Gentlehands

by M. E. Kerr

  “You guess you can tell me what?”

  “I smoked some marijuana with Skye. It makes you really hungry.”

  He held up the vase and admired the flowers. “Can you still feel it?”

  “Not so much now.”

  “And when you drove from Seaville?”

  “That was hairy.”

  He carried the vase over to the table and set it in the center. Graham hopped up to see, and he picked Graham up and stroked him, saying, “Those aren’t for you, Liebchen.”

  I hadn’t forgotten what Skye had started to tell me about De Lucca. I was going to mention it to my grandfather then. I thought it might explain De Lucca’s peering up there that day through binoculars. My grandfather knew many foreigners, one in particular, the man named Verner who called sometimes and spoke German with my grandfather. I didn’t think my grandfather liked him because the calls always made him irritated and he complained that Verner had to learn to solve his own problems.

  I was about to bring up the subject when my grandfather said, “Opportunity and responsibility go hand in hand, Buddy. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “If you have an opportunity to drive a car, you have a responsibility to protect others, and yourself, while you’re driving.”

  “I’ll never do it again,” I said. “I realized it was wrong the minute I hit the Montauk Highway.”

  “That was the minute you should have been responsible.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry.”

  “Once you know something is wrong, you’re responsible, whether you see it, or hear about it, and most particularly when you’re a part of it. That’s why I’m going to mention something else to you, something I see is wrong.”

  “All right,” I said. He sat down in his armchair and I went over and sat on the couch.

  “What are you going to be, Buddy? What do you want to do with your life?”

  “I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” I said.

  “Give it a lot of thought,” he said. “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain how fast it went.” Graham jumped down from his lap and scampered up the drapes to the rafters. “I read somewhere that when you’re young you sit like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, in good spirits, eagerly waiting for the play to begin…. That is true, I think, but some young people are still sitting there after the curtain rises. They never get to take part. They are the eternal audience, the watchers of other people.”

  “The way I watch everyone at Beauregard,” I said.

  “Yes, the way you watch the Penningtons, that’s close to what I’m saying. If they are the people you want to be like, you’d better start learning about the things that interest them. Whoever you want to model yourself after, you have to choose and begin.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being like you, Grandpa,” I said.

  “Thank you, Buddy.”

  Then he stood up. “I have to be on my way…. Buddy, I think you smoked the marijuana today to prove to Skye that you’re like her brother and his friend. You’re not, you know. You haven’t had their advantages. You have a long way to go to catch up to them. Let them cloud their minds and waste their time. You spend your time well and keep your head clear. Don’t be a weak person in this life, Buddy, not financially or emotionally or spiritually. You’ll be taken advantage of if you are.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said.

  “If drugs and liquor weren’t so readily available,” said my grandfather, “if the poor and the weak could come out of their stupors and see what’s being done to them, we’d have riots all over the world.”

  “Thanks for talking to me about things, Grandfather,” I said. “My dad and I don’t talk about things much.”

  “My father and I didn’t either,” he said. Then he whistled for Mignon. He smiled at me. “Be on stage, Buddy, not in the audience.”

  Skye and I made hamburgers and played with Graham. We took a long walk down on the beach when the rain stopped, and I made up a lie to impress her and said I’d decided I was going to be a lawyer.

  “Uncle Louie says lawyers and painters can soon change white to black,” Skye said. “Oh you should hear Uncle Louie on the subject of lawyers! Where are you going to school, Buddy?” I never had to think of an answer to most of her questions because she always went right on. “Go to Haverford for prelaw and then we’ll be right next door to each other. Harvard is best for law, of course. You could go there after. Oh, you’d be a Harvard law student, Buddy! Do you know this boy I know named Drake Goode couldn’t make Harvard and he’s brilliant, too, and Uncle Louie says it’s because his name is Goode, not Gold; that the Jews just about run Harvard!”

  “Uncle Louie sounds like a really fair man,” I said.

  “Oh, we’re all ashamed of Uncle Louie,” Skye said. “Honestly, we hate to go anyplace out with him because of the things that come out of his mouth! I went to the ballet with him once and he leaned over and said in this voice everyone for rows in front of us and behind us could hear, ‘There’s enough fruit up on stage to start a fruit stand!’ I could have just died!”

  “Do you think we’ll see each other when summer’s over?” I said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” she said.

  “Well?” I said.

  “It’ll be tragic if we don’t,” she said. “I hate and love tragedies, Buddy. I hate them when they happen to me, but I love them when I read them or see them on stage because everything really beautiful that’s been written about or set to music is tragic.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I said.

  “Does this?” she said, and she stopped, and pulled me by my slicker until she could put her arms around me. I let her kiss me for a long time and when she stopped, I said, “It still doesn’t answer my question.”

  “An answer is always a form of death,” she said. “I read that in The Magus by John Fowles. Did you ever read The Magus, Buddy? Og used to carry it everywhere with him, and he says it’s the most mysterious book he’s ever read, including all of Hesse!”

  My grandfather was right. I had some catching up to do.

  We went back to the house and started the fire my grandfather had laid in the fireplace, and Skye told me it was a good thing she’d left after I did, because she found the bag of pot I’d brought with me, on the table in the solarium.

  “I didn’t want to carry it here while I was driving,” she said. “I’ll save it for you. God! I’m glad Mummy didn’t see it first!”

  “Give it to Og and Lennie,” I said. “I don’t really turn on that much…. You know if drugs and liquor weren’t so easy to get, if the poor and the weak could come out of their stupors and see what’s being done to them, we’d have riots all over this country!”

  “You’re deep, Buddy,” she said. “At first I didn’t think so, I just thought you were this really beautiful number, you know, and my father would say he isn’t even out of high school, and I’d say I don’t care because I love looking at him, he’s better than anything else around here in the summer, but I told Daddy: I didn’t know anything about Botticelli when I was a junior. I mean I just had Renaissance Art this semester!”

  “What’d Daddy say?” I said.

  “Oh Daddy’s from the Middle Ages in his mind, he honestly is. He thinks the girl has to be younger than the boy.”

  We were sitting before the fire talking that way, when my grandfather came in and said not to disturb ourselves, he was just going to have a glass of wine and go somewhere with a good book.

  “Don’t leave, Mr. Trenker,” Skye said. “I was supremely disappointed when you weren’t here for dinner. Put on something tragic and we’ll all listen to it together, because Buddy and I were just talking a while ago about tragedy.”

  My grandfather said he’d put on one of his favorite operas, which he hadn’t listened to in a long time. He got himself a glass of wine, and we got fresh
Cokes, and then Skye began talking nonstop through most of the arias.

  She told this long story about how her mother had fallen asleep and begun snoring during a performance of Boris Godunov. During Boris’ most poignant number, “Farewell, my son, I am dying,” someone behind her mother had leaned forward and shook her gently, and her mother had sat bolt upright and cried aloud, “Junior, do you need anything?”

  “She’d been nursing my brother though this ghastly attack of bronchitis all that week, and she thought she was home!” Skye said, and we all laughed.

  Then suddenly Skye realized my grandfather had put on an opera called Tosca, and she sat up and said, “This is the end of Tosca!”

  My grandfather smiled, and nodded.

  “Buddy,” she said, “this is the famous aria ‘O dolci mani’ that I was going to tell you about this afternoon.”

  “We weren’t talking about opera this afternoon,” I said.

  “Well in a way we were,” she said. “This is the part when Tosca tells Cavaradossi they are free to go away and love each other. So he’s singing ‘O dolci mani,’ which translates ‘O gentle hands.’ That SS officer used to play Tosca for all the Jews he guarded, to taunt the ones who were from Rome. It’s Puccini, see, and it’s set in Rome, and he always sang ‘O dolci mani,’ with these horrible trained dogs ready to snarl at anything, right at his feet. So they called him Gentlehands!”

  “That’s very interesting,” my grandfather said. “How did you hear about all this, Skye?”

  “A friend of my mother’s named Nick De Lucca is—out—here. Oh, Buddy, now I am in deep, because I’m not supposed to tell this. I just better shut up right now.”

  “You can tell Grandpa,” I said.

  “If it’s a confidence, it should remain one,” said my grandfather.

  “She can tell you,” I said.

  “No, I shouldn’t,” said Skye.

  “Don’t let anyone convince you to break your word, Skye,” said my grandfather.

  “I have to go, anyway,” Skye said. “It’s late.”

  “Come again,” said my grandfather. “It’s always a pleasure.”

  Mignon and I walked Skye out to her Jensen and she was so quiet I finally said, “Well what are you so clammed up about?” and my voice sounded angry, because I had a feeling I knew why she was acting so strangely.

  “I can’t help it, Buddy, I’ve got goose bumps.”

  “I hope you don’t think my grandfather is—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

  “When did he come to this country, Buddy?”

  “Oh, you’re really subtle,” I said. “This is really subtle!”

  “It’s just too big a coincidence for my tiny mind,” she said, getting in her car.

  “Well, Heil Hitler and good night,” I said disgustedly, and I walked away while she was still getting the car started.

  15

  WHEN I WENT BACK INSIDE THAT NIGHT, MY grandfather was preparing to fill the bird feeders. He was standing at the kitchen counter. Graham was perched on his shoulder, reaching his paw down for sunflower seeds my grandfather passed up to him.

  “We have to let Graham go soon, Buddy.”

  “How soon?”

  “Tomorrow, the next day.”

  “He still has the bandage on, though.”

  “If we wait too long, he won’t learn to be independent.” He turned around and faced me. “I know about De Lucca. I met with him tonight.”

  “Who is he really looking for?” I asked.

  My grandfather shrugged. “This Gentlehands of his.”

  “Is Gentlehands supposed to be someone you know, Grandpa?”

  “Mr. De Lucca doesn’t think he’s someone I know. He thinks that I’m this Gentlehands.” My grandfather put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be alarmed, Buddy. These cases of mistaken identity happen all the time. I was a German during World War Two. This is a fact I’ve never tried to hide.”

  “But could Gentlehands be someone you know?”

  “Who?” my grandfather asked.

  “Mr. Verner?”

  “Mr. who?”

  “Verner,” I said. “The man who calls here.”

  “Ah, him.” My grandfather chuckled despairingly. “He’s no one. He’s a very old man who still collects his stamps like a boy.”

  I told my grandfather about seeing De Lucca that afternoon with the binoculars. I thought he might get angry at me for not mentioning it sooner, but he merely shrugged his shoulders again.

  “Let him watch this place. What will he see?”

  “What did he say to you tonight?” I said. “Didn’t you tell him you had nothing to do with those concentration camps?”

  My grandfather picked up the bag of sunflower seeds he’d slit open with his Swiss knife. “He called me and asked to meet with me, and I met with him. How long was I gone? An hour, two? We talked. This Mr. De Lucca is an American of Italian ancestry. He is a newspaperman. It’s his business to dig up a lurid story that will sell newspapers. He doesn’t care about facts or history or the danger of making libelous insinuations.”

  “A cousin of his was killed in a concentration camp,” I said.

  “In Auschwitz, yes. So he said.”

  “Didn’t you tell him you were never anywhere near Auschwitz?”

  “A man who listens because he wants to hear that he is right, cannot hear that he is wrong,” my grandfather said. “Perhaps that’s why this Mr. De Lucca needs his hearing aid.”

  “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “What could your father do, for example, if you went to him and said that someone else thought you were a car thief called Hot Hands? Could he make an arrest? Could he stop the maligning of your good name?…No. That takes a lawyer, Buddy.”

  “Are you going to call a lawyer?”

  “I may have to,” my grandfather said. “Right now I’m going to attend to my birds.”

  The next morning while I was wrestling with four orders of pancakes and two of eggs over easy, Kick came across to me and told me there was a phone call for me in his office.

  “She better mean what she says,” he told me. He was in a lousy mood; the rumor around Sweet Mouth was that Mrs. Townsend had told him he had to choose between pot and her.

  It was Skye calling.

  “What did Kick mean you’d better mean what you said?” I asked her.

  “I told him I was arranging for a kiddies’ party there, that I was a friend of yours and I wanted to make the arrangements through you.”

  “There goes my job,” I said.

  “So I get a dozen towheads from the beach and treat them,” Skye said. “I wanted to talk with you, Buddy. I’m sorry about last night.”

  “My grandfather knows all about De Lucca,” I said. “He’s going to sue De Lucca.”

  “It bothered me all the way home, Buddy. My God, I know it isn’t your grandfather. I mean, that’s preposterous. I love your grandfather, and a lot of people play Tosca. Daddy loves Tosca because everyone dies in the end.”

  “De Lucca actually thinks Gentlehands is my grandfather!”

  “He’s going to get himself in a lot of trouble, Buddy…. Am I in trouble, with you?”

  “Not if you round up a dozen towheads,” I said.

  “I’ll go to work on it, Buddy. Will you come by when you’re through?”

  I said I would, and when I went back on the floor, I told Kick she wanted maple walnut ice cream for the party. I knew we’d run out that morning.

  “Postpone it,” he said. “Stall her until tomorrow.”

  The only newspaper we carried in Sweet Mouth was The Seaville Citizen, which came out every Tuesday. At noon, the delivery boy dropped fifty copies outside and I went out to retrieve them. I tore off the string, grabbed a copy and read the story, standing on the sidewalk.

  MONTAUK MAN ACCUSED

  OF BEING NAZI

  In this Wednesday’s New York Record, Seaville summer resident, Nicholas L. De Lucca, in
a front-page article, will accuse Frank O. Trenker of Montauk, of being a former SS officer at Auschwitz, notorious for his acts of cruelty and murder.

  De Lucca, 57, a freelance investigative reporter and occasional stringer for The New York Record city desk, has a personal interest in forcing an investigation into Trenker. His cousin, Roselina De Lucca, died at Auschwitz. De Lucca never met his cousin. She was 15 when she was among the Roman Jews transported from Italy to the infamous Polish concentration camp, in 1943. Information concerning her treatment and death was documented by one of the few Jewish survivors from Rome.

  On the basis of information provided by an Austrian Nazi-hunter, De Lucca has been in pursuit of Trenker through many countries, for three years. According to De Lucca, there is no statute prohibiting the admittance of a war criminal, but all immigrants upon entrance to America must sign a statement declaring that they did not participate in the persecution of a minority because of race, creed or national origin. De Lucca’s intention is to stimulate official action against Trenker on the basis that Trenker falsely signed this statement, and is subject to denaturalization and ultimate extradition to West Germany.

  The New York Record alleges that Trenker was known by the ironic nickname “Gentlehands” at Auschwitz, because of his habit of playing often an aria from the opera Tosca, “O dolci mani,” to torment the homesick Italian females.

  The article describes a day when young Roselina De Lucca sneaked the collar off a dead guard dog, thought to be poisoned by a prisoner. (“The raggedy, ill, cold and hungry inmates had learned that everything was useful: string to tie up their shoes, old rags to wrap around their frozen feet, anything with which to barter for something to help them stay alive, and this child had found a way to secure the collar of the dead dog.”) After she was forced to stand naked in the snow, as an example, for two hours, Trenker then offered her a warm coat and hot soup. On her way to get them, according to the article in The Record, Trenker, a member of the SS, sicked the surviving attack dog on her.

  Little is known about Trenker in Montauk. A shopkeeper described him as a good-hearted man who loves animals and always has a smile and a friendly word for others. Many spoke of his strikingly handsome appearance, and the article mentions the fact Trenker was one of the youngest SS officers at Auschwitz, known for his imposing good looks.