After Dachau (21 page)

It took me a moment to register that it was Ward Woolton, my acquaintance on the
New York Times
. He’d gained some
weight since college days, filling out what had already been a nearly square face, and his dark hair had receded a bit to enhance the effect.

“What’s going on here?” I demanded.

“You’ll find a clip-on microphone there on the chair, I believe, and I’m told there are some floodlights. Are they turned on?” When I’d attached the microphone to the placket of my shirt and switched on the floodlights, he said that was better, and I repeated my query.

“That’s a large question, Jason,” Ward replied. “Among other things that are going on here, the moon is circling the earth, the earth is circling the sun, and the sun is circling whatever it circles.”

“I want to know what I’m doing here.”

“Let’s try and get things straight at the outset, Jason. I have no idea where you are or what you’re doing there. All I know is that I’m sitting here watching a televised picture of you, and you’re sitting there watching a televised picture of me. I’m in New York City. Where you are is unknown to me, as is the purpose for your being there.”

“You’ve got to know more than that. Why are you sitting there?”

“I’m sitting here because I was told to sit here.”

“You work for Harry Whitaker?”

“Who the hell is Harry Whitaker? Or do you mean the Intelligence wallah?”

“That’s who I mean.”

Ward chuckled. “My wife’ll get a kick out of that. No, I don’t work for Harry Whitaker. I work for my boss, who works for his boss, who works for his boss, who for all I
know has lunch with Harry Whitaker on alternate Tuesdays at the Yale Club.”

“What are you supposed to do sitting there?”

“I’m supposed to talk to you till you write three words on the chalkboard behind you.”

“What three words?”

“Dear boy,” Ward said, “try not to be a complete ass. If I knew the three magic words, I’d tell you straightaway and go to lunch.”

“How will you know if the three I write are the right ones?”

“Ah,” he said, beaming with pleasure. “I have a cunning little gizmo here at my right hand with a button and two lights, one red and one green. When I press the button, someone in another room checks his screen to see what you’ve written and then signals green for yes or red for no.”

“What happens when I finally get it right?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

I got up, found the chalk that had been provided, and wrote I A
M
V
ISIBLE
on the board. Ward pressed the button on his gizmo, and a moment later his phone rang. He answered, listened, and informed me that my lettering had been judged insufficiently legible. I needed to make it heavier. After I did so, Ward watched his gizmo complacently, then reported a no.

“Evidently,” he said, “your visibility or lack of same is not of interest.”

“How do I know if I come close but miss by one word or something?”

“I guess you don’t.”

“I’d like something to eat.”

“I’m told they’ll be sending in a sandwich for me around noon, if it takes that long. Perhaps they’re planning to do the same for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He shrugged. “I know nothing about your situation, so I don’t know what’s ridiculous and what isn’t.”

“I need some more water.”

“Then go get some.”

“There isn’t any here. There was some, but this is all that’s left of it.” I held up the bottle, now four-fifths empty. Ward shrugged. “Call and tell them I need more water.”

“I’m sorry, but that isn’t the setup here. They can call me but I can’t call them. All I can do is push the button on the gizmo.”

I got up and wrote I N
EED
W
ATER
on the board. Ward pressed his button, watched his gizmo, then shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “not the magic words.”

“They weren’t meant to be the magic words. They were meant to be a communication.”

“Maybe they’re not wired for sound and just get the picture. That’s all they care about, after all—the three words.”

I tried S
END IN
H
ARRY
.

No.

“Look, old man, maybe you should just get down to it instead of fucking about like this.”

“What do you mean by ‘get down to it’?”

Ward made a face. “Jason, when we were at school together, it often seemed to me that teachers gave you more credit than you deserved. Nothing you’ve said or done today has changed that estimate.”

“Go on.”

“I have no idea why you’re there—wherever ‘there’ is. Hasn’t it occurred to you to wonder why
I’m
here? Why me in particular?”

Mallory had asked a very similar question two nights before: “Why is Harry here
tonight?
” I was beginning to wonder if the way I was feeling is how people feel after a lobotomy.

“You’re there,” I said, “because I called and made an appointment to see you.”

“Bravo, Jason. You called and made an appointment to see me about …?”

“About a story.”

“Bravo again, Jason. I regard this as a
strong
clue.” He spoke with heavy irony, as well he might.

“So, in effect, they want me to keep my appointment with you, and this will ultimately lead me to produce three words they have in mind.”

“That’s certainly how it looks, old man. Why don’t you start by telling me what you planned to tell me twenty-four hours ago?”

“I’d rather just produce the three words and go home.”

“By all means. Go to it. Fire away.”

I lost faith in what I was writing halfway through, but went ahead anyway: I
T
D
OESN’T
M
ATTER
. I wasn’t even sure what the statement was supposed to mean, now that it was up there. I rubbed it out and sat down again to gather my thoughts.

“The five-minute limit is meaningless now,” I said at last.

“What five-minute limit do you mean?”

“You said you’d give me five minutes to explain my story.”

Ward chuckled. “Mere journalistic bluster, old boy. I wanted you to focus your thoughts before you arrived rather than while sitting at my desk.”

“I’m afraid it didn’t do much good. I’ve no idea how to begin.”

“Give me the lead. That’s always a good place to start.”

“What’s a lead?”

“Here’s a lead. ‘The parents of Hansel and Gretel were arrested for child endangerment this morning, according to police sources within the Great Forest.’ ”

“I don’t think I can do it that way. The Grimms didn’t either.”

“Don’t give up on it yet, Jason. The lead just takes the who, what, when, and where of a story and puts them all together in one sentence. If you’ve got a story, it’s certainly about someone, and this someone must’ve done something or had something done to him, and this must’ve happened at some particular time and place.”

“That’s all true of this story.”

“Splendid. So start with the who. Who are the who of your story?”

“
We
are the who.”

“You mean the Tulls?”

“No, not the Tulls.”

“Who then? The people of New York City? The people of America? What?”

“All of us.”

“You mean the whole human race?”

“No. The
Aryan
race.”

He looked puzzled. “The Aryan race is what the human
race has
become
, Jason. Just as
Homo sapiens sapiens
is what the human race has become.”

I had at that moment a flash of inspiration that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. “Here’s my lead, Ward. ‘The Aryan race was today charged with making itself the human race by murdering all other member races of
Homo sapiens sapiens
during the early centuries of the present era.’ ”

His look of puzzlement dissolved into open astonishment. “That’s not half bad, Jason,” he said, evidently impressed not so much by the content of what I’d said as by the fact that I’d said it. “But how does the story go from there? You say the Aryan race was ‘today charged’—by whom? In what court?”

“I guess I have to say by me, in the court of public opinion.”

“Hmmm. On whose authority do you make the charge? What weight does a charge by you carry? As far as I know, you’re just a private citizen.”

“That’s true.”

“And the court of public opinion meets very irregularly, to say the least. All the same …” He paused to think. “What evidence are you bringing forward to support the charge?”

“The evidence of our children’s textbooks, going back a thousand years.”

“Interesting.”

At that moment he was interrupted by the arrival of someone in the room from which he was broadcasting. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s my lunch. Would you rather I took it somewhere else?”

“No, go ahead and eat. Just try not to enjoy it too much.”

He nodded just as if I’d said something to be taken seriously, then waded into his sandwich. “In effect,” he said, after swallowing a bite, “you’re just offering a new interpretation of what’s in those textbooks.”

I thought about that some. “At their arraignment, Hansel and Gretel’s parents said, ‘In effect you’re just offering a new interpretation of our actions. From our point of view, we were only doing the best we could for the tykes. Ma and I were broke and starving, so we thought the kids could do better on their own. We never wanted anything but the best for them.’ ”

Ward was nodding enthusiastically. “Okay, that’s damned good—so long as it’s just between you and me. But I’m afraid it’s not going to play very well for a wider audience. Hansel and Gretel’s parents are one thing. Fifty generations of journalists, dramatists, novelists, screenwriters, historians, curriculum writers, and schoolteachers are another. Surely you can see that.”

“I can see it. All the same, the facts are not in question.”

“Perfectly correct,” said Ward. “Hansel and Gretel were ditched in the forest by their parents.”

“And we systematically purged the world of every race but our own.”

Ward took a bite of his sandwich and gazed into the eye of the camera. When he finished chewing, he said, “Where do we go from there?”

I got up and wrote three words on the chalkboard: W
E’RE
A
LL
M
URDERERS
.

He shrugged and jabbed the button on his gizmo. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “Those three don’t do anything for them—or for me, to be honest. Maybe you should
think about what you want to accomplish with the story. What are you hoping for—waves of mass suicidal remorse?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the point of issuing a statement like ‘We’re all murderers’?”

“Forget it. I’m grasping at straws. I’m thirsty.”

The swine chose that moment to take a long swallow of beer. He patted his lips with a napkin, then asked again what I wanted to accomplish.

“I want to wake people up to the pious lies they learned in school.”

“And those are …?”

“That we were acting for the good of humanity when we exterminated the native peoples of Asia, Africa, and the New World. That we murdered billions of people out of sheer selfless nobility.”

Ward nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that is the way it’s taught. But I’m not sure it isn’t taken with a grain of salt.”

“Did
you
take it with a grain of salt?”

“I took
everything
with a grain of salt.”

“So this was nothing special.”

“No, not really. It was just one more piece of ancient history, like the sack of Rome or the Norman Conquest—nothing to do with me.”

“Has this conversation changed the way you feel about it?”

“Truthfully, not even by a hair.”

“It doesn’t trouble you that the systematic extermination of all these people is represented as a sort of sacred undertaking?”

“How would you like it to be represented?”

“As a ghastly crime—the most terrible in human history—committed by our immediate ancestors.”

“All the crimes of history were committed by our ancestors—every single one of them—every murder, rape, assault, assassination, and enslavement. Who else would have committed them if not our ancestors?”

“But this crime was committed by the people who turned the entire human race into
us
. It was committed by the people who secured the earth for the Aryan race alone.”

Ward shrugged and shook his head.

“This doesn’t move you,” I persisted.

“Move me to what? Tears? Remorse? Indignation? I’m afraid not, honestly.”

“All right. Tell me this. Are you speaking personally now or as an editor?”

“How do you perceive the difference?”

“As an editor, you must assign a lot of stories that don’t have any relevance or fascination to you personally.”

“Very true.”

“As an editor, you can’t select only the ones you’d personally like to see. You’re selecting stories for the entire readership of your newspaper.”

“Absolutely.”

“So which judgment are you giving me here? Your personal judgment or your professional judgment?”

“I’m giving you both. They’re not always in conflict, after all. In this case, your story’s a nonstarter, for me and for the readership of the
Times
.”

“Amazing,” I said. “It’s so simple. How could I have missed it?”

“What do you mean?”

I got up and chalked in three new words.

“You’ve got something there,” Mark said. “Even if it’s no more than what I’ve been telling you for the last ten minutes. All the same, these may not be the magic words.”

“Press the button, Mark.”

He did so and a moment later turned to me with a raffish grin.

“You’re right at last, Jason.
No one cares
. I think you can count on that.”

He drained his glass, wiped his lips, and said, “So how is your mother, Jason? You know, I met her once. An amazing woman.”

The helicopter arrived an hour later.