FRANZ ROSEN

Hatred

I AM THINKING OF HERBERT now, and not Oksana directly. But I believe one certain trait of his allowed him to be her protector. He is not a good hater. Perhaps to compensate for this emotional shortcoming, he has an enlarged ability to deflect or in some cases absorb the arrows shot at him.

I suppose the same could be said of myself. It’s even possible, though I’ve made no general survey to support the idea, that this vitamin deficiency, as it were, was an adaptive trait for those few of us who remained here after the war. A case of survival of the fittest. Those who hated could have been driven insane.

(I might further observe that this Darwinian case is made in exactly the opposite fashion by some concerning the Jews before the war – it is said that if we had hated more, we might have survived better. But times change.)

(Moreover some of these same critics conflate hatred with courage. It is said that we feared to hate. But Herbert is surely no coward, either in business or anything else. For the smallest proof of it: no coward would have taken on Oksana.)