It starts as he fills me in on the background of one of our new regulars, a 97 year old that shuffles in for lunch, late, always late, 10 minutes before close, that 10 minutes and another 5 he spends finding a seat in the restaurant. He's bonded with the Nephew, the reason being that apparently in the second world war he was a Nazi, met Hitler, has photos, shown them to the nephew, brought him books, told stories.
And from this the nephew fills me in on his point of view:
"I mean, think about it, The Egyptians, the Russians, The Germans, I can understand that everyone doesn't like you, but if nobody likes you maybe the problem is with you...Look at the banks....the US...it's caused by the Jews....Hitler, he saw it coming...he was an angel sent by God to save us....he was the Messiah, and we, we killed the son of god, and then we killed Hitler...he invented recycling, shoes over here, shirts over there...."
His conversations, invariably inappropriate and always at a volume several times what a sane person would use, but he's using the time-honored Italian technique of raising his voice to persuade me, we would easily lose half of our customers if they could read his mind, but he's on a tear now, justifying his admiration for this old and tottering relic...it doesn't matter, it's his day to stay late and he can while away the long afternoon hours looking through black and white war photos....