opted to stretch out in the back seat and try to sleep more, leaving the passenger seat to Moses.
Moses spent most of the ride studying the car’s gearshift and other features, touching everything and imitating Vipond’s driving. Vipond glanced at him frequently in amusement. He had always marveled at the power of a child’s imagination.
“Are you driving your own car, Moses?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I love driving.”
The old man smiled, then studied the surrounding country again. It had been years since he had ventured out of Valence and had hardly even left his apartment building in recent years. He had forgotten that he loved nature, the interminable forests, the beautiful prairies. He was anxious to see the Pyrenees again. He remembered how beautiful they were. He thought about his trip to Cuba and wondered how Buenos Aires would compare. He chuckled to think that here he was, as old as could be, making the longest trip of his life. Yet the even longer journey was yet to begin.
Vipond’s thoughts wandered back to his childhood, when he was a boy like Moses. He had been so afraid of hell, a childish notion he had since disabused himself of. He had not been overly concerned about his soul in recent years, nor about the fact that his body was old and sick. He had simply been carried along by the impetuous rush of life. One day followed the next, without giving the impression of leading anywhere in particular. He still had that impression, which worried him a bit. How was it possible that, being as close as he was to death, he gave it such little thought? Since childhood, Vipond had intuited that at a certain age people stop asking hard questions—not because they are no longer interested in the answers but rather because they are afraid of them.
“What’re you thinking about?” Moses asked.
Vipond was not sure how to answer. “I don’t think you’d be able to understand if I explained it. You’re still in the world of fantasy. You make reality fit with what you want to see . . .”
“Do adults not do that?” Moses said. At first Vipond chuckled at the boy’s innocence, but then he thought, perhaps, that is exactly what adults did. They lived in their imaginary worlds, worried about the problems that were never going to materialize, wishing for things they were unwilling to fight for, and ignoring the eternal question of the real meaning of life.
“Maybe we do,” the old man finally mused. “I’d just never thought of it like that.”
“You know what? Sometimes I imagine what South America and Buenos Aires are like,” Moses said, suddenly serious.
“And what are they like in your imagination?” Vipond asked, expecting a fantastical description.
“I imagine everything is new, which is why they call it the New World. The streets are clean and straight, the buildings look all shiny and pretty on the outside, like parts of Paris. The people are rich. The country’s so young the rich people won’t have had time to rob all the poor people. I heard that over there nobody asks you where you’re from because everybody’s from somewhere far away. The days will be really long, and I don’t think it’s as cold as here. And, best of all, my mother and father are there.” Moses finished his pronouncement with great satisfaction.
“Well, I think you’ve painted a pretty picture,” Vipond answered. He did not know much about Argentina either, other than the fact that it had been a Spanish colony, that the English had wanted it, and that it had vast tracts of virgin land.
“I think they speak Spanish, but in a different way than in Spain. They’re all really pale and they don’t hate Jews.”
Moses’s last prediction took Vipond by surprise. “And why do you say that?”
“The French hate Jews, like the Germans and Swiss, but the Argentines don’t. They let us come live with them,” was his naïve conclusion.
They were so wrapped up in the conversation that they did not notice a checkpoint of the paramilitary French militia, the Milice Français, some two hundred yards ahead.
One of the militiamen raised his hand for the vehicle to stop. For a brief moment, Vipond was tempted to speed up and run the fascists over, but he braked. They had nothing to fear; all their papers were in order.
“Documents for yourself and the children, please, sir,” the militiaman barked. He wore blue pants, a brown shirt, and a blue beret. His fellow militiamen kept