Is that what you’re wearing? To visit Anne Frank? Sweatpants? Dungarees? To visit Anne Frank, that’s how you dress?
Sunday afternoon, Kugel took Jonah to the Stockton Independence Day parade; the police closed off the main street to through traffic, and the townspeople packed the sidewalks, waving flags and blowing into noisemakers as the elderly war veterans slowly walked by.
Sixty years earlier and a few thousand miles west, thought Kugel, and I’m in a whole different story. It’s Hitler marching through town instead of the Stockton Old Timers’ Band; it’s swastikas instead of stars and stripes.
God Bless Germany.
Three cheers for the red, white, and black.
A black silhouette of the Battle of the Somme and the words Never Forget, in blood red.
Crowds worried Kugel. We’re communal people, Pinkus had once said to him, we draw together as one; it is one of our most beautiful defining attributes.
So do monkeys, thought Kugel.
So do coyotes.
So do wolves.
Nowhere Ho.
Wilbur Senior was given the seat of honor in the mayor’s parade car, right beside the mayor himself.
We love ya, Senior, the people called.
You’re a good man, Senior.
Go get ’em, Senior.
Senior smiled through his grief and waved to the crowd. Even the various political protesters, stationed on corners along the parade route, cheered to see Senior. God, after all, had never said anything about the sins of the sons being passed to the fathers. As soon as he had passed by, though, they returned to their angry fist shaking and sign waving, calling attention to the plight of the Native Americans past and the victims of wars present. Protagonists, antagonists, nobody could decide. They were all agonists, though, that much they knew for certain.
According to John, Jesus’ last words weren’t Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. According to John, Jesus’ last words were this:
It is finished.
Or, Get me out of here.
Or, Feh.
Matthew and Mark didn’t want to get involved in the whole Luke/John/Jesus last-words argument: both just agree that Jesus said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? at some point while on the cross, but not as last words, even though those would have been better last words than the last words that either Luke or John claimed (he ripped them off from David, of course, but there aren’t that many good last words to go around).
A little fire.
A little rage.
Scream when you burn, said Bukowski.
Or when you’re nailed to a cross.
Well, that’s life for you, thought Kugel: You spend all your life thinking of the perfect last words to say, and nobody even bothers to write the damn thing down.
Monday morning, a Sergeant Frankel from the police department phoned. Sergeant Frankel informed Kugel that there was nothing to be concerned about, but that the arsonist had made a third attempt the previous night at burning down the farm on Sawmill Road; as a precaution, and only as a precaution, the sergeant was phoning the owners of the remaining half dozen or so Messerschmidt farms to make sure everything was okay, and to assure them that the full force of the Stockton Police Department was on the case.
Should I be worried? Kugel asked.
You should only worry, said Sergeant Frankel, about the things you can control.
If I could control them, said Kugel, they wouldn’t worry me.
Exactly, said Sergeant Frankel.
Winston Churchill’s last words were this: I’m so bored with it all.
No use, wrote Van Gogh in his suicide note, I shall never be rid of this depression.
Good-bye, wrote Sid Vicious.
Keep it short. To the point. Get in and get out. Less chance of typos that way. Kugel thought that might be his perfect ending: for he who had spent his life reading, surrounded by books and incapable of shaking his begrudging respect for the written word, he who had spent so much time and consideration trying to come up with the perfect final phrase, that set of words that said so much in so little, the best last thing anyone ever said, and then, in writing that perfect thought in his suicide note, to misspell it.
It is finushed.
Good-bye cruel werld.
Fuck all of you mothfuckers.
That night, Kugel and Bree sat in bed, trying to ignore the sounds of forced passion coming from Hannah’s bedroom. Bree was crunching numbers, Kugel was reading about the liberation of Buchenwald. At last the sounds of sex came to an end, only to be replaced by the sounds of Mother, alive and suffering: oy, ow, my back, ungh, feh, fart, belch, oy.
Here she lies. Big surprise.
Bree sighed and shook her head at the numbers, and began to explain to Kugel exactly how much trouble they were in.
We owe another mortgage payment in two weeks, she said. We still haven’t paid the last one.
Twenty full-page photographs inside, promised the cover of the Buchenwald book.
Now more ghastly.
Twenty percent more depressing.
Page seven of the promised twenty was the one of Smiling Man.
We can borrow the money from Jonah’s college fund, said Bree, but that will only get us to September. The food costs are killing us.
Maybe he was religious, thought Kugel. Maybe he was smiling because he believed in God, because he believed there was something after. Maybe he was thinking of his next life. Maybe he was hoping he would come back as candy.
Kugel’s last conversation with Professor Jove concerned suicide. It wasn’t that Kugel was considering it, but he was troubled by how much sense it seemed to make to him, why people didn’t do it more, why they saw it as cowardice. It seemed like a reasonable idea.
I read, Professor Jove told Kugel, of an interesting experiment that had been conducted by a small government agency. It had been determined, by various studies, that the deterrent capability of capital punishment had weakened over time, due to overuse, and that perhaps it could be strengthened once again if there were a way, for those who committed certain crimes—pedophilia, murder, treason of course—to be killed twice. To be put to death, or something close to it, and then, in a sense, brought back, only to be killed again. A large sum of money was granted for research and development, and soon enough, a method was devised, using certain chemicals injected at precise moments into the condemned’s arms, neck, and chest, to put him to death, and then, after a time, to bring him back. A prison was chosen—notorious was it for the brutality of its prisoners and, consequently, its guards—and on a certain day, a criminal, previously sentenced to death, was selected, and strapped into this machine. As the nature of the punishment was not just punitive but preventative, the prison officials also gathered together many of the other inmates to witness the proceedings, in order, of course, to dissuade them from committing this or any crime ever again. The warden informed the prisoners, moreover, that certain crimes might be punishable not by two deaths, but by three deaths, or four deaths, or more; there was no limit to the agony they were about to witness. With that he flipped a switch, and the hideous machine whirred to life, and a moment later the prisoner seized, arched his back, and collapsed, dead. His body twitched; silence filled the room as the prisoners realized this had not been an idle threat. The warden smiled to see their fear, knowing as he did that it was the key to discipline and control. The machine ticked off the prescribed amount of time, whirred again, and the prisoner jolted, his back arched, and he snapped forward again, and, dazed, a moment later, he opened his eyes, which were filled with terror and agony. The warden readied the switch to put the poor man to death again; he hesitated though, for effect, wanting the other prisoners to appreciate just how terrified this once-terrifying man had become. And it is here that the experiment went terribly wrong, for this prisoner, whose life can only be described as nasty and brutish and not nearly short enough, turned to the warden and began to cry, begging not, as the warden expected, t
o be allowed to live, but rather to be sent back, pleading to be put once more, for a final time, to death. It was so beautiful, he cried. So peaceful, so light, so free, free of this, of you, of me. And the prisoner began to beg: Please, Mr. Warden, sir, please send me back, take my life, if you have an ounce of compassion left, kill me now without hesitation. The other prisoners, seeing this, and having always known only respect for this prisoner, began to beg for the same—for death. The warden grew furious and flipped the switch, instantly putting the man to death. Get them the hell out of here, he grumbled to the guards. The prisoners were led back to their cells, and in the following days, many killed themselves in whatever manner they could—hanging themselves in their cells, overdosing on whatever contraband they could find, flinging themselves onto the electrified fence that surrounded the prison yard. The program was decried an absolute failure and the warden’s stature was greatly diminished.
Wouldn’t that show, asked Kugel, that hope is a positive thing?
I can’t imagine, said the professor, that anything that inspires men to take their lives can be said to be positive. We also don’t know what that prisoner was actually experiencing. Was it true death? Was it the afterlife, or just some stray electrical pulses—that’s all we are, after all—bouncing around his brain in the moments before they ceased completely? The story, however, doesn’t end there. The warden, you see, being somewhat crafty in the field of punishment and human suffering, did eventually find an effective use for the machine. It was some time later, and a new prisoner arose, more feared than even the last and who knew no fear himself, who was a never-ending source of trouble for the warden and his staff, and upon whom no amount of punishment could elicit change. The warden then remembered the machine and had an idea: He ordered a room built to his exact specifications in the center of the prison—the walls and floors were covered in soft padding, the ceiling constructed from an iron mesh screen—and as soon as it was completed, he ordered the prisoner strapped into the machine and put to death. Once again, the prisoners were gathered around, once again the machine whirred to life, and once again, the prisoner, dead, then revived, began to beg, as the other had, to go back, to be put to death again. At this point, the warden stood, faced the assembled prisoners, and said, in a clear and loud voice: Let this be a lesson to you all. With that the prisoner was removed from the machine and dragged, kicking and screaming, into the padded room at the center of the prison, where there was no possible way for him to kill himself and where his screams of agony traveled freely through the screen ceiling, sending dread and horror down the spine of every man who heard them. By giving him hope for something after death, the warden had, in effect, sentenced this poor man to life.
Kugel looked down at Smiling Man. Maybe he hoped. Maybe he knew his life sentence was nearing an end. Kugel thought of the fawn. He thought of Jonah. He thought that if you’re lucky enough to live in the eye of the storm, maybe you should just live it up. Maybe the people who had lived in the storm would be pissed off to learn that you hadn’t, would be disgusted that you wasted your whole damned eye worrying about the storm to come.
Kugel got out of bed and looked out the window.
Are you even listening to me? Bree asked.
Was Wilbur out there? Kugel wondered.
He held up his middle finger, just in case he was.
Fuck you, motherfucker, said Kugel.
Excuse me? said Bree.
And then Jonah screamed, a piercing, terrified scream, a nightmare scream of panic and fear.
Kugel looked at Bree, too stunned to immediately move. Jonah never screamed like that. He screamed again, and that tore them from their shock. Kugel raced out the door, Bree right behind him, into the darkened hall.
If she’s laid one finger on him, he thought, I’ll fucking kill her.
27.
JONAH WAS SHAKING VIOLENTLY as Bree held him in her arms. His body heaved with every sob.
I heard a monster, he wept.
When Kugel was young, Mother told him that the way to survive a gas chamber is by urinating on a handkerchief and holding it over your mouth and nose when the gas starts coming out. Kugel had no idea if that was true. If it was, and you didn’t do it because you didn’t want to piss on a rag and hold it against your face for no reason, you’d die for a pretty stupid reason. If it wasn’t true, and you tried it and it didn’t work, that would actually make the death even worse, if that can be imagined, because now you didn’t just die in a gas chamber, you died in a gas chamber with a piss-soaked rag in your face.
Should he tell Jonah that trick?
How could he?
How could he not?
What if it worked?
What if it didn’t?
Bree gently rocked Jonah in her arms. There is a point at which anger cools and becomes acceptance, and at that point, it is no longer even necessary to express one’s rage; it is simply no longer worth the effort. This was the point, it seemed to Kugel, that Bree had now reached, as she didn’t even glare at him, didn’t grit her teeth or move away; she just rubbed Jonah’s back, her eyes closed, whispering, Shh, shh, it’s okay.
Which is exactly, Kugel thought, what he’d told the fawn.
Kugel tried to rub Jonah’s back—the boy was wearing his favorite SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas, and SpongeBob’s joy seemed, to Kugel, entirely out of place—but the boy moved away from him. Children notice everything, and Kugel’s heart broke to think that Jonah understood in general what was happening, if not in the specifics: that his father was fucking up. SpongeBob’s father had done a good job. SpongeBob was happy, confident, secure. It was hard to say what kind of job Patrick’s father had done—perhaps he had mercifully dropped him on his head—but it was clear that Squidward’s father was a failure. Squidward was bitter, angry, jealous. He didn’t want to be Mr. Squidward.
There’s no such thing as monsters, Kugel said.
Yes, there is! Jonah shouted. I heard it!
Okay, said Kugel. Okay.
Mother hurried into the bedroom, tying her robe.
I heard a scream, she said.
It’s okay, said Kugel with a nod to the ceiling. Jonah heard a monster.
Mother kissed Jonah on the head, rubbed his arm, and said, That’s not a very nice thing to say, is it?
Mother, said Kugel.
At that moment, a sound filled the room that did indeed sound like that of a monster—a loud roar, a retch—and everyone jumped. It came again, and Kugel looked up.
It was Anne Frank, he knew. And it sounded, God help him, like she was vomiting into the vents.
Jonah began to scream. Bree held him tightly, grabbed his blanket, and hurried out of the room.
Goddamn it, muttered Kugel.
He turned to go up to Anne.
It isn’t her fault, Mother begged, grabbing Kugel’s shirtsleeve. She’s old, she’s not well. My God, what that woman . . .
Kugel tore himself free and stormed into the hall, pulled down the attic stairs, and stamped heavily up them.
It was hot in there again, humid; the air felt heavy, and the attic stank of vomit and shit; Kugel gasped as he entered, nearly getting sick himself. Was this what he had allowed his home to become? He didn’t see her at first, all he saw was that she had removed the protective grate from the vent; vomit splattered the floor around it and coated the walls of the duct inside.
He pulled his shirt over his nose, and found her behind the western wall, curled in the fetal position on her mound of tattered blankets, eyes closed, a second and even larger pool of vomit beside her bed.
Anne, he said softly.
She didn’t move.
Should I call someone? he asked.
She opened her eyes for a moment but made no answer before closing them once again.
Should I call? he asked again. Who should I call? Anne, I don’t . . . who should I call?
He pulled the blanket from the bed and covered her with it, thinking perhaps that she was cold. S
hould he call a doctor? How? Where? He uncovered her, thinking that perhaps she was too warm. He stood there a while, stupidly, and then she retched again, and Kugel jumped backward.
I’ll get a bucket, he said. I’ll get some tea.
He hurried down the stairs, his leg aching, and he passed Bree in the hallway.
He’s asleep, said Bree.
She’s dying, he said.
He brought her up a cup of tea and a flask filled with hot water. He placed them beside her and opened one of the windows to let in some fresh air. He went back downstairs, got a bucket, some rolls of paper towels, and some cleaner. Mother paced nervously in the hallway.
Should I go to her? she asked.
Give her some space, he said.
Is she okay?
She’ll be fine.
Maybe I can just go to her.
Mother, said Kugel. Please.
It took Kugel some time to clean the vomit out of the vent and ducts. To clean beside her bed, he needed to move aside all the boxes from the western wall—using just his one good hand—and then, kneeling beside her sleeping form, mop it up as best he could. He left the bucket beside her, along with the roll of paper towels. He made a note to get another board and nail it down, too, over the vent. Afterward, he slid the boxes back into place, and switched on the small lamp beside the unused bed.
Tap if you need anything, he said. Anne? Tap if you do.
He climbed back down from the attic, but left the attic stairs down, just in case.
Just in case of what?
Just in case.
It was two o’clock in the morning.
And Bree and Jonah were gone.
28.
IN THE MORNING, Kugel went outside to Mother’s garden with a bag full of fruits and vegetables, though he could hardly afford them now. He had been as consistent as possible in leaving produce out for her every morning—there was something in the ritual, any ritual, in which he had begun to take some comfort—but he had been less so with regard to gathering it back up each evening. Now the meats, vegetables, and fruits from the previous week were rotting and turning brown; many were covered with ants and maggots. Kugel didn’t bother to kick the old aside; he simply covered the old with the new, and moved on.
Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel Page 22
