Empty Ever After (32 page)

We explained to our guide what we were looking for and he said he knew just such a place. He walked us over to the spot. It’s hard to say that one frozen patch of snow-covered earth is better than another, but for our purposes this patch of earth seemed well chosen. We asked the guide and the government man to excuse us. After they left us, Steven and I spread handfuls of Israel Roth’s ashes onto the slippery ground. When there was nothing left in the urn, I took a card out of my coat pocket and began to recite Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. “
Yis-ga-dal v’yis-ka-dash sh’may ra-bo, B’ol-mo dee-v’ro
…”

As I read off the card, Steven Roth joined in. He didn’t need the card. After finishing the prayer and saying our amens, I held Steven’s hands in mine.

“Kaddish and ashes, it’s what he wanted,” I said. “I guess part of him never left this place.”

“Part of us will never leave here either.”

Who was I to argue?

Many years ago, I asked Lee Child when he would know the time had come to pull down the curtain on his Jack Reacher series. He was incredulous. His answer was something like, “Why would I ever do that?” It was only after reading several more of his series books that I completely understood his response. Reacher is untethered to a specific place. He travels light, very light. His past is shadowy and malleable. And, if there’s an overriding series arc, Lee has masterfully disguised it. Though I am surely not the first person to point this out, Reacher is the
High Plains Drifter.
It was only through understanding the very clever way Lee had constructed the Reacher series that I came to understand why I had asked him the question in the first place. I asked because I knew that someday I would have to close the door, or, more aptly, turn the page on Moe Prager.

You need only look at my sales figures to know Moe Prager is no Jack Reacher. In many ways, Moe is, in conception, at least, the antithesis of the
High Plains Drifter.
Moe is utterly tethered to a specific place—Coney Island, Brooklyn—to his family, to a business he despises, to secrets, but, most of all, to his past. Moe’s history is his history. He knows only what he knows. There can be no fudging or blurring of lines. Moe ages during the course of the series. He is in his thirties in
Walking the Perfect Square
and his fifties in
Empty Ever After
. When I wrote
Walking …
I included sort of an artificial timeline for the series—1978 to 1998. This was the one thing I knew I could, if necessary, dispense with. As long as Moe didn’t die in 1998, I could continue the series. One problem: you can’t continue a series without a publisher. If only readers understood the profound effect the business end of publishing has on the books that are written. Alas.

I had a two-book contract with Bleak House Books.
Soul Patch
, the fourth book in the series, was done and I had one more Moe book to write. It was an interesting challenge because I didn’t know if there would be another contract.
Empty Ever After
—a title taken from a song by the Brooklyn rock band The Shirts—would have been a different book had I known for sure it would be the last book in the series. As I didn’t know that to be the case at the time, I had to write a book that would on the one hand give loyal Moe readers a sense of series closure and, on the other, leave the door open for the series to continue. No easy task, that. Yet, even had I known there would be more Moe books to follow, I realized that things had to change. The books had become too heavily burdened with backstory. Moe’s past was essential to the success of the books, but it also became an albatross. I found I was spending too much time explaining details from the earlier books. I also realized that the story arc concerning Moe’s keeping of Patrick Maloney’s secret was played out. I had done all I could do with that conceit and, frankly, I wasn’t interested in trying to breathe new life into it.

So the challenge became an opportunity.
Empty Ever After
would allow me to wrap up all the loose ends left over from the previous four books in the series and to introduce some new characters and situations that might extend the life of the series. What better way to move on emotionally and practically, I thought, than by ritually burying the past. It is no accident that the prologue takes place in a cemetery. The cemetery motif recurs throughout the novel and is meant to symbolize the death of the story arc surrounding Patrick Maloney’s disappearance and murder. In the novel, Moe revisits all of his old cases and interacts with many of the most memorable characters from the earlier books. This was done so the loyal Moe readers could pay their respects and say their farewells. Me too. I was always curious about what had happened to Nancy Lustig and Judas Wannsee and Connie Geary. Ultimately, I wanted to bury Mr. Roth—the moral center of the series—as well. Along with death comes rebirth and this was why I brought back Carmella Melendez. The birth of her son Israel is symbolic on two levels. His arrival marks a new turn for Moe and the series, but by naming him Israel—after Israel Roth—I would tie any future Moe books to the older books in the series.

 

Dear Readers,

When my great friend Israel Roth died many years ago, he bequeathed me some money, many of his old photographs, and the contents of the house he owned and rented out in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. He had long since made Florida his permanent home, but Israel Roth was a man who, in spite of his best efforts, could never let go of the past. That’s why he could never bear to sell that old house. The house was part of him as sure as his own arms and legs. He was a man who understood history, not as a stream of facts or dates and places or as a list of names of generals and despots to be remembered and recited on cue, but as a living breathing thing. As a concentration camp survivor, he was a small piece in the puzzle of man’s ugliest moment in time.

Unlike many survivors, Mr. Roth was not shy about discussing his years in the camps, but I was completely stunned by what I found in a trunk in the attic of his old Midwood house. In a large white envelope that had yellowed and was more a memory than an envelope—it disintegrated in my hands—were a collection of several legal pads covered in faded handwriting I recognized immediately as Israel Roth’s. On the pads were several short stories Mr. Roth had written based upon his brief time in Treblinka and his torments in Auschwitz. I recognized some of the incidents described in these stories as being directly inspired by Mr. Roth’s own experiences, but not all the incidents described were about him nor was the camp he described in the stories identifiable as either Treblinka or Auschwitz. I don’t think that was the point nor was Mr. Roth the point. He wanted to leave behind the essence of the overwhelming inhumanity to which he had borne witness and to try and explain how one could survive in such places and still be a human being. I now share one of those stories with you. Learn from him as I learned.

 

With Sincerest Love and Respect for Israel Roth,
Moe Prager

 

 

Exhausted and hungry, Isaac Becker closed his tattered notebook.

“More!” barked Kleinmann. “What happens to the old baker’s daughter? Does she escape Poland with the documents? Does Pavel, the dirty Bolshevik scum, help her or turn her over to the Gestapo to save his own worthless hide? More!”

“Not tonight, I’m afraid, Herr Lieutenant Kleinmann. I am feeling weak. There was much much work on the ash heap today. Have you ever shoveled wet ashes?”

“You Jews! Always complaining. Always ungrateful. Remember, Becker, if not for me, you would be in the heap and not on it.”

“I remember. Every day, I remember. I thank the God of Israel for your kindness.”

“Good, then write well tonight, Becker. Pray to that God of yours to inspire you, for I will dream again of the old baker’s daughter and what will become of her.”

“But my rations … what about—”

“You will have your crusts and soup,” Kleinmann said, cutting Becker off mid-question as he always did.

It was as ritualized as the dance of bees, these nightly exchanges between Werner Kleinmann, the SS lieutenant, and Isaac Becker, the Jew. With the exception of Becker’s tales, even the words they spoke had become formalized, as if they were the names of words instead of the words themselves. Any implied irony or threat that may have been a part of the ritual when the dance partners took their first awkward steps together had long since been forgotten.

“Thank you, Herr Lieutenant Kleinmann.” Becker bowed as he always did, as was expected.

Becker waited for the words.
You’re welcome, Isaac
. These words never came. The lieutenant dismissed the prisoner with a curt, backhanded slap of the air as a finger of flame might snap at an impudent moth. Lately it dawned on Becker that things omitted from a ritual are part of the ritual too, but this revelation did not quench his thirst or fill his belly.

Closing the door behind him and plodding through the mud back to his barracks, Becker cursed Kleinmann in several tongues. In hell, one is educated in many things. He loved Hungarian curses best of all. He delighted at the sound and rhythm of the language, and the creativity of the curses was unparalleled. He had never been to Hungary and once had dreamed of some day visiting. But he had months ago stopped dreaming of walking the streets of Budapest and just listening to the people chatter about the magnificent and the mundane. His current hell was as close to Budapest as he would ever get.

So caught up was he in his cursing, Becker hadn’t noticed the approach of Jacob Weisen. Weisen and Becker were from the same small village on the German side of the Polish border. They had met for the first time when they were five, their hate for one another immediate and mutual. The depth of their loathing was beyond social, beyond merely molecular. It was metaphysical. At home, they had managed, for the most part, to avoid contact. That proved impossible in the camp, their having been assigned to the same barracks. Worse for Becker was Weisen’s position as head of the retribution squad.

A death camp is a special kind of prison, but a prison nonetheless. In all prisons, there are rules and there are lines and there are lines not to be crossed, ever. Given the cheapness of life and the ever-hungry
machinery of death behind the barbed wire and electrical fences, no one seemed keen on appeals or second chances. This was especially true of the prisoner enforcers. Yes, at its basest level, life inside this place was all about survival: a few more minutes, an extra day, two weeks, perhaps a month. But at what price? How close to the line should one step?

“So, Isaac Becker, you have again been feeding the crocodile,” prodded Weisen.

“The crocodile? What nonsense are you talking now, Weisen?”

“Have you never heard it said that the frightened man feeds the crocodile in the hope that he will be eaten last?”

“I am a teller of tales, not a chef. I work on the heap just like you and the rest of the men in our barracks.”

“But you eat better than us, don’t you?”

This stunned Becker. Lieutenant Kleinmann had assured Isaac that none of the other prisoners would ever learn of their special arrangement. The change in Becker’s expression was not lost on Weisen.

“How typical of you to assume you are the only lost soul in hell to have made a deal with the devil. Fool! Do you ever wonder where your rewards come from? For every one of your extra rations, there is a little more smoke, the heap gets a little taller.”

Becker felt as if Weisen had just whacked him across the ribs with a plank. He was short of breath, suddenly nauseous, and might’ve vomited right there in the mud had there been enough food in his system to bring back up. He had never wanted to consider from where his extra rations had come. He hadn’t wanted to think about it because he knew. He had known from that first day the lieutenant pulled him off the pile.

“You are the storyteller,” said the SS man. “In such a place as this, your talent is a commodity as precious as gold fillings and hidden diamonds, Becker.” The SS man had pointed at the crematoria. “If a man’s soul is gray when he is stationed here, the smoke will blacken it. If a man’s soul is already black …”

“And yours, Herr Lieutenant Kleinmann, what is its hue?”

“Never mind my soul, storyteller. Your job is to make sure that a little sun shines through the smoke.”

And so the deal had been struck. Becker would provide the sun, Kleinmann the bread and soup.

“What’s the matter? You’ve gone gray, Becker,” Weisen asked, snapping the storyteller back into the moment. “You walk a very thin tightrope between us and the crocodile. His protection extends only so far. One day soon, you will be part of the pile and your rations will go to some other
scum who has traded in your soul for one more day in paradise. Sooner or later, Becker, we are all eaten by one crocodile or another.”

Becker opened up his mouth to explain, but the words would not come. He knew he could not risk telling another inmate of his plan. Weisen’s threats had only reinforced Becker’s belief that there were no secrets in Hades.