Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel

by Shalom Auslander

  And: Don’t fuck with me.

  Kugel went back inside and locked the door.

  A Rottweiler, maybe. With one of those spiked collars.

  After being in the fresh air outside, the stench inside the house seemed even more pronounced. The vent cleaners had suggested that perhaps it was caused by a small animal, dead in the very walls it had climbed behind for safety, but that wouldn’t explain why the smell returned after they had cleaned it, or why it seemed of late to be getting worse.

  Awake anyway, he thought. Might as well try to find out where it was coming from.

  Kugel got down on his hands and knees, nose up, sniffing and crawling as he went, out of the kitchen, into the living room. Here the stench weakened somewhat, but after crawling into the hallway and foyer, he picked up the scent again. At the tenant’s room, the smell seemed to grow stronger.

  He knew that bastard had been up to something.

  He considered knocking, demanding to know what the tenant was up to in there, but it was three o’clock in the morning, and he decided to wait until morning. Before he left, just to be certain, he sniffed along the rest of the hallway, and indeed the smell was at its worst in front of Mother’s bedroom door.

  He quietly got to his feet, knocked gently on the door, but heard no reply. He wrapped his hand around the doorknob; turning it slowly, he silently pushed the door open.

  Mother? Kugel whispered.

  Nothing.

  He stepped into the room. The bed was empty.

  Mother?

  He heard a sound in the darkness from the far side of the bed. He switched on the light and stepped around the bed.

  Ma? he called.

  And then he saw her, squatting down beside the bed, over the heating vent, just the silver halo of her hair at first, as she was peering down between her knees. Kugel said, Mother? again, and she looked up, and he recognized the expression on her face, it was the same expression he’d had on his own face, every day and night for a week after Passover, after eating that damned matzoh, that cursed bread of affliction, and she saw him there, and she shook her head and said, her face red with exertion, Ever since the war.

  I know, said Kugel.

  Alan Dershowitz looked on.

  Those sons of bitches, said Mother.

  It’s okay, said Kugel.

  It’s okay.

  15.

  KUGEL AWOKE EARLY the next morning, turning his face from the harsh rays of intruding sunlight that stretched across the room like some goddamned thing that stretches across some other goddamned thing.

  Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It’s a giant ball of fire, kids. It’s rage and fury. Whatever it’s doing, it isn’t fucking smiling.

  Kugel sat up, dressed, went out back, left vegetables for Mother in her garden, gave Anne Frank the finger, and decided to go for a bicycle ride.

  Bree had given him the bike as a gift when they first moved in—that seemed like so long ago now—all titanium and carbon fiber and bright yellow paint, hoping he would use it to relieve his stress, to change his mood. It hadn’t quite worked out that way. He found bike riding stressful—the worries about flat tires, the concerns about getting up the next hill, the cars and trucks speeding by only inches away. Still, he couldn’t give up on the idea—riding a bike should be calming, even if it wasn’t so for him—and he didn’t want Bree to think that he didn’t appreciate the gift or, worse, that he was incapable of enjoying it, of enjoying anything (anhedonia, a psychiatrist once told him by way of diagnosis, the inability to feel pleasure; it isn’t the inability, Kugel argued, it’s the knowledge that pleasure is just a prelude to pain; exactly, said the psychiatrist). So Kugel rode, hoping it would calm him, knowing it probably wouldn’t, hoping it would mollify Bree’s anger, knowing it probably couldn’t. Perhaps, he hoped, she would see him riding back up the driveway, and think, Well, he’s trying. Perhaps she’d spy him through the living room window, struggling up the impossible gravel drive, and she’d think, That’s why I love him. That’s why I’ve always loved him. He’s made some mistakes, sure, but they were with the best of intentions, and isn’t he doing what he can now to correct them, to make things anew? This can’t be easy on him, either, can it? Perhaps, she would think, an apology was in order.

  Kugel set off, the wind in what would have been, some years ago, his hair.

  Everything this morning was dead.

  Crushed turtles.

  Burst raccoons.

  Flattened chipmunks.

  Of all the roadkill Kugel passed, chipmunks were always the most troubling. Maybe it was because they seemed so innocent. They weren’t, though, he knew that; he had watched them now and then in the garden, fighting, stealing food, attacking birds. They were adorable, territorial pricks. They were survivors, and survival wasn’t pretty. What, then, was so disturbing about the flat ones? Maybe it was because they always seemed so desperate to survive, forever darting, running, fleeing. Maybe it was because they always seemed so terrified, and Kugel hated to see their fears validated for future generations of chipmunks. This patch of hair, Mother Chipmunk would say to her children, was your grandfather; this bloodstain was your aunt. Or maybe it was because when they darted across the road, more than any other animal, they seemed so certain they would make it to the other side. Deer, like Kugel himself, seemed certain they wouldn’t make it. Tentatively they stepped into the road, frightened, waiting for the truck that would slam into them, for the car that would split them in two. Maybe, he thought, stopping his bike and kneeling down beside the furry remains of one such now two-dimensional chipmunk, it was just the way they popped. He picked up a nearby stick and prodded it. Most other animals seemed to get flattened, pressed like a dress shirt onto the roadway, everything staying tight and contained and crushed. Chipmunks seemed to pop, from the inside out, like a tube of toothpaste squeezed from the bottom up, like hairy little ketchup packets, the rolling pressure of the enormous vehicle above them forcing all their guts and brains right out through the tops of their little heads. Pop. The chipmunk at Kugel’s feet lay there like all chipmunks lay there: a furry, flattened body with a red/gray ejaculation of blood and brains having burst from his little exploded head. To Kugel, chipmunks looked as if they’d died of a good idea; a great idea; an idea so unbelievably revolutionary that it made their lovable little heads burst. Like they’d cured some disease. Like they’d proved (or disproved) the existence of God. Like they’d figured out the meaning of life.

  Well I’ll be damned, Stan, we’re only here to ka-pow.

  The irony, thought Kugel, as he peeled the dead chipmunk off the road with the stick, was that what they’d actually died of was a bad idea. A terrible idea. They’d died of the worst idea in the world, an idea that always seemed like a great one at the time: they died of “Let’s cross the road.” They died of “Let’s see what’s over there.”

  I wonder if life is better on that splat.

  That looks like a nice place to raise a wham.

  Well, we can always come back if it doesn’t oof.

  Maybe they bothered him because in their desperate hope they reminded him of himself. Maybe Professor Jove had been right. As this hopeful chipmunk’s corpse was beginning to disintegrate, Chipmunk Anne Frank was at home, storing her nuts for winter and letting all the foolish dreamer chipmunks try their luck on the other side of the road.

  What if she died? Kugel wondered.

  Anne Frank.

  What if she was dead already?

  He flicked the dead chipmunk to the side of the road, happy to help the little believer, albeit in death, reach his dreamed-of destination, got back on his bike, and continued riding. He wasn’t so much concerned for Anne Frank’s passing as he was that there would be a corpse in the house, even for a small amount of time. What if she died in her bed, directly over Jonah’s bedroom? What if she died of a great idea? Kugel was surprised to realize that he had gone, in such a short time, from wanting to kill her
to worrying that she might be dead. Who could blame her, after all? Maybe hiding in an attic your whole life wasn’t insane; maybe not hiding in an attic your whole life was. Ask the chipmunk.

  What would Anne Frank’s last words be? he wondered as he rode.

  Gas is running low, said Amelia Earhart in her last radio communication before her plane disappeared. Of course those were just the last words she ever said to anyone else—her actual last word, as the plane went down, might just have been Fuuuuuuck. Most likely it was Fuuuuuuck, why wouldn’t it be? Nobody is going to admit that fuuuuuuck was someone’s last word, even if it is the most appropriate last word of all. It’s possible she didn’t die going down, of course; she might have landed safely on an island, thanked God, and then discovered the island was deserted and had no food sources. Last words: Fuck, now what?

  He liked that.

  Now what?

  He would write that down when he got back home.

  Now it has come, said Laurence Sterne.

  He meant Fuuuuuuck.

  More light! shouted Goethe. More light!

  He meant Fuuuuuuck.

  Fuuuuuuck isn’t a bad way to go. To hell with all the profundity and wit and pithiness; Anne Frank struck him as someone who might just want her last word to be fuuuuuuck.

  Let’s do it, said Gary Gilmore.

  Toodle-oo, said Allen Ginsberg.

  Kugel, thinking of last words and Anne Frank’s demise, drifted into the middle of the road. A black van sped by, horn blaring.

  Asshole! called the driver.

  Kugel steadied his bike and held up his middle finger. The driver leaned on his horn in reply.

  Vans are the vehicles of murderers. Serial killers, rapists, thieves. Nothing good ever happens in a van. Police should be allowed to arrest van drivers without cause. The van is the cause, asshole.

  Kugel spent the rest of the ride worrying that the black van would return. He worried the driver would force him into a ditch, or mow him down, or drive by and shoot him in the head. Then he’d steal the bike Bree gave him and sell it on eBay. Like new. Ridden once. Light scratches on frame.

  The attic life, thought Kugel, is the life for me.

  I should go for a bike ride, it will help me ka-blammo.

  I need to learn to stop and smell the wham.

  It’s a wonderful ka-pow.

  Kugel entered the house, covered in sweat, glancing back at the road before closing the door to see if the black van had followed him.

  He locked the door behind him.

  Then he unlocked the door, wheeled in the bicycle, and locked the door again.

  He stood and listened. He could hear Bree in the kitchen preparing breakfast, but that was all. He went to his knees and pressed his ear against the vent. No tapping, that was good. He could hear the tenant, though, speaking on his phone. Laughing. What was he laughing about? He was probably laughing at Kugel, mocking him.

  Dad? asked Jonah.

  Kugel looked up. Jonah was standing before him, still in his Spider-Man pajamas, which were covered in crumbs.

  Oh, said Kugel, hey, buddy.

  What are you doing?

  I was just checking the heat.

  Is it broken?

  No, no. It’s fine.

  Dad?

  Yeah, buddy?

  Why is the bicycle in the house?

  Why? I thought it would be safer here. What are you eating?

  Jonah held up the piece of bread in his hand.

  Grandma’s bread, he said.

  Grandma’s bread? asked Kugel.

  Jonah nodded.

  Was she eating it? Kugel asked.

  Jonah shook his head.

  I got it from the couch, he said.

  Kugel sighed. Mother had been hiding bread around the house ever since reading that this was common behavior among survivors of the Holocaust. She hid it under her mattress, beneath the rugs, in between the cushions of the couch.

  Did Grandma say you could have it? Kugel asked, getting to his feet.

  Jonah nodded, taking a bite out of it.

  She did?

  I saw her putting it there last night, said Jonah.

  And she said you could have it?

  Mm-hmm, said Jonah. She said I would thank her for it.

  Joney, said Kugel, bending down to kiss Jonah on the head, don’t eat Grandma’s bread. If you want bread, just ask me.

  Dad? asked Jonah.

  Yeah, buddy?

  How come Grandma puts bread in the couch?

  Well, said Kugel, she’s old, buddy.

  Are you going to put bread in the couch when you’re old?

  Probably, said Kugel.

  Am I?

  I hope not.

  Mother came into the room then, wearing her sun hat and carrying her basket full of vegetables. Kugel asked Jonah to go into the kitchen for breakfast.

  I asked you, Kugel said to Mother when Jonah had gone, not to do that here.

  Not to do what?

  Not to hide bread.

  Mother waved at him with annoyance.

  They don’t have Holocausts in Stockton? she asked.

  No, said Kugel. They don’t.

  We’ll see.

  Mother, I asked you not to. I was concerned my son might discover it.

  And?

  And he has.

  And?

  And I don’t want to get into the meaning of genocide with him just yet, Mother.

  Why not?

  He’s three.

  So?

  So I don’t want to frighten him.

  He’ll thank me when they kick his doors in.

  When who kicks his doors in?

  Whoever.

  Whoever?

  What’s the difference? said Mother. A kicked-in door is a kicked-in door. You care so much who’s doing the kicking in?

  Kugel decided then and there that he would die a happy man, that he would consider his meager life a success, if in years to come, somewhere, someday, someone kicked in Jonah’s door and Jonah was surprised. Shocked. Amazed. Let him be utterly bewildered, dear God. Let him wonder, raised-eyebrowed and slack-jawed, They kick doors in now? Since when? Hang on, hang on—they’re putting people in ovens? You can’t be serious. Since when do people put other people in ovens?

  If you have to hide it, said Kugel, hide it in your own room.

  Mother waved him off again and headed for the kitchen.

  Oh, please, she said. That’s the first place they’ll look.

  Let him be floored, O Lord, thought Kugel.

  Let him be stunned.

  Let him be flabber-fucking-gasted.

  After checking that he’d locked the front door, Kugel entered the kitchen. Bree was at the stove, scrambling eggs; Jonah was at the table, which Bree had set and filled with plates of bread and muffins; through the window, Kugel could see Mother back in her garden, filling a second basket with store-bought groceries and rejoicing at the bounty she had brought forth into the world.

  Kugel watched Bree as she worked at the stove, her hips swaying slightly as she did, and fresh desire rushed through his veins.

  Kugel had only loved one other woman in his life, an African American woman named Aleeyah, whom Mother disapproved of for not being Jewish. She would, Mother wailed, be the end of the Kugels, which only made Kugel want Aleeyah even more (so much did he want her that he was willing to overlook the fact that her name, in Hebrew, meant to go up, and was the idiomatic term used to describe immigrating to Israel; Kugel hated the superiority and judgment implicit in that term, and though he loved Aleeyah and thought the world of her, he was concerned that a part of him, however small, just wanted to “fuck Aleeyah”). Unfortunately, Aleeyah was an intensely political member of the African American community, and all she seemed to want to speak about with Kugel was the suffering of her people, of slavery and Tuskegee and Birmingham.

  Can we talk about something else? he asked one night.

  Can we talk about somethin
g else?

  I don’t want to talk about the past all the time.

  The past, said Aleeyah, is the present.

  Then let’s talk about Auschwitz, he said. Let’s run a warm bath, fill it with bubbles, undress, climb in, and talk about Auschwitz.

  I’m sick of that Holocaust shit, said Aleeyah.

  When he met Bree a few months later, the fact that she was Jewish was mitigated by the fact that her connection to that part of her history was tenuous at best; she neither hated nor adored it; she simply didn’t give it much thought. He admired that about her, emulated her, wanted to become like her; how much happier he could be, he thought, if he could just turn ambivalence into indifference.

  Well? asked Bree as Kugel sat down at the table.

  Well what? Kugel asked.

  Bree glanced at Jonah.

  Did you talk to h-e-r? Bree asked.

  Kugel sat down at the table beside Jonah.

  She’s a s-u-r-v-i-v-o-r, hon.

  Bree brought over the plate of eggs and dropped it with a clang onto the table in front of Kugel.

  Who isn’t, she said.

  Bree had suffered physical abuse when she was a child—her father had been a violent man with a drinking problem, her mother a weak woman with a self-esteem problem—and the moment she turned eighteen, she left her home and moved to New York City; she hadn’t spoken with them since. At the beginning of their relationship, Bree wanted to talk about it and Kugel wanted to listen. Like his own mother, though, he felt that, compared to Bree, he hadn’t quite suffered enough, and wasn’t qualified to advise or even relate to her. What was an absent father compared to an abusive father? Was a good father leaving as bad as a bad father staying?

  Which is worse? Kugel had asked.

  They’re both bad, Bree had said.

  Yes, said Kugel, but which is worse?

  It’s enough that you listen, Bree had said, but Kugel couldn’t help wanting to help, even if the only way he could think to help her was to help her help herself. With books. Books had always been his answer, and he bought her so many self-help books—Overcoming This, Getting Past That, Coming to Terms with Your Whatever—that she soon stopped wanting to talk about it at all, concerned that this part of her past she just needed to talk about, to share with him, was now becoming, for Kugel, her defining feature. She was no longer Bree; she was becoming Bree of Sorrows, Bree of the Leather Belt, Bree of the Thrown Shoe; Bree, Patron Saint of Adult Children of Alcoholics.