bits from her memorized books, the facts of destruction in human history, snatches of songs, and speeches from their revolutionary past. They are litanies of courage, hope, and terror for the human race:
|
 | | Slaveships deathtrains clubs eeenough
The bell summon what enables
78,000 in one minute
(whisper of a scream)
78,000 human beings we'll destroy ourselves?
|
| | Lift high banner of reason
(tatter of an orator's voice)
justice freedom light
Humankind life worthy capacities
Seeks
(blur of shudder)
belong human being
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As David listens, it seems to him that Eva is ''maliciously . . . playing back only what said nothing of him, of the children, of their intimate life together." He says to her, knowing she cannot hear him, "A lifetime you tended and loved, and now not a word of us, for us." Finally Eva's words work their way into his consciousness, and he too remembers the idealism of their youth, the ways he has conspired with society to betray those ideals, "and the monstrous shapes of what had actually happened in the century." To ease himself, he thinks of their grandchildren, "whose childhoods were childish, who had never hungered, who lived unravaged by disease in warm houses of many rooms, had all the school for which they cared, could walk on any street, stood a head taller than their grandparents, towered abovebeautiful skins, straight backs, clear straightforward eyes. . . . And was this not the dream then, come true in ways undreamed?"
|
The answer to David's question is
yes,
but only if one is thinking in individualistic terms. For Eva,
family
and
children
have meanings that extend far beyond tight biological definitions. Thoughts of the well-being of her own family have never allowed Eva to escape into complacency, and now, having fallen under her spell, David cannot escape either. He answers his own question "as if in her harsh voice":
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