Making her feel better isn’t going to make her feel any better.
Dr. Lamb looked at Kugel with concern.
What will make her feel better? he asked.
Feeling worse, said Kugel.
Dr. Lamb nodded.
I understand, he said. We can stop the pain medication. We can discontinue the antidepressants. We can restrict her desserts, and prescribe hours a day of grueling exercise.
I think she’d like that, Kugel had said.
Kugel put the call on speakerphone; Bree sat with a notepad beside him.
It’s about Mother, said Kugel.
Mm-hmm, said Dr. Lamb. What seems to be the problem?
Well, said Kugel, she seems to be getting . . . I don’t know . . . better.
Better?
Better, yes. She seems very . . . energetic. For someone as close to death as you suggested. You did say “close to.”
I said “brink of.”
That’s right.
I see, said Dr. Lamb. And now you want me to tell you that she’s going to be okay, that she’s turned a corner, that she’s out of the woods? I’m not going to tell you that, Mr. Kugel.
Bree scribbled on the pad: Move out.
Well, no, I wasn’t . . . I was just wondering if you thought she could live on her own again, get back to normal. I think she’d like that.
And you’d like that, too, said Dr. Lamb. For it to be over.
Well, I think she’d be happier. I love her, and just want her to be, you know. Happy.
Mr. Kugel, said Dr. Lamb, the disease your mother has is degenerative; it is not one from which she, nor anyone else, can recover.
Kugel glanced at Bree and raised a hopeful eyebrow, though he knew that more waiting was not the suggestion Bree wanted to hear.
I understand, Dr. Lamb continued, how difficult that can be for a child to accept about a parent. And there are certainly experimental treatments you can try. There are pills and injections and scans and scopes; you can try acupuncture, homeopathy, bioresonance, massage therapy; you can feed her colloidal silver, shark cartilage, monkey brains, and elephant semen. They won’t hurt her. Nor, I can assure you, will they help her. They may temporarily prolong her life, yes; they will also only delay the inevitable while protracting her suffering.
Elephant semen? asked Kugel.
My advice, said Dr. Lamb, is to let the disease take its course. If there were something we could do, we would be doing it; we’re doing everything we can, which is why we aren’t doing anything. There is a time to be born and a time to die. Et cetera.
Energy? wrote Bree on the pad. PARANOIA?
What about all this energy, asked Kugel, and this paranoia?
It is not uncommon, said Dr. Lamb, for sufferers of your mother’s condition to exhibit a certain burst of energy or spirit; unfortunately, this heralds not a recovery but the beginning of the end. A last hurrah.
Kugel glanced at Bree and shrugged.
The paranoia, said Dr. Lamb, would seem to confirm that.
So all we can do is wait? asked Kugel.
Bree shook her head, and folded her arms across her chest.
We can’t go on, said Dr. Lamb, we go on.
And then what? asked Kugel.
Then, fortunately, we drop dead. Yes, at least, at last, there’s that.
It was not the prognosis Bree was hoping for, and with a chilly I’m going to town, she went upstairs to get her purse and keys.
Mother’s paranoia had begun to present itself only recently. Kugel noticed that she’d begun locking the windows at night, and she ceased conversation, whatever the subject of discussion, if either the tenant or Bree so much as entered the room. She was becoming increasingly suspicious—of neighbors who waved and of neighbors who didn’t, of phone callers that hung up, of cars that passed by too quickly (or too slowly, which was even more suspicious) as she walked down the road. But she narrowed her eyes at nobody quite so much as she did at the UPS man, who was arriving these days on a fairly regular basis. Boxes of matzoh and jars of borscht and herring arrived every other day, and books on death camps and how to be your own best editor every day in between; Mother watched him from the bedroom window, from the living room window, from the peephole in the front door.
The now-familiar honk of the UPS truck brought Kugel hobbling quickly to the front room; the arrival of the daily packages infuriated Bree, packages they could ill afford, and Kugel would have liked to be rid of him before she came back down.
Mother was already at the living room window, peering through the blinds. She tutted and shook her head as Kugel limped up behind her.
Not good, she said.
Mother, said Kugel.
We should get her an electric book.
A what?
An electric book.
She was talking about an e-reader.
We’re not getting her an electric book, Mother.
She could download anything she wants, said Mother. This delivery thing is too risky. I don’t like it.
Forget it, said Kugel.
There was no money for an e-reader. There was no money for anything.
He’s onto us, Mother added.
Onto what?
He knows too much. I don’t trust him.
There’s nothing to know, Mother.
The UPS man set the boxes down on the front porch and checked his scanner. Mother’s voice dropped to a whisper and she said, He knows that we get a lot of packages all of a sudden.
And?
What if he puts two and two together?
Two and two equals Anne Frank in our attic?
Mother turned to face him.
That other woman’s been snooping around a bit, too, she said.
That other woman is my wife, Mother.
I don’t trust her.
The UPS man knocked on the door. Kugel went to open it, and Mother followed behind him.
Careful, she whispered as he opened the door.
Morning, said Kugel.
Morning, said the UPS man with a smile. Ouch, he added, looking over Kugel’s various injuries. You get the number of that truck?
You should see the other guy, said Kugel.
The UPS man laughed and handed Kugel the scanner and a stylus he pulled from the pocket of his brown shirt.
That’s far enough, said Mother.
Kugel glanced at her.
Sure getting a lot of books these days, said the UPS man.
I’m a reader, said Kugel.
Oh, me, too, said the UPS man. Thing of the past, though, I’m afraid. Wife got me one of those e-reader things for the holidays this year. It’s something else.
That’s what I hear, said Kugel as he signed for the packages.
Noticed you blacked out your windows up top, said the UPS man.
Mother nudged Kugel.
Drafty, said Kugel.
Yep, said the UPS man. Got to save every penny these days, I’m afraid. Well, I’ll see you folks tomorrow.
I’ll see you, said Kugel.
The UPS man got back in his truck, waved, and headed down the driveway.
He knows, said Mother.
He doesn’t know anything.
He’s probably already reported us.
To who?
Whoever.
Mother, please.
She turned and went back inside. Kugel watched the UPS truck turn down the road with a friendly toot of its horn.
Kugel smiled and waved.
He sure did ask a lot of questions, though, didn’t he?
21.
MOTHER DECIDED TO JOIN Bree on her trip to town. Hannah and Pinkus were coming for dinner, and Bree needed to stop for groceries and meat; Anne Frank needed printing paper, said Mother.
And a microwave, she added.
Kugel walked them to the front door; he was relieved to be getting them out of the house, and to have some time alone with Jonah. It had been a while.
We’re not getting Anne Frank a micr
owave, said Kugel.
Do you know what she eats? asked Mother.
The thought of it still haunted him.
I’m aware of what she eats, he said.
So?
So we’re not getting her a microwave.
Then get her a bed.
A bed?
That woman, said Mother, pointing at the ceiling, sleeps on rags. That will be Anne Frank’s deathbed, thanks to you, will it? A pile of soiled rags?
Bree pressed by without a word and headed for the car.
Mother, said Kugel, we don’t have money for a bed.
She looked at Kugel with great sadness in her eyes.
My mother, she said. Do you know what her deathbed was? A wooden board in Auschwitz. But what could I do? I was a child, you understand, just an innocent child. I wanted to bring her food, but where would I find it? We were all starving, all of us.
Kugel stamped the end of his cane on the wooden floor.
Mother, he said through clenched teeth, surprising even himself, you weren’t in Auschwitz. And neither was Grandma. She died in the cardiac unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, surrounded by her husband and children.
Mother looked at him for a moment, stunned, and then she began to weep. Kugel sighed.
The past, she sobbed. It’s disappearing like so much gossamer before my failing eyes, like a child’s writing is wiped from a . . . from the . . .
She shook her head, trying to jog her memory. Kugel waited a moment before offering, Blackboard?
Mother nodded.
Bree tapped on the car horn.
It’s all disappearing, Mother sobbed.
Lucky you, thought Kugel. He could go for some of that forgetting stuff right about now. Forget her, forget Father, forget it all, just for a day, a weekend. Heaven is a place with no memory, no history, no past; sure, some warm memories would be sacrificed along with the bad, but all in all, an improvement. A step in the right directionlessness.
There’s no money for a bed, Mother.
How can there be no money? Mother asked. She’s Anne Frank. Thirty-two million copies, that’s not exactly small potatoes.
She can’t touch it, Mother.
Why not?
Because she’s dead.
Bree leaned on the horn.
Mother wagged a finger in his face.
When I get home, she said, I’m phoning Alan Dershowitz.
You’re not phoning Alan Dershowitz.
The hell I’m not, Mother called back as she headed for the car. Spineless, just like your father. If you had even half the courage in your whole body as Alan Dershowitz has in one finger.
Mother, Kugel shouted back, you’re not calling Alan Dershowitz. And if you get Anne Frank a microwave, I’m bringing it back.
Which is exactly, Mother said, cinching her coat belt before getting into the car, what Alan Dershowitz would not say.
Kugel gave Jonah a quick lunch of peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk, and after a couple of cookies, took him out back to have a catch.
I’ll be the Yankees, said Jonah, you be the Mets.
Why do I have to be the Mets? asked Kugel. The Mets stink.
Jonah laughed.
Though Jonah was still young, it was obvious to everyone that he was an exceedingly bright child, and his intelligence only exacerbated the guilt Kugel felt for bringing him into the world. It was one thing to have condemned a child to life, that was criminal enough, but life was a sentence more easily served by fools.
Congratulations, the obstetrician should say, your child is an idiot.
Oh, thank you, Doctor. We were so worried.
Not at all. He’s a schmuck.
Too much brain, wrote Gogol, is sometimes worse than none at all.
Perhaps, wrote Dostoyevsky, the normal man should be stupid. Perhaps it is very beautiful, in fact.
Perhaps, thought Kugel, Smiling Man was stupid. Perhaps he was smiling because he was too blessedly dumb to know how completely fucked he was. You wouldn’t call anyone in Buchenwald lucky, but the dumb ones were luckier than the smart ones, the sensitive ones, the aware ones, of that much you could be sure. You didn’t want to be in Auschwitz at all, but you sure as hell didn’t want to be a poet in Auschwitz.
Or Chelmno. Chelmno was bad, too.
With the vegetable garden behind Jonah acting as their backstop, Kugel tossed him the ball. He watched Jonah’s little legs as he ran and chased it into the weeds.
I should have dropped him, thought Kugel. When he was a baby. If I really loved him, I would have picked him up, turned him over, and dropped him on his delicate eggshell skull. I would’ve shaken him. A truly good father, a caring father, a protective father, would sit that child in front of the television set all day and let that sharp, curious mind turn to spongy, uncomprehending, witless mush. It would have been the least I could do. I brought him into this world, didn’t I? I should at least have the courtesy to ensure he go through it in a mindless, drooling stupor like the rest of the goddamned species. Two and a half thousand years later, it was becoming undeniably apparent that an unexamined life is the only one worth living. Examined lives tended to end hanging by the neck in the shower. Life examiners tended to go out sucking on the barrel of a shotgun.
Life: examine at your own risk.
Last words?
Not bad.
The ball hit Kugel in the crotch, and Jonah squealed with glee.
Shh, Kugel said, glancing up quickly at the attic windows.
He didn’t want Anne Frank to hear them, and his concern for her surprised him. He worried that their happiness would make her sad, and wanted to spare her what he imagined was the pain of his joy.
Come on, buddy, said Kugel, let’s go to the side lawn.
Jonah grabbed the ball and ran ahead of him, disappearing around the corner of the house. Kugel wondered why Anne Frank hadn’t contacted her father after the war, once she’d learned that he’d survived. Would he contact his own father if he’d discovered he was alive? He thought that he might. And that Professor Jove would be against it.
The north side of the house was the only side completely hidden from Anne Frank’s view. There was nothing much on this side of the house, though, just a few bramble bushes and a small patch of grass, and Jonah wanted to return to where they had been playing before.
Jonah grabbed the ball and ran, shouting, to the backyard.
Not so loud, called Kugel after him. The neighbors . . .
No poetry after Auschwitz, said Theodor Adorno. How about laughing, though, Ted? How about giggling? How about fucking? Those are much worse than poetry, and poetry was dead anyway (there was a death, at last, you couldn’t pin on the Nazis). Kugel doubted that Anne Frank would mind very much if Jonah sat outside and read a sonnet or two aloud, but he was sure that child’s laughter would cut her to the bone. Perhaps it would remind her of happier days. Whether there had been happier days or whether she could recall them any longer, he was unable to say with any certainty. He didn’t even know that she was unhappy now—disfigured, sure, half-mad, perhaps, but sanity has never been a prerequisite for happiness; it often seemed to be its biggest hurdle—so he couldn’t say for certain that overhearing other people’s happiness would cause her sadness. But he didn’t want to take the chance.
Dad, called Jonah. Hey, Dad, come here.
Kugel walked around the corner of the house, and Jonah motioned him over to something he’d found in the grass. Kugel went over and knelt beside it.
Don’t touch it, said Kugel. Don’t touch it.
There in the tall grass at the side of the house, as if napping peacefully, was the severed head of Sunshine, the neighbor’s missing cat. Kugel looked up at Anne’s window, directly overhead.
Where’s the rest of her? Jonah asked.
I don’t know, said Kugel.
What happened?
Kugel shook his head.
Something must have killed her, he said.
Di
d they hate her?
Kugel shook his head.
Just hungry, he said.
Using a pair of sticks they found lying in the grass nearby, Kugel and Jonah dug a small hole in the ground in which to bury Sunshine’s head. Jonah squatted down beside the cat’s head and lifted it up by its ear.
I don’t want you to die, said Jonah, looking at Sunshine’s face.
I’m not going to die, said Kugel.
Jonah dropped Sunshine’s head into the shallow grave, and together they covered her up. They sat there for a while, talking; Jonah asked Kugel what happened when you died, and where you went, and what it was like. Kugel answered as best he could, covering Sunshine’s head while explaining that some people believe there’s a world after this one where we all meet, and other people believe in reincarnation, where we all come back to life as something else. Jonah looked upset.
Someone once said, Kugel said to Jonah, that a free man thinks of death least of all things.
What does that mean?
How should I know? said Kugel with a smile. Go ask the guy who said it.
Jonah laughed—You’re silly, Dad—and placed a small stone on the grave of Sunshine’s head.
I want to come back as candy, said Jonah.
Candy?
Jonah shrugged.
Everyone likes candy, he said.
When children aren’t saying something incredibly stupid that we in our need for answers decide is incredibly wise, they are saying something that makes you want to lift them up, hold them tightly in your arms, climb up inside an attic, and never, ever come back down.
Joney wouldn’t make it in Auschwitz either, thought Kugel. Not a chance.
22.
AFTER SIX YEARS TOGETHER, Hannah and Pinkus were still childless, though it wasn’t for a lack of dogged, relentless trying; regardless of company or occasion, they were unashamedly physical with each other—perhaps this was because they were still attempting to have children (said Kugel), perhaps it was because they were ashamed of their pathetic previous failures (said Mother)—and it was difficult to find a time when one wasn’t touching the other in some overtly sexual manner, standing close together, adjusting the other’s clothing or playing with the other’s hair. Family members or anyone else unlucky enough to witness these public acts of fore-foreplay either attempted to pretend not to notice or, more commonly, attempted distraction by engaging Pinkus or Hannah in unrelated, prosaic conversation.
Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel Page 17
