She’s sleeping, Mother would say.
Are you sure?
Should I check?
No, no, you’ll wake her.
I think she’s okay. Do you think she’s okay?
She’s probably fine.
Should I check?
Can you hear anything?
Hold on . . . No.
Maybe you should check.
The effect of the recent economic downturn upon EnviroSolutions had been severe; they had lost revenue, market share; in response, they expanded their product offerings to include environmentally friendly, eco-conscious office furniture. The pressure to bring in sales was intense.
Kugel had been out a while, and he had some lost time to make up for. He phoned his client, Mr. Thomason, the superintendent of the largest local school, whom Kugel had, some time ago, signed on as one of EnviroSolutions’ biggest recycling clients. It was a contract that caused the whole company to celebrate, and Kugel was heralded as a hero, but the reality was that he’d just gotten lucky; under pressure from environmental groups, the state and local government had begun offering financial incentives to any organization that instituted a comprehensive recycling plan, and Mr. Thomason had negotiated such a low-cost contract with Kugel that he was actually making money off the new plan, and pocketing the extra incentive fees for himself. But nobody was offering incentives on eco-friendly furniture, and Mr. Thomason had already turned down two other EnviroSolutions salesmen in the past week alone.
Hello, Mr. Thomason, Kugel said into the phone, Solomon Kugel here from EnviroSolutions. Did you know that your students’ chairs might be affecting their minds? Off-gassing from plastic seating has been . . . Yes, of course, I understand. Yes. Of course, yes, but for only a few dollars per unit, your students could be sitting on eco-friendly bamboo chairs that save their minds and save the planet.
Kugel sighed and rubbed his eyes with the fingertips of his free hand.
That’s probably overstating it, to be honest, he added. Wouldn’t that be great, though, Mr. Thomason, if some chairs could save the planet? If chairs could save the planet, I’d be the happiest motherfucker alive, let me tell you. We have hemp office chairs, Mr. Thomason, made of sustainable something or other. Can I interest you in hemp office furniture, Mr. Thomason? When the oceans rise and drown us, at least you can smoke the goddamn things. But the oceans won’t rise, Mr. Thomason, I don’t want to worry you about that; God Himself promised, after the whole Noah thing, he promised he wouldn’t drown us, and, fuck, Mr. Thomason, if you can’t trust God, well, we’re all fucked. You know who wanted to save the earth? Hitler. Mr. Thomason? Hello?
The line had gone dead a while ago, but Kugel soldiered on.
Perhaps I can interest you, he continued, in some handmade recycled cardboard office partitions? Handmade by, well . . . by hands, I suppose. That’s better than partitions not made by hands, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Thomason? We all have hands, you know. We all have hands and we have feet and we have heads. Did you know that repurposed printer tables are a great way to save . . . something? To protect the whatever? The sun? Have you thought about the sun, Mr. Thomason? Have you?
He was beginning to shout.
Have you ever thought about the sun, Mr. Thomason? Think about the sun, man, just once, for God’s sake, think about the sun!
If you’d like to make a call, said the phone, please hang up and try again.
Kugel hung up, and after a moment phoned home.
Is she okay? he asked.
I think so, said Mother. She’s hungry.
She said that?
No, but I think she is.
It should be there soon.
How soon?
Soon.
Okay.
Let me know when it gets there.
Okay.
Okay.
Last night, he had gone online and ordered Anne Frank a twelve-pack of Streit’s matzoh (4 stars—Light and crispy! Great packaging!), and he went back online now and ordered her a jar of thick-cut herring (3 stars) and a six-pack of Gold’s Russian borscht (no reviews).
A salesman named Neil stuck his head into Kugel’s office.
You okay? he asked. I heard some shouting.
Customers, said Kugel. Can’t see the big picture.
Nasty shiner, said Neil.
In this difficult financial atmosphere, supervisors brought quick attention to the slightest of their employees’ failings and mistakes, and coworkers privately made it known to those same superiors that, in regard to Employee X or Y, they were in complete agreement with their superior’s judgment and shared his or her concerns. Kugel didn’t blame them; he understood and accepted the nature of business, and what it meant for the way others behaved. That’s business, said Kugel, suggesting that people were less treacherous and self-serving in everyday life. This concerned Professor Jove, who insisted that the regular world was no different from the business world, and attempted to get Kugel to see it that way, too.
What do you call five lawyers in quicksand? asked Professor Jove.
Kugel shrugged.
Fucked, replied Professor Jove. And if one has to step on another’s head to get himself out, that’s what he’ll do.
Because he’s a lawyer?
Because he’s a human being. Survival has its own morality, Kugel. Only a fool would expect someone drowning in quicksand to behave any differently. And, brother, we’re all in quicksand. Up to our eyeballs, from the moment we’re born. And do you know how to get out of quicksand?
Is this a joke?
No.
I don’t know, said Kugel. How do you get out of quicksand?
There are two ways. The first one never works.
What’s the first one?
You wait for someone to save you. You rely on the kindness of strangers.
What’s the second way?
You save yourself. You step on something. Living or dead, you step on it and get the fuck out.
Ten years earlier, Kugel had been at a sales conference in Los Angeles when a perfect series of perfect storms left flights across the nation canceled and airports closed. It was a few days before Christmas, and even once the storms had passed and travel was restored, the backups and delays meant many would be stranded away from home over the holidays. The company, though, decided to charter a small plane from Los Angeles to New York, reserved for just those employees with family back east—wives, husbands, children. It was a tremendous show of corporate sensitivity at a time of terrible uncertainty. As soon as word of the chartered plane got out, though, senior executives, similarly stranded in Los Angeles, began to complain: Why should I have to stay here? one asked. Why does that nobody get to go home before me? asked another. And so the higher-ups soon began using their rank and seniority to force their way onto the plane, until one by one all the mothers and fathers of lower rank were bumped off, and all that remained on the flight were senior executives and their personal assistants.
You step on something.
You get the fuck out.
According to John, author of the Gospel by the same name, Jesus, dying on the cross, said this: It is finished.
Was he referring to his life? Or, supposed Kugel, to mankind, to humanity, to the species that could do such a thing to one of its own? You never see a lion crucifying another lion. You never see a bear just randomly murdering salmon for anything besides food; bears don’t form armies, invade rivers, tear the heads off male salmon, rape the female salmon, and enslave their salmon children.
It is finished, to Kugel, sounded a hell of a lot like Fuck all of you motherfuckers.
Kugel wondered if Miep Gies would have done what she had if she’d had children of her own. Would anyone blame her if she didn’t? Maybe, on the contrary, they would have thought her irresponsible if she had?
At lunch that day Kugel asked Neil: Would you hide me?
Hide you?
Hide me. And my family. Wife and a child. He’s three. Maybe a dog.
>
What are you talking about?
If something happened.
If what happened?
Whatever.
Whatever?
Whatever.
You’re freaking me out, Kugel. People are starting to talk.
Would you hide us? That’s all I’m asking.
Where?
In your attic.
I have a lot of shit up there, Kugel.
But would you? If we had to hide?
From who?
Whoever.
Whoever?
What’s the difference?
What’s the difference?
What’s the difference? Would you hide us or not?
I have a lot of shit up there, Kugel.
Is that a no?
Are you okay, Kugel? That’s a nasty bump on your head.
Of the seven people in his office Kugel asked that day if they would let him and his family hide in their attic, three said they had a lot of shit up there, one said he would love to but was allergic to dogs, one said he didn’t have an attic but Kugel could stay in his garden shed (on condition that, if discovered, Kugel would back up his claim of ignorance), and one said he could probably stay in his attic, but he didn’t want to commit to anything at the moment and Kugel should ask again when the time came.
He left work early, complaining of a headache. As he was driving home, he received an e-mail from his supervisor:
Your performance of late has been subpar.
A last line?
A tombstone:
SOLOMON KUGEL
His performance, of late,
had been subpar.
Born, unfortunately. Died eventually.
As Kugel pulled into his driveway that evening, the UPS man was there, delivering packages.
Kugel knew all too well that this would be a terrible time to lose his job. Nobody was hiring, Mother wasn’t paying rent, and their only tenant was threatening to leave, if he wasn’t already out looking for a new apartment.
The twelve-pack of matzoh cost $64.95, and would last Anne Frank about three days. The borscht cost $74.95. A nine-cubic-foot mini-fridge cost $265.43.
Kugel wondered if in these days of the Internet you would even need a Miep Gies anymore, if you could make it through a genocide these days with just a smartphone and a credit card, and he was hopeful that in the event of another Holocaust, he would have some sort of broadband Internet access. Still, somebody would have to sign for the packages and bring them up to the attic, so he was back to square one. Also, they would probably be tracking Amazon orders, or at least UPS deliveries, so he’d probably have to have the packages delivered to an alternate address and brought to him by Miep (assuming Amazon even took orders from Jews once the shit started going down, which they probably wouldn’t).
Bree looked at the UPS packages piled up on the front porch and shook her head in disgust.
The house was beginning to smell again.
Kugel phoned Professor Jove.
Jove wasn’t in.
Kugel left a message.
19.
THAT NIGHT, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, Kugel thought he heard a gentle tapping on the vent, but decided that he hadn’t.
Maybe he had.
He hadn’t.
The noises from the ducts were loudest and most oppressive at night. Mother below, moaning, groaning, belching; Anne Frank above, tapping, shuffling, wheezing, typing, printing, bitching; and Kugel, trapped in the middle of this miserable suffer sandwich, with all the wretched clangor of their failing mortal coils—the farts, the grunts, the gasps, the coughs; the nightly performance of the Judeo-Misery Orchestra, a distressing cacophony of oy-veys, gevalts, and Gott in himmels played against the endless laugh track that emanated from the tenant’s television, culminating in the big finale, when Mother woke them all with her daily morning screams of her not-traumatic-enough-stress disorder.
Burp.
Groan.
Moan.
Ha ha ha!
Oy vey.
Freeze, police!
Gottenyu.
This is Sixty Minutes.
Oof.
God in heaven.
Tonight on Jay Leno.
Ugh.
Fart.
Grunt.
Applause.
And, on top of that, the creaks, the cracks, the pops that sounded, each and every one, like an arsonist, whatever an arsonist sounded like, just outside his window, just outside the door, preparing to burn them all alive.
Tell them I said . . . something.
What, though, goddamn it? What?
Kugel already had the perfect tombstone for Mother. He’d had it since he was a teenager, had thought of it on their trip one summer to a German concentration camp. Mother had taken him to Jerusalem for his bar mitzvah (You should know your history, she said as the Israeli soldier eyed them suspiciously and tore through their suitcases); when she realized the return flight required a stopover in Berlin, she decided this was the perfect opportunity for the two of them to visit a death camp.
You with your comfortable American life, she said. You wouldn’t last five minutes in Auschwitz.
Young Kugel wondered how Chelmno felt. Nobody ever talked about Chelmno.
He wouldn’t last five minutes in Chelmno, either.
They decided to spend the night in Berlin, visit a death camp in the morning, and continue home that afternoon. Unfortunately, Mother soon discovered that all the really famous death camps were far away, much too far for a day trip, so she had to settle for the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen.
Sachsen what? she had asked the hotel concierge.
Sachsenhausen, he said. It’s about a thirty-minute train ride from Berlin Central Station.
Never heard of it, she said. And then, holding her hand up to her mouth, she said to Kugel: They don’t want us to see the real death camps.
The concierge assured her that many thousands of people died there.
How many?
Many, miss. Very many.
Was there a gas chamber?
After a long pause: Of course, yes.
You’re sure.
Oh, yes.
I don’t want to get out there and find some sanitized park grounds.
No, no, not at all. It’s very disturbing.
They set out by train the following morning, but as neither Mother nor Kugel was yet aware of his gluten intolerance, she packed only some bottles of water to drink and a loaf of bread to eat, since anything more than that, she declared, would insult the memory of the deceased. They would have killed, she said, for a loaf of bread like that.
By the time they arrived, Kugel was doubled over in pain, and he raced to the bathroom the moment she handed him his ticket.
And there he stayed, on the toilet, for the bulk of their available time.
He made a few attempts to leave the restroom and walk to the camp, but he’d only get as far as the gates—Work Will Set You Free, they read—before having to turn and run back, hoping his stall was not yet taken. With little more than forty minutes to go before their train to the airport, Kugel managed to gain some control of his quivering innards, and he and Mother hurried together into the camp. Kugel did his best to keep up with Mother’s angry, purposeful stride through the camp gates.
Well, I’m never going to see it all now, said Mother, looking at the map of the camp in her hands, thank you very much. I can forget about seeing the Jewish barracks, they’re way the hell over there. And the medical center is a twenty-minute walk all by itself. Walk faster, Solomon, for crying out loud.
She decided, with the limited time they had, to just see the gas chamber, marked with the letter Z on the camp map. They followed the map closely, but to Mother’s growing frustration, couldn’t seem to find “the damned thing” anywhere. With just twenty minutes left, she stopped the leader of a small tour group standing at the center of the camp.
Pardon me, she said, can you direct
me to the gas chambers?
Ah, he said, no problem, we were just heading there ourselves.
He clapped his hands to get the group’s attention.
This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen, he said.
He led them to a small patch of grass at the far side of the camp, where they gathered around him in a tight, solemn circle. It was silent for a while, as the visitors let the reality of the horrors of what happened here, on this very spot, only a few short decades ago, sink into their minds and tear at their hearts.
This, said the leader of the tourist group, is where thousands of men, women, and children were systematically murdered.
One woman began to cry. Her husband put his arm around her.
Where? asked Mother.
Right here, said the group leader.
Where?
Here. Where you’re standing.
Where’d they go? she asked.
They died, he said with irritation.
Not the people, said Mother, the gas chambers.
They knocked them down.
Who?
The SS, he said.
Sons of bitches, she said. Still they torture us.
The guide nodded.
One of the visitors placed his hand on his head and made a blessing in Hebrew. Everyone closed their eyes and when he finished, they nodded and said: Amen.
After a moment, Mother said, Are there ovens at least? The trip shouldn’t be a total waste?
The guide pointed them to the infirmary, in the basement of which were half a dozen steel crematoriums built into the foundation wall. Mother had Kugel stand in front of one of the ovens for a photo.
Open it, she said to him. So we can see.
Kugel reached over, pulled the heavy door open, and faced the camera.
What are you doing? she asked.
Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel Page 15
