What interested her was the sweeping architecture of the mall, the daring shapes, the huge open spaces which made the place quite unlike any other shopping complex. It was interlaced with sculptures, huge tapestries, and intricate fountains. She was intrigued at how the various levels connected via curved stairways that jotted out into the open space here and there.

      The most unusual feature of the center was the main restaurant on the fourth floor, where we had lunch one day. The entire restaurant had been constructed in the shape of a ring that hung suspended beneath a glass dome that covered a part of the atrium. Access to the restaurant was provided via a small bridge. Naturally, the most interesting tables were those overlooking the central hall of stairways, artworks, elevators, and four levels of shops. Anton was dazzled by it all.

      An unusual incidence caught her attention that day, unusual by Moscow standards. She noticed a traffic jam on one of the stairways. A girl caused it, whose stunning appearance had brought the entire traffic flow to a complete standstill. Nobody moved until she had passed.

      "You wouldn't see that in Russia," Anton commented.

      "Oh, why? Is it considered offensive?" Sylvia asked.

      She shook her head.

      "And would you find it offensive if it happened to you?" Sylvia asked.

      She smiled. "Of course not."

      "Is sexual emphasis offensive in Russia?" Sylvia asked again. I knew she was pushing the issue.

      Anton didn't answer her this time.

      Heather intervened quickly. "It depends on how one looks at it," she said.

      Anton nodded.

      "Something as richly human as that, won't ever be allowed in Russia," said Tony jokingly.

      Anton punched him for that, gently. "Still you are right," she said, "it is somewhat like a miracle what is happening here, compared to the glum equalization of the sexes that is practiced back home."

      "Eh, but you don't see many scenes like that in the States either," said Tony. He told her that most people were fooling themselves, imagining themselves to be liberated, while in reality they were practicing the most rigid segregation between male and female than could possibly exist in Russia, which had put them into an even tighter isolation.

      "Enforced through brainwashing," added Ross.

      "Even on the so-called liberal scene," said Tony.

      "Especially there!" said Heather.

      "People are not aware of what they are doing," said Ross, who had been remarkably quite ever since we got to the restaurant. "People worship unity, they embrace it, they gloat over it, but everything they do and feel is centered on isolation and fragmentation, and strengthens it. It is a process that goes against their deepest intentions, and no one is aware of it. They've got to turn the process around, but how can they, if they are not aware that it is happening?"

      "Ah, this takes all the steam out of fighting to get together," said Tony. He told Anton about his girl watching speech, and about the controversies that it had caused. Immediately she asked to be invited once more to Alberto's pub where it all began. Out of this background came her own contribution to the conference, in support of the girl-watching speech.

     

      "I want you to know that I come from a very old oligarchic family of Russia," she opened her speech. "My great grandfather was the proud protector of the name of Lisitov that had a long history over many generations. He owned a large estate and had also become a financier and one of the early industrialists of the imperial era. I had always been proud of my heritage in Russia's past. Even though our family estates were nationalized after the revolution and our name fell into ill rebuke, I continued to be proud of that name and history of nobility that it stood for. Then, one afternoon that pride was torn to shreds. It happened in a museum where the great book of my family was displayed. The book had been prepared long before my great grandfather had lived, and his father before him. It contained the entire family's history and its beliefs. That's when I learned how our fortune had been created, what it had been based on. It was based on thievery. Everything was taken from the labor of the peasants who were regarded as being lower even than the slaves of Rome were. It was written in the book that the laborers were to be kept in such a state of poverty that a very high death rate would result. This was to be done to protect the family and the way of life it enjoyed. If the peasants were allowed to develop as a normal human being should develop, the family would be vastly outnumbered and be overruled by the developing intellect of the people who would not long tolerate their oppression. To prevent this, diseases were invited to develop through malnutrition. This was the rule that every generation was obliged to follow to protect the name of Lisitov. Obedience to this rule was not optional. It reflected the sacred code of conduct which the entire nobility respected, that no one dared to violate."

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche