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They were torches to our matchsticks. They ate our city’s oxygen along with everything our celebrated bakers, butchers, and distillers prepared to order. Early in the occupation we glimpsed them at the opera, at better cafes, at the racetrack calculating odds. Their uniforms were tailored to broaden their shoulders and taper their waists; the sharp black bills of their caps reflected lustre. No one disputes this. Today the world squints back at the startling clarity of their eyes and calls it all arrogance and brutality, and we don’t deny it, but they spoke our language carefully, not well, but apologetically. You’ll say we were charmed. As more arrived in caravans or after long marches through the provinces, we saw them get out of cabs to help children down from streetcars. Elsewhere, our own terrorists bruised the land with dynamite, derailed trains and unbridged rivers, to the cheers of resisters in exile, but those of us who occupied these roofs and stones had a different sort of politics and bunkered down into the essentials. At brothels, they were favored for their generosity and scrupulous demeanor. For the ladies, and for themselves, they demanded intimate examinations. Ask a madame still alive and she’ll remember. We knew them already as cross-border neighbors and tourists. We understood, also, that the few thousand we hosted were the finest. They should have been as discerning about us. We had them where we wanted them. Memories of their home lives surrendered to the crisp linens, soft women, angular music of our raucous nightlife. After armistace, they resented going home. Partisans condemn us for bringing out our best while battles raged nearby, and we don’t dispute anything that happened. We only want to say it isn’t easy to live, and we too defeated them in our way.
Original Copyright © January 30, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 31, 2026
He wasn’t doing enough, for the world, and he knew it. It was killing him. Getting through another day was hard, for this man, knowing how little he was doing, for the world. It’s not like he wasn’t doing plenty. He was doing plenty, but however masterfully he did the indispensable work for which he was appreciated and renowned, and believe me there was plenty of that, there were others, he knew, who did it better, for less (in most cases much less) with fewer expectations, in places he wouldn’t practice, for patients who needed it more and who might even say thank you instead of suing you afterwards for crooked stitches. He hated those pussies, but he felt he needed to be more like them. He’d been enjoying having wealth while publicly despising it and acting suicidal about being so pampered by life (and again ridiculously overpaid) amidst such suffering, in the world. It was an appealing character, but it couldn’t, I’m looking for an analogy: the character couldn’t take root in his behavior, I guess. Anyway, it was hard to pull off “Woe is me I got another pay increase through arbitration; they basically forced it on me,” for a man who declined to donate to charities until he could scrupulously study their financials. After his reboot, he deflected all talk of money, saying he had accumulated wealth inadvertently by making more than he spent and not losing any. All the world required was that he be timely, do no harm, remove the proper organs and leave neat stitches, but he did more, for the world, but never enough. I should have told you. He deprived himself and resented it. It turned him into a bore. “Good deeds not done rob the world,” he said, and died.
Copyright © January 15, 2026
Very Short Novels 
This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Short for Family from 20 years ago. The revisions…