Hope: A Tragedy (9 page)

Nice planet, Kugel thought; he and his family were going to die in a concentration camp because of a stupid lawn mower he forgot to refill. That’s earth for you: the difference between life and death on this crap-sack planet is a half a gallon of gas.

Last words? he wondered.

Could be.

He was in too much pain to write it down, but promised himself he would later.

Anyway, even if Dooner let the mower thing slide and took them in, the Dooners themselves were going through a nasty divorce; she might report on them just to get her husband in hot water with the authorities.

The Kugels, Kugel hated to admit, might just have to, in the event of genocide, rely on the kindness of strangers.

Mother used to say: I can name six million people who relied on the kindness of strangers.

When Kugel left for college, she took him aside, held his face in her hands, and said: No matter where you go, you’ll always be a Kugel.

She meant Jew, he could hear it in her tone. It was meant not as encouragement but as warning; she meant that someday he would be murdered by people he had considered his friends.

Pardon me, said Kugel, getting to his feet. He could feel another abdominal attack building deep within his bowels. Sometimes walking helped.

Yes? asked the man.

Would you mind watching my bag for me? I desperately need to get to a bathroom.

We’re leaving soon, said the man.

It will only take a minute.

We’re leaving.

Kugel winced in pain.

Do you have an attic? he asked.

Pardon me?

I was just wondering, said Kugel. Never mind.

You were just wondering if I had an attic?

I was wondering, if you had an attic, ow, if I could hide in it.

What?

With my family.

Are you crazy? the man asked. Is that it?

Kugel winced in pain.

Not
now
, he said, don’t be ridiculous. Ow. Ugh. I mean, you know, if something happened.

If what happened?

Something, said Kugel.

You think that’s funny? asked the woman.

Ow, said Kugel. Funny?

I lost relatives in the Holocaust, she said.

So? asked Kugel.

So I find that offensive.

I lost family in the Holocaust, too, said Kugel. Oh, God.

Oh, really, she said.

Really, said Kugel, wincing again. Oh, God.

She crossed her arms over her chest.

How many? she asked.

How many what? asked Kugel.

How many relatives, she said.

Kugel shrank in pain.

Enough, he said, turning back to rest on the bench. Forget it.

Enough?
she asked. How many?

Enough, he said.

How many?

How many did you lose? Kugel asked.

She scoffed.

More than you, she said.

The pain that had been growing exploded within him again. Kugel squeezed his eyes and commanded his organs and orifices to fight on, to resist, but it was for naught.

Oh, God, he cried.

What is the matter with you? asked the man.

Kugel hurried down the porch steps, bent over, hands on his stomach.

Watch my bag, he grunted, watch my bag . . .

There was no time, he knew it, not even enough to get across the street, and Kugel—begin-againer, starterer-anew—had no option but to scurry to the side of the house, press through the plants and shrubbery arranged along the foundations, and, squatting down, relieve himself there.

I wouldn’t survive ten minutes, he thought as he did. I wouldn’t even make it to head-shaving.

Nick, Sharon, he heard a woman call out, there you are. Have you been waiting long?

It was Eve.

I foresee humiliation and
shame
.

I foresee tortured innards and wasted days and . . .

No problem, said a male voice now. Nice to see you.

The tall man. Nick.

Eve was at the front of the house. He leaves for one damned minute . . .

This is the one, said the woman. With the tire swing. Is that as nice inside as it is outside?

Kugel straightened his clothes as hastily as he could, and stumbled out from behind the rhododendrons.

More so, he heard Eve say. Just came on the market, too. Shall we go see it?

Kugel stopped at the edge of the grass, fixed his hair, tucked in his shirt, took a deep breath, and walked purposefully, head held high, around the corner of the house.

Mr. Kugel, said Eve.

You know this guy? Nick asked Eve.

Kugel clasped his hands behind his back and looked Eve in the eye.

It’s about the house, he said.

Of course, said Eve.

Eve invited Nick and Sharon to wait for her beside her car, she would only be a minute.

You look tired, Mr. Kugel, said Eve when they had gone. Moving can be so stressful.

It’s about the house, said Kugel.

There’s something wrong with it, said Eve, taking out a cigarette and tapping the end against her wrist.

Not
with
it, said Kugel.
In
it.

Mice?

Not mice.

Bats?

I’m referring, he said, lowering his voice, to a certain Holocaust victim.

He leaned toward Eve to emphasize his point.

In my
attic
, he said.

A Holocaust survivor? Eve asked. In your attic?

Nick and Sharon turned to her.

Keep your voice down, said Kugel.

Eve lit her cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth, a look of genuine concern upon her face.

Is it Elie Wiesel? she asked.

Don’t be ridiculous, said Kugel.

Is it Dr. Ruth?

Dr. Ruth isn’t a Holocaust survivor.

She isn’t?

I think she got out before it started.

Are you sure?

Nick and Sharon approached, and asked if they could use the office bathroom. Eve handed them the key to the front door and invited them to help themselves, while they were at it, to some of the cookies on the front desk.

Eve waited for them to go inside before turning back to Kugel. Kugel folded his arms across his chest.

Is it Simon Wiesenthal? asked Eve.

Anne Frank is in my attic, snapped Kugel, and you damn well know it.

Well, said Eve, I can see how that would be a problem. But I assure you this is the first I’ve ever heard of it.

And why, precisely, should I believe you?

I’m a real estate agent, Mr. Kugel. As a rule, you shouldn’t believe me. But in this case, I’m telling the truth.

She won’t leave, said Kugel.

I would imagine not, said Eve. You’ve got a gradual roof slope and high attic knee walls.

You don’t sound very surprised, said Kugel.

Buyer’s remorse, said Eve, is an interesting phenomenon, Mr. Kugel. It’s this vague, creeping notion that one has been had, that he’s spent too much money, that what he got isn’t worth what he gave. So the buyer decides there is something wrong with the house, something specific, something structural, and he comes to tell me about it—the boiler’s shot, the foundation’s a little crooked, the electrical system needs an overhaul. Little things, but real things. Maybe they can replace something, trade up, maybe they can get some money back and the remorse will go away. It usually does. Buyer’s
guilt
, though, is different. The homeowner comes here, tells me there’s a problem, something’s not right. But they can’t name anything specific with the house, nothing tangible. There’s nothing I can do. They say they’re unhappy, but they’re wrong. They are happy. That’s the problem. They’re very happy and it’s making them sick. You know why? Because they think they don’t deserve it. They’ve been selfish, they’ve been unfaithful, they’ve cheated on their taxes. They’ve been inattentive to their spouses, cruel to their parents, absent with their children. They’ve taken the easy way out. They followed the money instead of following their hearts. They masturbate to violent pornography. Whatever it is they enjoy, they are certain it disqualifies them from being happy: they don’t deserve the stone walkway, the master bath, the walk-in closets, the nights of lovemaking in front of the soapstone-lined fireplace, the long walks in their fifty-acre woods, the starry nights above their in-ground pool, the autumn leaves kicking up behind their white all-wheel drive convertible Audi with cream leather interior. People in Africa are starving, and here they are with a fifteen-thousand-dollar industrial Wolf oven they never even use. People in Treblinka slept three to a wooden bunk, and they’ve got a California king in a bedroom so large that there’s still enough room for a leather couch and a small additional seating area beside the French patio doors. There’s an oil well puking black death into the Gulf, there’s childhood leukemia, everything’s going to hell, why should they have a screened-in porch with a slate floor and a ceiling fan that cost eight hundred dollars? They don’t deserve it. And do you know what I tell them?

No, said Kugel. What do you tell them?

I tell them they’re right. I tell them they don’t deserve it. I tell them nobody does. Abraham was an adulterer. Moses was a murderer. Jesus jacked off, bet on it. That’s why he wept. It’s not an ugly world because you’re in it, I tell them; I tell them they’re ugly because they’re in this world. You know who deserves radiant heating, marble floors, glass-enclosed showers, and Jacuzzi tubs? Nobody. Not a single goddamned person in the whole world. I sure as hell don’t. I sell enormous homes to people who don’t need them. I put my career before my children. I cheated on my husband, and then lied under oath that he beat me. Now I have two kids, no spouse, six bedrooms, and fifteen acres. I have a horse. I have a stable. I’m sleeping with a married employee I don’t love and will fire once the lovemaking gets boring. And I’m happy. Not thrilled, not ecstatic, but happier than I deserve to be. I tell them this: there are better people than you who have less, and worse people who have more; if a proper reckoning were to be done, I tell them, if everyone in this world got what they truly deserved, most of us would be lying facedown, beaten and bloody in a fly-infested pool of steaming cow shit.

And what do they say? asked Kugel.

They say Anne Frank’s in my attic, said Eve. They say there’s a bad smell coming from the vents, they say the house is tilting, or the windows are jammed or nobody told them about the winters. They want out. Not out of the house: out of happiness. Some people just can’t hack it. And then do you know what I tell them?

No. What do you tell them?

She dropped her cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of her high-heeled shoe.

I tell them to fuck off, said Eve. I tell them that’s what the third-party inspection was for, and I tell them that I have their signature on a legal document indemnifying Promised Land Fine Properties and Estates from any problems with the house the owner knowingly withheld from us or which the buyer in the course of the sales transaction neglected to inform the seller and/or the seller’s representatives. I tell them if they have a problem with happiness, they should call a shrink. I tell them if they have a problem with the house, they should call the former owner. And then I slam the door.

There’s a bad smell coming from the vents, said Kugel.

And Eve slammed the door.

12.

WHEN AT LAST Kugel arrived home, he found his sister Hannah’s car parked in his driveway.

Marvelous, thought Kugel.

Hannah was not taking Mother’s impending death very well; when Kugel relocated to Stockton and Mother later joined him, Hannah decided to rent a small house a few towns over—so she could be close, she said. Just in case.

Just in case what? Kugel asked.

Just in case, said Hannah.

Hannah was married to an evolutionary biologist named Pinkus Stephenor. Pinkus took a teaching job at the nearby local university; Hannah visited Mother often, and often, when visiting Mother, Hannah wept. Mother would hold her in her arms and say, Come now, let’s not do this.

Hannah would nod and compose herself.

You’re right, she would say, you’re right. Everything happens for a reason.

Then Mother would add: Let’s not spend our last hours together weeping like children—which would cause Hannah to begin weeping once again.

Hello? Kugel called as he came through the front door.

He could hear voices.

Upstairs.

Mother and Hannah.

What the hell were they doing upstairs?

He put the Mother Earth’s bag on the small table beside the door, dropped down beside the vent in the foyer floor, and pressed his ear against the grate. The blower was on; this not only made it more difficult to hear voices, but the stench that had been slowly returning now rushed forth from the vents, enveloping Kugel in a noxious, suffocating smog.

Kugel held his breath and tried to listen over the hum of the machinery.

HANNAH (
SOBBING
):
Oh, Momma.

He couldn’t make out the rest. He sat up, took another breath, and bent back down to the vent.

MOTHER:
Stop that, Hannah.

HANNAH:
You’re right.

MOTHER:
Now, where on earth did I pack those photos? I know there was another box up here somewhere.

They’re in the attic, thought Kugel with a shudder. If Mother discovered Anne Frank, he was finished. She would never let Kugel throw Anne Frank out. No son of mine, she would say, is throwing Anne Frank out of his house. She wouldn’t particularly enjoy the competition for his pity, either, which would only make a bad situation worse.

I foresee days of darkness.

I foresee long trips of
guilt.

Pull that box down, Hannah, he heard Mother say. Maybe it’s behind there.

Kugel grabbed the Mother Earth’s bag and raced up the stairs.

There was a small chance that it could go the other way; Mother always had to be the biggest sufferer in the room; she might not want to have an actual Holocaust survivor in the house. It’s the 500-meter Sufferer Dash at the Summer Misery Olympics, and Carl Lewis just lined up beside you. Mother might actually
insist
that he throw Anne Frank out, demand he do just that.

Hope springs eternal, Kugel once said to Professor Jove.

It doesn’t have to, Professor Jove had replied.

Though he ran upstairs as quickly as he could, by the time Kugel reached the attic, Hannah had already taken down nearly half the boxes from the recently reconstructed western wall. She was leaning over the top of the remaining crates and chests and peering into the darkness behind them; Mother was sitting on the floor nearby, sifting through an opened box.

Nope, Hannah was saying, no more boxes back there; just some old blankets on the floor. And some old computer. It’s on, though, that’s weird.

What’s on? Mother asked.

The computer.

The computer’s on? Mother asked.

Kugel, in an effort to distract them, made a loud entrance, calling out to them, telling Mother she really shouldn’t be lifting those boxes herself and demanding Hannah come away from that wall and say hello this instant.

It was still daylight; from the short bit of her diary that he’d read, Kugel knew that Anne Frank slept in the daytime and worked at night. They must have woken her, but where did she go?

Kugel was ashamed to admit that he’d never actually read the whole diary. By the time Mother had given it to him at age thirteen, she’d already made him read Elie Wiesel’s
Night
, and
Dawn
, and
Day
, and Primo Levi’s
If This Is a Man
; and sit through all three hours of Stanley Kramer’s
Judgment at Nuremberg
, all seven and a half hours of NBC’s
Holocaust
, and all nine hours of Claude Lanzmann’s
Shoah
. Then she handed him
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young
Girl
.

I’m sick of this Holocaust shit, young Kugel had said.

So horrified was Mother at that, she didn’t even yell at him; she didn’t lecture him; she simply turned on her heel and walked away. Later, he went to her and apologized.

I’m sorry, he said.

She gave him a choice:
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
or
The Sorrow and the
Pity
.

He took the diary from Mother’s hand and turned it over. The heartbreaking something, he read, of a tragic whatever.

He went with the documentary, all five hours of it. At least he could fast-forward when Mother wasn’t looking, and he kind of knew how it ended.

Kugel gave Hannah a long, enthusiastic hug, holding her tightly while peering over her shoulder for Anne Frank.

He didn’t see her. The floor, he noticed, was strewn with photos, newspaper clippings, and scissors.

Mother, said Kugel, releasing his sister. What did I tell you about that?

For some time now, Mother had been putting together a family scrapbook for Jonah. Kugel had begged her not to, but with her memory fading and her time running out, she was determined to leave behind a family history for her sole grandchild. She had requested assistance from her children, cousins, aunts, and uncles in the form of any old family photographs they could provide her with, and they speedily obliged. To her dismay, however, the photographs told a very different story from the one she remembered, or wanted to tell, or wanted Jonah to be told: faded black-and-white photos of families playing in the sand at the beach, beaming brides and proud grooms, sepia-toned families enjoying a round of badminton fun at some well-manicured Catskill resort, young lovers holding hands on the boardwalk at Coney Island as appreciative passersby smiled wistfully in their direction.

Useless.

So she began to include, here and there, a news photograph of prisoners at Buchenwald, some press clipping about pogroms in the Soviet Union, a collage of Kristallnacht, corpse piles at Dachau, mass graves at Auschwitz, until these terrifying images of history’s tragic victims equaled, and soon outnumbered, the photographs of any actual Kugels.

Zelig himself, thought Kugel, would be proud. Then he would turn into a lamp shade.

Mother began the project last year, when Jonah had taken sick. From the beginning, Kugel had begged Mother not to editorialize; Mother insisted it was just adding context, making history come alive. Kugel appreciated that she wanted to leave his child something, but there was, he insisted, a better story, a truer story: her story. Mother’s story. A story of moving on, he said, of a woman left alone and raising, against the odds, a pair of semi-normal, occasionally functioning children with only mild sexual dysfunctions.

He should know about his past, Mother said.

You are his past, said Kugel.

Mother shook her head.

I had it easy, she said. If all you teach a boy about hurricanes is what it’s like in the eye of the storm, he’ll never know what to do when the wind tears the roof from overhead and the rain destroys all that he owns.

Kugel stared at her for a moment.

What the hell are you talking about? he asked.

I’m talking about life, said Mother.

You’re talking about death, said Kugel.

What’s the difference? asked Mother.

Reason rarely worked with Mother, so Kugel had appealed, as he often did, to her emotions. As destructive as her way of showing it may have been, Kugel believed she loved Jonah deeply, and genuinely cared, first and foremost, for his well-being.

You’re going to scare him, Kugel said, looking deep into her eyes.

Somebody has to, Mother replied.

Hannah went to Mother and began helping her collect the loose photos from the attic floor. It was then that Kugel spotted, through a gap between the boxes on the wall behind Hannah, the cloudy yellow eye of Anne Frank.

We should get dinner going, said Kugel.

Mother sighed loudly and shook her head at the clipping in her hand; it was of the now-iconic photo of male prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp, crammed on top of one another on the stacked wooden planks that passed there for something like beds.

Your cousin Alex, she said.

For as long as Kugel could remember, Mother had kept a large print of this photo on the wall of their old living room in the city; every so often, she would point to one of the prisoners—the young one, using his metal food bowl for a pillow, or the one on the bottom bunk, the one with those terrible sunken raccoon eyes—shake her head, and say, poor Cousin Alex. Or, Oh, dear Uncle Morris. Or, How I miss your grandpa Solomon—you were named for him, Sol.

Kugel glanced at Anne Frank.

We really ought to get dinner started, he said.

Kugel remembered the photo, was haunted by it, less for his supposed family members and more for one of the prisoners, the naked one standing at the far right of the frame. He was emaciated, pale shrunken skin pulled tight over weary twisted bones, holding a cloth of some kind over himself in some final instinct of modesty and self-respect. And, somehow, he was smiling. Kugel was sure of it, ever since Mother first showed it to him; it wasn’t a broad smile, more of a grin, a Mona Lisa thing, but a smile nonetheless.

Why is that man smiling? he had once asked Mother.

He’s not smiling, she said with disgust.

But he
was
smiling, there was no question about it. Even now, as Kugel went to help Mother up, he looked at the photo and saw him, still naked, still emaciated, still smiling. Why, Kugel wondered anew, was he smiling? What was so funny? And, more important, most important: how? How can one smile in that world of misery and death? And why, for that matter, did he still play along with this game of Mother’s? Why didn’t he ever just call her on it, make her at last admit the unhorrible truth: that life, tragically, hadn’t been so bad? That, relatively speaking, they had been, unfortunately, fortunate?

Let’s go, Mother, he said. We should get dinner going.

Sons of bitches, said Mother.

It’s okay, said Kugel.

Kugel helped Mother up, and she protested—There isn’t much time, she said—until Kugel promised to bring the photo boxes downstairs later so that she could continue her work in her bedroom. Kugel was most concerned that Jonah not discover what Mother had been putting together, and her bedroom was the safest place for that (Jonah had not set foot in there since she moved in).

Hannah, meanwhile, was kneeling beside the box of photos, holding a small black-and-white photograph in her hand, cupping it like a broken bird. She shook her head and sighed. It was a photo of Father.

That son of a bitch, she said, hatred hardening her voice. A wife, a home, two beautiful children. What kind of a coward kills himself?

Kills himself? asked Kugel. Turning to Mother, he said, You told me he disappeared. You told me he was murdered.

What’s the difference? Mother asked.

What’s the
difference
? Kugel asked.

What’s the difference? Hannah snapped, coming to Mother’s defense. Everything happens for a reason, so what’s the difference?

Then why are you so pissed off at him? Kugel asked.

At who?

At Father.

Just because there’s a reason for what he did, said Hannah, tossing the photo to the floor, doesn’t mean I can’t be pissed off. And just because I’m pissed off doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. There is a reason for everything.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe that, said Kugel.

It was a common belief—reasonism, Kugel called it. They were a volatile bunch, the reasonists; all Christians, for example, are reasonists, but not all reasonists are Christian. Hannah was more of a general reasonist, not getting too specific about what the reason might be but certain above all that there was one—and it wouldn’t irritate Kugel as much as it did if she were more honest, if she acknowledged, however briefly, that if there was indeed a reason for everything, it was as likely to be a bad reason as it was a good reason. But for reasonists, the reason was always positive: to teach us X, or so that we learn Y, to bring us closer to Z. The reason was never because life’s a bummer, or because whoever or whatever the Reason for Everything is, it finds our misery kind of funny.