraid to think of, to speak of, even, as the love of his life.

They are slipping away from each other as if they were standing on a muddy bank holding on to each other, trying to be completely still although they feel their footing giving way.

Only a year earlier when they were both leaving home for college, it seemed everything would be quite easy.

From the day that she moves into the dorm, Miranda knows that she is lucky in her roommate, Valerie, from a small town outside Omaha, bouncy and pleasant and pleased with everything. She wants to major in art history. Miranda’s arriving at college with a boyfriend, a musician, gives her, for Valerie, a great cachet. There are what are called parietal hours, two hours on Sunday when boys are allowed in dormitory rooms. Quite early on, Miranda confided her sexual status to Valerie, who was honored to leave the room on Sundays. And so for the first time Adam and Miranda are free from the fear of intrusion and surveillance. For the first time, they are safe in her bed.

Miranda makes a new friend every week. Her closest friends live on the same dormitory floor: Lydia, from Needles, California, who likes geology, and tall Renee from Philadelphia who urges Miranda to take Russian, and Marian from Chicago who is one of the first to major in African studies. They think Adam is wonderful; his