Therefore Choose by Keith Oatley

inspected, but Frau von Kleist was able to do this without seeming inquisitive.
    â€œAnna says that although you plan to be a doctor, you write short stories.”
    â€œI would like to write,” said George. “But there is a difficult apprenticeship, and I have a long way to go.”
    â€œAnna has told me some of your very interesting ideas about novels and plays.”
    â€œThey are only half ideas, really,” said George. “I don’t think they will be real ideas until I can put them into practice.”
    Frau von Kleist took tea with Anna and George, and then went with her daughter to the Kurfürstendamm.
    â€œWell,” said Anna when she returned. “What did you think?”
    â€œI liked her very much. I can see her in you. But that’s not nearly as important as what she thought of me.”
    â€œShe doesn’t mind you being foreign, but she is concerned about your ambition to enter the questionable occupation of medicine.”
    â€œShe looks well.”
    â€œI hope so. I worry about her.”
    George did not know how to reply.
    â€œShe’s gone back to her hotel now. I shall have dinner with her, this evening, with a friend of our family. You will have to occupy yourself.”

11
    As the Olympic Games approached , most ordinary Germans felt more secure than they had a few years earlier. The Games in Berlin meant a return to international respect, visitors to the city. Unemployment was no longer prominent in the newspapers. Instead, there were columns of print on prosperity, growth, strength.
    When Anna was at her office, George would read from Dagmar’s library, sometimes write. Sometimes he would visit a gallery. Berlin was full of them. Sometimes he would walk to the Kurfürstendamm, look at the shops, and walk towards the west. Sometimes he would walk east along Budapester Strasse to Potsdamer Platz, then take a bus or the U-Bahn back to the Zoologischer Garten, from where he could walk to the flat.
    In England, of course, policemen didn’t carry guns. You never saw a gun. Here, men in uniform were everywhere, and plenty of guns. They made George uneasy. It was difficult to get used to these Germans.
    At the end of July, Werner returned from his visit to his parents in Konstanz. George and he had exchanged letters and had arranged to meet at the recently opened Pergamon Museum.

    The centrepiece of the museum was the Altar of Zeus, which filled a space larger than a concert hall, and even then was only a third of the original altar. Its massive staircase and extraordinary frieze of sculptures had been transported stone by stone from Turkey.
    â€œGerman archaeology,” said Werner.
    â€œAstonishing,” said George.
    â€œPergamon overlooks a valley,” said Werner. “I’ve not been there, but from what I’ve read the city is impressive. The Greco-Roman world, Alexander’s empire, one of the foundations of our society today.”
    â€œIt must have been a huge feat to take all that apart and load it onto ox-carts or whatever they were and onto ships and bring it here.”
    â€œWe’ve protected it. This altar used to be in one of the world’s great centres of civilization. Civilization moved on, and now this is at the centre again, where everyone can see it.”
    George looked at Werner. “This is the mission of archaeology?” he said.
    â€œIt’s difficult to travel to where this was. Is it not more fitting that it is here rather than being left to decay on the side of a hill where goats climb on it and shit on it?”
    â€œLet’s go up the steps,” said George.
    After the museum they walked by the river.
    â€œI think it’s good to have this material in Berlin,” said Werner. “Of course we know hardly anything about Greek music, but in the other arts — architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, and philosophy of course — the last century in Germany has