Hope: A Tragedy (11 page)

Hypothetically no, said Kugel. Hypothetically I’m not throwing Simon Wiesenthal out of the fucking dryer.

What about Solzhenitsyn? asked Bree. We’re going out for dinner, I take a shower, open the bedroom closet to get some clothing out, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s sitting on the floor. Does he get to stay?

That’s ridiculous, said Kugel, relieved to have found his own limit. He’d totally throw Solzhenitsyn out.

Oh
that’s
ridiculous?

Solzhenitsyn wasn’t in the Holocaust, hon.

He was in the Gulag, said Bree.

The Gulag wasn’t the Holocaust.

So we’re specifically housing Holocaust survivors?

Keep your voice down, said Kugel.

He stood, shook his head, and turned to the window. The woods were dark, forbidding. Why couldn’t he have found an arsonist, why couldn’t he have found mouse shit? He knew what he sounded like, and he hated it, but he didn’t like what she sounded like, either. She had relatives who died in the camps, too; how could she be so cold?

Tap, tap-tap.

You know, said Kugel, this hasn’t been a picnic for me, either. I was trying to protect you, to leave you out of it. I haven’t slept in days, Bree, I’ve been berated by real estate agents, by a Holocaust foundation, who knows if they contacted the ADL—it hasn’t been easy, you know?

Tap, tap-tap.

Kugel kicked the pillows off the vent and bent over.

Shut the fuck up, he shouted. I heard you, okay? I heard you!

Kugel grabbed his bathrobe from the bed and angrily pulled it on.

What about Sharansky? asked Bree. He wasn’t in the Holocaust.

Bree, said Kugel as he headed for the door, I’m not throwing Sharansky out.

Where are you going? she asked.

Kugel stamped angrily down the hallway and pulled the attic stairs down. He climbed up two steps at a time; maybe, he thought, I should just throw the bitch out.

The attic was dark.

What? he called out.

Nothing.

What do you want? he called out again as he approached the wall of boxes. I’m in no mood for jokes. I’m in no mood for this hide-and-seek bullshit.

He looked over the wall. Anne Frank was on her side, sleeping. The laptop was closed, and he could hear her ragged breathing.

Tap, tap-tap.

Kugel turned to the vent in the attic floor. He approached it slowly.

Tap, tap-tap.

Kugel knelt down beside the vent.

Mother? he said.

I’m frightened, came Mother’s reply.

Kugel closed his eyes and dropped his head.

Mother, said Kugel, go to sleep.

I can hear you fighting, said Mother. I don’t like hearing you fighting.

We’re not fighting, Mother.

I should go, she said.

Mother, you don’t have to go. We weren’t fighting.

I’m sorry.

Mother, go to sleep.

I’m a burden.

Go to
sleep
, Mother.

Kugel stood up, checked again on Anne, and went back downstairs, folding the attic stairs as quietly as he could. He climbed into bed; Bree lay with her back to him, on the far side of the bed.

She’s not staying, said Bree.

I’m not dragging Anne Frank down the stairs, honey. I’m not throwing Anne fucking Frank over my shoulder, kicking and screaming, and dropping her on the front lawn of my house, I’m sorry, I’m just not doing it.

Anne Frank is dead, said Bree.

I wish, said Kugel.

Bree switched off her bedside lamp and pulled the covers tight around her. Kugel was thankful for the darkness that surrounded him.

She’s not staying, said Bree.

Kugel turned his back to Bree and stared at the wall.

Why couldn’t he have just found shit?

She just wants to finish her book, he said.

I’m in no mood, Bree replied, for jokes.

14.

THAT NIGHT, Kugel dreamed he was looking out his bedroom window whereupon he spied a long procession of derelict elderly men and women, stretching as far as he could see, dragging themselves along his driveway; skeletal and withered, they moved slowly, bleating and bawling all the way; they went barefoot, their crumbling, emaciated bodies draped in dirty hospital gowns and gray, soiled pajamas; they were bent and broken and bandaged; some had their heads wrapped in gauze, some had walkers, some went with wooden crutches, some with steel IV towers, the small black plastic wheels stuttering along the crushed-stone drive. Some stumbled and fell to the ground, unable to rise; the others took no notice, didn’t try to help them to their feet, just kept walking on, moving ahead, even stepping on them, trampling them, as their inexorable plodding march continued. They frightened Kugel, though he didn’t know why, old and enfeebled as they were. He hurried down the stairs and out the front door, where he stood at the end of the front walkway, shouting at them to get off his property, warning them that he would call the authorities if they did not turn around immediately, but they paid him no attention. They moaned and groaned as they hobbled forward, sounding more like a herd of bruised cattle than human beings, drawing closer and closer to the house. Jonah had followed Kugel out onto the front porch, and Kugel shouted back to him to go inside, to lock the doors, and to tell Bree to phone the police. They grew closer. Kugel bent down, picked up a sharp stone, and threw it toward them with as much force as he could; with a sharp crack, the stone hit one elderly man square in the skull, but he didn’t seem to feel it, or if he did, it didn’t slow him down; his head snapped back, but he just kept on ambling forward. Kugel threw another stone, and then another, striking them on their shoulders, chests, heads, but none having any more effect than the first one had. Closer and closer they came, until they were upon him, and Kugel shouted for Bree and covered his face and shut his eyes, waiting for the beating to begin—he couldn’t bring himself, even now, to lash out at them with his fists—but the beating never came. With his eyes still closed, he could feel them brushing past him, groaning and moaning and oy-veying by, as if he weren’t even there. They had a stench about them like decay, like old neglected books. He opened his eyes as they shuffled by; their thin bare legs were covered in soot and mud; a few had wrapped their feet in old rags and newspapers, but they weren’t English papers, they were foreign, a language Kugel couldn’t recognize. When the last one had passed, Kugel turned and followed them around the corner of the house, where they had continued toward the high, sharp cliff at the edge of the property. Hey, he called to them, hey, watch out. Again, though, they took no notice of him. Hey! he called again. But they continued walking, bleating, braying, shuffling toward their doom, and soon, one by one, they were stepping off the edge of the cliff and falling, without a cry, to their deaths.

Kugel woke with a start.

He sat up, listening.

Had he heard something?

He lay back down, tried to sleep, but sat up sharply when he thought he’d heard the sound again.

Maybe when I’m dead, he thought. Maybe when I’m dead I’ll get some goddamned sleep.

He wondered if there was a last line in that.

Sleep, at last
. Or:
At last,
sleep
.

To sleep, perchance to something.

Perchance to
sleep?

To sleep perchance to sleep even
more?

Something.

He picked up his notepad and wrote that down.

Byron, on his deathbed, said: Now I shall go to sleep. Good night.

How about: Don’t wake me for breakfast.

Or: Cancel my subscription to the
Times
.

Or that old joke: Do not disturb any further.

That wasn’t bad for a tombstone:

SOLOMON KUGEL

Born.

Died.

Do Not Disturb Any Further.

That sound again. A creaking.

Could be nothing.

Could be a door opening.

Could be two trees, their trunks rubbing together in the wind, nothing more.

Nature, he couldn’t help noticing lately, was trying to scare the shit out of him. Fucking with him. He couldn’t help noticing that the extremes of temperature caused the wood of the house to expand and contract, making it sound as if a roof beam were snapping, as if the house might collapse and crush them all; he couldn’t help noticing, too, that lightning seemed to happen only at night, when it was most frightening; he couldn’t help noticing that if nature caught you sitting peacefully on the veranda one morning, enjoying the warm summer breeze and sipping a cup of tea, WHAM, she’ll cause a door somewhere to slam shut, a newspaper to fly away, a table to tip over. Sure, sure, François-Marie, all we have to do is tend our gardens. But what if your garden is trying to kill you, what then?

Again the creaking.

Kugel quietly crept out of bed so as not to wake Bree, knelt on the floor, and pressed his ear to the heating vent. He tried not to breathe; the stench was unbearable, even without the blower vomiting it up into the air. He heard Jonah, snoring lightly, and a moan of pain—that was probably Mother. He didn’t hear Anne typing. At this time of night, he could usually hear her typing. Maybe the creaking was her? Maybe she was walking around the house? Was that lunatic down here, walking around the house?

Anne? he whispered into the vent.

Nothing.

Mother?

Nothing.

Ma?

Kugel tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the darkened hall. He was relieved to see the attic stairs closed, and decided to check in on Jonah. Kugel knew that parents were supposed to enjoy watching their children sleep, but Kugel did everything he could to avoid it. Jonah seemed even more vulnerable in his sleep than he did during the day, his delicate chest rising and falling and seeming at times as if it could so easily stop, for no reason, with no warning or symptoms, going one moment and then, in the next, not. It was evening, it was morning, it sucked.

Kugel thought he might get a gun.

Just a small one.

For protection.

Not too small, though.

He crept downstairs, took the flashlight from beside the garden door, and walked outside.

Hello, he whispered. Hello?

Or a dog. Something big. Not too big, though.

He switched on the flashlight; the beam seemed pathetically weak in the heavy dark of night. The air was cool. He wondered if it was any cooler in the attic now, too. Maybe he should get her a fan.

Maybe it was too cool. She was old, after all. Maybe he should get her some blankets.

Kugel swung the light across the line of trees at the edge of the woods and called out: I know you’re fucking out there, motherfucker.

He waited.

Nothing.

What a world, thought Kugel; whoever you were, wherever you were, whatever time of the day or night, you could open your back door and call out I know you’re out there motherfucker, and nine times out of ten you’d be right. The motherfucker might not be in your own backyard, he might not be in the neighbor’s yard, he might be in the next town over, in the next state, in the next country. But the motherfucker was out there, and he meant you harm.

Why was Smiling Man smiling? Had he lost his mind? Had the photographer been joking with him? Had he made a joke himself—about his nudity, his frailty?

What’s your best side? the photographer might have asked.

Looking down at his skeletal form, Smiling Man might have said: These are all my sides.

Maybe he wasn’t smiling, after all.

Why was it so important to Kugel that he was smiling?

Because he
was
smiling, whether we wanted him to be or not.

I fucking know you’re fucking out there, Kugel called again.

A .22.

Nothing crazy.

Something small.

Not too small.

For protection.

A Doberman.

Just in case.

Mother’s defense against the motherfuckers out there was paranoia. Better spooked than sorry.

It’s a theory, thought Kugel.

Professor Jove was opposed to guns, not because of the physical danger they posed but because of the ominous hope they represented. The whole notion of personal protection caused Jove some concern, from national armies on down, and he saw a troubling similarity between gun owners and health fanatics, the former hoping they could protect themselves from the threat of man, the latter from the threats of life, of age, of nature, of death.

You never see a happy jogger, said Professor Jove, or a happy gun owner. Do you know why?

Is this a joke? asked Kugel.

No, said Professor Jove. It’s because they both know they’re chasing the impossible. So they run more miles, they lift more weight, they eat more protein and less carbs, or they eat more carbs and less protein. So they buy a bigger gun, a second gun, a third gun. Schmucks. Has a gun owner ever, in the history of the weapon, been satisfied with a small gun? If a small gun can save me, he figures, what can a big gun save? What can the biggest gun save? What can a bomb save? Tell me, Kugel: What did Helen Keller do when she fell into the pond?

Kugel sighed.

I don’t know, said Kugel. What did Helen Keller do when she fell into the pond?

She drowned, said Professor Jove. She struggled to reach the surface, but the exertion only made her body more desperate for oxygen and her lungs began to contract and expand on their own. Soon the spasms in her chest ceased, and she lost consciousness and died.

I don’t get it, said Kugel.

Maybe she jogged that morning, said Professor Jove. Maybe she had a .22 in her dresser drawer. Schmuck.

Kugel swung the flashlight back and forth across the face of the woods. Nothing moved.

Asshole, he called out.

And: Don’t fuck with me.

Kugel went back inside and locked the door.

A Rottweiler, maybe. With one of those spiked collars.

After being in the fresh air outside, the stench inside the house seemed even more pronounced. The vent cleaners had suggested that perhaps it was caused by a small animal, dead in the very walls it had climbed behind for safety, but that wouldn’t explain why the smell returned after they had cleaned it, or why it seemed of late to be getting worse.

Awake anyway, he thought. Might as well try to find out where it was coming from.

Kugel got down on his hands and knees, nose up, sniffing and crawling as he went, out of the kitchen, into the living room. Here the stench weakened somewhat, but after crawling into the hallway and foyer, he picked up the scent again. At the tenant’s room, the smell seemed to grow stronger.

He knew that bastard had been up to something.

He considered knocking, demanding to know what the tenant was up to in there, but it was three o’clock in the morning, and he decided to wait until morning. Before he left, just to be certain, he sniffed along the rest of the hallway, and indeed the smell was at its worst in front of Mother’s bedroom door.

He quietly got to his feet, knocked gently on the door, but heard no reply. He wrapped his hand around the doorknob; turning it slowly, he silently pushed the door open.

Mother? Kugel whispered.

Nothing.

He stepped into the room. The bed was empty.

Mother?

He heard a sound in the darkness from the far side of the bed. He switched on the light and stepped around the bed.

Ma? he called.

And then he saw her, squatting down beside the bed, over the heating vent, just the silver halo of her hair at first, as she was peering down between her knees. Kugel said, Mother? again, and she looked up, and he recognized the expression on her face, it was the same expression he’d had on his own face, every day and night for a week after Passover, after eating that damned matzoh, that cursed bread of affliction, and she saw him there, and she shook her head and said, her face red with exertion, Ever since the war.

I know, said Kugel.

Alan Dershowitz looked on.

Those sons of bitches, said Mother.

It’s okay, said Kugel.

It’s okay.