“I’ve got to know, damn it,” Paul said emphatically, but without raising his voice. “You’re not helping Papa with your silence. You know what he did. Tell me. Did he help in the roundup of Jews? I must know. Then maybe we can figure out who took him.”
“It’s a complicated story, Paulus,” said Peter Vovus. “No one who wasn’t there could possibly understand it. They were terrible times, and some very bad things happened—to Lithuanians and to others. You could never understand, you who were born in America.”
“That’s what Papa always says. I must hear the facts, even if I don’t understand everything.”
“We never talk about it. What we did would be misunderstood.”
“This is not about judging you, Mr. Vovus, or even about judging my father. It is about saving him. Please. We will never repeat what you tell us. We have to know.”
“All right,” said Peter Vovus. “I must give you some background first. About your grandfather, whom you didn’t know. Sit down and listen. Your father told me this story many times.”
Paul and Freddy sat down as Peter Vovus began the story.
“It started with a stupid argument about soccer, which turned into a barroom brawl. Your grandfather, Paulus Prandus, hit Matius Plusk. Plusk picked up a vodka bottle and bashed your grandfather over the head. Your grandfather staggered toward the door. Plusk followed him, cursing. Several regulars at the Wolf Tavern, including my uncle, tried to break up the fight, but Plusk managed to hit him once more, this time with a heavy lantern. Your grandfather fell to the ground, dead.”
Peter Vovus shifted uncomfortably in his chair and downed a shot of vodka as he continued the story.
“Your grandmother always believed that the Jews had caused her husband’s death. It was a Jewish-owned tavern—as many were in those days. The owner, Shmulka Grossberg, had not intervened in the fight. He never did. He would always say, ‘Let the drunken goyim’—that’s what he called us—‘kill each other if they want to. That is their way. They are always getting drunk and fighting.’ This time, your grandfather was killed. A freak death—generally it takes more than a few blows to the head to kill. Nobody pressed charges, since everyone had seen Paulus strike the first blow. But at the funeral, the priest made it clear who was at fault. ‘The Jews fill us with alcohol for their own profit,’ Father Grekus preached. ‘They care only about other Jews. We are just sources of their profit.’ Everyone knew that Grossberg kept a gun behind his bar, in case of robbers, but he didn’t use it. ‘A Christian life is worthless to the Jew. It says so in their Talmud,’ the priest told us.
“Even before your grandfather’s death, your father had been taught—by his parents, priests, neighbors—that the Jews and Communists were the enemy of their way of life, and that the Jews created communism. We were all taught that.”
“It is true,” the man in the wheelchair interjected. “I don’t care what anyone says today. It is still true.”
“Shut up, Oleg. They’re not here to listen to your opinions. They want facts,” Vovus said, shrugging his shoulders apologetically as he continued.
“Your father always loved authority, rules, order. His choice to become a policeman suited him perfectly. He loved the Fascists, even before they rescued our country from the Communists. After that, everybody loved the Fascists. As soon as Hitler’s army liberated Vilnius, your father—he was twenty-one then—volunteered for duty in the operations against the Jews. He knew the Jews of Vilna. He understood them. They had killed his father. He knew they had to be destroyed.
“The chief of the local Gestapo, General Heinrich Gruber, knew about Paulus Prandus’s death, and he entrusted your father with responsibility for conducting the roundups of Jews. Your father idolized Gruber, because he was the first German Nazi he knew.
“In less than six months, your father had risen through the ranks. His physical bearing and strength made him a commanding figure. I remember how good he looked in the black uniform of the militia,” Vovus said in a tone of nostalgia. “His intelligence, charm, and good manners had earned him the respect of both his colleagues and his German superiors. Soon he was made a captain in the Lithuanian Auxiliary Militia. His mother was proud. That was important to him. He was a family man.
“After the war, the Communists were again in charge. There was talk of trials for collaboration, though he couldn’t see how that would be possible, since everybody had collaborated. We agreed with the Nazis. They were on our side. It was those who had supported communism—the so-called partisans—who had collaborated. But all that was beside the point now that the Russians had occupied Vilnius, and Marcelus learned his name was on a list of suspects compiled by the Red Army.
“Your grandmother had some relatives in Boston, so that is where they fled. Later they moved up here. Coincidentally, my parents knew some people in Salem, so we moved here, too.
“You know the rest of the story, Paul. Your father lived an exemplary life after the war. Besides his family, his life was the Lithuanian Social Club. He was our president.
“I do not expect you to understand, but I hope that information is helpful to your investigator. It is the first time I have talked about it in many years.”
Paul sat there, stunned. He had always suspected that there was more to his father’s past than rounding up some Communists, but even in his wildest fantasies he could never imagine his father as a Nazi.
“My father didn’t actually kill any Jews, did he?” Paul asked weakly, knowing the answer.
“What did he tell you?”
“That he never hurt anyone.”
“Then let us leave it at that.”
“We can’t. I must know. Did he kill any Jews?” Paul demanded, his voice rising.
“Everyone did. They were the enemy. Your father just followed orders. He got no pleasure from rounding up traitors. He was just doing his job.”
“Do you know the names of any specific families?”
“There were so many. I can remember a few names.”
“Please tell us.”
“In the beginning, they rounded up prominent families. The Blooms, the Solevichicks, the Kaplans, the Menuchens, the Glassmans.”
Freddy wrote down the names as Vovus recalled them. “It’s a start,” said Freddy. “Let me work on it.” After what he had just heard, he was prepared to believe that Marcelus might have been abducted. He remembered the first rule of police work: If you don’t find the missing person within the first couple of days, you’re probably not going to find him alive.
Chapter 26
THE CHILDREN
The following morning Max did exactly what he set out to do, methodically, systematically, and without any guilt or hesitation as Danielle videotaped the death scene for Prandus to see.
At midday Max and Danielle returned from Salem to the cabin in the Berkshires, exhausted but satisfied that they had achieved the next step in their plan. This time there was no ambivalence and no accident.
“Is Marc here? Marc, Marc, run for your life!” Prandus screamed, his face turning red.
“He can’t hear you. He’s already dead,” said Max somberly.
“No, no, you said you would bring him here!”
“We killed him in Salem, and videotaped his death for you to see. Watch the TV screen.”
Danielle turned on the video machine and inserted the tape. A happy, playful Marc was skipping on his way to school. As he approached the intersection, Prandus could see a car waiting. The zoom lens focused on the driver. It was an old man. As Marc crossed, the car accelerated in the child’s direction.
“No, no, watch out, Marc!” Prandus shrieked as the car crashed violently into the young boy’s body, throwing it thirty feet into the air.
Prandus lowered his eyes and wept.
“I’m afraid Marc never made it to school this morning. Would you like to see it again, in slow motion, to be certain he is dead?”
“No, no, my God, no,” Prandus said, sobbing. “You are so
cruel. How could you have done this?”
“It’s only the beginning, Mr. Prandus. Next comes your granddaughter and then your sons. The children must die first. They are the most important. And you must watch, as I eradicate the Prandus seed from this world, just as you eradicated the Menuchen seed!” Max said with a determined look.
“No. No. Please don’t. You killed my grandson. Isn’t that enough?” Prandus pleaded.
“None of your descendants will remain alive,” Max said firmly.
“But you survived,” Prandus cried.
“And so will you, until you see each of your descendants die. Then you will die, like my grandfather did, knowing that you have left absolutely no progeny. It is biblical justice. Do you remember what Moses commanded the Jews to do to the children of the Midianites? Kill every child.”
“But Jesus said, ‘Forgive them.’ ”
“You should have listened to Jesus in the Ponary Woods. Now you are seeing Old Testament justice.”
“Please don’t kill the rest of my family,” Prandus whimpered. “Please, please, you are a better man than me.”
“No, I’m not. I learned evil from you. Here, let me read to you from Shakespeare.” Max opened a book to Shylock’s chilling soliloquy.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
“Now I am bettering your instruction.”
“No, no, I can’t take this!” Prandus cried.
As Max looked up, he could see the old man was shaking all over. Prandus urinated in his pants. Max noticed and smiled.
The next evening Danielle chose to stay behind in Cambridge as Marcelus Prandus watched the murders of his six-year-old granddaughter and her father, Peter, Marcelus’s younger son. They were both shot to death at close range by a young woman firing a pistol with a silencer. “They had to be killed in quick succession, before they could go into hiding,” Max told Marcelus. “Otherwise I would have drawn it out even further, so as to increase your suffering. Only your older son, Paul, have I not yet found.”
Max watched Marcelus Prandus writhing in pain. He had not seen such anguish in another human being since Ponary Woods. At first he imagined the death of a Prandus bringing back a Menuchen. This only plunged him into despair as he realized that nothing would ever bring back his family.
Prandus’s face was a study in suffering. He was on the lowest level of Dante’s Inferno and sinking even lower, his pain unimaginable to anyone other than one who had experienced the torture Max had been through. Prandus’s expression reminded Max of the look in Grandpa Mordechai’s face when he realized his entire family would perish. For a moment Max allowed himself to feel compassion for Prandus. Then the realization hit him: Prandus had lived a full and happy life. His suffering, intense as it is, was being compressed into a few days. It would soon be over.
If Max could never take back the decades of guilt-free happiness Prandus had enjoyed, at least he would make him see that everything he had lived for had been in vain. He would die with the maudlin message of Ecclesiastes on his lips: “All is vanity.” Max now understood what was meant when the Greek philosopher said: “Let no man count himself content, until he is dead.” Had Prandus been lucky enough to die two days earlier, he would have died a content man. But now, when he died, he would truly wish, as Job had wished, that he had never been born. That would at least begin to make up for Prandus’s happy years. Max’s revenge would be short but sweet.
There was far too little revenge taken, Max thought. From the Nazis, to the Turks, to the Argentineans, to the Cambodians, to the Bosnians, most genocidal murderers had lived happy lives.
It would have been good, Max thought, for Jews to have killed guilty Nazi murderers—the thousands who were not tried at Nuremberg. The Jews didn’t do it, despite the victims’ demand for nekama. Although the Old Testament commanded revenge, history had shown that most Jews were uncomfortable meting it out. The survivors of the Holocaust had failed their murdered parents, children, and siblings. They were all too busy rebuilding their broken lives, establishing Israel, fighting for the rights of others.
Now that nearly all the perpetrators were dead, everyone was busy apologizing—the French, the Swiss, the Church, the banks, the Red Cross. But these apologies, unaccompanied by punishment, seemed hollow to Max. Now, Max Menuchen was getting revenge, for himself, for his family, maybe even for the Jewish people who didn’t take revenge.
Max realized that he was treating his festering wounds with the powerful and dangerous medicine of revenge. He knew there was a risk that he could become like the count of Monte Cristo, who lived for revenge, only to discover how unfulfilling its accomplishment could be.
Despite this risk, Max felt he had no choice. He was being driven to despair by his realization that the world did not care that a person who did what Marcelus Prandus had done could remain unpunished for so many years. What happened in Ponary Woods was the work of madmen during wartime, Max understood. But what happened to Marcelus Prandus—more precisely, what didn’t happen to Marcelus Prandus—that was the work of the entire civilized world over a lifetime. The world allowed—indeed helped—a mass murderer to escape justice. The message that such inaction sent was clear: The world didn’t care about what happened in the Ponary Woods. That was what was destroying Max. That was what drove him to the vengeance in which he was now engaged.
Max recalled Danielle’s parting words to him earlier that day. “It isn’t vengeance, it’s justice—if it is done right.”
Max hoped they were doing it right.
Chapter 27
DEATH
Marcelus Prandus had now seen both of his grandchildren and his younger son killed. Only his oldest son, Paul, was still alive. Max and Danielle went looking for Paul. It was only a matter of hours before they saw him enter the Salem police station, devastated by his loss. Now they were able to complete their planned revenge, professionally, without any problems. The next day Max returned to the cabin with the last videotape. Danielle chose to remain outside the cabin, so as to allow Max to exact his revenge without distraction.
“The final solution has been accomplished,” Max said, holding the tape. “Every genetic Prandus, except you, is dead. Soon it will be your turn, but not until you see this.”
He placed the videotape in the machine. It showed a visibly upset Paul Prandus leaving the Salem police station. As Marcelus Prandus stared hopelessly at the television screen, Max explained to him that the “police have no idea who killed your family, because they do not know about your history in Lithuania. They are stymied. Your deception to your own son has prevented the police from protecting your family.”
Prandus uttered a grunt as the video showed Paul getting into his car, which was parked a block away from the police station. Prandus tried to turn his eyes away as he saw his son turn on the ignition. But there was no way to avoid the sound and sight of the massive explosion and fireball that instantaneously engulfed the car in flames.
Prandus screamed in rage, trying to break out of the ropes that contained him. The screams turned to whimpers as he faced the horrible reality. Suddenly he looked much older. His eyes became sunken, his skin sallow, as if the life had gone out of him.
“My revenge is complete. Now you can die at any time you wish.”
“Please, let me die now. Kill me. I can’t stand being alive and knowing what happened. Please let me die. Let me end my suffering. Now.”
“That is your choice,” Max said. “You can take these cyanide pills, if you wish.” He placed three white capsules on the table. “It must be of your own volition, however. It must be you who decides to die. Because under your religion, only suicide precludes salvation and heaven. You must make that decision. I will not make it for you. Are you willing to endure pain here on earth to obtain a chance at salva
tion? Or will you choose to end the pain and assure damnation? It is your decision.”
“Please,” Prandus implored, “don’t make me choose death. I beg you to kill me. Torture me, even. But don’t make me choose between committing suicide and living with my pain. Please, grant me a final wish—kill me.”
“No,” Max said harshly, pressing the rewind button on the video machine. “You will take your own life or you will exist here with all that remains of your descendants—this tape—until you die. Having to choose is your ultimate punishment—and my ultimate revenge.”
Prandus moaned. A tortured look came over him. Then, in a voice filled with the agony of defeat, he announced his decision. “Give me the pills. I can’t endure it any longer. I want it to end. It must end. Now.”
Max placed the cyanide capsules next to Marcelus Prandus’s right hand. He loosened the rope around his right arm and handed him a pen.
“First write.”
“What?”
Max dictated: “ ‘I, Marcelus Prandus, in full control of my capacities, am taking my own life. I know that by committing suicide, I give up all hope of salvation. It is I who asked to die by my own hand. It is I who asked for the pills. I am ending my life in order to stop the pain caused directly by my own actions in the Ponary Woods in 1942.’ ”
Prandus wrote the note in big block letters and signed it. He looked at the blank screen of the television set, as if to say good-bye to his murdered children and grandchildren. Then he crossed himself and asked God for forgiveness before he reached for the pills. He quickly took the three pills in his fingers and swallowed them with a glass of water. Max watched somberly.
Immediately Prandus’s face began to flush as the first of the seizures took hold of his body. His face contorted, and his tongue protruded from his mouth. He tried to speak, but only guttural sounds came forth. Then his face turned pale, and finally he was still. Silence and the smell of death filled the room.
Max walked slowly out of the shack and spoke to Danielle. “It is over.”
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