Enchanted Forests (23 page)

like ripe fruit split wide to spill their seeds. Some of the news-

paper images have yellowed. Some are fresh.

Nina, my agent, has seen the locked door, but has never asked

what's on the other side. She has other things on her mind.

"Build a studio in Boulder or Denver," she says to me twice a

year. "You'd be close to the galleries- All of this would be so

much easier"

She wants me out of the mountains. If I had a heart attack, a

stroke, no one would know unless I radioed for help myself. Park

County Rescue would have to travel the same pair of wheel ruts

that Nina's hired truck negotiates, spring and fall, when it comes

to take my work to the galleries.

"I can hunt deer from my front porch," I tell her. "Could I do

that in Denver or Boulder?"

In the closet of the locked room, I keep the shoes, the boots,

the uniforms.

The shoes are flattened, sun-cracked—a right shoe hidden

among high weeds in El Salvador, a left shoe I stole from

Bergen-Belsen, a right that I dug from the rotting mud of Cam-

bodia. Shoes strangers have died of. Shoes that fit me. I only

keep the ones that do.

Some of the boots are like the shoes—dry-rotted, split-seamed.

The others go with the uniforms, patent leather boots hand-

polished until they gleam like black glass.

A full-length mirror hangs on the inside of the closet door.

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 153

Several of the uniforms are simple: fatigues of the Ugandan

security forces, the Khmer Rouge, Brazilian or Chilean troops

assigned to domestic duty. Khaki is interchangeable with tan,

with gray, with blue.

It's the black uniform that I prize above the others. It's the

black that I dress in to stand before the mirror. On the World

War n wall, young men in dress uniforms like this one smile

easy smiles.

I smile their smiles for the mirror, feeling what is natural to

feel in such a uniform. Invincibility. Pride. The twin lightning

bolts on the collar have everything and nothing to do with his-

tory. The death's head in me band of the cap is timeless.

To my smiling reflection, I say, "What are we to do with you?

What is to be done?" The question is no abstraction. It's a prac-

tical matter. It's the question I must ask each day before I begin

to carve.

Today, though, it's more practical than ever.

Downstairs on my couch is a young man, bound and gagged.

What am I to do with him?

The silver skull insignia gleams.

I hang the uniform and dress for work.

Snow covers the studio skylight. The shadows are soft, deep,

and blue. Before turning on the lights, I run my hands over the

rough-hewn block.

When I begin a new piece, even when I can feel into the wood

and know exactly what I'm cutting down to, the first hours of

work are always a struggle. The wood resists. Chisels skip off,

and saw blades twist out of shape as if I were trying to cut my

way through granite. 1 have to prove myself each time, coax the

echoes from the grain.

Then, once I have the shape roughed out, the heartwood soft-

ens, yields, invites me in. My blades melt through crosscuts as if

I were carving butter. The wood guides the tools, and the face,

the shoulder, the hand emerges.

For the piece I am working on today, me early stage lasts a

long time. The wood is green. Ordinarily, I cure the wood before

I work, but in this case, I don't have the time. Resin sticks to my

tools.

After two hours of work in the studio, I brush the sawdust

from my coveralls and come downstairs to have a look at him.

His eyes are wide, but it's hard to say if what I see in them is

fear. He's young. Young, but old enough to shave.

154                 Bruce Holland Rogers

Hanging near the stove where I put them out to dry are his

black jeans, black T-shirt, and motorcycle boots. He wears the

jeans and work shut I dressed him in, a size too large.

His hands, tied together, rest in his lap. The knuckles of his

left hand are tattooed with F-U-C-K, and the right with K-I-L-L.

Though his feet are tied together, he has kicked the books from

one of my shelves, the only damage he's been at liberty to do.

Shirer, Arendt, Camus. History and philosophy in a little pile at

his feet

I say, "If only you had a match, right?*'

He glares. I watch him breathe.

It seems to me as if the wooden faces in the room are watch-

ing him, too—the teak faces locked in screams, the anguished

expressions in pine or spruce or ebony. All the hollow wooden

eyes take him in.

Untying the gag is like breaking a dam. Obscenities flow from

him like water.

"I wouldn't have to gag you," I tell him, "if you could keep

a civil tongue."

"Fuck you."

I remind him that I saved his life.

"Fuck if you did," be says. "They'd have come back for me."

"I told you. There have been no new tracks in the snow. They

haven't been back."

"Fuck you," he says, but he must know his confederates, must

understand the truth as I tell it to him.

"You'd be frozen solid without me," I say, "so whatever I do

to you now, it's better than that, right? It's better than being

dead."

I force the gag back into his mouth before he can answer. If

I don't, he'll shout his lungs out and I won't be able to concen-

trate.

I go back to work.

I earn more for Nina than all of her other clients combined- If

she worries that I will have a heart attack, it is only because of

the money,

She is not without compassion, but some of the things she has

done for me have hardened her. The Auschwitz crossbeam was

one.

I grant few interviews. Shouldn't the work speak for itself?

But sometimes an interview brings its surprises. I once regretted

aloud that there was no wood from Auschwitz for me to carve.

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 155

A month after my words were in print, Nina had a call from the

Israeli government. They'd have preferred a Jewish artist, but no

one else achieves my effects.

The crossbeam came from one of the barracks torn down after

the war. It had, for a time, supported the roof of a Polish barn.

When they flew me in to inspect it, I did not ask how the

beam had come to Israel, to a warehouse where it lay in a mil-

itary truck bed like a missile.

The Deputy Minister of Culture, standing before the truck,

waved some documentation under my nose. I stepped past him

and touched the wood. Even after forty years, it was alive with

ghosts.

"We will give it to you," he said, "on the condition that you

cut it in half and produce two finished works, one of which you

will return to us. For the memorial."

I agreed.

They could not know how dense the wood was with tortured

faces, with gestures of pain and despair. Back in the States, I cut

the beam in half, as agreed. Then I split each half lengthwise and

carved four pieces instead of two. Let the Israelis imagine that

I'd had to carve deep to find the images I gave them. Let them

think the missing wood littered the floor of my studio as chips

and dust.

All four finished pieces were a tangied knot of victims.

Nina told me, "You can't sell the extras. You'll give yourself

away."

"We will sell them," I said. "Sealed bids. Secret bids. We'll

give slides for Hauptmann to circulate among likely buyers."

Nina's arms were crossed. "Not Hauptmann. I won't go

through Hauptmann again. Even talking to him on the phone, I

feel dirty."

"So write him. Mail him the slides."

"But the bidders he will bring us ..,"

"It's what I want, Nina."

"This is the last time I go through Hauptmann."

I said nothing. No one else knew the people Hauptmann knew.

A month later, Nina flung the list at my face. "Do you see

where these bids are coming from? Do you see?"

I picked up the loose pages from my floor, looked at the

names and offers. "Here," I said, and pointed at a bid from El

Salvador. "This can only be Rosado himself. It's not the nighest

bid, but I want you to sell it to him."

"If we weren't using Hauptmann's list, I could find someone

156                 Bruce Holland Rogers

else," Nina said. "A collector. An investor who would put it

away in a vault for his heirs. The money would be better, and—"

"Sell it to Rosado."

"In God's name, why?" Nina said. "Why do you want some-

one like him to have it?"

"If I'm lucky," I said, "he'll install it over his bed."

Nina's face was pale.

"Sell it to him, Nina. In a way, it's his already."

Then I picked another bid, one Nina liked no better.

The last carving we sold openly to the Museum of Modem

Art.

Once or twice a year, I look for trees in the killing fields.

Some are old fields. Some are fresh. I walk around the tree

trunks, touching them, feeling for the echoes. Then I direct the

cutting of the logs that will be shipped to the States, trucked

from Denver to the house and studio in the mountains,

Usually, the freshest sources are the hardest to get to. Not al-

ways, though. Not always.

A logging road runs parallel to my canyon, on the other side

of the ridge. If I have unwelcome visitors, that's usually where

they come from.

The night I found my guest, I was reading. I heard the crack

of a rifle shot.

I turned my lights off, shut down the generator.

Snow was falling. It had been coming down for hours in a fine

powder, the sort of snow that continues, steadily, all through one

day and into the next.

When 1 stepped outside, I could hear their voices at the top of

the ridge.

There was another shot. Youthful laughter. Raised voices.

Then silence.

When at last I heard one of the voices again, there was no

mirth in it. Indistinct words. Then another voice, pleading.

Again, silence. Enduring silence.

I waited a long time before getting the kerosene lantern out

and putting on my boots. Ordinary boots. Sorels. I had no way

of knowing that something special would be waiting for me at

the top of the ridge.

Lighting my way with the lantern, I found my way up the

slope to a small clearing. Fresh snowfall hadn't yet covered the

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 157

shell casings and beer bottles that appeared in the lantern's circle

of yellow light.

A shadow caught my eye, and I extended the lantern toward

it Stretched out on bloody snow was a body. The bald head was

uncovered. Vapor clouds of breath rose from the face. The eyes

were closed.

An old man. I thought. Lantern light is tricky. It took a mo-

ment for me to see that, no, his face was unlined. He was young.

Stepping closer, I saw the swastikas tattooed on his arm.

When I leaned to see his face, my hand fell upon the trunk,

and I paused, taking it all in.

I got my first taste of fighting in the fall of '44, in the Hiirtgen

Forest. The trees of the Hiirtgen were still just trees to me then.

I had the same feelings for them any infantryman would. When

they gave cover to my unit's advance, I loved them. When Ger-

man shells exploded among the branches over our heads, they

rained down limbs heavy as stones, splinters sharp as shrapnel.

We grenade-felled trees to clear booby traps, to build an instant

bridge over tangles of barbed wire. Trees were obstacles, trees

were useful. The tang of fresh resin filled the air.

1 paid more attention to the Germans.

Up close, as I stepped over them, the German dead in the

Hiirtgen could have been my cousins. Even after news of

Malmedy, I didn't hate them. I understood what had to be done.

I did it.

Buy a bond. Kill a Jap,

Kill a Jerry. A Nazi.

The swastika tattoos on the kid's arms are sharp-edged and

very black. He hasn't had them long.

"Do you know what I think?" I say to him. I haven't removed

the gag this time. His eyes bore into me.

"I think," I tell him, "that when a victim isn't handy, one

needs to be manufactured. Am I right?"

His eyes narrow. His gaze shifts to the deer rifle by the door,

but even if he unties himself while I'm upstairs, he'll find that

it's unloaded.

"I'm lucky that you and your companions didn't know I was

here—an old man living alone. An artist with shelves of history

books. I'd have been a more interesting victim, don't you think?

I'd have been perfect. You might be drinking a beer with them

right now, remembering, laughing. Instead, you had a little sur-

158                Bruce Holland Rogere

prise. Like Rohm's surprise. You know about Rohm, of course,

about what happened to him. You know all about the turn things

can take."

His lips work around the gag, but he's only trying to swallow.

There's no question, no understanding in his eyes.

"Ah. Never heard of Rohm. Well. It's an old, old story- Your

friends, your compatriots, they really did surprise you, yes?"