The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  Spiegelman took a seat next to the Gruppenführer, who nodded at the bureaucrats and commanders already installed at the table. Himmler was cleaning his rimless spectacles at the head of the table, and Spiegelman was struck, as usual, by how young he looked. His face was pleasant, which is to say that it was unremarkable: unlined, pale, with dark blue eyes that blinked searchingly from behind his lenses. Spiegelman watched as Himmler patted down his close-cut hair and opened the file in front of him. Licking his fingertips, Himmler pulled a document from the file, scanned it, then ripped it in half, a wet, predatory noise that seemed to wrench the room in two. Himmler went on like that for an eternity, licking, pulling, scanning and ripping—placing each dismembered page in a pile.

  “Shall we get started?” said Himmler, his words colored by a polite Bavarian accent. He did not smile, but he did not need to; the accent smiled for him. “As you all know, I am here to ensure the continued progress of our newly founded Ministry of Perception Management. First, I wish to thank all of you for the work you do here. Managing public perception is an integral part of our broader mission—to ensure the health and happiness of decent working people throughout the state.

  “But, of course, this ministry is still young.” Himmler paused, looking at each of them in turn. Spiegelman forced himself to hold Himmler’s gaze. This was just a man. He was a powerful, evil, foul man that burned what he didn’t know; still, he was just a man. God knew Spiegelman could look at another man. “Much remains to be perfected. So, if anyone among you sees something wrong, or inefficient, let him come to me. Let him speak to me personally. I welcome new ideas and am only too glad to correct mistakes.” Himmler put a hand on his heart like he was swearing an oath. “Now, in the spirit of new ideas, does anyone wish to open our meeting with a thought?”

  “With respect, Reichsführer,” said August Wolff, so much quieter than Spiegelman had ever heard him, “there is a matter I wish to discuss.”

  “Please, by all means, Gruppenführer, ah—”

  “August Wolff,” Wolff said stiffly.

  “Wolff, yes. You were recently promoted.”

  “By the grace of the Führer.”

  “What would you like to discuss?”

  “Reichsführer, over the past two months, my men and I have made remarkable strides in seizing rebel print factories. No doubt you are aware of the harm these newspapers can inflict on our people, and of their disturbing popularity.”

  “No doubt,” said Himmler, and each word was a land mine below the feet of August Wolff. Spiegelman felt viscerally conscious of the man’s restrained, persistent energy, like the pressure of a needle about to break through the skin. The man’s face looked like Spiegelman’s natural handwriting: plain, with no distinguishable characteristics, prepared to be molded into anything.

  Wolff went on. “However, Reichsführer, many of these newspapers represent extraordinary feats of ingenuity, both literary and technological. The factories themselves are often impeccably organized, while the papers are creative and well written. In fact, the Ministry of Perception Management has begun to explore the possibility of imitating some of the rebels’ endeavors. The La Libre Belgique project that you approved is a recent example.”

  “What is your point, Wolff?” asked a man at the table who Spiegelman didn’t recognize, another Gruppenführer.

  “It is our policy,” Wolff said, selecting his words with care, “to destroy rebel factories once we discover them.”

  “To cleanse them,” said Himmler. “We do what has always been done in the face of plague. We burn away the sores.”

  “I understand, of course. But, with respect, Reichsführer, it is my belief that we are wasting what could possibly be a valuable resource. To borrow your analogy, instead of burning them, we need only to drain the sores, and then to—”

  “I am going to interrupt you, Gruppenführer,” said Himmler, “to ask the identity of the man on your left.”

  All eyes turned to Spiegelman; historically, this state of affairs had not been good for him or his people. His shirt was sticking to his back. Spiegelman felt ashamed at his own fear. This was how it went, he thought, how they burned away your dignity until there was nothing left.

  Wolff inhaled. “His name is David Spiegelman.”

  The others did not murmur, dared not murmur in Himmler’s presence, but their silence was almost too loud for Spiegelman to bear.

  “He is one of your aides?” asked Himmler.

  “Yes, Reichsführer.”

  “May I ask how Herr Spiegelman came to work for you, Gruppenführer?”

  “He is renowned throughout Belgium for his skill as a linguistic ventriloquist.”

  Himmler’s eyes flickered with recognition. A nauseous tingle spread through Spiegelman’s stomach and face. This creature had heard of him, had possibly even admired his work. Spiegelman rebelled at the idea that he’d spent even a second in Himmler’s thoughts. “So he is the one who writes the letters,” said Himmler.

  “He is.”

  “But he is a Jew.”

  “Clearly, Reichsführer.” Wolff’s tone inched a tad too close to mockery. Spiegelman felt his pulse in every pore.

  “Were you aware of this when you took him on?”

  “Yes, Reichsführer.”

  “But you were also aware of our policies concerning the Jewish race?”

  “Of course.”

  “We have these policies for a reason, Wolff.” Himmler took on the tone of a lecturing parent. “Only a week ago, I read a heartbreaking report of a Jewish man—a homosexual, actually—who raped a young woman and her brother. Who knows what drives them do to these things? Witnesses say he went into some kind of frenzy. It’s horrible to think of it. I’ve since seen pictures of the siblings—beautiful, beautiful people. The man could have been my own brother. The woman could have been your sister or your wife, Wolff.

  “What we want is simple—the safety and happiness of our people. The Jewish race poses a danger to our way of life. They are an infection, and to take them into our ranks is to allow that infection to spread.”

  Spiegelman became aware that he was breathing too quickly. Did Himmler know he was a homosexual? Did it matter? Himmler’s hatred for the homosexuals was legendary, almost pathological. Two guards stood at the exit ahead of him, and there were at least two additional guards at the exit behind him. In other words, if Heinrich Himmler ordered him executed on the spot, he would be executed on the spot. Forgive me, Abraham, he thought.

  “But, you represent the best of the Fatherland.” Himmler gestured around the table. Spiegelman felt, somehow, that Himmler’s gesture did not include him. “I trust you to do what you feel is right for us.”

  Wolff paled. “Thank you, Reichsführer.”

  “No, no, thank you. However, I must warn you that your proclivity for choosing imitation over destruction can only take you so far. For example, La Libre Belgique. That is a project that balances imitation and destruction. That is why I approved it.” Himmler paused so Wolff could say:

  “And I must thank you again for doing so.” The resentment in his voice was far too palpable.

  Himmler waved away Wolff’s thanks. In doing so, he knocked over half the pile of ripped-up paper, sending it fluttering in inky snowflakes to the floor. “You may keep your Jew to help you as you see fit. As I mentioned, I’ve heard of his work and am aware that he has his uses. But do not allow this proclivity to define everything you do. Is that understood, Gruppenführer?”

  “It is understood.”

  “Your mission is to stamp out rebellion in Belgium, not to celebrate it. Burn the factories, August Wolff.” Himmler leaned back as though satisfied after a large meal. “Now, what is the next item on our agenda?”

  14 DAYS TO PRINT

  FIRST HOURS OF MORNING

  The Pyromaniac

  MORNIN
G CAME QUIETLY, its hands raised for surrender. I’d slept in the FI basement that night, as I did most nights. I rose without speaking; so did Aubrion, who’d slept nearby, and Noël, who set up a cot upstairs. As I’ve mentioned, our base was housed in an abandoned meatpacking factory, so it wasn’t designed for the comforts of men. We slept where we could, then went about our rituals: weak tea, stale toast, washed faces.

  When Victor came in, I was watching Aubrion teeter on the edge of electrocution. He was standing on a chair, trying to repair the burned-out lightbulb in the basement with copper wire, pliers, a pocketknife and a candy bar wrapper; I don’t think any writer could have come up with a keener metaphor for the Faux Soir endeavor. Martin Victor looked up at Aubrion and started to speak.

  “Shit!” said Aubrion as an electric crackle whipped the air. He jerked his fingers away from the bulb, shoving them in his mouth. Victor tossed Aubrion a file. Aubrion barely caught it. He took his fingers out of his mouth and read: “Schule für die Erziehung von Kindern mit ewige Liebe?”

  “That’s correct,” said Victor.

  “But what is it?”

  “The name of our fake school.”

  Ferdinand Wellens descended the staircase into the FI basement, bellowing: “School for the Education of Children with Undying Devotion!” He launched the word devotion like an ungainly missile.

  Clinging to the chair, Aubrion looked at Victor, who said: “It was Wellens’s idea.”

  “I could tell. Undying devotion to what?”

  “The school, presumably.”

  “Isn’t that tautological?”

  “Devotion to Hitler,” said Wellens, pronouncing it Hit-lah, the way Churchill did. Wellens was dressed, improbably enough, in a suit that appeared to have at least three lapels. “That shouldn’t be too hard to sell, eh?”

  “We’ll see about that,” grunted Mullier. He took an apple from the pocket of his ink-stained coat, rolling it around on a table. I still wonder how Mullier had managed to procure so many fresh apples in a country that hadn’t seen an apple farmer in three years.

  “Where’s Lada?” said Aubrion.

  “She said she’s not coming today, monsieur,” I said.

  “She told you that?”

  “This morning.”

  “Christ. If I hadn’t—”

  “Leave it, Aubrion,” said René Noël, who took a seat under one of the room’s ubiquitous chalkboards.

  “What about Spiegelman?” said Aubrion.

  “There was no telex from him this morning, monsieur,” I said.

  “Is everyone planning on being fashionably late today?”

  “Maybe if you provided coffee and pastries, people might look forward to the occasion,” Wellens said through his mustache. “I always provide coffee and pastries at my meetings. It’s just good business.”

  “With what budget?” muttered Noël.

  “Gamin, erase the board, would you?” said Aubrion.

  “Certainly, monsieur.” I set about my duties.

  “Let’s start with the Nazi school project.” Aubrion pointed a piece of chalk at Theo Mullier. “What do you have to report?”

  “Talk to Victor,” said Mullier.

  “Victor? What’s the news on that?”

  “I have assisted Mullier and Wellens in the creation of a curriculum for Nazi schoolchildren. It is based on three principles: loyalty, devotion and commitment.”

  “How are those any different from each other?” asked Aubrion.

  “They’re not,” said Mullier.

  “I was surprised to find,” said Victor, “that most Nazi schools have redundant mottos. That says something about the nature of Nazi education, don’t you think? There was joy, laughter, happiness, um, future, growth, destiny—”

  “This is all very interesting, compelling, fascinating,” said Aubrion, “but what else have you done?”

  “The curriculum is organized by week, with a total of forty-three weeks.” Victor held up a sheet of paper outlining the curriculum. “Each week has a theme. The theme of the first week is discarding the past, the second week is looking toward the future, the third week is devotion to the Reich, the fourth week is—”

  “Well, if nothing else, you’ll bore them into submission,” interruped Aubrion.

  “It’s all very convincing,” Wellens said, unconvincingly. “We plan to pitch our school to the Ministry of Education thusly: I shall act as the director of the school and present our vision, Victor will present the curriculum, we’ll have two people acting as instructors—”

  “We’re thinking Tarcovich and Spiegelman,” said Mullier.

  “Won’t the Ministry know Spiegelman by looking at him?” asked Aubrion.

  Victor shook his head. “The ministries of the Nazi government are very insular. They hardly ever communicate with each other. Certainly, anyone at the Ministry of Perception Management would know Spiegelman, but Education? It’s highly improbable.”

  Mullier held up a finger. “I don’t trust Spiegelman to do this.”

  “Why not?” asked Aubrion.

  “He’s working with the Germans.”

  “Was.”

  “He’s not here now, is he?”

  “He can’t be here whenever we want him here. We don’t have any reason not to trust him. Until we do, I’m not going to hear any more about it.” Aubrion tapped his fingers on the chalkboard. “Monsieur Wellens? Anything to add?”

  Wellens said, “We will need Gamin to play our pupil.” He was pacing, turning on his polished heels every time he reached the end of the room. “And we’ll need props. Investors love props.”

  “What sort of props?” asked Aubrion.

  “Obviously, the purpose of this exercise is to convince the Ministry that we need paper and ink,” said Victor, “but no prospective school would ever go to the Ministry with nothing in hand. We will need about a hundred fake textbooks.”

  “A hundred?” sputtered Noël.

  Victor said, “They need not have anything in them. A hundred agricultural manuals covered in swastikas and made to look like textbooks would be fine.”

  “Of course they’d be fine,” said Noël, “if we could get our hands on a hundred agricultural manuals.”

  “Bibles?” said Mullier.

  “Perhaps pulp novels,” said Victor. “My point is that if it’s in print, it shall work.”

  “But there isn’t a hundred of anything,” Aubrion said softly, like he was reading a eulogy. “Not in print, and not in Europe. They’ve burned it all.”

  “That’s not true.” We all looked up to find Lada Tarcovich at the bottom of the stairs, unwrapping her bright blue scarf. “They didn’t burn the pornography.”

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” Aubrion said, the end of his sentence slightly truncated when he realized what she’d said.

  “So did I.” Tarcovich took a seat apart from the others. And then she said, with the tone of someone reciting a grocery list, “When I’m not smuggling things out of the country or into politicians’ trousers, I write erotic stories about the Americans. Some of them have been published. It was how I’ve been able to afford an apartment all these years. I am not, as my clients would attest, a very good prostitute—but I do have a finger on the throbbing pulse of the Belgian pornography market.”

  Aubrion was not quite sure how to respond, and neither was anyone else. I remember my cheeks burning far hotter than any of the fires I’d started.

  “If you wanted them,” added Lada, “you could have a hundred pornographic novels on your desk by tomorrow evening.”

  “What would it cost?” asked Aubrion.

  “Only your dignity.”

  “Sold. Wellens—” Aubrion turned to the salesman “—have you been working on your sales pitch?”

  Wellens drew himself up to his
height. He was shorter than Aubrion, who was barely taller than me. “I have.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  Mullier crunched on an apple, a testy period at the end of Aubrion’s request.

  “Gentlemen of the Ministry, have you ever wondered what it would be like to be educated at a school that emphasized loyalty, devotion, erm, uh, loyalty, and commitment? Well, wonder no longer. Today, on this momentous day, we present to you—um—erm—”

  “You don’t remember the name of the school you invented?” groaned Aubrion.

  The businessman was indignant. “Well, do you?”

  Victor recited, “Schule für die Erziehung von Kindern mit ewige Liebe.”

  “Schule für die, erm—die Kindern mit ewige Liebe die Erziehung,” said Wellens.

  “Close enough,” said Aubrion.

  Wellens stood before the chalkboard with the posture of a marble statue. “Gentlemen, our mission is public enlightenment, and our method is to enlighten the public. Through our award-winning curriculum—”

  “Don’t say ‘award-winning,’” said Aubrion.

  “They’ll ask which awards we won,” explained Victor.

  “—we forge the minds of the youth in the furnace of our classrooms.” Wellens smiled. “Indeed, gentlemen, the Nazi aim is a noble one—”

  “What on earth,” said Spiegelman, who had arrived unnoticed, and who blinked at us from the bottom of the stairs, “did I miss?”

  “Not as much as he did,” muttered Tarcovich.

  Aubrion said, “Monsieur Wellens, a little more practice never hurt anyone, isn’t that right?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “Have we set a date to meet with the Ministry?”

  “The third,” said Victor.

  “Of November?” said Aubrion. “Christ, that’s five days from today.”

  “Four,” said Tarcovich.

  “That’s four days from today!”

  “Do you want Faux Soir to be finished before the eleventh of November, or don’t you?” said Victor.