Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel

by Shalom Auslander

  While there’s never a good time to find Anne Frank in your attic, this was a particularly bad time. Even with the low purchase price of the farmhouse, they needed to rent both downstairs bedrooms in order to cover their mortgage; Kugel’s giving Mother the second bedroom was a decision that still angered Bree. She had been irate when Kugel suggested it, and leveled bitter accusations at him, accusations he denied even as he suspected they were true: that he put his past before his future, that his former family came before his current family. And she had been right. It had been only a couple of months since they signed the mortgage, but they were already falling behind in the payments; in an effort to find some way to make ends meet, Bree recently suggested renting out the attic in order to make up for the loss of rent from Mother’s bedroom. But where would Bree write? And with that old woman up there now, what was Kugel going to do? How many more rooms was he going to let for free? To make matters worse, their sole tenant—Haman or Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar or something—had, ever since moving in, been after Kugel for a corner of the attic where he could store some of his extra belongings. Kugel was afraid to refuse him and risk his leaving; he had originally requested a bit of patience on the tenant’s part, claiming that the attic had not yet been organized or cleaned from the move; as soon as it was, Kugel had promised, he would find the tenant some space. But it had been some time now, and with that old woman up there now, he couldn’t have the tenant traipsing in and out; what would he think of her, of her living there for free, of her filth, her stench, of her taking his storage space? And if, either in anger or disgust, the tenant suddenly moved out, Kugel worried Bree might just do the same.

  Anne Frank, thought Kugel, running a hand through his hair. That’s all I fucking need.

  The sun was rising.

  Christ, it was already morning. Sunlight crept in through the back window of the bedroom and poured slowly across the floor. All at once, the typing sounds stopped.

  Bree pressed herself to Kugel and moaned softly.

  There was no need to tell her about the woman in the attic, there really wasn’t. Why upset her? He would deal with it on his own. How difficult could it be to get an elderly Holocaust survivor out of your house? He’d play Wagner. He’d get a German shepherd. When the UPS man had gone, he’d tell her it had been a man from the Gestapo, asking a lot of questions. A lot of questions.

  Did you shower yet, honey? he would call downstairs to Bree. Because if you showered already I’m going to shower now.

  She’d be out in a day.

  Piece of cake.

  Even if she didn’t leave, so what? Who would know she was there? She was hiding, after all, or thought she was; shutting up was the whole job description.

  The birds flitting about on the tree branches outside his window began to warble and call, and their delicate song began to calm his nerves. It couldn’t be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret—to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as if they were full-grown dogs. Nothing great, certainly nothing to justify the rest of it, but enough to keep you going. He could hear the squirrels now, clawing their way up and down the trees, chasing the birds, scaring them off.

  Squirrels, thought Kugel, were assholes. That such asshole creatures could be so physically adorable suggested a major flaw in nature’s schematic.

  He could pull this off. He was sure of it. It would have been one thing to protect Anne Frank from the Nazis; he was pretty sure he couldn’t have managed that. But protecting his family from Anne Frank? How difficult could that be?

  He looked up at the ceiling.

  He wondered what she was doing. She wasn’t typing. Was she sleeping?

  He wondered if she was hungry.

  She must be hungry.

  Maybe I should bring her something to eat.

  Downstairs, Mother began to scream. It was a loud, piercing scream, a cry of terror and anguish that carried throughout the house.

  Kugel sighed.

  Mother screamed every morning. She had done so ever since reading that this was common behavior among survivors of the Holocaust.

  Bree groaned, rolled onto her back, and opened her eyes.

  Ah, she said. The sounds of a country morning.

  Kugel kissed her gently on the top of her head.

  Sleep okay? she mumbled.

  So-so, said Kugel. You?

  Bree nodded.

  Mother screamed again. Jonah began to cry.

  I’ll get her, said Kugel.

  I’ll get him, said Bree.

  Kugel stepped out of bed, pulled on his robe, and headed down to Mother’s bedroom. Though she had moved in well over a month ago, Mother hadn’t unpacked yet and wasn’t going to; she preferred, she said, to live out of her suitcases, some of which stood against the wall, and some of which lay open on the bedroom floor.

  Just in case, she said.

  Just in case what? Kugel had asked.

  Just in case, she had replied.

  The only item she had unpacked was her gilt-framed three-foot tall by two-foot wide photograph of the famous Harvard attorney Alan Dershowitz, which she hung, as she always had, on the wall above her bed.

  Mother was sitting up in bed when Kugel entered her bedroom. She sat sobbing, her face buried in her trembling hands.

  I’m sorry, she whispered.

  It’s okay, said Kugel.

  He sat down on the bed beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.

  Ever since the war, she said.

  I know, he said.

  Those sons of bitches, said Mother.

  I know, said Kugel.

  She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes.

  I’m hungry, she said.

  6.

  WHILE BREE HURRIEDLY DRESSED Jonah and Mother slowly dressed herself, Kugel went to the kitchen and filled a cloth bag with vegetables from the pantry and refrigerator. He unlocked the garden door that led to the backyard—he’d been careful, every night since the arson had begun, to lock it, and careful, too, not to let Bree see that he had—and headed out to Mother’s vegetable garden, where nothing ever grew.

  A large rectangle of dry, dusty earth in the center of the backyard, further divided into a number of smaller raised rectangular beds and bounded on all sides by tall metal deer fencing, Mother’s vegetable garden was the only area of the yard where nothing grew, that was utterly devoid of any life whatsoever; everywhere else in the garden, grasses, weeds, and wildflowers pushed up from the earth at such an astonishing rate that it was almost troublesome, requiring constant pruning and weekly mowing, Kugel’s most hated chore. He tried in vain to convince Mother to fertilize the soil in her garden, to add compost, to water it more consistently, but she wouldn’t listen; instead, she stubbornly continued to do what she always had, spending hours each morning raking the lifeless soil from east to west, and then from west to east, from north to south, and then from south to north, at which point she would stop for a moment, wipe her brow, fan herself with her hat, and begin the entire process all over again.

  Kugel stepped inside the garden, trying his best not to let the hinges on the old garden gate creak, reached into his bag of vegetables, and began walking back and forth across the dry, loamy soil, dropping the store-bought produce haphazardly into the raised beds. He dropped radishes, tomatoes, long beans, even shucked ears of corn; later, Mother would come outside and smile to find just how much her hard gardening work had paid off. Kugel wasn’t sure whether he did this each morning for Mother’s benefit or for his own, but he couldn’t bear to see her out there, day after day, with nothing to show for it; couldn’t bear, on the days before he had begun stocking her garden with vegetables, her miserable moping and sighing about the house. The only seedlings she had actually planted were beans, herbs, and tomatoes (Kugel’s heart broke to see the doomed seedlings she carried out to the garden, never to return agai
n), but she never once questioned the many other varieties of vegetables she found there—the squash, the cucumbers, the heads of lettuce; on the contrary, she would strut into the kitchen, arms full of supermarket produce and nose in the air, gloating about her green thumb and wondering aloud if perhaps now Kugel would keep his foolish advice to himself. Some days (though he felt guilty afterward) Kugel would leave fruit out there, too—oranges, apples, honeydew, even diced cantaloupe in plastic containers—but Mother, secure in her horticultural abilities, never questioned their otherwise miraculous appearance. Her bedroom had a window that faced the backyard, as did the kitchen; if she knew what Kugel was doing out there each morning, she never said a word, though he suspected she didn’t want to know, either way.

  It wasn’t, however, an unpleasant chore, and in fact, Kugel had come, over the weeks, to appreciate the solitude and peace. It forced him out of the house early in the morning, when the world was still quiet; where he could feel the cool dew on his bare legs, fill his lungs with the sharp morning air, where all was placidity and peace. The sun, still low in the sky at that hour, gently broke through the pines and maples, warming his face as the birds danced about in the cool canopy of branches above.

  This morning, however, he felt as if he were being watched. He felt as if he were doing something wrong.

  He looked back at the house; was Mother watching him?

  No, he didn’t see her at her window.

  Bree?

  Bree didn’t like his wasting money on Mother’s vegetables, he knew that, or that he was encouraging her (as she saw it) to stay, but thus far she’d chosen not to confront him about it. Was she watching him today? Had she finally had enough?

  No, he didn’t see her.

  And then, higher up, just below the rising sun, he saw the darkened dormer windows in the attic.

  Was she watching him, he wondered, that crazy old hag? Judging him?

  Fuck her.

  What was her problem, that he was deceiving his mother? That he was wasting vegetables? Yes, I know, there are people starving in the world, so what? A few turnips aren’t going to save them. Or is it more than that, lady—is it my being outside on this beautiful morning while you’re stuck inside? Well, you’re not stuck inside, you’re staying inside, there’s a difference. I’ve been out here fifteen minutes already, and was out here all day yesterday, and I still haven’t seen gas chamber one.

  So fuck you.

  Her judging him, what a joke! She’s a trespasser, a liar, a thief, and she smells like a toilet—like a toilet that other toilets use when they need to use a toilet—and she’s judging me.

  Don’t make me laugh.

  The sun was getting higher now, and Kugel shielded his eyes against it as he tried to see if he could spot her there through the attic windows. He couldn’t, but he held up his middle finger just in case she was there, just in case she was watching him, and turned back to his chore.

  It ruined it, being watched like this.

  What did she know, anyway?

  Pain in the ass.

  She wasn’t going to dictate what he did or when he did it; she wasn’t calling the shots here.

  This is my goddamned house, he thought.

  He should just throw her out. Damn everyone else and their judgments to hell, he should just go inside and throw her decrepit ass out.

  He made one more pass along the garden, dropping the remaining fruits and vegetables from his bag, all but the last apple, which he tucked in his jacket pocket before heading back to the house.

  She’s probably hungry, he thought.

  7.

  WHERE WERE YOU? asked Bree as Kugel entered the kitchen.

  What? he asked, hiding the vegetable bag behind his back.

  Where were you?

  Where was I?

  I was calling you.

  You were . . .

  Shh! she said. Listen!

  She was in the middle of scrambling eggs for Jonah and the tenant, both of whom were already sitting at the kitchen table. She pressed a finger up to her lips and held the spatula aloft.

  There, she said at last. You hear that?

  He heard it. A metallic tapping sound, coming from the floor vent.

  He shook his head.

  No, he said. I don’t hear anything.

  Wait, said Bree, wait.

  Tap, tap-tap.

  There, she said.

  She was tapping on the vents, thought Kugel. The crazy old bitch was up there tapping on the vents—tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap—trying to signal him, to get his attention.

  That? asked Kugel.

  Do you hear it? Bree asked.

  I think so, he said. It’s very . . . That?

  Bree nodded.

  That, she said.

  The tenant stood.

  Mr. Kugel, he said firmly.

  Kugel didn’t like the tenant. The man was tall and dark-skinned, with an arrogant air, and a day had yet to pass without some complaint: the house smelled, the room was too cold, the closet was too small. Bree was doing her best to keep him happy, and Kugel was doing his best to avoid him. Something had happened in recent years, Kugel thought, something had changed. He remembered as a child, after Father disappeared and they were forced to move from their comfortable white house in the lush suburbs to an uncomfortable brown apartment in the barren city, how deferential Mother had been to their new landlord, how careful she had always been not to upset him in any way. Yes, Mr. Rosner; I’m sorry, Mr. Rosner; it’s no problem, Mr. Rosner. It angered Kugel to see his mother brought low before such a man, so he sometimes snuck down the stairs after dark, crept onto the sidewalk, and tipped over the garbage pails Mr. Rosner had so neatly lined up alongside the curb; then he would hurry upstairs and watch from the living room window as Mr. Rosner, red-faced and swearing, bent to clean up Mother’s trash. These days, though, the relationship had reversed: it was the landlord who lived on his knees, answering to every complaint, heeding every call. So this morning, as angry as he was at the old woman for tapping on his vents, he appreciated the distraction from the tenant.

  It’s probably the heater, said Kugel.

  The heater? asked Bree.

  Kugel knew almost nothing about mechanical issues, but Bree knew even less.

  Blower fan, said Kugel.

  Is that bad?

  Mr. Kugel, the tenant interjected. Mr. Kugel, it really is important that we speak.

  Folks, said Kugel, honestly, I had a hell of a night last night, and I don’t know that—

  There! said Bree. Again I heard it.

  Pity for everyone but me, thought Kugel. I should put some damned numbers on my arm.

  The blades, Kugel said, that’s what it sounds like to me. Fan blades. They’re probably bumping up against the exhaust flange.

  Mr. Kugel, the tenant interrupted again, his voice rising, is your mother going to be screaming like that every morning?

  The room grew silent.

  Kugel sighed and shook his head.

  Ever since the war, said Kugel softly.

  Mother had never been in a war. She’d never been anywhere near a war, unless you count the holiday sales at Bamberger’s the morning after Thanksgiving.

  I am rapidly . . . began the tenant, but at that very moment, Mother entered through the garden door, her arms full of bright fruits and shiny vegetables. She was beaming.

  There’s still more out there, she said breathlessly to Kugel, a triumphant smile on her face. Even the cantaloupes came in!

  She placed the bounty on the counter, still beaming, until she turned and saw the tenant, whereupon her face darkened.

  Mother disliked the tenant even more than Kugel did, and with far less actual cause. She suspected him of nefarious thoughts, devious plots, sexual perversion; she thought him, alternately, a Muslim, a Negro, a Sicilian; whenever she saw him, she held shut her blouse collar with one hand, and pulled down on her skirt hem with the other. And she had been, much to Bree’s dismay, openly
antagonistic toward the tenant from the start.

  Those, she said, glaring at the tenant as she held closed her blouse collar, are for family.

  Tap.

  Tap-tap.

  There, said Bree to Kugel. You must have heard that.

  The taps were getting louder now.

  Exhaust flange, said Kugel. Getting worse, too.

  TAP, TAP-TAP.

  Mr. Kugel, the tenant said firmly, coming around the table and standing at the kitchen doorway, arms folded across his chest. I signed a lease with you for a period of twelve months, but given the situation here, I don’t think I would have too difficult a time finding a judge who would allow me to break that contract—and to recoup my deposit, along with any and all past monies paid.

  So now he’s an attorney, Mother said to Bree.

  Mother, said Bree. And then, to the tenant, she said, I’m terribly sorry.

  Much as it had so long ago with Mother and Mr. Rosner, it angered Kugel to see Bree placating this ingrate—history repeats itself, it seems, with very little concern about whether we learn anything from it or not—but Bree and Kugel knew that they could ill afford to have the tenant leave. Mother, meanwhile, took a step toward the tenant, pointing her finger at his chest.

  You wouldn’t be talking like that, Mother said to him, if Mr. Alan Morton Dershowitz was here, I assure you of that.

  Mother, said Kugel.

  TAP.

  TAP-TAP.

  Pardon me, said Kugel, pressing past the tenant and hurrying out the kitchen door. We’ll pick this up later, he said as he went.

  Mr. Kugel, the tenant called after him. Mr. Kugel, you promised me space in the attic—space for which I am paying, Mr. Kugel.

  I’m so sorry, Kugel could hear Bree saying, and then, as the tapping continued and he hurried up the stairs, he could hear Mother taunting the tenant again: No, sir, she said, no, sir. You wouldn’t be pushing us around if the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University were here. I bet you wouldn’t be so smart then, would you?

  If only I’d found mouse shit, thought Kugel as he stomped up the stairs. If only I’d found an arsonist.