Eloquent Silences

Several conversations immediately come to mind, but one feature they all shared for me was a profound period of silence: the silence of knowing that your argument has just caused a friend's perspective to shift, and you can see the wheels turning in his eyes as the parameters re-align; the brittle silence across a scarred kitchen table as you realize that your marriage was just murdered; the glowing silence between two people who can commune their contentment without words.

One conversation that hs stuck with me for over ten years featured silence because I wasn't participating. At a dinner party, a couple who had been married for many, many years got into an argument. The wife was telling about her mother's experiences as a resident of Leningrad during the seige--it was a remarkable tale of accidental survival and ironic twists of inhuman suffering--but her husband kept trying to shush her. Finally, he could contain himself no more and said, "They do not want to hear this! Why tell such terrible things over dinner? They are awful! Just try to forget about it!" His wife remained unruffled through this outburst and said, "No, Sasha, they have to know."

Personally, I had really been enjoying the story, honoring the memory of these people who confronted inhumanity with courage and grace. It was interesting to see two people, as intimate as this veteran couple were, with such polar opposite needs: the one to expose, clarify, share in a calm and even-handed way, and the other to obscure the unlovely details, and to protect his peace of mind, even if he lost his cool in the process. It made me think about what strengths their marriage must have from these opposing tendencies. Although I was nominally "included" in the conversation, they got so wrapped up in arguing with each other that the rest of us just faded into the periphery.