Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel

by Shalom Auslander

  That’s not true.

  It is true.

  It isn’t.

  Kugel could understand her anger at the situation, but he couldn’t understand her anger toward him. What options did he have? Even if he wanted to throw Anne Frank out, Mother would never let him. And Mother was almost dead herself, the doctors all but guaranteed it. It would all be over soon. What better indicator of that was there than a brand-new deathbed?

  How much did it cost? she asked.

  I can return it.

  How much did it cost?

  He told her.

  She slapped his face, hard, and stormed away.

  I can return it, he said.

  The mattress and box spring stayed on the roof of Kugel’s car overnight and into the next morning, when Pinkus agreed to come over and help bring them up to the attic; with his injuries, Kugel simply couldn’t carry them alone. Mother, busy with her scrapbook, couldn’t help, and Bree, furious, wouldn’t. They left him alone there that morning, and for that he was glad—Bree took Jonah to day care, and Mother went along to do some shopping.

  She should have some fresh bedding, said Mother.

  Kugel waited on the front porch for Pinkus. The mattress, tied to the roof of the car, made him think of refugees. It made him think of fleeing. Where would they go if something happened?

  If what happened?

  He remembered reading something about papers, about needing papers—people in Holocaust books and movies were always worrying about their papers: getting them, not getting them, getting them when it was too late, getting them in the nick of time, forging them, hiding them, losing them. Did he even have papers? What were papers, anyway? Papers like what, like a passport? Papers like a birth certificate? So many people had trouble with these papers, it was the stories where people had their papers that always surprised Kugel. Really, you have papers? How did you know you were supposed to have papers? Who gave you the papers? Did Bree have papers? Did Jonah have papers? Did they need papers?

  iPod (headphones/charger)

  EpiPens

  Zyrtec

  Papers (?)

  He knew it, he hated to admit, from the very first time his mother showed him footage of the corpse piles at Dachau. That was his first thought: I wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t the survivor type. He was a succumber. A perisher. A plotzer. He never did get on that plane from LA. He had no idea how to get out of quicksand. Bree was a survivor. Bree was an overcomer. Bree would be out of the quicksand, showered, and changed before Kugel ever got a footing. Kugel hoped Jonah had some Bree in him. More Bree, less Kugel. He might make it then. But Kugel? Never. He wouldn’t stand a chance. He would kill himself. He would lose his mind. He couldn’t withstand a day of Auschwitz, not an hour, not a minute. And brother, Auschwitz happens.

  Toodle-oo.

  Canada.

  He’d probably go to Canada, assuming that whatever it was that was going on here wasn’t going on there. But that was what Otto Frank thought, wasn’t it? That was Otto’s plan. Northward Ho hadn’t exactly worked out for him, had it?

  Nowhere Ho, that’s what Kugel wanted. Him, Bree, and Jonah, in his car, flat out, pedal to the metal on the Nowhere Highway, singing songs and stopping at drive-thrus.

  Are we almost there, Dad?

  Almost, buddy, almost.

  He didn’t even have roof racks, Kugel thought, looking at his car. Jesus Christ, what kind of an idiot in this world doesn’t have roof racks? He remembered a legend he had been told in Hebrew school, of an angel that visits the baby inside the womb; the angel sits with the child and teaches him all the wisdom of the world, everything he will ever need to know to survive; then, just before birth, the angel presses his fingertip against the baby’s upper lip, leaving behind a small indentation and removing everything he has been taught. Kugel could never understand the point of that, but now, he thought, he knew exactly what the angel must say to every child about to embark on a life on earth: Listen up, kid: roof racks.

  You don’t escape genocide in a sedan. You don’t escape anything in a sedan. A sedan was just asking for trouble. He should trade it in for an SUV. Maybe a Jeep.

  Military-like.

  Prepared.

  A list.

  Listen up, kid: four-wheel drive.

  And don’t order the fish.

  At last Pinkus arrived. It took the two of them the better part of an hour to drag the mattress, box spring, and metal frame up the stairs and squeeze them through the narrow stairwell of the attic. Pinkus left for work, and Kugel set about putting together the frame and setting up the bed.

  When it was done, he lay down on it and looked at the roofing nails pointing down at him. He heard a slight shuffling behind the wall of boxes, and then that grim, creaky voice.

  What the hell, asked Anne Frank, is that?

  You’re welcome, said Kugel.

  I don’t want it.

  Don’t mention it, said Kugel. It’s a quality product.

  Take it back.

  It’s not for you. It’s for my mother.

  Then put it in her room.

  Silence.

  Do you have any money? he asked.

  More shuffling, then a heavy groan, as if she were lying back down on her pile of blankets.

  The first Jewish homeowner in sixty years, Anne Frank said, and he wants to charge me rent. Perfect.

  Kugel looked down at his right arm. He was beginning to get a rash of some kind. He scratched it with the cast on his left arm, then felt more itching around the base of his neck.

  How’s the book coming? he asked.

  There was no answer.

  How did you get out, he asked.

  Silence again.

  I asked you a question, he said.

  Kugel sat up, swung his feet off the side of the bed, and pressed his clenched fist into his forehead.

  Maybe he should kill her, after all.

  Who would know?

  He tried to control his anger.

  Hitler was an optimist.

  Monkeys are assholes.

  Roof racks.

  Father, I something something my something.

  I’ve been reading, said Kugel. About you.

  He’d ordered and read them all, looking for answers: all the testimonies of Anne Frank, the histories, the biographies, the martyrologies, the hagiographies. You might also like, said Amazon, Rwanda: Portrait of a Genocide, Pol Pot’s Bloody Reign, and The Starving of the Ukraine in Words and Pictures.

  Mazel tov, said Anne Frank. Reading is fundamental.

  People saw you, said Kugel.

  Fucking Spinoza.

  In the camp, he continued. They saw you. You were sick. You were dying.

  He stood and walked toward the wall of boxes.

  People, he said. Numerous people. They saw you. Anne Frank.

  Silence.

  You were dead, Anne. Stone cold.

  He stood at the wall, waiting, breathing through his nose, his hands on his hips.

  Ach, said the old woman behind the wall. I’m sick of all that Holocaust shit.

  Kugel kicked out with his good leg, sending a section of the wall crashing to the ground. The broken arm, the job, the rash, Bree, Jonah, the tenant, the finances—it all bubbled over. He shouted as he kicked over another section of the western wall, then another. Anne scurried through the shadows, hiding deep in the dark eaves as Kugel picked up a nearby broom in his good hand and began swinging it at the boxes on the two remaining walls, shouting and screaming and raising the broom overhead again and again as he smashed her boxes, her lamp, her table; everything was destroyed, the kitchen overturned, the bed quilts scattered; Anne Frank cowered in the eaves, her bony hand clenched in a feeble fist, and at last Kugel’s rampage stopped, and he stood there, exhausted. He stayed like that for a few moments, threw the broom to the floor, turned, and went to the attic stairs.

  I was dying, said Anne Frank.

  I don’t care, said Kugel.

  Ev
eryone was, said Anne Frank.

  Finish your book, said Kugel, and get out.

  Auschwitz was different, she continued. Auschwitz was a factory—a death factory, yes, but precise, orderly.

  Kugel stopped at the stairs.

  Belsen, though, Anne Frank continued, was a toilet. That was the idea of Belsen, you see, the whole concept. Filth and disease. Bodies lay everywhere, unburied. They were dying faster than they could get rid of them. I lay there on the wooden bed beside the door to our bunker, beside Margot, shivering despite the heat every time the door opened. She was dead, I don’t know for how long, and I waited, hopefully, for death to come for me. But it never did. My fever broke. The blissful freedom of my delirium vanished and I was a prisoner again in my own sanity. I decided to remain with the dead. I didn’t move, I don’t know for how long. The other prisoners, thinking we were both dead, carried us outside the bunker and laid us down on the ground beside the other corpses. Again I didn’t move. After some time there, I dared to let one eye creep open and realized that some of the other dead were not—that others there were doing the same thing as I, pretending to be dead; we spotted one another—a corpse who suddenly seemed to move, or whom you caught, for a moment, looking at you before quickly shutting her eye. At night, in the safety of the dark, some of the other non-dead would rise and move quietly about the yard, attempting to find some bread or water, and in the morning, before the dark lifted, they returned, bringing with them a piece of a turnip or crust of bread to the others they knew to be faking. A Sisterhood of the Dead. The threat of the SS loomed as ever, but the greater threat was that of the starving prisoners who had taken to eating parts of the dead—cutting off a nose, a tongue, to stay alive one more hour, one more day. I watched such a thing happen to a woman who had brought me a turnip one morning—in the middle of the night, a starving figure approached, knelt over her body, and tore her ear off, shoving it desperately into its mouth. The woman, though, didn’t move, didn’t cry out; only when the figure scurried off did she roll to her side, the side of the bloody ear, because bleeding might give her away, and I heard her whimper softly. That much grief she allowed herself. In earlier days, it would only be an hour or so before they dragged a dead body to the mass graves; we had heard, though, in past weeks, that the war was coming to an end, that the Russians and British were already on German soil; we often heard such rumors before, but the SS were beginning to behave strangely, like frightened birds, neglecting their duties—even the sacred roll call was sometimes skipped—and it seemed perhaps that the rumors this time were true. Once the dead piled up, any fool could see that it would be safer to be among them; the SS officers were more concerned with their own escape than with burial or cremation. Many of the officers dressed in civilian clothes and simply left, walked away, and I began to think of escape. We had been warned when we arrived at Belsen that escape was impossible, that even if you got past the guards and dogs and electrified gates, the roads around the camp were laid with mines, but from where I lay, I could see that the trucks and cars outside the gate drove safely in and out without incident. I lay there next to my sister’s corpse for two full days, and one night, as a transfer was taking place, I took my chance and stood, wobbling at first, for I hadn’t stood or eaten in some time, and I ran as best I could for the gate, using an exiting supply truck to shield me from sight. My sister was dead, my mother was dead, I assumed my father was, too. I waited for the bullet to strike me in the back; I waited for the mine explosion to tear me in half; the grenade, the dogs. But they never came. I ran through the woods, with no idea where I was going or why. I don’t remember how long I ran. At nights I pressed on, in the daytime I covered myself with leaves or hid beneath rocks and slept. One night, as I pressed through the woods, I came upon an old farmhouse. I hid among the bushes, not moving, watching, and when at last the sun rose, the man of the house came outside, got into his car, and drove off; soon after, his wife and young daughter did the same. I waited until I was certain they were gone, and I ransacked the place. I found a cloth laundry bag in the bathroom and filled it with everything I could: clothing, food, medicine. I thought, perhaps, I was dreaming, hallucinating. I washed myself in their sink, changed into some of the daughter’s clothing—she was much younger than I, but I was very thin at the time, and they fit me. A new dress, it had been so long. I grabbed my sack of provisions and ran out the front door onto the front porch . . . and then I stopped. I froze. I didn’t want to go out there again, Mr. Kugel. The world seemed enormously cruel and dangerous. I had only vague memories of life before war; the only place I could ever remember feeling safe was the attic in Amsterdam, that tiny, stifling annex with Margot and Father and Mother. So I turned around, went back inside, climbed upstairs, and hid in their attic. It was a nice attic, not much different from this one. How happy I felt, how safe. The owners found me a few days later, and they brought me food and water and clothing. They hated themselves, you see, and so they took pity on me. Yes, yes, I know, pity is contempt; but you take what you can get. Years later, when they moved to America, they arranged for my own safe passage, too, through a number of admittedly illegal means. The husband died and soon after, the wife grew ill, and she arranged to move me to a new family, a new attic, and so I went, here and there, house to house, family to family—a Polish family first, for a short time, then an elderly Austrian couple—until finally I came here, thirty or forty years or so ago, where the Messerschmidts took over my care. I have been the blessed beneficiary of sixty years of humanity’s guilt and remorse, Mr. Kugel. Did you like the part about the cannibals and the ear? Or the part about the tiny dress that fit my emaciated body? These are true details, I assure you, but I know to emphasize them; I’m not a fool; I know of guilt myself, Mr. Kugel. My sister died beside me. My mother died, my friends. I survived. That’s not easy, either. Perhaps it’s true that I am seeking to have it both ways; I want to be Anne Frank without the Holocaust, but I use the Holocaust to subsist, to get what I need: shelter, food, a place to work. To that I plead guilty. But would you have let me stay here if I hadn’t told you who I am? I doubt it very much. I’m a survivor, Mr. Kugel—not of this war or that, but as a type. I survive. I do what I have to. I survived death in my youth, and I’ve been surviving life ever since.

  Kugel waited a moment and headed down the attic stairs.

  Tell me, Mr. Kugel, called Anne Frank. Have you really not read my diary?

  No, he said.

  Do you mind if I ask why not?

  He got to the bottom of the stairs and turned around.

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

  Kugel folded the stairs and thought, as he closed the attic door, though it was certainly possible he was wrong, that he heard Anne Frank laughing.

  26.

  BREE TOOK A JOB at Mother Earth’s Bounty; the store needed some extra help for the upcoming July Fourth weekend, and a friend from her writers’ group had put in a good word with the store manager (Think of this, she had said to Bree, as your main character’s dark night of the soul, after which she emerges into a newer and brighter phase of life). The pay wouldn’t cover the loss of Kugel’s income, but they could continue their health insurance and keep from sinking too deep into debt if they could rent the two rooms, and maybe even the attic, without too much delay. Of equal importance was the employee discount that would help with their grocery bill; they were feeding themselves, Jonah, Mother, and Anne Frank on a salary that was barely enough to pay for just one of them.

  Kugel felt terribly guilty about the situation, and wondered if it might be better if Bree left for a short while, and perhaps stayed in Mother’s Williamsburg apartment, until he got back on his feet. Any free time she’d had for writing was, for the time being, gone, and for that Kugel felt the worst. The feeling of tension between them was great; Bree spoke infrequently to Kugel, only to keep up appearances before Jonah and to discuss their dwindling finances.

  To complicate matters even more,
there had been no way for Kugel to explain to Pinkus why he was moving a queen-size mattress and bed frame into the attic without telling him about Anne Frank. Pinkus, although expressing a fair degree of skepticism in the validity of the old woman’s story, subsequently told Hannah. For Hannah, her own belief or doubt was irrelevant; if Mother believed it was Anne Frank—or that the lamp shade was her father or the soap her aunt—and if that belief had invigorated Mother and given her life, that was more than enough for Hannah. Whether she was or wasn’t Anne Frank, said Hannah, was beside the point; she had made her way to this house for a reason, and that reason was to make Mother’s last days vibrant and meaningful. For that alone she deserved their assistance. So Friday afternoon, Hannah moved into the vacated room next to Mother’s, to both help her with the poor woman in the attic and to spend some time with her before she died. Pinkus joined Hannah, and at night, in their bedroom, they made loud, vulgar attempts at procreation, the sounds and dialogue of which drifted up through the heating ducts, emerging at Kugel’s bedside, where he and Bree lay separated by piles of spreadsheets and mountains of Holocaust books, until at last, after what seemed like hours, with a loud cry, one or another of the never-to-be parents announced, with great fanfare, the completion of their latest, greatest attempt at making one more Kugel.

  Mother, meanwhile, had been spending her time in the attic, fixing the damage Kugel had caused to Anne’s walls—My own son, she said, attacking Anne Frank. You want Elie Wiesel’s address? Maybe you could trash his bedroom, too?—and setting up the bed Anne Frank didn’t want and refused to use. Mother dressed the bed with pink sheets and pillowcases, and laid a white down comforter on top of them; she hung a pink ruffle sash around the bottom of the bed, on either side of which she placed two small white end tables, complete with turned legs and floral drawer pulls. Kugel noticed as well that, whereas initially Mother would go up to the attic without giving too much thought to her dress, she had begun of late dressing rather formally before ascending the attic stairs: dresses, blouses, shoes cleaned and shined. Soon she was covering her hair before going up, sometimes with just a simple white lace doily, sometimes with a fur felt hat and matching gloves, expressing displeasure with Kugel (though never in a raised voice; she only whispered when near the attic, or when ascending or descending the attic stairs) that he was dressing for his own visits in so common a manner.