Among Others

of flavour. I was surprised, because I don’t usually like tea at all and I was only drinking it to be polite. He got the water from the electric samovar, which he said kept the water at the right temperature.
    After a little while, I was looking at the books, and I saw The Communist Manifesto on top of one of the piles. I must have made a little noise, because they both looked at me. “I just noticed you have The Communist Manifesto ,” I said.
    Sam laughed. “My good friend Dr. Schechter lent me that.”
    “I was reading it recently myself,” I said.
    He laughed again. “It’s a lovely dream, but it would never work. Look at what’s happening in Russia now, or Poland. Marx is like Plato, he has dreams that can’t come true as long as people are people. That’s what Dr. Schechter can’t understand.”
    “I’ve been reading about Plato too,” I said, because he’s in The Last of the Wine of course, and Socrates too.
    “Reading about Plato?” Sam said. “How about reading Plato?”
    I shook my head.
    “You should read him, but always keep arguing with him,” he said. “Now, I must have some Plato in English somewhere.” Then he started moving piles of books, with my father helping him. I would have helped too, but I couldn’t move with Chairman Miaow asleep on my knees. He had Plato in Greek, and Polish, and German, and I realised as he muttered his way through the piles that he could read all those languages, as well as Hebrew, and that even though his English was funny and quite strongly accented and he lived in this little rented room, he was an educated man. Seeing my father help him go through the piles, I saw that they were fond of each other, though they didn’t do much to show it. “Ah, here,” he said. “ The Symposium , in English, and a good place to start.”
    It was a slim black Penguin Classics volume. “If I like it I can order more from the library,” I said.
    “You do that. Don’t be like Daniel here, always reading stories and no time for anything real. I’m the opposite. I have no time for stories.”
    “I have a friend in school who’s the same,” I said. “She reads science essays for fun.”
    It turned out that Sam has read some of Asimov’s science essays, and also owns a book he wrote about the Bible! “It’s a Jewish Atheist book about the Bible, so of course I own it,” he said.
    When it got dark, my father bustled up and insisted he’d take us out to eat. We went to a place quite near by, where we ate little pancakes called blinis with smoked salmon and cream cheese, which was absolutely delicious, perhaps the most delicious thing I’ve ever had. Then we had lovely dumplings with cheese and potato in them, which would have been the nicest thing I’d had for months if they hadn’t come after that lovely salty salmon, and then another sort of pancakes with jam inside. Everyone there knew Sam, and kept coming over to say hello and be introduced. It was a bit embarrassing at first, but I soon got used to it because Sam acted as if it was normal. I saw that he lived among these people as if they were family, he lived in community with them.
    I like Sam. I was sorry to say goodbye. I wrote down his address and gave him mine in school. I wanted to talk to him about being Jewish and what Sharon had said, and about my thought about being a rice Jew, but I didn’t want to with my father there. He made it awkward. It’s easier with Sam. For one thing, I don’t have to feel grateful to him, and for another, he doesn’t have to feel guilty about me.
    We drove to this hotel. It’s not a patch on the one where we used to stay in Pembrokeshire. It’s very anonymous. We’re sharing a room, which I didn’t expect, but as he went down to the bar almost at once, I’ve had the place pretty much to myself. The clocks go back tonight, so an extra hour of sleep!
    The Symposium is brill. It’s just like The Last of the Wine , though earlier, of course, when Alkibiades was young. That must have been a great time to be alive.
    S UNDAY 28 TH O CTOBER 1979
    I’m on the train, the big intercity train from London to Cardiff. It goes indiscriminately through countryside and towns, running along its inevitable rail. I sit in the corner of the carriage and nobody takes any notice of me. There’s a cafe car where you can buy awful sandwiches and horrible fizzy drinks or coffee. I bought a Kit Kat, which I am eating very slowly. It’s raining, which makes the