A Brief Lunacy (15 page)

“Why the story?” I ask. “Why the crazy made-up story of running away and your family being shot in the back?
Did they follow you? Were they shot?”

“It was two days before the whole camp went to the ovens. Thousands of people. I've read about it at the library. They took them, orchestra playing, until they took the orchestra. They all died. There were no Gypsies left in Birkenau. And then they moved in more Jews. I think they needed the room. I don't know.”

“That the right story? You got it right this time? You got a lot of stories, Mr. Carl.”

“I didn't want to leave my family but I was so young. I was small. Not like I am now. Small and thin. Starving. Stinking with infection.”

“That long day,” I say. “So, the truck left?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Carl? Yes? That's all?” I ask.

“My father was playing in the orchestra by the time they realized that I was missing. But my mother. They brought her out. I wish you could have met my mother. And my sister. Thank God my grandmother had gone already.”

Carl speaks between sobs, when he can. He sits with his face in his hands, raising his head only to speak the next words. He is broken. Am I the only one not crying? I cannot imagine tears. It is all too hideous. I tuck my arms underneath the blanket, touch my belly, where my children grew.

“They were naked. Both of them. I could see only their feet and halfway up their legs, but I saw enough to know what happened. I saw too much. They whipped Nonni bent over a stool until she ceased crying out. I couldn't see much
but I heard everything. I watched her feet jerk with each stroke from underneath the truck. Why they didn't catch me I'll never know. They shouted at my mother to tell where I was or they would beat Nonni again.”

“Did she know, your mother?”

“My mother knew nothing. How could she? She couldn't see me. They sent for my father. I watched his clothes drop to the dusty ground. He helped my mother hold Nonni up so she wouldn't fall, wouldn't be shot. I could see her useless feet and lower legs, bloody from the beating. When I closed my eyes, I saw her in that truck, dancing with her face, her eyes, her arms. They shouted at my father, ‘Where is he? Where is he? Where is your useless son?' I almost revealed myself. But I was seventeen. They would have killed us all.”

“It wasn't your fault, Carl,” I say.

Carl weeps quietly in his chair. He doesn't respond. When he finally looks up at me, I see more than sadness in his face. A kind of horror that I know I will never entirely forget.

“There's more, isn't there? Is that why you stopped?” Jonah seems fueled by the story. He talks faster, paces, his head down. “It's too painful? Carl? Are you awake? Remember the chicken dinner. I promised. When you're finished your story. But you're not finished, are you, Carl?”

“No.”

I can barely understand him. “Enough,” I say. “No more. He can't stand any more. Isn't that enough?”

“Intimacy through art. Through stories. Intimacy through honesty. Don't you get it, mother of Sylvie? Don't you
understand? God said to
know
you. How can I know Carl if he won't tell the truth? There's more. I can tell.”

“Please. He's told you everything. How could there be any more?”

“There's more. There's more, isn't there, Carl? Do you want me to whip the little lady? Don't make me do that.”

“They held a pistol to my mother's mouth, made her open her mouth, close her lips around the barrel. I couldn't see. But I heard them shout the orders, heard my father groan, heard my sister call out, ‘Mama.' My God, why didn't I show myself? Oh, my God. The rest of it, I saw, with my own eyes. I saw it all. My sister. Blood dripped down her chin from where she bit herself.”

“Well,” Jonah says, “I guess that's enough, Carl.”

“No. It's not enough. You wanted to hear it. I can't stop now. The others. They tried to turn away. Three were shot. My aunt was one of them. My father loved my mother. He did what he had to do. He thought she would be saved. My sister did it for me. She spread herself on the Nazi dirt and let our father do what he had to do. They made him lie naked on her, his own daughter. The shame. They laughed.

“Before he could stand up, the guard pulled the trigger on the pistol that was in my mother. They left Nonni there in the dirt. Hours later when the truck began to roll out the gates, Nonni still lay on that hard dirt alone. I tried to speak words she could understand on my mouth, but her eyes were vacant and so dark, dark like a raven's eyes. That's the last I saw of her.”

“Your father?” Jonah asks.

“They took him away. I don't know what happened to him. Perhaps he lived to go with the others to the gas.”

“Tape his arms,” Jonah says. “Just while you cook the chicken.”

“I'd like to get dressed,” I say. “I can't cook with the blanket around me.”

“First tape his arms.”

I
FEEL NAKED
although it is Jessie who wears no clothes. This time the tape is tight around my arms. Was it yesterday that Jessie pressed the old skin on the back of my hand? Then I had never hurt her, never used my hands against her. But what now? He has hung the drawings up all around the room with thumbtacks, even the ones of the pine tree. But the drawings of Jessie. God. Where are the saviors? Where are Hans and Marte? Doesn't someone know we are suffering?

My Jess returns to the couch and adjusts the blanket, pulls her bare feet under her. His couch. Where he lay watching the videos. I try to make myself look at her, to reassure her that everything will be all right, that Jonah will go away, that I will dress her gently and make tea and warm biscuits. But I'm ashamed. I make myself look at my hands. They are swelling from the tight tape, from their own culpability.

The car engine coughs and chokes and then dies. Out of gas. That's no solution for escape now. We all wait for Sylvie. Is she coming? My family is in ruins. What if she comes? What if she doesn't? Perhaps it's almost over,
n'est-ce pas?
Jonah sits quietly at the kitchen table, leafing through our old photo albums, the gun placed in front of him as if it were a water glass. My arms are held firm against the arms of the chair. If I stand I could whack him with it, but he will shoot. The tape crosses the belly of the fish on my arm. I order God to intervene. I haven't believed in God since Poland, but what else can I do?

From his pocket, Jonah takes more pills, swallows them with tea. My pharmacology information on that kind of drug dates back to medical school. It's probably amphetamines. More and more.

“Carl? What ya looking at? I like the album.”

“Please. You've done enough. Just go and we won't call the police.”

“But Sylvie. What about Sylvie? I've come to prepare everything. I can't leave.”

His clothes hang off him as if they were meant for someone larger. He's scared. He doesn't want to do this. His dull eyes drift from Jessie to me as if he's pleading to be comforted, but then his leg begins to jiggle again, banging on the underside of the table.

“I love her. Do you think she's found a motel?”

We don't answer. I think Jessie is too terrified and I have no idea what to say to him. He slams the album shut and tucks the revolver into his pants before he paces again, hugging the album to his chest. When he shoves it into its place
next to the others, he hesitates, glances at me, opens the closet. He bends toward the violin, picks it up, turns it over, brings the back close to his eyes.

“I see it,” Jonah says. “The ‘Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,' the National Socialist German Workers' Party. I studied some German in high school. You could sand the writing off, Carl.” He looks at Carl when he makes his suggestion, like a child with a good idea.

What is he going to do with it? He wipes the dried rosin along the frayed bow and tucks the violin under his chin. When he slides the bow across the strings, he tightens the pegs at the neck. I try to connect with Jessie. Now. We could escape. She could escape. She watches Jonah.

Jonah is indeed familiar with the violin. He knows how to tune. The string stretched over the damaged part of the bridge sounds tinny but it is tuned. He plays Chopin. Just snippets of pieces, one into the other. When he plays, his face softens, and his fingers are delicate on the strings. His eyes close while he plays. He changes to Vivaldi. Did his father really take him to violin lessons? I rise, try to pull the heavy chair with me, try to move my feet, but the tape pulls them too close together. He hears me and stops.

“Carl. Here. You play.”

“I can't. My arms are taped.”

“I'll fix that,” he says. “Oh, Sylvie's mother? Please unwrap Carl's arms. And check his legs. Make sure that tape is tight. Can't have him going off willy-nilly.”

“What about the chicken?” I say. “You said we would have dinner.”

“Shut up about chicken. I'll decide when we'll eat.”

Jessie drags the blanket with her, tries to keep it wrapped around herself. Her feet have bunions. I never really noticed that before. When she bends to untape my arms, I stroke her hair with my fingers. She keeps her head close enough to me. She stays at my side, leans her head on my hand. Her face is flushed. Hot. I make a quiet hum in my throat just to let her know. Know what? That I love her? That I'm going to fix everything?

“Where is she? I need her. She's the reason I'm here. Sylvie. My pretty Sylvie. I need to be where she is.”

Jonah's hand pats the revolver butt protruding from his waistband. He seems to gather strength from it. Jessie returns to her place on the couch, and Jonah passes me my violin.

I haven't played in years. I haven't held a violin under my chin since I left Europe. The sound of the bow across the strings shrieks into the otherwise-still air. Jessie pulls the blanket up around her neck. It's a good violin. Although I barely remember playing before the camp, I know intellectually that I played with my family in front of royalty and for friends, played dance music and symphonies, folk tunes and our own music, but my fingers seem to remember only regimented Nazi patriot tunes. I play the scale. I play “Happy Birthday,” and then it comes slowly, something from the past before the camp. I think it's Hungarian.

“I need to stand up,” I say. “I can't play in the chair.”

“Play. Tell him to play in the chair,” he says to Jessie. “Play something fast. Gypsy music.”

My fingers weren't so big then, when I played fast
Gypsy music. They move as if in molasses, playing something from my memory, sad, melancholy.

“I need to go where she is. I need to go where she was.”

Jonah paces back and forth while I play. When I stop, he touches the gun stuck in his waistband. I begin again. He takes more of the small white pills from his pocket, swallows them dry. Spittle gathers at the edges of his lips, and the stink of his sweat makes me hesitate. When I close my eyes, I see my uncle, his genitals shot off, naked in the frozen mud of Auschwitz, the smell of fear and excitement mingled, one stink for all of us, guards and prisoners. We all smelled the same. Do I smell my own fear? Jessie's? Jonah's?

“We don't know where she is,” Jessie says. Her voice is full, strong. I stop playing to listen. “If you let us call, we can find out.”

“She's been here. In this room.” Jonah touches the walls, the drawings of Jessie, the side table, the wrought-iron lamp in the corner of the room. “Here,” he says, “and here.” He touches Jessie's stomach through her blanket. “And here. Play, you son of a bitch. Play or I'll kill her.”

He kneels in front of Jessie. I play because I don't know what else to do. I play slowly, pushing my fingers to move up and down the neck, softly so that I can hear what she says over the harsh sound of the strings.

“Sylvie's been here, hasn't she? On you. Inside you. She's sucked at you.” He tugs the blanket down, exposing her shoulders. Jessie grabs at the edge to hold it up. He slaps her cheek, not hard, but enough to turn her head and cut
into the sound of the music.

“Jess,” I say. “My Jess.”

Jessie curls up tight into herself. She isn't crying. Her jaw sets hard and I know she can take it, whatever Jonah gives her. She has a new resolve. He jerks the blanket again and it slides down over her breasts onto her lap. She makes no effort to cover herself.

“Let me say this. You two will do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand that? God is with me. It is my mission. Answer me. Do you get it?”

“I hear you,” Jessie says.

I nod, murmur something.

“And you. Play. And don't stop. When you stop, I will have to hurt your wife. Do you hear me? I don't want to be doing this. But I have to be obedient. God has mandated. ‘Know them,' God said. ‘Know.' Do you understand? You. Carl. Answer me.”

“Yes,” I say.

Jonah pulls the gun out of his pants and holds it to my head while he removes the blanket from Jessie, throws it across the room into the kitchen. She doesn't flinch when he lifts her empty breast to his mouth and covers her nipple with his lips. The urge to turn away is almost more than I can resist, but I watch and play because I must. I can't rise to my feet while I'm playing. I have no balance. And besides, what could I do? Throw the violin at him? That's like trying to kill someone with feathers. Nothing I think of doing to him is possible because of the blasted gun pointing at my head, so I play something my father taught me, for my
mother. I see her naked, too, walking barefoot in front of the guard, Hans, who swipes at her bottom with a small whip. “We'll see where he's hiding now, won't we?” he said. “We'll see if little Veshi can watch his own dear mother beaten.” And then the crack of the whip hard on her back. It's my punishment. To watch. At that time, all I could see was her feet, her ankles, bare and dirty. My mother, dirty. But I heard everything from underneath that truck. And what I couldn't see with my eyes became vivid in my mind. And as many times as I try to remember her before, in the caravan, dressed in her red dress dotted with mirrors, silver bangles around her wrist, one lone bangle around her ankle, all I see is her bare, dusty feet.