A Changed Man (4 page)
Authors: Francine Prose
The old man doesn’t want to remember. There’s something about this he doesn’t like. Better wrap up this part and move on.
“Anyway,” says Nolan, “I read about this skin who had a huge…change of heart because he heard his four-year-old daughter calling someone a nigger.” Bonnie and Meyer flinch. “Excuse me. Which, frankly, would
not
have been enough to make me turn—but then, I don’t have kids.” He smiles at Bonnie.
She
has kids. “The guy signed on to help with this tolerance group in L.A. And I thought if I could find a place like that, I could do something similar.”
Bonnie says, “Meyer, I don’t
believe
this. You were just saying before—”
Maslow gives her a look. He means her to shut up.
“So you know who we are? From the Internet.”
Didn’t Nolan just say that? “I read your books,” he repeats. “
The Kindness of Strangers.
And the new one.
One Heart at a Time.
”
“That’s still in hardback,” says Maslow.
“I ordered it from Amazon.” Nolan intends to, when he finds a way. That is, as soon as he figures out how to get his own credit card and an account.
“We no longer patronize Amazon,” says Maslow. “Not until they agree to stop carrying
The Turner Diaries.
”
Normally, Nolan’s proud of how much he reads, but for once he suppresses the desire to say, “I read that!” Of course he read
The Turner Diaries.
It was the only book, besides the Bible, that Raymond had in the house, which made sense, since Pierce’s novel is practically like the Bible to the ARM guys, who can quote it, chapter and verse. Despite all the violence and the stuff about the major race war finally breaking out and the black people—or was it the white collaborators or race-mixers?—strung from lampposts, Nolan thought it was boring. Will it earn him points to say that? Not likely. He thinks not.
“Anyhow,” says Nolan, “that’s how I wound up here. I thought I could help out. I know how ARM functions, and what those guys want, why the whole Aryan thing works for them. I was
one
of those guys, so I know what makes them so vulnerable, so open to having their heads turned around.”
Maslow says, “This is very interesting. Why don’t you phone us in a few days? Mrs. Kalen and I and our staff will try to figure out how we can use your experience—”
Is that what they tell the ladies who volunteer to lick envelopes and make calls for the charity drive? All this hard work, and Nolan has failed to get his point across.
“I don’t know how to say this, but I can’t go back. Leaving ARM is not like quitting the Boy Scouts. I can’t wait for you to call and have some guy at the tire place where I work, where a bunch of ARM guys work, say, Hey, Nolan, phone call. For you. World Brotherhood Watch. Those guys don’t just let you go. They’re not real fond of…defectors. This one guy who left Wyoming ARM. They found out where he was and put him in the hot seat and cut off three of his toes. They would track me down, is what I’m saying. As it is, I’m risking my life. If they knew I was here…”
Only when Nolan hears himself say this does he realize that it’s true. If Raymond ever found out where he was, Nolan would be dead meat. Will Raymond bother to hunt him down? Probably. Sooner or later. The shiver Nolan feels makes him want to pass the fear along to someone else.
“I mean, like I said, the guys I knew in ARM, they weren’t really all that violent. But they were always one step away from seriously breaking heads. The slightest insult, one word of back talk from someone of another religion or race, would have been all they needed to get things rolling. They were always jealous when they heard about guys who actually torched a synagogue or something. Or encouraged some lone wolf who went on a shooting spree.”
Torched a synagogue. Shooting spree. Nolan’s taking a risk here. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to make them think that taking him on will be more dangerous than it’s worth. On the other hand, he’s hoping that the element of threat will make them want to prove how gutsy they are, and rise to the scary challenge. He looks at Bonnie and Maslow. Bonnie’s gone white. The old man’s harder to read.
Maslow says, “We’d be discreet. We wouldn’t try to reach you at your workplace.”
“We can call you at home,” says Bonnie.
How could she still not get it?
“I’ve been staying on my cousin’s living room couch,” says Nolan. “I
have
no home. I’m homeless.” He hears his voice rise. “Which could get inconvenient. Listen, I was even worried the guys in ARM would find out I’d checked out your Web site on Raymond’s computer.”
“Maybe they’d think you were learning about your enemies,” says Maslow.
“That’s not how their minds work.” What’s making this trickier are the details that might have supplied the filler to plug up the holes in his story. The fifteen hundred dollars, the truck. The contents of Raymond’s medicine chest.
“What I need is something like the Federal Witness Protection Program. Only…not so extreme.
The Kindness of Strangers
was what gave me the idea.” In fact, Maslow’s books
were
what convinced Nolan that he might be able to do this. Starting with the first line: “This is a book about being taken in and saved by ordinary people of courage and conscience.” In the second book there’s a conversation between Maslow and some Japanese Zen master in which they agree that history is the stick God uses to whomp you on the head. Then there’s the new book—which Nolan hasn’t actually read, except for the summary on Amazon—about changing one person, one heart, at a time. What he read was enough for him to understand that Maslow is working toward sainthood. So let’s see how saintly you are, pal. Save me, like those strangers saved you.
“I read how you survived the war because people—even people who didn’t like Jews—had consciences and hearts and souls and pitied you and took you in. And I figured you would remember. I mean, I know you must hate neo-Nazis even more than the—”
Oops. Nolan stops in mid-sentence. He can practically watch the steam pour out of Maslow’s ears.
“We don’t hate anyone,” Maslow says. “Hate is not what we do. And young man, let me tell you that if you think protecting you from your hooligan hate-monger friends is
anything
like being saved from the Nazis—”
Bonnie startles, visibly.
I’ve blown it, Nolan thinks.
“I didn’t mean
that.
I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded. But I thought that since it…since something like that happened…I mean, I know that what’s happening to me is nothing like—”
Maslow’s eyelids droop. He nods wearily. Let it go.
“I thought you would understand and find some way to help me lay low till the dust settles. Plus…don’t you think the newspapers will love it? ‘Nazi Turns for Brotherhood Watch.’ There were always reporters and freelance writers swarming all over the Homeland Encampment, wanting to take us out for beers and listen to our life stories. Every creep was writing a book about the white-power movement. After that skin in L.A. turned himself in to the Wiesenthal Foundation, he was on all the talk shows for a while, it was a big deal. Not that this would just be about the media. It would be about changing one heart at a time. Like you say in your book.”
Nolan’s had to spell it out for them. And he’s had to bank on the fact that Maslow and Bonnie are no different from anyone else.
“Forgive me.” The old man looks tired. Has Nolan blown it again? “It’s late in the day. Somehow it’s taken me all this time to understand what you’re offering—and what you’re asking. Which is quite a lot.”
Nolan shrugs. “Offering mainly.”
“And asking. Quite a lot,” repeats Maslow. “You’re asking us to shelter you. To give you a new life. And if we had any brains at all, or if our brains were as big as our hearts, we’d refuse. Anyone would understand. No one would know we’d turned you down. But maybe you know that Sufi story about the man who steals a chicken and goes out to the woods to kill it where no one will see, except that he knows God sees—and so he can’t kill the chicken.”
Nolan takes a little break during the chicken story. It’s the same spiritual jive he used to hear from his mom and her friends.
“Well,” explains Maslow, “God sees into this room today, and I would have to answer to Him if I turned away a young man in need, perhaps in danger, a young man determined to change—and help us. Which reminds me. One thing we ask. And that is the truth. No reconciliation, no progress, can happen without it. This is something I learned from Nelson Mandela, from the Truth and Reconciliation Program. Bonnie, do we have that film on tape? I think our friend should see it. It’s very moving, what they’ve done in South Africa. They believe that healing cannot happen without total honesty and full disclosure. As do we. Which is why we’re asking you to be completely forthcoming. We’ll need to know who you are, and what you’ve done, and what you believe.”
Nolan nods his wild approval. How cool is
that—
dropping Nelson Mandela’s name? “Sure, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. My life is an open book.”
“Think of that as our contract,” Maslow says.
“Agreed,” Nolan says. “Sir.” And now Maslow smiles.
“Let’s find you an empty office, and you can relax until we figure out the next step. Would that be all right?”
“That would be fine.” Standing, Nolan starts sweating again, so the hand he gives Maslow to shake is a slippery mess. Maslow doesn’t seem to mind.
“So if we are to be colleagues,” he says, “do you think that I could make a slightly…unusual request?”
What does he mean by
unusual?
Nolan’s staying in to find out.
“Be my guest,” says Nolan.
“Would you mind pushing up your sleeves?”
“Sure.” Nolan pushes his sleeves to the elbow, high enough for Maslow and Bonnie to get a good look at the Waffen-SS bolts and the death’s-head. Neither shows the slightest emotion. They could be doctors trained to examine disgusting eruptions.
“Thank you, Vincent,” says Maslow.
And then Maslow rolls up
his
sleeve, unbuttoning a pearly button and neatly turning his elegant cuff. And there on Maslow’s spindly arm is the row of blue numbers. Nolan should have predicted this, but he’s shocked, nonetheless. He’s never seen anything like it. He always knew Raymond was wrong about the Jews tattooing themselves. The Holo-hoax, Raymond calls it. Maslow’s quite a guy. You’ve got to give him credit for having the balls to go mano a mano in this weird game of dueling tattoos. Damn, Nolan’s
glad
he got the tats. They’re getting him into the action. At the same time he’s glad he never went for that Holo-hoax crap. If he had, the old man’s tattoos would be making him feel bad about himself instead of about his fellow humans.
Maslow says, “Did you know that you can tell from the number when one arrived at Auschwitz?”
When
one
arrived at Auschwitz? One
what?
Shame washes over Nolan, an oily wave of self-loathing. The guy survived the death camps, and Nolan’s annoyed by how he talks? English isn’t his language. He hardly has an accent. How would Nolan stack up if they were doing this in Hungarian?
Nolan says, “I didn’t know that.”
“And you could tell where someone came from. The Italians had the lowest numbers. Read Primo Levi. I can’t remember my phone number, but I remember the one on my arm.”
Nolan can’t remember the last time he had his own phone number. But no matter what’s happened to Nolan, Auschwitz beats it cold. So far. Unless Raymond and his buddies hunt him down and kill him. Not that they’d
mean
to kill him. They’d just try to scare him. Things get out of hand. Even then his death would be only one death, compared to millions of deaths. But the bottom line would be that Nolan would be dead, and Maslow would be alive. So
then
who would have it worse?
“A living dog is better than a dead lion,” Nolan says.
“Ecclesiastes,” says Meyer.
“My favorite quote from the Bible,” says Nolan. “Anyway that’s what tattoos do. I mean, they mark time. I remember when I got these, I—”
Maslow’s face hardens from best-friend puppy to attack dog. “My tattoos and yours are
not
the same!”
“I know that,” Nolan says.
“You don’t. You don’t know!” Maslow says.
“I’m learning,” says Nolan. “Believe me.”
A
FTER
B
ONNIE AND
V
INCENT
have pretty much covered
the riveting subjects of the weather (hot for April!) and the traffic (hardly moving!), there’s nothing to do but sit in the van, foreheads popping beads of sweat into the hideous silence. Bonnie’s fighting the impulse to fling open the door and run screaming down the highway, which would make perfect sense since it’s obvious she’s already lost her mind.
But why should it seem crazy, or even odd, to be taking a skinhead stranger home to spend the night alone with you and your children? Why? Because it’s outrageous. Totally suicidal. How could Bonnie—a grown woman, a mother, the person more or less single-handedly responsible for raising the annual budget of a great human rights organization—have let Meyer talk her into this? Why? Because she believes that Brotherhood Watch
is
a great organization. Everything follows from that. It makes everything into a test. Is she great enough to work there? Bonnie loves the foundation, she loves her job, and above all she loves the feeling that she is doing something worthwhile with her life, something more important than what she did at her previous job, which was shaking down her suburban neighbors so that the Clairmont Museum could buy another antique print of a riverboat steaming up the Hudson.
“Tappan Zee traffic,” says Bonnie, the Martian’s tour guide to Earth.
“I figured.” Vincent’s staring straight ahead and sitting up so rigidly he could be one of those mannequins solo drivers buy so they can ride the commuter lanes. Is it nervousness? Some paramilitary thing? Or was he taught as a child to take up the minimum possible space? How sad that a child should be taught to get small. But that’s what Meyer had to learn. That’s how Meyer survived.
How different from her own kids—squirming, sprawling, occupying every inch of the world that exists for them to fill with their glorious bodies. Bonnie has to admit that even with their broken home, their self-involved dad, and the soulless home-wrecker he currently lives with, Danny and Max are lucky. She knocks on the little square of wood she carries on the dashboard for that purpose.
“Superstitious?” Vincent asks.
“Extremely,” Bonnie replies.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that knocking on wood means you’re superstitious. Still, Vincent’s getting it right might seem like an encouraging sign—he’s paying attention, taking things in, he
is
from Planet Earth—except that he hasn’t turned to face her or so much as twitched during their brief conversation. If that isn’t creepy, what is? Perhaps he’s just being polite, trying to inflate a bubble of privacy around himself in this awkward situation. It would be worse if he were, say, staring at her knee as she swivels between the gas and the brake, revealing stretches of thigh. Her skirt seems six inches shorter than it did this morning. Most men couldn’t sit still, couldn’t suppress their body-language critique of Bonnie’s driving. Joel rarely let Bonnie drive, except sometimes after a party; then he’d slide all the way down in the seat and cover his face with his hands. The worst part was that Bonnie
laughed
at this cute married joke.
No, the most humiliating part was how Bonnie trained herself to respond to Joel’s every gesture: that almost imperceptible lip-curl that meant the steak was a shade too rare. She should have made him burn it himself. Maybe they’d still be together. Not that Bonnie wants that. Since the divorce, she’s begun to see many aspects of Joel that she’d chosen to overlook. But monitoring his tiny tics has turned out to be excellent training, useful now in her work as she watches a donor’s face for the perfect moment to raise the subject of giving.
“Might as well relax,” she tells Vincent. “Go with the flow.” She’s said plenty of stupid things, but not, as it happens,
that.
Vincent looks frightened to death. What’s
he
got to be scared of? Plenty, Bonnie thinks.
Leaving the office, they’d had to discuss how to get to Bonnie’s house. It was like a blind date from hell, matchmade by Meyer Maslow. Vincent asked where Clairmont was, as if it made a difference. He said his truck was broken. He’d taken the bus into the city. Which means that Bonnie gets to drive him home, and back and forth to work every day now that Meyer has decided to give Vincent a desk and pay him a minimal salary to do…what? They’ll figure that out later. At least he won’t be parking a pickup truck plastered with racist bumper stickers in her driveway overnight. Clairmont’s a small town. People talk. Her kids go to public school.
Meyer told her to think of Vincent as a person newly escaped from a cult. These first few days would be critical. He could take off at any minute. Did Meyer miss the part where Vincent said he
couldn’t
go back? It comforts Bonnie that Meyer said, “these first few days.” After that they can help Vincent find his own place. What could be simpler than renting a Manhattan apartment for a homeless, tattooed neo-Nazi with nothing to his name but a duffel bag? And probably a storage unit by the side of the road crammed with explosives and canned baked beans, his emergency survival cache for the coming race war.
To break the silence, she says, “It’s getting worse every day. The traffic, the pollution—”
“That’s a statistical fact,” Vincent says. “I read where some scientists said we’ve only got enough oxygen left in the atmosphere to last us thirty more years.”
Where did he read
that?
The
National Enquirer
? Don’t be a snob, Bonnie thinks. Working with Meyer has made her acutely aware of her middle-class prejudices. Could it be true about the oxygen supply? Bonnie doesn’t care. It’s the longest sentence Vincent has spoken since they got in the van, back in Midtown.
“That’s what you get for chopping down the rain forest.” This seems safe enough, unless it inspires a rant about the Indians bringing it on themselves, burning their habitat for firewood, or some other such proven fact.
“For Big Mac containers,” says Vincent. So Bonnie and her Nazi pal share similar views on the environment.
Earlier that afternoon, while Vincent waited in Meyer’s secretary’s office, Meyer sat on the edge of his desk and ticked off the essential questions on his elegant fingers: What is their obligation to someone who needs their help? Why would a guy like Vincent decide to become a skinhead? Why would he change? And can some magic formula be extracted from his reversal, some miracle vaccine with which to inoculate thousands like him? Meyer went on to talk about how the species was being programmed—by overpopulation, crowding, the media, big business—to suppress its instinctive impulse to shelter the homeless, and to take in the stray.
“Who’s got the room?” said Bonnie, lamely.
“Everyone,” Meyer said.
That’s why Bonnie admires Meyer. And it’s also why Danny calls him Meyer Manson.
So, Mom, what did Charlie—I mean Meyer—say today?
Don’t call him that, says Bonnie, even though she’s weirdly pleased that her son knows who Charlie Manson is. By now that counts as history. Plus, she understands what he means. When Meyer gets his big ideas, his visionary plans, other people—mainly Bonnie—wind up handling the details.
Work with anyone long enough, you learn that the person is human. Bonnie has seen the great man’s whole day ruined by a gravy spot on his tie. But he’s a true believer, and what he believes in—saving lives, getting people out of prison and fed and taken care of, education, health care, basic human rights—is pretty high on the scale of things, no matter how you’re counting. So what if Meyer might, in his secret heart,
like
to be a cult leader? He’s not programming Bonnie to stab Hollywood starlets or to be raptured up into outer space.
Still, Bonnie can’t help wishing that she wasn’t always the one who gets to deal with the trivia that makes Meyer’s dreams come true. During last summer’s Pride and Prejudice (“Keep our pride! Lose our prejudice! Celebrate diversity!”) camp in Maine, it was Bonnie who called the lawyer when the kids got busted for smoking pot. It was Bonnie who tracked down the surgeon when the Bosnian peace activist’s appendix ruptured on Thanksgiving morning. Bonnie who found the backup caterers for the Copenhagen Conference after that BSE scare, the pharmaceutical company wanting to brighten its tarnished image by shipping penicillin to aid workers in Somalia. Why is Bonnie the chosen one? Obviously. She’s female. But that can’t be the whole reason. Other women in the office aren’t singled out. Is it that Bonnie can’t say no? She’d rather think that Meyer sees her as someone from whom heroic things can be asked.
How rare it is to have a boss who’s a better person than you are. Bonnie’s become a more savvy and trusting human being just from being around him. She’s learned a lot by watching him take one look at someone and figure out who that person is. He’s said it’s a skill he had to learn fast, on the run from the Germans. He didn’t have the luxury of misreading people’s intentions. So if Meyer says that Vincent is a person who wants to change and not a serial rapist, Bonnie is willing to believe that Vincent is a person who wants to change and not a serial rapist. It means being braver than she really is. But that’s a good thing, too.
Anyway, Vincent doesn’t seem like a serial rapist. In fact, if he weren’t a neo-Nazi, okay, a
former
neo-Nazi, and if Bonnie weren’t your basic single-mother-of-two foundation fund-raiser nun, she might almost think that Vincent was…sort of attractive. A little on the rough-trade side, but some women like that. Or she might think that if the divorce hadn’t left her convinced that you were better off not noticing if a man was attractive or not.
After Meyer had talked her into taking in Vincent as a houseguest, the first thing that crossed Bonnie’s mind was that Vincent had made it clear: his life might be in danger. How interesting that her first response wasn’t fear of Vincent but fear of Vincent’s friends, the ones who’d tracked that poor guy down—that defector in Wyoming. They’d put him in the…
hot seat.
Cut off three of his toes. Maybe Bonnie has instincts, too. That would be reassuring. Reassuring about what? About his buddies not hunting him down and spraying the house with bullets? A stab of grief warns her away from imagining her sons asleep in their beds when the white-power drive-by erupts. How could Bonnie do this to them? For
Meyer?
It’s not about Meyer. It’s about saving and changing a life.
The boys are probably home by now. Bonnie would give anything to be there with them, kicking off her shoes, putting on her sweatshirt and jeans, and fooling around in the kitchen, instead of here in gridlock hell in a freak spring heat wave, stalled in traffic that hasn’t moved in fifteen, twenty minutes, and just for added interest, a human time bomb in the passenger seat and, wait a minute, what’s
this?
A blinking light on her dashboard.
The blinking light says, “Maintenance required.” When did
that
come on? And does it mean required right now? Or required when you get to it?
Either the steering wheel’s vibrating strangely, or Bonnie has some…neurological tremor that also wasn’t there this morning. Calm down. She knows what Meyer would say:
Look for the hidden blessing.
Meyer’s books are filled with stories in which he asked what God wanted, and the answer helped him escape one mortal danger after another. Let Meyer find the blessing in this five-year-old van, the heat, the traffic. Meyer
walks
home from work.
Well, one blessing of being stuck on the road is that it’s delaying the moment when Bonnie has to introduce her kids to their new roommate. Another is that Vincent’s presence forces Bonnie to maintain some dignity instead of pounding the steering wheel and moaning, as she might if she were alone. Vincent might know what to do if the blinking dashboard light turns out to be serious. He’s a guy. He works in a tire shop.
Which would mean that her life was some cornball O. Henry short story scripted by Meyer. Our heroine does the right thing, her car breaks down, and—surprise!—the homeless skinhead is on board to help.
Vincent says, “I really appreciate your giving me a place to crash—”
“You should thank Meyer,” says Bonnie. “Not me.” That’s not what she meant to say. This wasn’t my idea. The boss made me do it. But isn’t that partly true? She’d begged Meyer to let her call a hotel and book Vincent a room. Meyer was sure that Vincent would be gone before morning. Bonnie reminded Meyer: She’s divorced. She lives in the suburbs with two teenage sons. Did he think a Nazi houseguest was really a good idea?
Meyer said, “What do I know? I’m just someone whose life was saved by men and women who acted without asking themselves if it was a good idea.”
“It’s not the same,” Bonnie pointed out. “Hiding you was the opposite of hiding a neo-Nazi.” It had only been a few minutes since Meyer said that to Vincent.
“A former Nazi.” Meyer waved his hand. “A human being asking for help.” Once more Meyer had made Bonnie see that she was being narrow and small-minded, caring only for her soft bed, her house, her kids, her privacy, when, if Meyer’s instinct about Vincent turned out to be true, the good he could do might outweigh all that put together. Here was a person who could talk to—who could
reach
—the kind of bigots that the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center can only monitor from afar. And what if Vincent doesn’t pan out? He doesn’t have to make
converts.
All he has to do is scare one middle-school kid out of turning into him.
“He’s quite a guy,” says Vincent. “That thing he did with the tattoos blew me away.”
“Me, too,” says Bonnie. “Wasn’t that incredible?” So it’s not just their concern for the rain forest that she and her new friend have in common. They shared an
experience
back in the office.
Bonnie had been deeply moved. Meyer’s thin arm, Vincent’s muscular one, the difference in their ages, their colors. Every human body born into this world as a blank slate on which a life will be inscribed. Another vision she would never have had if not for Meyer Maslow.