Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel

by Shalom Auslander

  What?

  Stop smiling.

  Oh.

  Look into the oven. Not all the way in, Solomon, just with your eyes.

  Like this?

  Sadder. Good. Now get one of me.

  They hurried back to the train, Kugel again walking quickly to keep up with Mother’s furious gait.

  I hope you’re happy, she said once they had taken their seats. You ruined the whole concentration camp for me, you know that? You ruined the whole damn camp.

  Kugel felt bad. She had been so looking forward to it.

  We saw the ovens, though, he offered. Those were pretty cool.

  She waved her hand at him in disgust and looked out the window.

  Ah, she said, never mind. I’m sure I’ll see the inside of a gas chamber before long. I’m sure they’re already building them, getting them ready.

  Who? he asked.

  What’s the difference?

  She lay back, closed her eyes, and went to sleep. And that’s when he looked at her and thought, instantly, of her tombstone:

  MOTHER

  Here she lies.

  Big surprise.

  Now, he thought as he lay in his bed, I just need one for myself. And for Mother to drop dead.

  I shouldn’t have thought that, he thought.

  At least I didn’t say it.

  But you thought it.

  That’s not as bad.

  It’s bad, though.

  There it was again. That sound.

  Maybe it was just the wind.

  It was probably just the wind.

  Kugel crept quietly from bed, knelt on the floor, and pressed his ear against the cold metal vent.

  Anne? he whispered.

  I’m hungry.

  Mother? he whispered.

  I’m hungry, Mother repeated.

  Mother, go to sleep.

  I’m hungry. Can you bring me a little something?

  Kugel looked over his shoulder to check on Bree, who stirred in her sleep, rolled onto her side, and pulled the quilt over her head.

  I’m hungry, Mother called.

  Go get something, then.

  I’m frightened.

  Mother had claimed, after he’d found her befouling the heating ducts, that she’d been doing it because she was frightened of the tenant, that she didn’t feel comfortable leaving her room at night, that she often barricaded the door with a chair.

  That’s dangerous, Mother, he had said.

  Not as dangerous as not barricading it, she had replied.

  Bree rolled over again, mumbling in her sleep.

  Will you bring me something? Mother asked.

  Okay.

  Bring me something to eat.

  Okay!

  He’d do anything for a night of silence, a no-groan, no-moan, no-oy night.

  Kugel went downstairs to the darkened kitchen, shone the flashlight out the back door to see if the arsonist was there, gave him the finger in the event that he was, made Mother a plate of cookies and a cup of tea, brought it to her in her room, asked her twice if she needed to go the bathroom while he was there, and, enjoying the silence that followed, climbed back upstairs.

  Sol, he heard Mother call through the hallway vent. Solly, I spilled.

  He pulled the attic stairs down and headed up to check on Anne, hoping to find her picking out cover art and packing up her belongings.

  It was dark up there, the only light visible being the blue-green glow of a computer screen coming from behind the boxes on the western wall. A positive sign.

  Hello? he said softly. Hello?

  A sigh of frustration came from behind the wall.

  Enter, said Anne Frank, the son.

  Kugel noticed the heavy black fabric hung over the windows. He crossed to the window nearest him and tugged on it.

  Your mother, said Anne Frank, in addition to having an inordinate amount of time on her hands, has a rather sepulchral design sense.

  During the day, as Anne slept and Kugel worked, Mother had covered the windows of the attic dormers with heavy black cloth, as, she had read, had been done in the original Frank attic, which left the Kugel attic even darker and more depressing than it had been before. Kugel worried that Mother might be annoying Anne Frank, disturbing her, slowing her down and interrupting her work.

  I’ll talk to her, said Kugel.

  He peered over the wall of boxes; the pile of papers beside the computer didn’t seem to have grown much, if at all.

  It may have even grown smaller.

  He walked back to the window that faced the driveway, looking over the dark cloth Mother had stapled to the frame.

  I’m curious, Anne Frank said. Which do you think it is? Does she not want others to see in, or does she not want me to see out?

  Both, said Kugel. Kind of her whole parenting philosophy, really.

  It’s a funny thing, said Anne Frank. My mother and I never got along very well. We clashed, for any number of reasons. In the end, what brought us closer together was genocide.

  That is funny, said Kugel.

  We cried in that camp, said Anne Frank, and held each other, shivering, dying, and she told me how special I was, and I told her how much I loved her, and we both apologized, again and again, for all the time over the years we had wasted bickering.

  Hilarious.

  What do you imagine would have happened, continued Anne Frank, if she had survived? If we had reunited somewhere in Europe after the war; if we’d gotten a small flat in Paris, Milan, Berlin, somewhere? We’d have killed each other, that’s what, Mr. Kugel. We’d have hated each other more than we ever had before.

  What’s that got to do with my mother? Kugel asked.

  Don’t let death fool you, Mr. Kugel. Death holds no red pen over the decades of life that came before it. It changes nothing. A free man, said Spinoza, thinks of death least of all things. That should be true of the death of others as of his own.

  Kugel pulled on the black cloth covering the window, but it held fast.

  Well, Anne Frank continued as she typed, our elders fail us, more often than not. They should teach us how to live, yes, but more important, they should teach us how to die; teach us that to obsess about death is cowardice, and that to run from death is to run from life.

  She said from her attic, said Kugel.

  You’ll not shame a turtle for its shell, Mr. Kugel, said Anne Frank.

  Silence. Typing.

  I kind of like it up here, Kugel said. It’s got a certain fatalistic charm, a certain je ne sais fucked.

  He pulled again at the fabric, tearing it slightly from the window, and peered outside. Not enough attics in the world, he thought. Not enough attics in the whole goddamned world.

  How’s the book coming? he asked.

  There was no reply for a moment, and then Anne Frank said: I’m sorry to be the cause of such friction in your marriage. I suspect, though, the causes are deeper underlying faults that have nothing at all to do with me.

  Kugel tore the rest of the black fabric from the wall and looked out the window into the darkness below.

  He should really get a dog.

  Yes, he said, you’re right. I suppose we should have discussed how we’d deal with finding Anne Frank in our attic before getting married. Most couples do, but we were in a rush. We had a plan for finding Simon Wiesenthal in the pantry, but this is a whole different—

  Simon Wiesenthal, Anne Frank spat, was full of shit.

  Silence.

  So how’s the book coming? asked Kugel.

  I have a world of characters in my head.

  Mm-hmm.

  A novel has to be given room to breathe, Mr. Kugel.

  Sure.

  Thirty-two million copies, said Anne Frank. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

  So I hear.

  Anything less than that, she added, will be a failure.

  Kugel went to the window on the other side of the attic and tore at that covering as well, though he found he had to ste
p back behind the eastern wall of boxes to do so. It was dark there, and it gave him a strange comfort to be back there, an unfamiliar but welcome sense of safety. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to leave. He grabbed the corner of the black fabric and pulled, but the staples held tight.

  Aren’t you setting the bar a little high? he asked.

  I’ve sold that many before, she said.

  Yeah, but that was . . .

  That was what?

  That was different.

  He pulled again, but his hands slipped. Mother must have used a staple gun over here, and he thought he might have to go downstairs and get a screwdriver.

  Why was that different? Anne Frank asked.

  You died.

  People didn’t buy my book because I died.

  No, of course not. I didn’t mean . . .

  They bought it because of the quality of my prose.

  Of course. I just . . . I don’t think people read so much anymore, that’s all.

  As he stepped backward, he felt something small and stiff crack beneath his shoe, like the shell of a walnut, only larger.

  What is that supposed to mean? she asked.

  He lifted his foot and felt around with the tip of his shoe; he felt many of the shell-like things, and he pulled hard on the fabric to try to get some light in. At last the corner gave slightly, and a small pool of moonlight spilled onto the attic floor.

  Maybe you should do it as a screenplay, he said.

  A screenplay? she said. I am a writer, Mr. Kugel. A prose artist. I create worlds with language, with image, with character. I peer into the abyss and welcome the abyss as it peers into me.

  Mm-hmm, said Kugel, bending down; with a splinter of wood he found beside his foot, he began nudging the items beneath his feet into the nearby moonlight until he could see what they were: here a mound of small white bones, here the severed head of a squirrel, here the eviscerated body of a crow, the burned flesh pulled from its bones.

  Pulitzers, Anne Frank continued, not Oscars. Art is not convenient, Mr. Kugel, art is not safe.

  Kugel stood, his hand over his mouth; the stench was unbearable. He pulled on the black window covering again, moonlight now illuminating a number of small rodent carcasses—mice, squirrels, and what he was sure was the cooked body of the Ambersons’ missing cat, Sunshine. Beside the bodies were a small pile of their heads, torn or cut off, and a pile of innards in various states of decomposition.

  Everyone wants a Van Gogh in the living room, Mr. Kugel, Anne Frank went on, but nobody wants Van Gogh in the living room. It is the price of genius . . .

  Kugel gagged. It made sense, of course; anyone living in attics for that long . . . but the bile rose in his throat, and his head began to spin.

  . . . and I shall gladly pay it, Anne Frank declared.

  Kugel wasn’t listening, he just needed to get away, to get some air, and he staggered away from the wall, fast, away, away—was this in his house? was this him? was this her? was this survival?—his feet stumbling beneath him, and suddenly he was tripping, falling, and the attic seemed to recede into the darkness as he tumbled, backward, down the attic stairs.

  Solomon! called Bree from the bedroom.

  Jonah began to cry.

  20.

  THERE WAS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT—in the days since Kugel had told Mother that Anne Frank was in the attic, he noticed some distinct, troubling changes in Mother’s behavior. To begin with, she had stopped collecting the vegetables Kugel left in her garden each morning. She had, she said with a disconcerting air, far more important things to do now. Kugel continued to put the fruits and vegetables out each morning, regardless, but now he had a second, more tedious chore, that of collecting the same fruits and vegetables again that very evening. And his new injuries weren’t making those chores any easier.

  Most of the bruises Kugel suffered in the fall down the attic stairs were contusions and scrapes, some simple, some severe; his right thigh, from buttock to knee, was covered in a large purple-and-red bruise that ached whenever he put any weight on it. So painful was it to step on that leg that he thought he had broken his ankle, but the X-rays revealed no leg fractures at all, and the doctors gave him some painkillers and a hospital cane to ease the pain of walking. His left wrist suffered the most damage: hairline breaks on two of his metatarsals and a fracture on the end of the radius; he was in a cast from elbow to fingertips, the end of which was shaped like a flat paddle in order to keep his wrist and fingers straight. Thanks to the painkillers, however, it was the first night he’d slept soundly in some time. Still, he found the underlying Christian ethic in emergency rooms troubling: if you suffer enough, you get the Vicodin; if you suffer not as much, you get the codeine; if you suffer not at all, you get Tylenol and a bill. So deep was his slumber that night that when he awoke the following morning, he didn’t recall a single dream, and was grateful for that, too. How wonderful, he thought, to recall not at all.

  Bree was already dressed and out of bed, straightening up the bedroom and putting things away. Kugel groaned in mock agony, hoping for a show of concern.

  Nothing.

  He stood, went to the dresser, took a pill out of the prescription bottle, and once Bree turned in his direction, made a show of lifting it into his mouth and wincing at the excruciating pain that resulted from even that small amount of movement.

  Bree walked past him and out the door.

  Goddamn it, Kugel thought.

  He phoned his office and asked for his supervisor.

  Tampons, said the recorded hold message. Nail clippings. Urine.

  His supervisor wouldn’t be happy about his missing another day, but he was lucky he hadn’t broken his neck, and surely they would at least be relieved to hear that.

  Yes, Kugel said to his supervisor, I know . . . Of course, yes . . . my own fault, really . . . nasty fall, it was, right down the attic stairs . . . The left wrist, sir, yes . . . Ha ha, no, no, that shouldn’t be a problem. Yes . . . yes, these are difficult times, I understand, my clumsiness is not your problem, no . . . Well, it shouldn’t be more than a day, no . . . Yes, tomorrow, of course . . . Thank you, sir, yes.

  He went down to the kitchen and began filling a bag with vegetables for Mother’s garden. He put in a couple of tomatoes and a zucchini.

  Her stupid fault I broke my arm, he thought to himself.

  He put in a handful of strawberries and a package of sliced turkey breast.

  If I hadn’t been up making her tea, I wouldn’t have been up visiting Anne.

  He put in a package of frozen asparagus tips and a plastic tray of California sushi rolls.

  He slid his good arm through the handles of the bag, picked up his cane, and hobbled out to her garden. The whole damned routine was now a much more complicated affair. For each item, he had to step forward, lean the cane against his leg, place the bag on the ground, take out the produce, put the bag back on his arm, give Anne Frank the finger, pick up the cane, take a few more steps, and repeat the whole process. After completing a few steps of this complicated routine, however, Kugel noticed something strange in Mother’s garden: life. A number of young green seedlings were somehow, against all odds, pushing through the top of the soil. At first he thought they were weeds, surely they must be, but the one- and two-leafed shoots were aligned in perfect parallel rows; without Mother’s constant tilling and scraping, they had at last been given a chance to grow.

  Kugel placed the end of his cane on the first shoot, and crushed it into the ground. He did the same with the rest; it took him some time, but after an hour, he was sure they were all dead. He tossed the package of turkey breast to the ground, sprinkled some California rolls around the beds, and limped inside.

  There was a still more troubling change in Mother’s behavior since she had learned about Anne Frank’s presence: she seemed rejuvenated, revived, energized, and this disconcerting liveliness was on display that morning as she buzzed around the kitchen preparing a tray of food for Anne Frank. It tormented
Kugel to see it: she was indefatigable when she was supposed to have been terminal. She strode through the house more quickly, more busily, her posture more upright, with an uncharacteristic sense of purpose and determination. The very same stairs that only days ago caused her to moan in agony, to pause every few steps with a heavy sigh and a hand on the small of her back, she now ascended and descended speedily, without pause, without complaint, with the energy of a woman half her age. In the morning, which was Anne Frank’s evening, Mother removed her trash and dishes from the night before; in the afternoon, as Anne Frank slept, she went with Bree to town, where she purchased food and writing supplies; in the evening, she prepared Anne’s breakfast and coffee and double-checked that she had all she needed for the night of crucial writing that lay ahead.

  On a positive note, Mother’s inexplicable turn for the better concerned Bree as well; over coffee that morning (Have you seen the sliced turkey breast? she had asked Kugel), Bree suggested the change in Mother warranted placing a call to her physician, an eminent geriatric specialist named Dr. Lamb. If Mother was well enough to take care of Anne Frank, Bree figured, maybe she was well enough to take care of herself—maybe she could at last get out of their house, leave them alone; maybe they could at last rent the second room, could at last get on with their lives. As for Kugel, his newfound tolerance for Anne was accompanied by an equal but opposite lack of tolerance for his mother, and he was relieved to have something he and Bree could agree on. So once Mother had finished her breakfast and went back to her room—That scrapbook, she sighed, isn’t going to collect itself—Kugel and Bree sat together at the kitchen table and rang Dr. Lamb’s office.

  Dr. Lamb had first diagnosed Mother many months ago. He was a tall man whom Kugel remembered for his rare, untarnished honesty. As Mother lay resting in the hospital bed, Dr. Lamb had asked Kugel to step into the hallway, in order to keep from upsetting her, and there, with compassionate austerity, he said to Kugel, Your mother is dying. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do for her. We can try to make her comfortable. We can try to minimize her discomfort. We can try to reduce her suffering.

  No, Kugel had answered.

  We just want to make her feel better.