Other Stories.”

“Let’s get the complaining out of the way,” proposed Hope. “I’ve got me a pacemaker.” And Bridget said, “I sent my story to a friend from my old writing class.” “And how is that a complaint?” Bessie asked her. Bridget said, “Because it feels—maybe it’s something like the actor’s stage fright.” “What I felt,” Lucinella said to Bridget, “when I sent you my water-bug story.

January: The Forgetting Olympics Bessie said, “You mean whoever forgets the most names gets the gold?” “Forgets more words, words, words,” said Bridget. “And dates and appointments,” Farah said. Bessie said, “Addresses. I remember Lotte calling me several times for the address of the party that turned out to be—I forget, what do we call a Jewish wake?—for Sylvia’s deceased aunt.

Commentary When the Berlin Wall fell, I naively supposed that freedom was now secure, that never again would the spectre of totalitarianism return to Europe. I failed to take into account what I should have known, that the thirst for power is at least as great as that for freedom. Freedom and power are forever locked into a kind of Manichaean struggle, as are good and evil, and the thirst for power is perfectly capable of making an instrument of supposed good causes.