'The tests were positive. I'm going to have a child. By Kalus. I wanted to explain that it changes nothing between you, and that I feel no hostility—-'
But Sylviana broke her off, whirling in a frenzy. 'You sorry Asian WHORE! Sleeping with him behind my back, and humiliating me again and again!'
'No,' said Kataya calmly, firmly. 'There was only the one time, which never would have happened….. But it did happen, for which I'll always be grateful. I just wanted to tell you that I bear you no grudge, and would never try to steal him from you.'
Sylviana stood in shocked silence. And though her face and whole bearing were hostile and inconsolable, Kataya realized they might never speak again. Better to say it all now, and have done.
'Taking him away from you was never my motive. And though I am deeply fond of him….. Can't you see how much he loves you? PASSIONATELY, single-heartedly. Don't you know how much that's worth? I've only experienced it once in my life, and I would give all the world to have that back….. My gentle husband, so unlike the hard, cruel men among whom he was raised.'
'Get out!' screamed Sylviana, 'Before I tear your eyes out!
You MONSTER. You whore.' And she fell to weeping.
Kataya swallowed hard, then left to control her own emotions. Rising,
Stenmark spoke for her, perhaps for all the company.
'Sylviana. SYLVIE. I know you don't want to hear this
right now, but I think you have to.'
The young woman fell back upon the stool, sobbing. Touched with pity though he was, the aging Commander knew he could not comfort her until he had made her see the truth.
'The men of Japan, Kataya's ancestors, were every bit as cruel as the Germans during World War II. They killed millions in their march through Asia, raping women to death, cutting men to pieces, never sparing the children….. So that when America finally developed the atomic bomb, those with the power to use it had very little sympathy left. But loosing that atomic death, whose lingering effects were not yet known, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, making war against the innocent women and children of that tragic country….. One atrocity doesn't justify another.' And while he was not sure she would understand the parallel, he knew no other way of reaching her.
'The problem with revenge, Sylviana, is that you never hurt the people you're trying to, but only create new victims. Your country condemned to a slow and horrible death, by all the ills and cancers of radiation poisoning, more than a million men, women and children who had no knowledge of, and took no willing hand in, the butcheries of their military government.'