I walked over to Willow for lunch yesterday. I normally eat at the desk, but I wanted to raise a glass of wine yesterday to honor the exact minute of the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was raining, a chill dank penetrating mist that made me unzip the hood concealed in the collar of my Burberry jacket. I shrugged it off and let it drip in the bar, which was empty. The murmur of voices carried from the dining room, which had a fairly brisk trade despite the inclement weather.

I ordered one of Tracy O’Grady’s excellent Caesar salads and a glass of wine. The salad comes adorned with imported white anchovies, shaved smoked Gouda cheese and drizzled with dressing, lemon and dotted with marvelously crisp croutons.

I put my Blackberry on the bar and watched the minutes tick over on the display.

When it proclaimed “12:55,” I got up and walked into the conversation nook and faced west, looking out at the rain, and stood silently for a minute. I thought of the whine of aircraft engines and the bright crimson blossoms of the deadly cargo that was delivered with such precision on the wings of the soft Sunday morning trade winds long ago.

Then I sat down again at the bar on the stool next to the one where my jacket was dripping moisture on the waxed wooden floor.

Katya had the bar duty, and responsibility for a table in the Nosh area, so we chatted as she bustled about.

“So,” I said “it was seventy years ago that the Empire of Japan blew the crap out of the Fleet that Sunday morning.”

Katya has an exotic look. Her dark hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, which I gather is Deborah’s direction for uniform standardization, and her dark eyes had a sparkle in their extraordinary depth. She had worked at Willow before I became a regular, and now was back as she completed her college education.

She nodded and poured me a glass of Pino Grigio- not the Happy Hour usual, but c’est la vie. Even preferred customers can’t get happy hour prices at lunch. “Since we are commemorating anniversaries, when did your family come here from Byelorussia?”

She shook her head. “It is a bit of a story. I have a table to take care of, and can’t do it justice. The short version is that my Grandparents came after the war.”
“Holy crap. They were in Russia when the Germans came?”

She nodded, but shrugged. “It will take a while to tell it completely.” She placed the mound of salad in front of me with a smaller plate alongside with a neatly-folded snowy white cloth napkin and fork on top next to it.

“Could I get a knife?” I asked.

Katya smiled. “I always forget.” Then she disappeared out the back to serve a couple at the table around the corner from the bar. When she returned, I asked her if her Grandfather had been in the Red Army.

She shook her head. “No, he was impressed into the German Army.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I heard some people in Byelorussia and Ukraine waved little Nazi flags when the Wehrmacht rolled in. They thought the Germans would let them have their land back from the collective farms that Stalin jammed down their throats.”
“In some ways it was like the Reds and the Whites all over again. Grandfather did not want to go with them, but he had no choice. He was a poet. You say it is seventy years since the Japanese attack. Grandfather said that in December of 1941 the Nazis could see the spires of the Kremlin in Moscow.”

“Jeeze, what happened to him?”

“When the Reds started the counter-offensive seventy years ago this month, he did what he had to do.”
“It must have been very weird,” I said. “The Nazis recruited an SS Division there, I think. It must have been like the civil war after the Bolsheviks deposed the Czar.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “But Grandfather was captured and sent to Siberia to the Gulag for nine years. He is gone now, and he is buried here.”

“Damn. Your grandfather witnessed all that as a poet. It is like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch”

“Would you like another glass of wine?”

“I would, but then I wouldn’t go back to work. This was supposed to be a quiet moment of commemoration, but I guess I forgot there was a lot going on this month.”
“It all depends on your perspective. If you come back this evening I can tell you more. It is quite a complex story.” Katya slid a black folder with the check in front of me, and I pulled out my credit card as I munched the rest of the salad thoughtfully.

When I was done and the check was settled, I walked back to the office in the rain. When I got there I looked at some spread-sheets on projects that were likely to come up for re-compete over the next few months. The rain streaked the windows and the clouds made evening come on early.

The darkness wrapped itself around the building.
There was a note in the late mail from my sister Annook. She wants to get Big Mama a cat.

“Just the thing,” I thought. Then I put on the Burberry and walked out to the elevator and down to the street and into the evening.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com