The Things We Cherished by Pam Jenoff Page B

seemingly without effort. Even as he disdained his brother’s lifestyle, though, there was a part of Sol that secretly wished Jake might for once sweep him up and take him along on the magic carpet ride that was his social life.
    “Sit down,” Sol’s mother urged. He peered longingly down the table, wishing that he could squeeze past the others and find a seat down by Jake and the girl, but the guests were packed elbow to elbow and so he reluctantly pulled up the only available chair, a low-backed wooden one, and slid into the space his mother indicated beside her.
    Sol studied the remnants of dinner that littered the table, crumbs scattered across the lace tablecloth and fine china. On the surface his mother’s weekly gatherings had not changed—there had been savory chicken with spaetzle, he could tell from the lingering aroma, delicious chocolate tortes for dessert. Only one who had been there years earlier before the war might notice that the cuts of meat were leaner, the wine not so expensive. The dishes, casseroles and stews, were designed to stretch the expensive ingredients, to hide amidst the gravy and starch the fact that there was less.
    The guests themselves were changed too—in earlier years, none would have been caught wearing anything but the latest fashion. Now if he looked closely he could see a bit of hand darning at Frau Leifler’s collar, a scuff on the toe of Herr Mittel’s dress shoe wherethe leather had worn thin. No one, it seemed, had been exempt from the economic hardship that followed the war.
    Jake caught Sol’s gaze and raised a hand in a wave that was friendlier than their relationship might warrant, designed for the benefit of the other guests. Sol did not return the gesture, but nodded and then looked away. He could remember a time when they had once been, if not close, at least not as distant as they had become since their lives took such different paths.
    Sol surveyed the room. The house had always been Dora’s; even when Max was alive, there was little of their father in the floral upholstery, the too-ornate furnishings. Now, with the passage of the years, there was an unmistakable wornness to it all. The wallpaper had faded and the carpets were frayed at the edges and there was a tarnish to the lamps that no amount of polishing could remove.
    Sol’s eyes dropped to the mantelpiece. Between the silver candlesticks and the framed photograph of his parents as young newlyweds, now yellow with age, sat a glass-domed clock. It had been a gift from their father to their mother, brought back from a business trip to the south when Sol was a small child. The timepiece was their mother’s most prized possession; not only was it a memento of her long-departed husband, but it was one of the few gifts picked with thought and care during their marriage by the otherwise preoccupied Max. Dora forbade the maid from even dusting it, insisting on doing it herself each week with a special chamois cloth.
    His thoughts were interrupted by rising voices across the table and he lowered his gaze to Herr Mittel, who was engaged in heated debate with a guest Sol did not recognize. The conversation had descended into politics, a debate on why Germany lost the war, what would have happened if it had won. Almost four years afterthe armistice, it was a popular topic, the speculation seemingly endless.
    Inwardly, Sol bristled. Who else here but he had fought and nearly died in the trenches? “If the Jews …” Herr Mittel began. Then he stopped, as though he had forgotten for a moment where he was. Clearing his throat, he continued. “That is, if the foreign populations had fought instead of allying with their interests abroad.”
    Sol’s anger rose to full boil. The Jews had fought hard alongside the rest of the German men. One survey he’d read at the Gemeinde said more Jews had fought for Germany than any other minority, that twelve thousand had died. But that report had been buried, not published at