The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  Spiegelman took some paper and a pen from his book bag, settling under a tree. Without giving much thought to what he was doing, he licked the tip of his pen and wrote:

  Mr. Thompkinson,

  Please forgive David’s tardiness. My youngest son spent the better part of this morning ill with the croup. With his father gone to shop, David had no choice but to stay behind and help me tend to his brother. I shall, of course, ensure he completes his schoolwork.

  With respect,

  Ruth Spiegelman

  He sat back to regard his work. Though it was David Spiegelman who put pen to paper, it was as if his mother had spilled the ink. The handwriting, the curious bend to the letters (she was born left-handed, but her parents forced her to write with her right, as was the custom)—it was his mother’s voice. The polite but firm phrasing—it was his mother’s voice. Even the way the words were positioned on the page, the paragraph starting halfway down the paper and meandering slightly to the left—it was exactly how his mother would have done it. Breathless with his work, Spiegelman went inside the schoolhouse.

  “David, you’re tardy.” Mr. Thompkinson gave a pointed glance at the clock, his eyebrows coming together in advance of a lecture. Spiegelman presented the letter to his teacher. As Mr. Thompkinson read it, the boy held his breath.

  “Oh, I see. Oh, dear. Is your brother any better?”

  David Spiegelman’s friends muttered. Praying for them to shut up, the boy managed, “He’s fine. Thank you.”

  “Good. Give my regards to your mother.”

  Spiegelman’s identity changed that day. He was no longer that forgettable boy who read strange books. Now, he was a con artist, a master of deceit. Everyone had a physicians’ note that needed to be written, a parent’s signature that needed to be forged, a letter that said they’d been to class, or church, or that they hadn’t been to Brussels with that girl. His classmates brought him samples, and under the watchful eye of his grandmother’s bookshelves, David Spiegelman’s pen became them all.

  Soon, the demand was too high for Spiegelman to keep up. The enterprising young man that he was, Spiegelman began charging for his services, convincing his parents that he’d started a small newspaper business so that he could afford candy and books. After a year of paid labor, David was buying his parents tickets to the theater, to operas; his father, who owned a little shop, saw Cyrano de Bergerac on opening night, at La Monnaie.

  This went on for about three years, an eternity for a boy Spiegelman’s age. The inevitable happened a few months into Spiegelman’s fifteenth year. A girl in another grade, someone he didn’t know very well, asked him to write a letter from a teacher to her parents, informing them that she was making satisfactory progress in her courses. There were two problems with this plan: first, the girl was failing, and second, the teacher no longer worked there. Two days after the girl paid for the letter, Mr. Thompkinson asked David Spiegelman to speak with him after school.

  Mr. Thompkinson held up a slip of paper covered in even, straight words. Spiegelman’s mouth went dry.

  “How many of these are there?” asked Mr. Thompkinson.

  “Just the one, sir,” said Spiegelman.

  “You know what I mean. How long has this been going on?”

  “I don’t—”

  “How many letters like these have you written, for how many students? Is it only teachers? Are you pretending to be their mothers and fathers, as well? Businessmen? Shopkeepers?” Mr. Thompkinson crouched so that his face was level with young David’s. The yellow light overhead reflected off his pallid skin. “You could be in a great deal of trouble for this.”

  “I know, sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I—”

  “Legal trouble, even.”

  Spiegelman clamped his mouth shut. His parents had taught him, from a very young age, to revere lawyers almost as prophets.

  Standing, Mr. Thompkinson tore the paper to shreds, then deposited it in a trash bin. “No one knows about this but me. We can keep it that way, if you’d like. Your parents will never know, the law will never know. Would you like that, David?”

  “Yes, sir.” Spiegelman sensed something was wrong, that he was about to be drawn into something from which it would be too hard to escape.

  “You’re very young.” Mr. Thompkinson paced, his hands clasped behind his back. “You don’t know this, David, but sometimes, things are complicated for adults. Do you know what I mean by complicated? I mean that there are certain things that happen to us that are difficult to fix. Bad things, even when we aren’t bad people. Are you understanding all this?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Take me, for example. I’m not a bad person, but my wife doesn’t love me, and I’m a man, like any man, so what was I to do? I found a woman who does love me, only she’s found out about Bette, and... Do you see what I mean, David? Complicated.”

  “Yes, sir.” Spiegelman had no idea what Mr. Thompkinson meant.

  “Sit down.” As Spiegelman sat at a desk, Mr. Thompkinson fetched a sheet of paper and a pen. He laid them in front of the boy. “I want you to write a letter to me, from my wife, saying she’s leaving me. Say she’s having the divorce papers drawn up. Here’s my wife’s handwriting.” Mr. Thompkinson placed two scraps of paper—a grocery list and a note with instructions to a milkman—on the desk. The simple intimacy of the grocery list (eggs, flour, pickles) made Spiegelman ill. “I mean to give it to my—to the other woman, so that she will come back to me.”

  Spiegelman licked his dry lips. “Is your wife leaving you?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters if it’s not the truth.”

  “You lied for them.” Mr. Thompkinson pointed out the window, at Spiegelman’s friends playing in the yard. “And you didn’t care, did you?” It had been fun, writing letters for the other children, becoming someone’s uncle or teacher or minister. No one had gotten hurt; no one was sad, or angry. But adults were different. Adults did not lie, in Spiegelman’s experience, unless they wanted to cause pain.

  “I don’t want to do this.” Spiegelman pushed the pen and paper away from him. “I don’t like it.”

  Mr. Thompkinson picked up the paper and slapped it back down. “I don’t care what you like, you little shit.”

  The boy stared down at the instruments of his trade, the tools of the gastromancer that had brought him so much pleasure. His eyes grew warm with tears. “I’m not going to do it.”

  “Write the letter.”

  “No.”

  “Write the goddamn letter.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Spiegelman pushed back his chair and stood up. Mr. Thompkinson caught his arm, squeezing until the boy cried out.

  “Write the letter,” he said, “or everyone will know how you look at that lad Douglas van der Waal.”

  “What?” whispered David.

  “I’ve seen it. You’re an odd one, David, and you thought no one knew, you thought it was a secret that you kissed that boy Thomas last year in the park. But I know, David, and everyone else will know, too, unless you sit down in that chair and write that letter.”

  His whole body numb, Spiegelman lowered himself into the chair and picked up his pen.

  “Good boy,” said Mr. Thompkinson, as Spiegelman began to write.

  So commenced Spiegelman’s five years of servitude. Thompkinson passed the boy’s gift and his secret on to another man, who passed him to a friend, and Spiegelman threw his voice into the mouths of adulterers and thieves. It might have gone on forever, if the war had not broken out.

  David Spiegelman’s grandmother died the day Hitler invaded Poland. Her father was from Poland, and her heart couldn’t stand the news of what had happened there. After his brother Abraham disappeared, Spiegelman tried to arrange for his parents to flee Europe, but he couldn’t get the visas
in time. They died next. Shortly thereafter, the Nazis came for David Spiegelman.

  The Gestapo found Spiegelman sitting on a chair near his grandmother’s bookshelves, the same chair he’d used to climb up and reach Amazing Stories of Far Off Lands. He’d been running, sleeping behind old buildings; he’d dug his parents’ grave. But Spiegelman was finished living with fear in his chest and dirt in his hair. So he went home to his grandmother’s books, to join his family in more welcome lands. As the Gestapo leveled their guns at him, Spiegelman clutched a tattered copy of One Thousand and One Nights, trying not to tremble. But they did not fire. Instead, a man with tired eyes held out his hand to Spiegelman.

  “David Spiegelman? I am Brigadeführer August Wolff.”

  Spiegelman shook his hand. It felt stiff but hollow, like the cheap wood the toymaker had used to make his boyhood puppet.

  “Would you come with us, please?” said Wolff.

  Spiegelman stood on unsteady legs. “Where are we going?”

  “To the capital.”

  “What for?”

  “I have a letter for you to write. I am told you are quite proficient at such things.”

  And that was the beginning of David Spiegelman’s career as a ventriloquist.

  18 DAYS TO PRINT

  EARLY MORNING

  The Jester

  AUBRION SPENT THAT night drawing up a list of materials we’d need for Faux Soir. The list went through six drafts, five of which were scrawled on the chalkboards at the Front de l’Indépendance headquarters, the last of which was penciled on the back of yesterday’s Le Soir. When he was satisfied with the results, Aubrion instructed me to send a telex to Wolff asking him to meet that afternoon. By then, it was too late to sleep but too early to do anything else, so Aubrion pulled on his battered coat and gestured for me to follow him.

  We stepped outside, shivering. Though the air was damp, it wasn’t quite raining; Belgium refused to commit to anything in those days, whether it was the Allies or precipitation. The run-on quiet of the streets was punctuated by the footsteps of Nazi patrol units. Aubrion could hear lamplighters running through the streets, or halfhearted songs trickling from alehouse windows. These sounds were scarce, though. The city had been imprisoned in a comma that divided the first days of the occupation from the last.

  Morning came slowly, and as the streetlamps guttered, Aubrion bought coffee and pastries. We ate on a bridge that creaked under our weight, feeble from the last air raid. When our meal was done, I parted ways with Aubrion, who took a cab to the Nazi outpost in west Enghien. There, Wolff and Spiegelman awaited him in a conference room.

  “Let’s keep this short,” said Aubrion, pulling out a chair. The mendacity of the room frightened him. It was unsettling—dysphoric—to think of generals tallying casualties on the plain wooden table, or pasting lists of concentration camps to the clean walls. The air held a faint stink of ammonia. “I do not wish to be here any longer than I have to.”

  Wolff sat across from Aubrion, flanked by Spiegelman. “As you like,” said the Gruppenführer. The skin under Wolff’s eyes looked bruised.

  “You might want to take this down.” Aubrion paused. This was a tricky thing, to communicate exactly what he needed for Faux Soir while selling—but not overselling—his commitment to co-opting La Libre Belgique. Wolff and Spiegelman waited.

  “What we have in mind,” began Aubrion, “is a four-page issue with a print run of fifty thousand copies. About one hundred copies per newsstand, assuming we distribute the paper to about five hundred newsstands across Belgium.” That much was true. “It should be easy enough for us to do.” That much was false. “We’ll need about 200,000 sheets of paper, 200 barrels of ink, and 50,000 francs for bribes and goods—the old francs, not the new worthless shit you lot are squeezing from our mother’s teats. Over and beyond these costs, we’ll need materials to build a few small incendiary devices. We probably won’t need a distraction—” quite false “—but in case we do, we should be ready.”

  “What do you consider a ‘small’ incendiary device?” asked Wolff.

  “And why would you need a distraction?” said Spiegelman.

  “Like a Molotov cocktail, but a tad bigger. You know.” Aubrion spread his arms to indicate the size he had in mind. “If the FI learns what we’re up to and tries to disrupt our distribution lines, we’ll need to be armed, won’t we?”

  “You would fire on your own people?” said Spiegelman, who spoke without irony.

  “That is an interesting question, from you.”

  “We are not discussing me.”

  “I said it was for a distraction, didn’t I? Obviously I don’t want to kill anybody. But if the FI figures out what is amiss, they’re not going to afford me the same courtesy. I might need to get away. I might need to make people run in a different direction so I can get away.”

  “Is that all?” said Wolff.

  Aubrion counted on his fingers to make sure he’d gotten to everything. “I think so.”

  Wolff and Spiegelman shared a glance.

  “What?” said Aubrion. “What is it?”

  Wolff said, “If you were to scale down the operation—”

  “To what?”

  “Make it smaller.”

  “I know what ‘scale down the operation’ means. I thought you wanted the largest black propaganda campaign ever.”

  “We do.”

  “And I thought that meant the largest black propaganda campaign ever.”

  Wolff rubbed his eyes. “The Ministry of Perception Management is still relatively new, Monsieur Aubrion, and unproven. They’ve given us a budget of five thousand francs—”

  “Five thousand?”

  “—to carry out this operation.”

  “I can’t do anything with five thousand francs.”

  “You can,” said Wolff. “You can raise another forty-five.”

  “What about paper? Ink? You do want a printed paper, do you not?”

  “You must do what you can.”

  “Damn.” Aubrion’s fists trembled. “You know, if you were smart, Herr Wolff, you would keep ‘rebel’ print factories instead of burning them to the ground. Then perhaps you would be able to print something when you wanted it.”

  To Aubrion’s surprise, Wolff looked down. “The decision to burn them is not mine.” If it was not quite regret in the Gruppenführer’s eyes, it was something akin to that.

  “Well, put a suggestion in the bloody suggestion box.”

  “We all do what we can, monsieur. Will that be all?”

  “And what kind of a name is the ‘Ministry of Perception Management’ anyway? Who among you has been reading too many comic books?”

  “Will that be all, Monsieur Aubrion?”

  Aubrion took a breath and stood, his attention already elsewhere. “Yes. That’s all.”

  “I expect weekly reports on your progress,” said Wolff.

  “Weekly?” said Aubrion. “I am to work in handcuffs, then?”

  “Do not be so melodramatic, Monsieur Aubrion.”

  Wolff stood, but Spiegelman remained seated. “I’d like to have a word with Monsieur Aubrion about the mechanics of the project,” he said. “You did grant me permission, Gruppenführer, at our earlier—”

  “Yes, yes.” Wolff consulted his wristwatch. “I have a meeting in four minutes.”

  “I’ll debrief you this evening.” Spiegelman glanced at the soldiers by the door, motioning Wolff closer. “This is a sensitive matter. Perhaps the guards could wait outside?”

  The Gruppenführer hesitated. But he said, “Make it quick,” and left them alone.

  The Gastromancer

  The door creaked—a rusted question mark—as it closed on Wolff’s and Manning’s footsteps. Spiegelman opened his mouth to say something, but of course, Aubrion was quicker.

&n
bsp; “Let me hear your opinion on this,” said Aubrion, resuming his seat, “because I already know my own. Which of us is the greater sellout?”

  “Aubrion—”

  “Worse sellout? Greater? I am not sure which adjective is appropriate.”

  “Monsieur Aubrion, let me—”

  “Which of us has more of his soul left? I suppose that’s the question to ask.”

  “Would you shut up?” Panicked, he glanced around to ensure no one was watching them. Of course, the room was empty. He sat slowly, leaning in to whisper, “I want to help you.”

  “That’s hardly a secret, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not stupid. I know you’re doing something else.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A different project, something other than La Libre Belgique. You must be.”

  “You’re right. I’m trying to decide whether I want to be buried alongside my mother or stepmother. That is my other project.”

  “Oh, God,” said Spiegelman, the cry of a man who’d just received word of a death. He put his face in his hands, too overcome even to weep, trapped in his grandmother’s study again. His world became her perfume and the musk of old books; he was clutching One Thousand and One Nights and ready to die. Did Aubrion see him for what he was, for what he needed? Spiegelman suspected he did not, that Aubrion could not understand his soul even if Spiegelman picked it apart and laid it clean. Spiegelman imagined his future, as he often had: a land bordered by concrete walls made of repugnant, infeasible options—pledging his services to Aubrion, this little fool with his feet on the table, this strange man who did not seem to comprehend the bullet that awaited him—or Wolff now, Wolff tomorrow, wearing himself into shreds with a letter to this general, a letter to that governor, knowing they would die because of something Spiegelman wrote with his own hands.

  But the air around Marc Aubrion’s body crackled with something unspeakable and new.

  “Listen to me,” said Spiegelman. “You can believe me or not. I’m a Jew—”

  “Who works for the Nazis,” said Aubrion.

  “You think everything is so simple.”