The more boxes Kugel cleared away from the wall, the worse the woman’s stench became, and Kugel had to fight the urge to turn his head; the smell seemed to engulf him, to pass right through him, foul and putrid, and he gagged. He covered his nose and mouth with his free hand, but the thought of breathing her in, of drawing her within him, caused him to gag again.
He stepped back, swinging the beam of light around the attic, hoping to find a quilt or a tarp; perhaps he could wrap her body in it and drag it down the stairs without waking up Jonah, perhaps it would reduce the smell.
And then what, genius? Leave her in your car? You’re going to leave a dead body in your car?
He had no idea how much time had passed since he’d first left his bed. An hour? More? He returned to the wall, leaning over even farther this time, his heart pounding so furiously that he wondered if Bree could hear it downstairs; a bead of sweat ran down his forehead, another streaked down his neck as he stretched out his arm toward the old woman and reached out with his flashlight, slowly, slowly, until at last, with its end, he nudged her shoulder.
Nothing.
He nudged her again.
Dead. She was dead.
Okay, that was better than alive.
Or maybe it was worse.
He reached out one more time, but just as he did, that ancient bony hand, as if rising unbidden from the grave, swatted angrily at the end of the flashlight.
Jesus Christ, Kugel hissed, darting back from the boxes and raising the flashlight overhead as if to strike.
Jesus fucking Christ, he said.
The old woman coughed—a sickly, terrible cough—and pulled the tattered blanket over her exposed shoulder.
Close, she muttered.
Her voice was raspy and dry, and she coughed again as she pushed herself up onto her hip.
You’re alive, said Kugel.
She wiped the spittle from her lips.
I won’t tell if you won’t, she replied.
Who are you? Kugel asked, aiming the light at her face. What do you want? Are you the arsonist? How long have you been here? Do you need help? Should I call an ambulance? Are you the arsonist? Are you okay? Who are you?
She coughed again, and cleared her throat.
I’m Anne Frank, she grumbled.
She’s mad, thought Kugel. She’s alive, yes, I suppose that’s a relief, alive is better than dead, it must be better than dead, and yet she’s very obviously mad. Should I run? Should I lock the attic door? How could I lock the attic door? I could get a long two-by-four; I could jam it underneath, between the hallway floor and the attic door, yes, so she couldn’t open it, so she couldn’t get out. Who says she wants to get out? Where am I going to get a two-by-four? The barn? The cellar? I should have a two-by-four, a man should have a two-by-four in the house, he should, a man should, a man would.
She turned her back to him, shielding her eyes from the light and shuffling farther back into the dark eaves, but before she disappeared he could see that she was hideous, horribly disfigured, and terribly old—Kugel thought he’d never seen anyone so old—the white of her right eye yellowed with age, the left eye clouded with cataracts, dead, unseeing. Her skin, sallow and gray, was thin, almost transparent; the hair on her head, what there was of it, was sparse in some places, bare in others. Her shoulders hunched up around her ears, and a massive hump on her back forced her skull forward so that she faced the ground, head bowed, even when looking straight ahead.
What are you doing here? Kugel whispered, his terror beginning to give way to anger. What do you want?
I want you, she croaked, to turn off that goddamned light.
Who are you? he quickly replied, pointing the flashlight at her. How did you get in here?
She scurried farther back into the eaves, holding up a hand, trying to get away from the harsh beam of light.
I told you, she growled. I’m Anne Frank. Now, turn off that goddamned light.
Fear is not an end state; it is a precursor, a catalyst, it becomes something—occasionally submission, more often violence or rage. Kugel yanked another box from the wall and threw it to the floor with a crash, then another box followed, and another after that.
Who are you? he asked, his voice rising as he tore down the wall of boxes, forgetting Bree and Jonah and Mother downstairs. What are you doing here? Who let you in? How did you get into my house?
By the time he finished, half a dozen boxes lay strewn about, upended, their contents spilled across the floor. Kugel, breathing heavily, flashed the light at her again.
Who are you? he demanded.
He wanted to see fear, he wanted to watch her cower; instead, with an insouciant air of annoyance and bother, the old woman pulled her cardigan around herself with one hand and fixed her hair with the other.
Oh, she said with a derisive sigh, how I do adore meeting the homeowners.
Kugel tore another box down from the wall. Old textbooks spilled out, postcards, a badge of some childhood honor. Four more boxes followed the first to the floor, and when it was over, Kugel had revealed, behind the remaining boxes and to the left of her bed, what seemed like a small table—a two-foot-long scrap of splintered floorboard lay across a pair of Bree’s old shoeboxes—on top of which sat a small lamp, a laptop computer, and a small laser printer.
He aimed the flashlight at the makeshift office.
What the hell? he said softly, reaching out toward the pile of neatly stacked papers sitting facedown beside the printer.
The old lady moved very quickly, though, much more quickly than he would have guessed she could, and shouted No! as she slammed down her hand on top of the papers.
Kugel reared back.
You can read it, she growled, when I’m done.
Kugel looked at her, trying to decide if she was real or if this was something else, a dream, a nightmare, maybe a hallucination. He hadn’t slept well in a while. The stench, though, convinced him it was real.
I’m calling the police, he said.
He snapped off his flashlight and backed toward the stairs, afraid to turn away from her. She waved in annoyance again, shuffled forward out of the eaves, settled in front of the computer and, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred, began to type.
That was the sound. The tapping of the keyboard. He’d been hearing it for days.
Kugel stopped at the head of the attic stairs.
And let me tell you something else, he said.
She continued to type, paying him no attention.
I don’t know who you are, he said, or how you got up here. But I’ll tell you what I do know: I know Anne Frank died in Auschwitz. And I know that she died along with many others, some of whom were my relatives. And I know that making light of that, by claiming to be Anne Frank, not only is not funny and abhorrent but it also insults the memory of millions of victims of Nazi brutality.
The old woman stopped typing and turned to him, fixing that hideous yellow eye upon his.
It was Bergen-Belsen, jackass, she said.
Kugel continued to glare at her, even as he felt a flush of shame color his face. He turned and began climbing down the stairs.
And as for the relatives you lost in the Holocaust? she continued.
Kugel stopped and looked at her, and when he did, she yanked up her shirtsleeve, revealing the fading blue-black concentration camp numbers tattooed on the inside of her pale forearm.
Blow me, said Anne Frank.
5.
YOU EXPECT CERTAIN THINGS when you move to the country. You just do. You expect these things because you’ve seen the films, you’ve watched the TV episodes. You expect dishonest carpenters and creepy locals. You expect deer eating your petunias and raccoons toppling your garbage. You expect poison ivy and power outages and colorful neighbors and mice.
You don’t expect arson.
And you sure as hell don’t expect Anne Frank.
Kugel sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at the telephone in his hand
. Behind him, Bree snored softly in her blissful, oblivious slumber.
The numbers on her arm.
They were a problem.
A big fucking problem.
If she didn’t have numbers on her arm, he would have phoned the police immediately. Maybe not immediately—he would wait until morning for Bree to take Jonah to day care, no need to frighten the child—and then, when they had gone, phone the police without delay. But she had numbers, didn’t she, he had seen them, those damned numbers, and the numbers meant that Anne Frank or not, consumed by madness or not, half-dead or not, rotting like a hundred-year-old corpse or not, the old woman was a goddamned Holocaust survivor.
Which was a problem.
Was he really going to throw an elderly, half-mad Holocaust survivor out of his house? Speak of madness! He could never do it, he knew that, even if she was old and emotionally damaged enough to think she was Anne Frank. Pity was a funny thing: it would be easier to throw out the real Anne Frank than it would be to throw out a Holocaust survivor so fucked up by the Holocaust that she thought she was Anne Frank. Can you imagine the headlines? Can you imagine the outrage?
Local Man Evicts Anne Frank.
Jew Drops Dime on Holocaust Survivor.
Brutalized by Nazis, Tossed Out by a Jew: One Survivor’s Tragic Story of Something.
If he’d heard the story, he would join in the outcry himself; if he were watching TV one night and the news came on and they reported, with all their practiced shock and disgust, that a man had thrown an elderly, broken Holocaust survivor out of his home, would he not share in the outrage? And wouldn’t he be right to do so?
The story gets weirder, the smiley anchorwoman would say: the homeowner was a Jew.
Boy, oh, boy, the smiling anchorman would add. Now I’ve heard everything. Now I have heard everything.
This was a hell of a way to start anew. He’d never received any love from his mother; it would have been nice to be accepted, even if only for a while, by a community. But if he turned her in, they would never forgive him. And why should they? Hi, we’re from the community welcome wagon; here’s a flaming bag of dog shit. They would have to move yet again.
But what could he do? Let this crazy old woman live in his attic? It was absurd. For how long? A week? A month? A year? Until whatever Holocaust she thought she was hiding from came to whatever end she thought it would come to? Until she dropped dead?
And what if she really was Anne Frank? It wasn’t impossible—they’d found former Nazi officers in Rio, hadn’t they, ex-camp commandants in New Jersey. Why not a famous survivor in Stockton? Could he take that chance? What if he called the police, and they came over and cuffed her and dragged her out of his house and discovered that, my goodness, my God, she really is Anne Frank. She’s alive. He would forever be known as the person—the Jewish person—that reported Anne Frank to the authorities. Even if he could survive the shame, even if he could weather the ignominy of it all, he could never survive the look on Mother’s face when she found out. He had a better chance of surviving the Holocaust itself.
My own son, she would say, ratting out Anne Frank.
You had to call the police, she would say. What’s the matter, you didn’t have Dr. Mengele’s number? He doesn’t make house calls?
You want Elie Wiesel’s address? Maybe you could turn him in, too?
No. No, no. Hell no. There would be no police, of that much Kugel was certain. He would find another way. The old lady would die soon, from the looks of it, maybe he could wait it out. But then what? Hello, police? There’s a dead woman in my attic. Her name? Well, uh, funny story . . .
Kugel gently placed the phone back in its cradle and, sliding quietly from bed, knelt down beside the vent on the floor.
He listened.
Maybe he’d dreamt it.
Maybe she’d gone.
The forced-air heating system the Messerschmidts had retrofitted into the farmhouse had been usual in design for the times, but unusually poor in construction. The system pulled in fresh air through a large duct that ran from the attic to the heater in the cellar; from there, a network of secondary ducts carried the heated air through the walls, to every room in the house, where it emerged through metal vents in the floor. The better systems employed fiberglass-insulated ducts to carry the air through the walls; the Messerschmidts had gone with the cheaper steel materials, and as a result, the ducts carried sound at least as well as they did heat. It wasn’t long after settling into the new home that Kugel realized he could hear every sound, from every room, of every floor in the house, clear as a bell, through the vents in the floor, a ghostly intercom system he didn’t want and could never silence.
He pressed his ear against the vent.
Mother moaning.
The television laughing.
And the typing.
From the attic.
Ceaseless.
Desperate.
If only I’d found shit, thought Kugel. If only I’d found an arsonist.
It dawned on Kugel as he knelt on the cold floor of his bedroom that the very thing he’d feared the past month and a half—a house fire—might, as it turned out, have been the best thing that could have possibly happened. Combing through the smoldering wreckage, the police would find the body of some old lady, but at least she would be gone, out of his hair, and the insurance on the house would pay off handsomely.
Bree shifted, turned on her side, and mumbled something in her sleep.
She isn’t going to like this, Kugel thought as he watched her. She isn’t going to like this at all. He’d already allowed one crazy old lady into the house—his mother—and they were still waiting for her to die.
A physician, said Professor Jove, is but a criminal dealer of the narcotic of hope.
Kugel got to his feet and slid quietly back into bed.
Kugel first began seeing Professor Jove the previous year, soon after Jonah’s illness. Kugel was having a difficult time sleeping; the anxiety and anger that had been building within him for some time were threatening to spill over, and he was determined to do whatever was necessary to be the husband Bree deserved and the father Jonah needed. He’d seen analysts in the past, but psychiatry was too narrow a scope for him now. Professor Jove, however, was a polymath; not just a Jungian or a Freudian, not just a Kantian or a Cartesian; he had studied the ancients and the moderns, the Realists and Impressionists, he had studied everyone from Aristotle to Zarathustra, from Democritus to Heraclitus and, as he liked to say, all the Ituses in between. He was, in a sense, the distillation of all of Western and Eastern thought of the past two thousand years combined, and it was Professor Jove’s opinion, standing as only someone today could, on the twenty-first-century peak of all history, heir to all mankind’s experience, wisdom, and knowledge, that the greatest source of misery in the world, the greatest cause of anguish and hatred and sadness and death, was neither disease nor race nor religion.
It was hope.
Hope? Kugel asked.
Pessimists, Professor Jove replied, don’t start wars. It was hope, according to Professor Jove, that was keeping Kugel up at night. It was hope that was making him angry.
Give Up, read the sign on the wall behind Jove’s book-covered desk, You’ll Live Longer.
But you’ve been to Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, said Kugel.
That’s how I know, said Professor Jove.
Kugel had waited weeks for an appointment.
We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope.
Kugel wasn’t sure he understood. Professor Jove smiled warmly.
Tell me, he said. Hitler was the last century’s greatest what?
Kugel had shrugged.
Monster?
Optimist, said Pr
ofessor Jove. Hitler was the most unabashed doe-eyed optimist of the last hundred years. That’s why he was the biggest monster. Have you ever heard of anything as outrageously hopeful as the Final Solution? Not just that there could be a solution—to anything, mind you, while we have yet to cure the common cold—but a final one, no less! Full of hope, the Führer was. A dreamer! A romantic, even, yes? If I just kill this one, gas that one, everything will be okay. I tell you this with absolute certainty: every morning, Adolf Hitler woke up, made himself a cup of coffee, and asked himself how to make the world a better place. We all know his answer, but the answer isn’t nearly as important as the question. The only thing more naively hopeful than the Final Solution is the ludicrous dictum to which it gave birth: Never Again. How many times since Never Again has it happened again? Three? Four? That we know of, mind you. Mao? Optimist. Stalin? Optimist. Pol Pot? Optimist. Here’s a good rule for life, Kugel, no matter where you happen to live or when you happen to be born: when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.
I just want my family to be safe, said Kugel. I just want the world to leave us alone. Is that asking too much?
What, asked Professor Jove, did Jesus Christ say when they nailed him to the cross?
I don’t know, said Kugel. What did Jesus Christ say when they nailed him to the cross?
He said Ouch, said Professor Jove.
I don’t get it, said Kugel.
There’s nothing to get, said Professor Jove. It hurt. First they whipped him half to death, then they held him down and nailed iron spikes through his wrists. If he was lucky, they did the same to his feet. The weight of his body bearing down on his chest made it difficult to breathe, and he died, slowly and agonizingly, from respiratory distress.
I still don’t get it, said Kugel.
There is hurt in this world, said Professor Jove. There is pain. Hoping there won’t be only makes it worse.
Kugel pulled the bedcovers up to his chin and moved closer to Bree. She turned over and draped her arm across his chest, burying her face in his shoulder.
Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel Page 3
