Free What's In A Name by Thomas H. Cook Page A

forces, not great men.” He smiled. “This is the conclusion to which I have come after many, many years of study.” He paused, then said, “Any questions?”
    There were a few, all of them intelligent, and Altman answered them graciously, and even with a bit of humor.
    â€œAll right, well, thank you for coming,” Altman said after the last of them had been addressed.
    With that the members of his audience began to pick up their belongings.
    He’d expected them all to have trundled off into the evening by the time he’d returned his notes to his briefcase, but as he glanced up, he saw that one of them remained, an old man, quite pale, with white hair, who sat staring at him fixedly and a little quizzically.
    Perhaps, Altman thought, there’ll be one final question.
    He was right.
    â€œMr. Altman,” the old man said. “It was very interesting, your talk.”
    The old man remained where Altman had first seen him, seated third chair from the aisle in the second row. He was dressed in dark blue trousers, with a shirt that was a lighter shade of blue. There was something disheveled about him, a sense of buttons in the wrong holes, of trouser legs with uneven cuffs, but it was the slight tremor Altman now noticed more than anything else about the poor fellow. It was in his head and in his hands, and it made him look quite frail, as if precariously holding on to life, like an autumn leaf.
    â€œI’m glad you found my remarks interesting,” Altman said.
    The old man smiled shyly. “I would like to have a great many books, as you do,” he said, “but I am on a pension.”
    â€œI understand,” Altman said, then made his way up the aisle, his mind on the chicken salad sandwich waiting for him at the diner on 83rd and Broadway, a treat he allowed himself despite his doctor’s warnings about mayonnaise.
    â€œDo you remember the Realschule? In Linz?”
    Altman stopped dead, astonished by the question. “The Realschule in Linz?”
    The old man struggled to his feet. “You were a student there before the Great War.”
    â€œYes, I was,” Altman told him.
    He had not thought of the Realschule in a great many years. Why should he? He’d come to America a few years after the war, a journey funded by his wealthy Berlin parents despite their objections to his “go West young man” argument for leaving Germany and moving to the New World. It was a position Altman had found ridiculous in its patriotism, his father’s feeling that despite the horrible times being endured by Germany in the wake of the Great War, its “noble sons” should remain and rebuild the homeland.
    â€œI was there also,” the old man said in a voice that was little above a whisper. “At the Realschule.”
    â€œReally?” Altman said. “After the Great War, there can’t be many of us left now, can there?” He shook his head. “Such a slaughterer of young men, that war.”
    The old man nodded, and the wave of straight white hair that lay across his brow drooped slightly. “Slaughter,” he murmured, “yes.”
    There was something disturbing about this old man, and for that reason, Altman felt a curious urge to get away from him. In addition, that chicken salad sandwich was calling to him powerfully. And yet, he also felt called to engage this poor fellow a little longer. Evidently they’d been in school together, and clearly this unfortunate and apparently infirm old gentleman had not had an easy life, a fact that seemed to waft up from him, like an odor.
    â€œDid you like the Realschule? ” Altman asked.
    The old man shook his head.
    â€œWhy not?” Altman asked, since he’d loved his time at the Realschule, even fell in love there, this girl of his dreams now rising to his consciousness after so many years, blond, with radiant blue eyes, still a vision to him.
    â€œI was not