[Very few people feel inclined to hug him, and he's somewhat taken aback when she does, although he doesn't back away from it as he might if he weren't drunk and not thinking clearly. In fact, he doesn't even notice the fact that some of the spilled wine has dripped from the table onto his pants, something that would hugely irritate him were he sober.]

I'll see it all for myself soon enough.

[Truthfully, he has no idea whether he'll be alive in twenty years to see the next war and the devastation that comes out of it. That's not something he thinks about, or at least, tries not to. Being confronted with the future does force you to consider where you'll be when that future happens, however.]

What my family went through was no better or worse than what any other family went through in that time and place. Yours included, I'm sure.

[He can afford to be stoic about it now. New York hadn't been ideal, not by a longshot, but it had been far, far better than Grodno ever had; even when he'd been very young he'd known that.]