I heard fragments of a speech from somewhere far off. “My brothers, the army of Nazi Germany is attacking. They have invaded Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Moldova, and have begun to enslave the workers there.” Perhaps the speaker was using an old-fashioned megaphone, for the voice crackled and was hard to make out. Even with bombers flying overhead, this speaker was taking his time, carefully pronouncing the name of each ethnic nation-state, already thinking beyond this battle to postwar Europe. After the war, when forests, towns, and wounded citizens are all spoils for the taking, a new age, truly delicious for the victors, begins. So that there would be no doubt about which cakes he had every right to claim as his own, he was now naming each cake his army had saved from the Nazis. “The Russian Red Army had to fight to save the Ukraine Tarte, the Belarus Crème, the Choco Latvia, the Estonia Clair, the Strawberry Shortcake, and many others from the dastardly Nazis.” “Really?” said another voice. “Well then, I guess we’ll just have to give them up.” “We’ll let you have the cakes you just listed, but the Nagasaki Castella, the Hiroshima Manjū, and Tokyo Thunder Crackers are ours.” I turned around to see that one of those American soldiers from before was back. His smile gone, his ample chin now trembled with anger. But when he saw Stalin’s stone head burst out of the bas relief like a ball of fire, he quickly ran away.

Hearing Stalin’s voice listing cakes, the stone people hurriedly changed into ethnic costumes. Bright red flowers with emerald green leaves embroidered on billowing white collarless blouses over scarlet skirts trimmed with white lace, as sturdy white legs slid into crimson boots. I heard ethnic music, perhaps from the Ukraine. But where was it coming from? The dandelions at my feet had turned into speakers. The women, now all decked out in their costumes, put their hands on their hips and, swaying gently from side to side, began lightly tapping the ground with their heels. The sound brought men, also dressed in red and white ethnic costumes, up out of the earth to place their hands on the women’s hips and start dancing along, moving their heads from side to side and then waving their arms in the air. Masks with pictures of laughing eyes and smiling mouths were pasted onto the faces of both men and women. The colors each ethnic group wore were much too bright; wondering why they all had to be so gaudy, I figured that this was to show that there were various groups, each one different from the others. These people were not just a motley assortment but a republic formed when all these groups came together. “But surely you didn’t all have ethnic costumes stashed away? Where did you get them? Ah, you bought them at a souvenir shop? I understand—in fact, I bought the yukata I have with me at a souvenir shop in Narita Airport.” As soon as I’d said that, the people stopped dancing, took off their costumes, and hurriedly changed back into their work clothes. “So you have to be ethnic sometimes,” I said, “but you have to be laborers, too.” They all went back to work. The shoemaker returned to his workshop and the baker to his oven, while the blacksmith picked up a huge hammer. But with a war going on, they couldn’t very well settle down to business as usual. The baker shut up his shop, piled all the bread he’d just baked onto a cart, and took off for the battlefield. The soldiers were waiting for bread. The stone book had a picture of soldiers receiving sheaves of wheat, but raw wheat wouldn’t do them much good—while they were threshing it, grinding the grain into flour, and kneading the dough, the enemy would attack. Soldiers’ muddy boots were piled high on the table in the shoemaker’s workshop, and he was cleaning the mud off them and pounding nails into the soles. His regular customers had brought smart leather shoes and high heels for him to repair, but he pushed all those out the window.