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in. They say that my real purpose in leaving them was to stop being a Jew, or anyway to pass as a Gentile, which is something I can’t manage with them nearby. So for me, success in denying that I’m a Jew hinges on shutting them out of my life. It’s a terrifying interpretation, but they really believe it. He noticed that my eyes were closing from fatigue and said, I’m sorry to have talked your ear off. The truth is that I started this conversation only to be able to say that I envy you. I wish my parents would leave me alone. Why can’t they be like your parents? What would be wrong with that? It hasn’t done you any harm.
    I didn’t answer his question. I was realizing that, even if you put aside their peculiarities, my parents were a species with which he had no familiarity. Just as it seemed I had only the most limited understanding of his circumstances. There was no hurry, I thought, he’ll have lots of time to learn about me and my kind. Especially if our friendship lasts. I had begun to think that it might. So I said goodnight, and we went to bed.
                      
    W HETHER H ENRY WAS A J EW was a question Archie and I had discussed more than once without reaching a definite conclusion. Archie agreed with me that the family’s having been in Poland during the war was a reason to suppose that he wasn’t. We both believed that the Germans had killed all Polish Jews. The name White gave no clue, because it must have been changed. But changed from what? We also agreed that Henry didn’t look like a Jew. His address in Brooklyn pointed the other way. Brooklyn, Archie said, was where all the New York Jews lived. That left the fact that Henry was no friendlier with the three known Jews in our dormitory than with anyone else. According to Archie, that meant nothing. Or one could take it as a sign that Henry wanted to pass. At the time that seemed to me a reasonable conclusion. However, now that Henry had told me that he was a Jew I couldn’t imagine that in similar circumstances he would be less forthright with Archie. Didn’t that blow out of the water the theory that he was trying to pass? It did occur to me that Henry had created the occasion for this particular confession. Looked at in a certain way, it was a piece of stagecraft. He had certainly avoided saying that he was Jewish when Archie grilled him about his background that day we met. He had stopped short of a lie, but what had his intention been?
    The only Jew I had known for a long time and thought I knew well was our dentist in Pittsfield, a nice man who had been taking care of my teeth since my first cavity and who had never hurt or scared me. He had a big, richly stocked aquarium in his office, so cleverly placed that you could watch the fish while he drilled, and I think that at one point I was so interested in them that I looked forward to my appointments. I was very much aware of the Jewish family that owned the big Pittsfield department store. Two of the grandchildren, both a couple of grades behind me, had gone to the same country day school as I in Lenox. My parents didn’t know their parents or grandparents, probably because they didn’t belong to the country club. But even if they had belonged, my mother and father would have kept a respectful distance from them, as they normally would in the case of a much richer or grander member of the club with whom they didn’t have a personal connection. It would have been up to the Kaufmanns to make the first move. There were Jewish musicians in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which performed in the summer at Tanglewood, but I had not had an opportunity to meet any of them. We had no Jewish neighbors. To my knowledge, there weren’t any Jews working at the bank. The position of Jews at my boarding school was, by contrast, well established. There were several New York Jews—elegant and rich—among the students, the most notable being the sons of a family of bankers. Members