The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  Have you seen those films, those time-lapse films of a tiny bud blossoming into a rose? Imagine that, the explosion of color and power and will, magnified a thousand times so that it is so much faster and so much more powerful than anything you have ever witnessed. That was what happened on that cold evening. The men threw L’Ingénue onto the fire, and then it was ten or twenty more fires, enveloping the screaming men as they struggled to get away. I watched them, smelling their burning flesh, half blinded by what I saw.

  I turned away to wipe the sting from my eyes. When I looked again, the men were gone, and so was the church. In their place were skeletons: the coal-black remains of the scarred church, the still-life bodies of men who had done me harm.

  “Want to know why the Nazis are so dangerous?” Aubrion said to me once. I thought I knew why: they made people so scared that they would trample their neighbors to get away—that they would step on the bodies of children who went to school with their sons and daughters. “Everything they do, every goddamn thing, is propaganda.” Aubrion was slightly drunk when he said that, I remember. “When they invade a country? That’s propaganda. The order in which they invade? Propaganda. Shooting a traitor in the back? Propaganda.” Aubrion often spoke to me this way, in broken lectures. It wasn’t often that he reminded me of my father, but he did when he grew especially passionate; my father had been renowned, in his time, for treating pubs as lecture halls, but when I try to recall such things, it is not my father’s face that appears, but Marc Aubrion’s.

  And so, Marc Aubrion told me, August Wolff was taught to use fire as propaganda, a weapon that purified as it killed. It is hard for me to discuss the Nazi relationship with fire. I’ve spent my life, from the moment I became conscious of myself, defining myself as not a Nazi, and yet the Nazi relationship with fire mirrored my own. I came to fire as a child running from the Germans; fire came to August Wolff as a young man training for the Gestapo.

  The first time I saw the Germans take a torch to a home—my friend Baptiste’s home, where he lived with his grandparents—the fire emptied everything that it touched. Fire purifies, August Wolff wrote in his memos, and I remember feeling the same, the delirious ache in my body as my perception of things changed. It cleanses. The house was new again, remade in ash and soot. It is beautiful.

  “Wolff thinks it’s all shit,” Spiegelman confided in me one evening. Just the two of us were awake. Even Aubrion slept. “All of it. The whole Nazi business.”

  “He said that, monsieur?” I asked.

  “There were so many times he let it slip—small confessions about his guilt, his sense of duty. I believe I was invisible to him after a while. He said things around me that I don’t think he would have said to anyone else. He wanted to be a writer, you know. He likes the idea of building things out of words. The Germans are good at that, I don’t have to tell you. But Wolff doesn’t think they’re doing enough.”

  “What else does he want them to do, monsieur?”

  “I don’t know.” Spiegelman rocked back and forth. I’d seen orphans do that, alone on cast-off roads. “Perhaps he wants them to pause and appreciate what they are destroying.” I shook my head, confused. “Listen,” Spiegelman said. “August Wolff often makes me think of a story from my childhood. My grandmother told it to me. My parents never held to the superstitions of the day, so Abraham—”

  “Your brother?” I said.

  “Yes, my younger brother. Abraham and I got our stories from our grandmother. ‘This is a sad tale, David,’ she told me. I was around eight or nine, too big to sit on her lap, but she pulled me into her arms anyway. Grandmother spoke, and I pocketed each word. ‘A sad tale, David,’ she said, ‘not a scary one this time. It is about a spirit called the dybbuk.’

  “The dybbuk, she told me, is a wandering soul, divorced from its body.” Spiegelman’s voice was paper-thin. “We all must die sometime, of course. When most of us go, we are mourned by those who love us. But some of us are not so fortunate.”

  “What happens to them?” I asked. My breath felt cold in my chest. “The less fortunate souls, I mean.”

  “They roam the earth, searching for a body to inhabit. They pick the bodies of women, most of the time, or young children. Often, they live inside a soul for years. They peel away the voices of these stolen bodies and trap themselves beneath their skin.”

  “Do they stay there forever?”

  “Not forever. Only until they complete their task.”

  “What task does the dybbuk have to complete, monsieur?” I asked Spiegelman.

  Spiegelman leaned back, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It can be different things. Some want to find their families, the ones who did not mourn, and force them to account for this crime. My grandmother told me about dybbuks who took a body because they never felt at home in their own. They leave when their voice becomes stronger.

  “But the weight of the dybbuk’s task is often too much for them to bear.” Spiegelman shrugged. “They’re quite human, in that way. They want to relieve some of the pressure, release some of that burden—they want to share their stories, to be free from guilt, to achieve their wishes, to shake off the chains of their obligations. They are constantly scrabbling to share and to win, Gamin,” said Spiegelman. “That is who they are.”

  “Can people help them?” I wondered.

  “A good question.” Spiegelman put his hand on my shoulder, a rare and strained display of affection. “People often help them without knowing it, or so my grandmother believed.” He nearly laughed, the way I’ve laughed at jokes told at my own expense. “Most of the time, they don’t find out that they’ve helped the spirit until its task is done. The dybbuk is sly that way.”

  The Dybbuk

  The building in front of them was short and slender, with a broad face marred by dirty glass. Wolff’s diaries—the ones from his youth, not the false diaries he kept during his time with the Nazis—speak of an experience he had as a boy, about seven years old, watching a colony of ants devour a rat carcass. Whenever the Gruppenführer saw his soldiers running toward a print factory in their dark uniforms and their dark rifles and boots, he thought of those ants: so orderly and complete, every part of them dedicated to the business of undoing.

  Half the soldiers went inside the building, while the other half poured kerosene around the perimeter. Soon, the morning was thick with the smell of it. Wolff turned away, struggling not to cough.

  “I’ve been told you get used to it,” said Herr Manning, fanning the air in front of his face. “But I haven’t.”

  “You don’t,” Wolff replied, and that was true. He felt as though his body were elsewhere, as though he were watching the conflagration from behind glass.

  In the distance, Wolff could hear the shrieks of the factory workers—many of them women, most of them unaware they’d been printing papers for the underground. That was the way of things. Though many underground printers, typesetters, operators, and linotypists were volunteers, it was sometimes the foremen who volunteered without their workers’ knowledge. The foremen broke up the workers’ tasks so they never saw exactly what they were printing, just fragments of an unseen whole. They did not discover the true nature of their task until they heard the words: On the floor, on the floor! Their ignorance could not stop the bullets.

  “What is this?” said Manning. “The third—no, second rebel factory we’ve found this month? The year is far from over, and we’re on track for a new record.”

  The shrieks grew closer, and then a woman burst from a door at the rear of the factory. She ran, stumbling, tripping over her simple dress and clogs, almost falling. All the while, of course, she screamed. Wolff learned early in his life that a certain kind of scream lies dormant until death, when it is drawn out in a fevered rattle—a rattle that rang coarse and hollow over the sounds of gunfire.

  October 25, —43, Wolff would write, later that evening. Prec
ision operation on print factory responsible for rebel publication La Barrière. Eradicated all traitors. Burned the papers. No survivors. Our banner marches on without delay, wiping the stains of their rebellion from this earth.

  “How many do you think worked there?” asked Manning.

  Wolff’s eyes itched. “Worked?”

  “I beg your pardon, Gruppenführer?”

  “About a thousand. That was our last estimate.”

  Wolff’s next comment was cut off by a sound—a roar, from the dancing fire that smelled of kerosene, the fire that continued to roar long after Wolff and his men had gone.

  16 DAYS TO PRINT

  MORNING

  The Gastromancer

  HIS ASSIGNMENTS USUALLY began with an envelope, sealed with the stamp of the Gestapo: an eagle bearing a swastika beneath its outstretched wings. Spiegelman opened three envelopes that lay in a pile on his desk, one after the other, setting the contents aside like organs during a transplant. The first envelope contained a letter from a museum curator to his mistress; the second from the mistress to the curator; and the third from the curator to his wife. Spiegelman’s palms grew clammy as he picked through these lives and misdeeds.

  He got up to wash his hands at the basin in the corner of his living quarters. The Nazis did not disaggregate their work and their lives, and so most offices on base contained a cot, a washbasin, and a trunk for personal effects. These amenities were tucked behind the office space, as though the Germans were embarrassed that they had to pause their duties to sleep or tend to their morning or evening ablutions. Spiegelman’s quarters were relatively spacious; Wolff had seen to that. The basin was white porcelain, the walls barren and clean. Wolff had permitted Spiegelman to order a plain blue rug, which muffled Spiegelman’s footsteps as he returned to his envelopes.

  Spiegelman almost didn’t need to read them. He’d found the pattern in mistresses’ writing years ago, selling his skills as a boy. They all wrote the same way: the pleading insecurities, the shocking language, promises turning into bribes that later revealed themselves as threats. Even the handwriting was similar. It was forced, often curly, as if each letter were trying to make more of itself than was possible, given its low birth. Mistresses always put too much pressure on their pens, which made the letters look juvenile and thick. And then, of course, there were the spelling errors, the overwrought language.

  Someone knocked at his door. Spiegelman put aside his work.

  “Come,” he said.

  The Gruppenführer entered and closed the door. “I hope I am not disturbing you.”

  “I am just starting the Schoenberg letter.”

  “Remind me.” Wolff took a seat in front of Spiegelman’s desk.

  “A curator who displeased the Führer by refusing to house Nazi artifacts in his museum.”

  “Oh, yes. It should be simple enough, no?”

  “It’ll be done before the day is out.”

  “The letter?”

  “The relationship.”

  Wolff’s mouth crumpled up, the closest he came to smiling. “You are that confident?”

  Spiegelman said, without humor, “I have ruined more marriages than all the distilleries in Belgium.”

  “I almost pity them.”

  Spiegelman shifted in his seat. He dreaded these meetings with the Gruppenführer—not just because the man was despicable, but because Wolff was pathetic, and his Midas hands turned everything he saw into a cowardly husk. Spiegelman struggled to hold himself up in the presence of Wolff.

  Wolff said, “I’ve come to speak to you about La Libre Belgique.”

  “What about it?” Spiegelman picked up a pen, fidgeting with it.

  Wolff leaned in. “I am telling you this in confidence. I do not have a good feeling about it. Aubrion and the others agreed far too quickly.”

  Spiegelman’s heart raced. “Perhaps they understood they didn’t have a choice,” he said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I am not sure.” Wolff rubbed his eyes. “I have a feeling, but no evidence, that they’re planning something.”

  “What could that be?” Spiegelman could feel himself sweating through his shirt. He hoped Wolff would attribute this to the room’s warmth.

  “Counter-propaganda, possibly. Or simply something that jeopardizes the project. I don’t know. It could be anything. Regardless of what they’re doing, it is important for me to keep them on a leash.”

  “Absolutely. What would you have me do?”

  “Exactly what you have been doing.” Wolff handed Spiegelman a blank sheet of paper. “Be my leash.”

  The Smuggler

  “Your Honor, the accused, Lada Tarcovich, stands accused of automobile theft.” The barrister said those last three words with the air of a man who didn’t get to say them very often, the way a surgeon might’ve said “heart transplant” at the time, or a politician might have said “invade Russia.” Surely this would be the trial that made the barrister’s name a household presence. (The next day’s paper did not even mention the fellow.) The barrister paced in front of Tarcovich, pausing every now and then in case someone in the audience wanted to take a photograph of him. The courtroom was mostly empty. Tarcovich stood flanked by two policemen, her hands chained at the wrists. She kept her head down, playacting as a chastened prisoner, but her eyes were fixed on Judge Andree Grandjean sitting above them in her white wig and robes.

  “Is the accused represented by anyone?” asked Judge Andree Grandjean.

  “I am representing myself, Your Honor,” said Tarcovich.

  “Do you have any prior experience representing yourself in a court of law?”

  Tarcovich enjoyed the woman’s voice. It was low and firm, the way few women’s voices were. “No, Your Honor.”

  “Then I recommend the court adjourn until you can secure the services of—”

  “I am confident I can do what needs to be done, Your Honor.”

  Grandjean’s mouth clamped shut. She was obviously not used to being interrupted. “Very well,” she said. “You may continue, barrister.”

  The barrister inhaled audibly, then posed, as if this were some impressive feat only he had mastered. “Your Honor,” he said, “earlier this afternoon, the accused was spotted loitering near a Nash-Kelvinator model 600.”

  On the morning of her arrest for automobile theft, Lada Tarcovich did not know how to drive a motorcar. To her credit, she could remember reading about the car in one of Professor Victor’s books. She just couldn’t remember what it was called. Cursing herself for being such a pitiful car thief, Tarcovich sauntered around the vehicle, because car thieves did not, in general, saunter, and she didn’t want anyone to know that she was a car thief, at least not yet.

  The car was parked behind a church in northern Charleroi. She peered through the windows. It was a bulbous thing, pudgy with strange lights and lines that formed an old man face at the front. More importantly, the car was unlocked.

  “She then proceeded to use a blunt instrument to shatter the rear windows.”

  Lada Tarcovich had calmly opened the door on the driver’s side of the vehicle and climbed in.

  “Miraculously, she was not bloodied by this barbarous display of barbarism.”

  Tarcovich stiffened at the barrister’s redundancy—not to mention the alliteration. She’d expected him to exaggerate, of course, but she had not expected such linguistic carelessness.

  “Encouraged,” the barrister went on, “the accused began to tamper with the motorcar’s ignition system.”

  Tarcovich had studied the keyhole to the right of the steering wheel, remembering that one required a key to start a motorcar. “Damn,” she’d whispered, for the driver had not been dumb enough to leave his key in the ignition. Tarcovich felt around the driver’s seat. Nothing. She
felt around the passenger’s seat, breathing quickly now, inhaling fresh leather and cigar ash. Nothing. She turned around, saw something glinting in the back seat. Her heart pounding, Tarcovich leaned back and grabbed the key. She’d laughed, insane with triumph. Humming “Ode to Joy,” Tarcovich jammed the key into the ignition—forgetting, of course, to turn the key.

  Judge Andree Grandjean was twirling a pen as the barrister spoke. Tarcovich had never seen anyone look so bored, and she’d once walked in on her former lover having sex with a man.

  “Her speed and sophistication,” said the barrister, “are likely a testament to the number of cars she has stolen in the past.”

  Unsure what else to do, Tarcovich had grabbed the key and twisted, certain she was going to break it. The car rumbled to life.

  Tarcovich screamed, then realized the motorcar was supposed to be making that sound. She grabbed ahold of the steering wheel, fiddled with the clutch, remembered at the last second to put her foot on the pedal, realized her foot was on the wrong pedal, switched pedals, and then pushed on the accelerator, hard.

  The barrister posed for a moment before continuing. “The accused then attempted her getaway.”

  The citizens of Charleroi had set up a poultry market across from the church where the car was parked. Tarcovich, who had taken hold of the steering wheel but had not thought to use it, sped toward the stalls. Ahead of her, people scattered, yelling at her to stop, stop, for the love of God, stop!, throwing their children out of the way. Screaming, Tarcovich accelerated into a flailing mass of wood, tarp and feathers. But the car swerved, and not even the chickens were hurt.

  “Your Honor—” And here the barrister paused, his head bowed. “I cannot even guess at the number of lives lost as a result of this tragic display.”

  Rolling her eyes at the barrister, Tarcovich decided now was the time. “Your Honor,” she said, meeting Grandjean’s gaze. “May I approach the bench?”