Empire Read Free Page B

Croatian—Catholic, yes, but also of the tribe that Serbians hated more than any. Once Serbs and Croats had been the same people. But the Turks had long ruled Serbia, while Croatia was sheltered within Catholic Austria-Hungary. What did Croats know of oppression and suffering? And when the Nazis came, they collaborated with the conquerors, and the price of their perfidy was paid in Serbian blood.
    Nobody forgot things like this in the Balkans. Such injuries were nursed generation after generation. So when Reuben came home from Ohio State with a
Croatian
girl, and then left her with
his
family while he went off to begin serving his ROTC obligation to his country, his parents were appalled.
    She won them over completely. It was hard to believe that anyone could get past Father’s cast-iron hatred of Croats, but Cessy had insisted that she’d do just fine, now go off and be a soldier for a while. And when Reuben came home on leave the first time, it quickly became clear that not only did his family like Cessy, they liked her a lot more than they liked Reuben. Oh, they said they still loved him best, but he knew it was just to make him feel better. They
adored
Cessy.
    And that was fine with him. “You should be our U.N. ambassador,” he told her on that first leave. “You could get Hutus and Tutsis to be friends. You could get Israelis and Palestinians to hug and kiss. Hindus and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, Shia and Baha’i, Basque and Spaniard—”
    â€œNot Basques and Spaniards,” she told him. “That dates back to when there were still mastodons in Europe. That’s practically like Cro-Magnon versus Neandertal.”
    â€œI want our babies to be as smart as you and as tough as me,” he said.
    â€œI just want them to
look
like me,” said Cessy. “Because having daughters that look like you would be cruel.”
    Their daughters did look like Cessy, and their sons had Reuben’slean, lithe body, and all in all, their family life was perfect. That’s what he came home to every day from school; that was the environment in which he studied. That was his root in reality that kept calling him back from the brink of getting seduced into the fantasyland of academia.
    Until Averell Torrent decided he wanted Reuben’s soul.
    Reuben had been goaded by professors before. He goaded them by wearing his uniform to every class on the first day. They took it as a personal affront. Why shouldn’t they? That’s how he meant it.
    Some of them simply ignored him the rest of the semester—until his coursework forced them to give him an A. Others declared war on him, but their ham-handed attacks on Reuben always backfired, winning him the sympathy of the other students as Reuben answered all the attacks with unflagging courtesy and quiet good sense. Many of the others would begin defending him—and, by extension, the military. Thus Reuben would quietly lose all the classroom battles for the hearts and minds of the students, but win the war.
    With Torrent, though, as they worked their way through the ancient long-lived empires—Egypt, China—and the ancient republics—first Athens, now Rome—it became for the other students a class in watching Torrent and Reuben spar with each other. They weren’t angry at Reuben—they knew that Torrent always initiated their long, classtime-consuming exchanges—but they still resented the fact that Reuben Malich had hijacked their only class with the great man.
    Can’t help it, Reuben silently answered their huffish attitudes. He calls on
me
. What am I supposed to do, cover my ears and hum loudly so I can’t hear his questions?
    Though he was getting tempted to do just that. Because what Torrent was saying about America and empire made perverse sense. While the other students sidetracked themselves into a discussion about whether Torrent’s statements were “conservative” or