Hope: A Tragedy (22 page)

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.

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, to 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.