Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel

by Shalom Auslander

  Those sons of bitches, she said softly.

  I know, said Kugel.

  Ever since the war.

  It’s okay, Mother, said Kugel, kissing her on her forehead. It’s okay.

  Kugel turned from her and hurried up the stairs, pulling himself up with the banister in the places where the steps had already collapsed. He had no idea how he was going to get back down, but he would think of it later—perhaps by then the firemen would arrive and they could go out through one of the upstairs windows.

  Did he hear sirens?

  He thought he heard sirens.

  They were probably sirens.

  He pulled down the attic door, and black smoke billowed down from above. He climbed the stairs, calling for her, coughing, finding it harder and harder to breathe, to get any air into his lungs at all. The smoke was much heavier up there; he stopped, thought for a moment about going back down, but could not leave her there. He pressed himself up into the attic, trying to stay low to the floor, wasn’t that what he was supposed to do, stay low to the floor, or was it the opposite, he was supposed to stay off the floor? He couldn’t remember, but he remembered that the salesman had said that the Memory Foam Topper was somewhat flammable, and now he saw it burning brightly, a bed of fire, a bed of flames, as if it were more a bed of coals than anything else, a bed in hell, and he wondered if they would possibly take it back now, if he could get a refund, but he doubted it, and Bree would be upset, and he called for Anne again, and suddenly he saw the walls of boxes collapse, and he thought it was from fire, thought she must surely be dead, but through the smoke he saw the figure—was it? yes—of a man, a firefighter, he thought, no, the man had no helmet, no coat. Kugel couldn’t quite make him out, the fire was so hot, the smoke burned his eyes, maybe it was a firefighter, maybe it was Will, was it Will? He didn’t know, but somebody was standing upright, he was smaller than Will, and slight, but he was carrying Anne Frank in his arms, carrying her to the dormer window on the eastern side of the house, and Kugel heard her then, Anne Frank, and she was laughing at him.

  You would have never made it, Mr. Kugel! she called. You would never have lasted five minutes in Auschwitz! I’m a survivor, Mr. Kugel!

  Kugel crawled forward, trying to get to the window, trying to see who was there, maybe it was Professor Jove. Had Professor Jove come at last, or would he say that Kugel shouldn’t even try to survive, that he should give up? What did the bartender say to the chicken? Why did the goat cross the farm? What do you get when you’re on the cross? Ouch. Schmuck. Feh. Nowhere. Tell them I said something. Roof racks. Were those sirens? Did he hear sirens?

  Kugel reached Anne’s sleeping place, the old blankets and quilts burning, flaming, hot, and though she was already at the window and whoever was carrying her had nearly gotten her outside to the roof, Kugel grabbed her laptop and he reached out and he held it to her, and she laughed again.

  No, thank you, Mr. Kugel, she called, I’m sick of that Holocaust shit. I’m going back to my novel, Mr. Kugel, I’m a writer, not some goddamned essayist! Thirty-two million copies, that’s nothing to sneeze at . . .

  . . . and as the man helped her through the window, Kugel caught a glimpse of him, just for a moment, in the sunlight, and he wondered, Could it be, could it really be him, was it even possible, how could it be possible? Kugel strained to push himself up, just a bit, just the littlest bit, to get a better look, but he had no breath, no air, and pulled himself forward onto his knees with the last remaining strength in his burned and bloody body, and he saw him at last, yes, it was, my God, it was him, was it him? Could it be him? And he reached out to him, for help, for saving, but the man turned and left, and Kugel cried out to him, and the words that Solomon Kugel cried out then were the last two words Solomon Kugel ever spoke:

  Alan, gasped Kugel. Dershowitz.

  The flames roared around him, the world turned yellow and orange and black, and there was nothing but fire, and then darkness, and Kugel laid his head down and closed his eyes, for he was very, very tired and he desperately, desperately wanted to sleep.

  Anne Frank? he thought.

  It’s funny.

  EPILOGUE

  EVE ROLLED DOWN her window as she steered her car onto the gravel driveway leading up to the old Herschkopf property, letting the sound of her tires crunching on the loose stone driveway fill the car. She glanced in the rearview mirror at the Cohens—Nick and Sharon—holding hands, sitting close together in the backseat. Sharon turned to Nick and smiled.

  I love that sound, Sharon whispered.

  Nick smiled and kissed her.

  Me, too, he said.

  Here we are, Eve called out with a smile.

  She pulled to a stop underneath the cool shade of the grand oak tree that stood in front of the stately old Victorian; Nick pointed to the tire swing that hung from its branches, and Sharon smiled again. Eve smiled at Sharon, who smiled at Nick, who smiled at Eve.

  Eve had been out just yesterday to rehang the damn thing; it was the fourth tire swing she’d had to replace in as many months. Local kids had cut down the last one on Halloween night; she searched the woods nearby for almost an hour but couldn’t find it, and wound up having to use the full-size spare from her trunk. It would cost her a hundred bucks to replace, but she wasn’t taking any chances with Nick and Sharon; she had been working this sale for three months now, and wasn’t about to lose it over a goddamned radial tire.

  Eve had first met Nick and Sharon last June. The Herschkopf house was the first one she had shown them; it was the very same day, she recalled, that she had spoken for the last time with poor Mr. Kugel, just weeks before that terrible fire took his life. She remembered, too, that Sharon had spoken with Mr. Kugel that day, and as they drove out to the Herschkopf property, Sharon had been irate.

  That man, Sharon had said to her, asked us if he could hide in our attic.

  Your attic? Eve had asked.

  In the event of a holocaust, Sharon had gasped. Can you believe that?

  Well, Eve had said, he’s going through a lot.

  I lost family in the Holocaust, Sharon had said, crossing her arms over her chest. A lot of family.

  Nick put his arm around her shoulders and held her close.

  Sons of bitches, he had said.

  Let’s not talk about the past, Eve had said encouragingly. Let’s talk about the future. Your future.

  All told, this was now their fifth visit to the Herschkopf property. The house was in good condition, but not the condition Sharon and Nick wanted; they loved the exterior but hated the interior; Eve was dealing with a second couple who loved the interior but hated the exterior, and a third who loved the location but hated the house altogether (the idea that there was one single property that would satisfy every selfish, petty, nitpicking human being in the history of the world was enough, in Eve’s opinion, to invalidate the notion of a heaven for all time). Unfortunately, though, the Herschkopf house had been designated historical by the Stockton Preservation Society, so Nick and Sharon were the only couple of the three who could actually do with it what they wanted. But while the Cohens had the financial resources to make the interior changes they wanted, they had heard some horror stories about the stresses of home renovations: couples once deeply in love, now separated or worse, their relationship methodically demolished as their home was painstakingly constructed, leaving behind a two-and-a-half-thousand-square-foot, million-dollar locket for a love that no longer existed.

  Home sweet home, said Eve as she led them through the front doorway. I’ll leave you be.

  Eve waited in the living room as Nick and Sharon toured the house the very same way they had each time before: silently, almost solemnly checking out first the kitchen, then the dining room, nodding, shrugging, whispering before heading up the stairs, brows creased, where they checked the bedrooms, argued about the closet space, and took a cursory glance of the attic overhead before coming back downstairs, stopping to whisper on the landing—Do you . . . I
don’t think . . . But what if . . . It just doesn’t make . . . —before joining Eve back in the living room, sighing heavily and shaking their heads.

  We’re just . . . said Sharon. We’re just a little concerned.

  About the renovations, said Nick.

  About the stress, said Sharon.

  A little concerned? asked Eve, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke out the corner of her mouth. You should be more than a little concerned. I am not a religious woman, Mrs. Cohen, I assure you of that, but I have no doubt God created the world in six days—He’s a heckuva builder, after all. The best. But I’ll tell you this: if those six days are supposed to include working with architects, hammering out blueprints, bidding out the job to contractors, and wrestling with the local planning board, well, then, may God have mercy on my soul, but Genesis is nothing but a pile of horseshit. Construction is a bitch, and I should know, I’ve renovated more homes than I care to remember. Trust me—before you even get the final plans done you’ll want to murder the architect, strangle each other, and bury the rotting bodies in the new foundation, and that’s if the goddamned mason ever arrives. And I’ll tell you why: blueprints.

  Blueprints? asked Nick.

  Architects, said Eve, are professional liars. It’s nothing personal, that’s their job. We pay them to lie to us, and if the lies aren’t elaborate enough, we send them back to draw new ones, bigger ones, lies with infinity pools and soapstone kitchen islands and radiant heating. Blueprints are fiction, Mr. Cohen. They’re fakes. They’re dreams and hopes and lies. That’s why we like them so much—they’re complete bullshit. The sunroom will go here, and we’ll have the neighbors over for dinner here, and we’ll put the Jacuzzi out back, and the kids’ rooms upstairs, right next to ours, so they know that we’re there, beside them, forever and always and more. So you shake hands, sign some checks, break ground, and that’s when it all goes wrong. That, Mrs. Cohen, is when all that wonderful fiction becomes horribly, terribly nonfiction. That’s where the stress starts, when the fiction is revealed. That’s why people love architects but hate builders; builders deal with the dreary muck of nonfiction; architects lie and builders have to call them on it. You see, it turns out there are drainage issues. The well’s run dry. The foundation isn’t level. The sunroom actually faces north, so there’s not much sun in there to speak of, and you can forget about those parties because the neighbors are all assholes who refused your request for a variance; the Jacuzzi makes a racket and eats electricity, and you discover, when all is said and done and the work is finally completed and at long last the pickup trucks leave, that something is wrong with your genitals: your tubes are blocked, or his tubes are blocked, or his balls are too hot or your uterus is too cold, so those extra bedrooms you spent the line of credit on will now be nothing more than empty twelve-by-twenty reminders of the family you will never have. And so, faced with all this hideous, horrible nonfiction, we crack. We crumble. And we should. Reality is a nightmare. And so we shout, we shriek, we try to blame this nonfiction on each other. And you realize suddenly that you were better off before the fiction was ever written. But it’s too late now, Adam, you can’t go back; so sorry, Eve, you can’t put that apple back on the tree.

  So what’s the answer? asked Sharon.

  Eve stubbed out her cigarette on the top of the woodstove.

  You can’t go on renovating, she said with a sigh, you go on renovating. Because if you somehow muddle through, something amazing happens. A month, or two, or three down the road, the fiction returns. You find yourself sitting in front of the woodstove, watching the flames and sipping some wine and remembering your times in the house as better than they ever were. You rewrite it all: Remember the first time the electric came on? you’ll say with a smile. Remember how exciting it was when they finished framing the bedrooms, remember how much fun we had painting the bathrooms, remember when the appliances arrived that evening and we cooked our first dinner in our new home and afterward we made love in the kitchen? Some people will rewrite the past as better than it was, some people will rewrite it as worse—the builder was an anti-Semite, the homosexual architect hated us because we were straight—but one way or the other, I promise you, fiction will return, if only because the nonfiction is too damned much to bear.

  She raised up her hand and dangled the house keys between her thumb and index finger.

  Do we have a deal? she asked.

  Nick looked to Sharon, squeezed her hand and smiled.

  Sharon smiled at Nick.

  Nick smiled at Eve.

  Eve smiled at Sharon.

  Sharon inhaled deeply through her nose.

  What about that smell? she asked.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Jewish Book Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in GQ, Tablet, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR’s This American Life. The author of the short story collection Beware of God and the memoir Foreskin’s Lament, he lives in New York.

  ALSO BY SHALOM AUSLANDER

  Foreskin’s Lament

  Beware of God: Stories