Frameshift (4 page)

When she was eighteen, Molly Bond had been an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Minnesota. She lived in residence even though her family was right here in Minneapolis. Even back then, she couldn’t take staying in the same house with them — not with her disapproving mother, not with her vacuous sister Jessica, and not with her mother’s new husband, Paul, whose thoughts about her were often anything but paternal.

Still, there were certain family events that forced her to return home.

Today was one of those. “Happy birthday, Paul,” she said, leaning in to give her stepfather a kiss on the cheek. “I love you.”

Should say the same thing back
. “Love you, too, hon.”

Molly stepped away, trying to keep her sigh from escaping audibly. It wasn’t much of a party, but maybe they’d do better next year. This was Paul’s forty-ninth birthday; they’d try to commemorate the big five-oh in a more stylish fashion.

If Paul was still around at that point, that is. What Molly had wanted to detect when she leaned in to kiss Paul was
I love you, too
, spontaneous, unplanned, unrehearsed. But no. She’d heard
Should say the same thing
b
ack
, and then, a moment later, the spoken words, false, manufactured, flat.

Molly’s mother came out of the kitchen carrying a cake — a carrot cake, Paul’s favorite, crowned with the requisite number of candles, including one for good luck, arranged just like the stars on an American flag. Jessica helped Paul get his presents out of the way.

Molly couldn’t resist. While her mother fumbled to get her camera set up, she moved in to stand right beside her stepfather, bringing him into her zone again. Molly’s mother said, “Now make a wish and blow out the candles.”

Paul closed his eyes.
I wish
, he thought,
that I hadn’t gotten married
.

He exhaled on the tiny flames, and smoke rose toward the ceiling.

Molly wasn’t really surprised. At first she’d thought Paul was having an affair: he often worked late on weeknights, or disappeared all day on Saturdays, saying he was going to the office. But the truth, in some ways, was just as bad. He wasn’t going off to be with someone else; rather, he just didn’t want to be with them.

They sang “Happy Birthday,” and then Paul cut the cake.

The thoughts of Molly’s mother were no better. She suspected Molly might be a lesbian, so rarely was she seen with men. She hated her job, but pretended to enjoy it, and although she smiled when she handed over money to help Molly with university expenses, she resented every dollar of it. It reminded her of how hard she’d worked to put her first husband, Molly’s dad, through business school.

Molly looked again at Paul and found she couldn’t really blame him. She wanted to get away from this family, too — far, far away, so that even birthdays and Christmases could be skipped. Paul handed her a piece of cake. Molly took it and moved down to the far end of the table, sitting alone.

Wrapped up in his personal problems, Pierre failed all of his first-year courses. He went to see the dean of undergraduate studies and explained his situation. The dean gave him a second chance: McGill offered a reduced curriculum over the summer session. Pierre would only manage a couple of credits, but it would get him back on the right track for next September.

And so Pierre found himself back in an introductory genetics course. By coincidence, the same pencil-necked Anglais teaching assistant who had originally pointed out the heritability of eye color was teaching this one.

Pierre had never been one for paying attention in class; his old notebooks contained mostly doodled hockey-team crests. But today he really was trying to listen… at least with one ear.

“It was the biggest puzzle in science during the early 1950s,” said the TA. “What form did the DNA molecule take? It was a race against time, with many luminaries, including Linus Pauling, working on the problem.

They all knew that whoever discovered the answer would be remembered forever…”

Or perhaps with
both
ears…

“A young biologist — no older than any of you — named James Watson got involved with Francis Crick, and the two of them started looking for the answer. Building on the work of Maurice Wilkins and X-ray crystallography studies done by Rosalind Franklin…”

Pierre sat rapt.

“… Watson and Crick knew that the four bases used in DNA — adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine — were each of a different size. But by using cardboard cutouts of the bases, they were able to show that when adenine and thymine bind together, they form a combined shape that’s the same length as the one formed when guanine and cytosine bind together. And they showed that those combined shapes could form rungs on a spiral ladder…”

Rapt.

“It was an amazing breakthrough — and what was even more amazing was that James Watson was just twenty-five years old when he and Crick proved that the DNA molecule took the form of a double helix…”

Morning, after a night spent more awake than asleep. Pierre sat on the edge of his bed.

He had turned nineteen in April.

Many of those at risk for Huntington’s had full-blown symptoms by the time they were — to select a figure — thirty-eight. Just double his current age.

So little time.

And yet—

And yet, so much had happened in the last nineteen years.

Vague, early memories, of baby-sitters and tricycles and marbles and endless summers and
Batman
in first run on TV.

Kindergarten. God, that seemed so long ago. Mademoiselle Renault’s class. Dimly recalled celebrations of Canada’s centennial.

Being a Louveteau — a Cub Scout — but never managing to finish a merit badge.

Two years of summer camp.

His family moving from Clearpoint to Outrement, and he having to adjust to a new school.

Breaking his arm playing street hockey.

And the FLQ October Crisis in 1970, and his parents trying to explain to a very frightened boy what all the TV news stories meant, and why there were troops in the streets.

Robert Apollinaire, his best friend when he was ten, who had moved all of twenty blocks away, and had never been seen again.

And puberty, and all that
that
entailed.

The hubbub when the 1976 Olympics were held in Montreal.

His first kiss, at a party, playing spin the bottle.

And seeing
Star Wars
for the first time and thinking it was the best movie that ever was.

His first girlfriend, Marie — he wondered where she was now.

Getting his driver’s license, and smashing up Dad’s car two months later.

Discovering the magic words
Je t’aime
, and how effective they were at getting his hand under a sweater or skirt. Then learning what those words really meant, in the summer of his seventeenth year, with Danielle. And crying alone on a street corner after she had broken up with him.

Learning to drink beer, and then learning to like the taste. Parties.

Summer jobs. A school play for which he did lighting. Winning season’s tickets to the Canadiens home games in a CFCF radio giveaway — what a year that had been! Walking, unmotivated, through high school. Doing sports reporting for
L’Informateur
, the school newspaper. That big fight with Roch Laval — fifteen years of friendship, gone in one evening, never to be recovered.

Dad’s heart attack. Pierre had thought the pain of losing him would never go away, but it had. Time heals all wounds.

Almost all.

All that, in nineteen years. It
was a
long time, was a substantial period, was… was, perhaps, all the good time he had left.

The pencil-necked teaching assistant had been talking last class about James D. Watson. Just twenty-five when he’d co-discovered the helical nature of DNA. And by the time he was thirty-four, Watson had won the Nobel Prize.

Pierre knew that he was bright. He walked through school because he c
ould
walk through school. Whatever the subject, he had no trouble.

Study? You must be joking. Carry home a stack of books? Surely you jest.

A life that might be cut short.

A Nobel Prize by age thirty-four.

Pierre began to get dressed, putting on underwear and a shirt.

He felt an emptiness in his heart, a vast feeling of loss. But he came to realize, after a few moments, that it wasn’t the potential, future loss that he was mourning. It was the wasted past, the misspent time, the hours frittered away, the days without accomplishment, the coasting through life.

Pierre pulled up his socks.

He would make the most of it — make the most of every minute.

Pierre Jacques Tardivel
would
be remembered.

He looked at his watch.

No time to waste.

None.

Avi Meyer’s father, Jubas Meyer, had been one of the fifty people to escape from the Treblinka death camp. Jubas had lived for three years after the escape, but had died before Avi was born. As a child growing up in Chicago, where Avi’s parents had settled after time in a displaced-persons camp, Avi had resented that his dad wasn’t around. But shortly after his bar mitzvah in 1960, Avi’s mother said to him, “You’re a man now, Avi. You should know what your father went through — what all our people went through.”

And she’d told him. All of it.

The Nazis.

Treblinka.

Yes, his father had escaped the camp, but his father’s brother and three sisters had all been killed there, as had Avi’s grandparents, and countless other people they’d been related to or known.

All dead. Ghosts.

But now, perhaps, the ghosts could rest. They had the man who had tormented them, the man who had tortured them, the man who had gassed them to death.

Ivan the Terrible. They had the bastard. And now he was going to pay.

Avi, a compact, homely man with a face like a bulldog, was an agent with the Office of Special Investigations, the division of the United States Department of Justice devoted to hunting down Nazi war criminals. He and his colleagues at the OSI had identified a Cleveland autoworker named John Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible.

Oh, Demjanjuk didn’t seem evil now. He was a bald, tubby Ukrainian in his late sixties, with protruding ears and almond-shaped eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. And, true, he seemed not nearly as cunning as some reports had made out Ivan the Terrible to be, but, then again, he was hardly the first man to have had his intellect dulled by the passing decades.

The OSI agents had shown photo spreads containing pictures of Demjanjuk and others to Treblinka survivors. Based on their identifications, and an SS identity card recovered from the Soviets, Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship had been revoked in 1981. He’d been extradited to Israel, and now was standing trial for the one capital crime in all of Israeli law.

The courtroom in Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’uma convention center was large — indeed, it was actually Hall Two, a theater rented for this trial, the most important one since Eichmann’s, so that as many spectators as possible could see history being made. Much of the audience consisted of Holocaust survivors and their families. The survivors were an ever dwindling number: since Demjanjuk’s denaturalization trial in Cleveland, three of those who had identified him as Ivan the Terrible had passed away.

The judges’ bench was on the stage — three high-back leather chairs, with the one in the center even taller than the other two. The bench was flanked on either side by a blue-and-white Israeli flag. To stage left, the prosecution’s table and the witness box; to stage right, the table for the defense attorneys and, just behind them, the dock where Demjanjuk, wearing an open-necked shirt and blue sports jacket, sat with his interpreter and guard. All the furnishings were of polished blond wood.

The stage was raised a full meter above the general audience seating.

Television crews lined the back of the theater; the trial was being broadcast live.

The trial had been under way for a week. Avi Meyer, there as an OSI observer, whiled away the time waiting for the court to be called to order by rereading a paperback of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. Harper Lee’s tale had affected him profoundly the first time he’d read it in university. Not that the experiences of Scout — Miss Jean Louise Finch, that is — growing up in the Deep South bore any resemblance to his own upbringing in Chicago.

But the story — of the truths we hide, of the search for justice — was timeless.

In fact, maybe that book had as much to do with him joining the OSI as did the ghosts of the family he had never known. Tom Robinson, a black man, was charged with raping a white girl name of Mayella Ewell. The only physical evidence was Mayella’s badly bruised face: she’d been punched repeatedly by a man who had led with his left. Her father, a nasty impoverished drunk, was left-handed. Tom Robinson was a cripple; his left arm was twelve inches shorter than his right, and ended in a tiny shriveled hand. Tom testified that Mayella had thrown herself at him, that he’d rejected her advances, and that her father had beaten her for tempting a black man. There was not one shred of evidence to support the rape charge, and Tom Robinson was physically incapable of inflicting the beating.

But in that sleepy Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, the all-male, all-white jury had found Tom Robinson guilty as charged. A white girl’s testimony
had
to be taken over a black man’s and, well, even if Robinson wasn’t guilty of this particular crime, he was a shiftless nigger and doubtless guilty of something else.

That justice needed righteous guardians there could be no doubt. And there had been one in
To Kill a Mockingbird
: Jean Louise’s lawyer father, Atticus Finch, who represented Tom despite the calumny of the townsfolk, who gave a spirited, intelligent, dignified defense.

Back then, in the thirties, the courthouse, like everything else, had been segregated. The blacks had to sit in the balcony. Jean Louise and her brother Jem had snuck into the courthouse and found a place to watch from up there, near the kindly Reverend Sykes.

When the case was over, when Tom Robinson was taken off to jail, when all the whites had ambled out, the blacks waited in silence until Atticus Finch gathered up his law books. As he made his way out, the black men and women, knowing in their bones that Tom was innocent, that this was their lot, that Atticus had done his best, rose to their feet and stood in silent salute. The Reverend Sykes spoke to Atticus’s young daughter. “Miss Jean Louise,” he said, “stand up. Your father’s passin‘.”

Even in defeat, a righteous man is honored by those who know he did his best in an honorable cause.
Your father’s passin‘
…

Supreme court justice Dov Levin and Jerusalem district court judges Zvi Tal and Dalia Dorner — the tribunal that would decide John Demjanjuk’s fate — came into the theater. As soon as the three were seated, the clerk rose and announced, “
Beit Hamishpat!
State of Israel versus Ivan ‘John,’ son of Nikolai Demjanjuk, criminal file 373/86 at the Jerusalem District Court, sitting as the Special Court under the Law for the Punishment of Nazis and Their Collaborators. Court session of 24 Shevat 5747, 23 February 1987, morning session.”

Avi Meyer folded down a page corner to mark his place.

“My name is Epstein, Pinhas, the son of Dov and Sara. I was born in Czestochowa, Poland, on March third, 1925. I lived there with my parents until the day we were taken to Treblinka.”

Avi Meyer, who had just turned forty and so was particularly conscious of the signs of aging, thought Epstein looked ten years younger than sixty-two. He was tall, with a full head of reddish brown hair combed straight back from his forehead.

The panel of three judges listened intently: bearded Zvi Tal, a yarmulke crowning his thick gray hair; Dov Levin, dour, balding, wearing horn-rimmed glasses; and Dalia Dorner, her hair cropped short, wearing a jacket and tie just like her male colleagues.

“Your Honors,” said Epstein, turning to them, “I remember an incident — I have nightmares about it still. One day, a little girl managed to escape alive from the gas chamber. She was twelve or fourteen. Like Jubas Meyer, Shlomo Malamud, and others, I was forced to be a corpse bearer, removing the dead from the chambers.” Avi Meyer sat up straight at the mention of his father’s name. “The girl’s words still ring in my ears,” said Epstein: “ ‘Mother! Mother!’ ” He paused for a moment and wiped tears from his eyes. “Well, Ivan went after Jubas, and…”

Avi Meyer felt his heart pounding. Epstein had trailed off, and was now looking again from judge to judge, lingering longest on Dalia Dorner, as if intimidated by the female presence. “I’m sorry,” said the witness. “I’m too ashamed to repeat the words Ivan used next.”

Dov Levin frowned and removed his glasses. “If it’s important that we hear the words, then say them.”

Epstein sucked in breath, then: “He beat Jubas, then shouted, ‘
Davayy ebatsa’
…”

Levin raised his shaggy black eyebrows. “Which means?”

Epstein squirmed in his chair. “ ‘Come fuck,’ in Russian. He was saying to Jubas, take off your pants and come fuck. And he pointed at the terrified girl.”

Avi Meyer tasted bile at the back of his throat. He’d thought he’d heard all the horrors twenty-seven years ago, after his bar mitzvah. His mother was dead now; he hoped she had never known.

Mickey Shaked, one of the three Israeli prosecutors, had a full head of curly hair and sad, soulful eyes. He placed the cardboard photo spread in front of Epstein. It was a sheet with eight photographs on it: two rows of three pictures and a final row of two. All were of Ukrainian men suspected of war crimes. The first five photos were passport shots; the sixth was clipped from some other document. Only the seventh and eighth were regular snapshots — almost twice as big as the others. Of the eight photos, only the seventh showed an almost totally bald man; only the seventh showed a round-faced man.

“Do you see anyone whose face you recognize among these pictures?” asked Shaked.

Epstein nodded, but at first was unable to give voice to his thoughts. He finally placed a finger on the seventh picture. “I recognize him,” he said.

“In what way?”

“The forehead, the round face, the very short neck, the broad shoulders, the ears that stick out. This is Ivan the Terrible as I remember him from Treblinka.”

“And do you see this same man anywhere in this court today?” asked Shaked, looking around the vast theater as if he himself had no idea where the monster might be.

Epstein raised his voice as he pointed at Demjanjuk. “Yes, he’s sitting right there!”

Spectators actually applauded. Demjanjuk’s Israeli lawyer, Yoram Sheftel, spread his arms imploringly at the bench. Judge Levin scowled, as if reluctant to interrupt good theater, but finally called the room to order.

Another witness was on the stand now: Eliahu Rosenberg, a short, stocky man with gray hair and dark bushy eyebrows.

“I ask you to look at the accused,” said Prosecutor Mickey Shaked.

“Scrutinize him.”

Rosenberg turned to the three judges. “Will you ask the accused to take off his glasses?”

Demjanjuk immediately removed his glasses, but as Mark O’Connor, his American lawyer, rose to object, Demjanjuk put them back on.

“Mr. O’Connor,” said Judge Levin, frowning, “what is your position?”

O’Connor looked at Demjanjuk, then at Rosenberg, then back again at Judge Levin. Finally, he shrugged. “My client has nothing to hide.”

Demjanjuk stood up and took off his glasses again. He then leaned forward and spoke to O’Connor. “It’s okay,” Demjanjuk said. “Have him come closer.” He pointed to the edge of his booth. “Have him come right here.”

O’Connor at first shushed Demjanjuk, but then seemed to think that perhaps he did have a good idea. “Mar Rosenberg,” he said, “why don’t you come over for a closer look?”

Rosenberg left the witness stand and, without taking his eyes off Demjanjuk, closed the distance. Spectators whispered to themselves.

Rosenberg placed a hand on the edge of Demjanjuk’s dock to steady himself. “
Posmotree!”
he shouted.
Look at me!

Demjanjuk met his eyes and stuck out his hand. “
Shalom
,” he said.

Rosenberg stumbled backward. “Murderer!” he shouted. “How dare you offer me your hand?” Avi Meyer watched as Rosenberg’s wife, Adina, who was seated in the third row, fainted. Her daughter caught her in her arms.

Rosenberg stormed back to the witness stand.

“You were asked to come closer and have a look,” said Judge Dov Levin.

“What did you see?”

Rosenberg’s voice was shaking. “He is Ivan.” He swallowed, trying to gain composure. “I say that without hesitation or the slightest doubt. He is Ivan from Treblinka — Ivan from the gas chambers. I’ll never forget those eyes — those murderous eyes.”

Demjanjuk shouted something. Avi Meyer hadn’t made it out clearly, and O’Connor, his hearing impaired by the translation headset, apparently also missed it. He took off the earphones and turned to face his client.

Avi strained to hear. “What did you say?” asked O’Connor.

Demjanjuk, red-faced, crossed his arms in front of his chest, said nothing. Demjanjuk’s Israeli lawyer, Yoram Sheftel, leaned closer to O’Connor and spoke in English. “He said to Rosenberg, ‘
Atah shakran
’

—“ ‘You are a liar.’ ”

“I’m telling the truth!” shouted Rosenberg. “He is Ivan the Terrible!”