The Holocaust Opera (11 page)

“They said to leave the place in darkness, to lock it up after I left and to never return. That I would be safe as long as Mengele didn’t know they were dead.”

“Maybe they didn’t do it to themselves, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah stared at me with wet eyes. “What do you mean? Of course they did. They left the confession.”

“Think about it, Jeremiah. Think about all the stuff you just told me. Your father was determined to destroy Mengele and he would have done anything. Maybe your parents were on the verge of warning the world of what might happen. We know for a fact that Friedman had figured it out. Maybe Friedman didn’t kill himself either.”

Jeremiah stared at me, and I could tell that I was getting through to him. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said:
It
is
a virus, Roxanne. Once it gets inside you, you can’t get it out.

Suddenly, I thought I understood what Mengele’s plan had been all along. His intention was for the entire world to become infected with whatever hidden evil lay buried inside the music. He’d tried unsuccessfully to work his evil magic with Aaron and Eva Gideon and when he knew he would fail, he worked some kind of Nazi magic and brought a child into the world, pre-programmed to do his terrible bidding for him. Jeremiah was
good.
Somehow, Mengele had failed. God, I wanted so much to believe that.

The mathematics is skewed.
The compositions are tainted with something.

Dear God, Mengele—wherever he had come from, whatever he was—wanted mass suicide, mass hysteria. It would be his ultimate and parting gift to the world. I stood up quickly, adrenalin pumping through my bloodstream as the truth slammed home.

It
is
a virus, Roxanne. Once it gets inside you, you can’t get it out.

Jeremiah stood up and I lunged at him, pounding my fists against his chest, sobbing. “You bastard,” I said. “You knew, and yet you allowed me to come into your world. You allowed me to fall in love with you, you son of a bitch!” Jeremiah dropped his hands to his sides and made no attempt to fight back, or to stop me for that matter. He stared straight ahead as I beat on his chest, his eyes overflowing with tears as they slid down his cheeks. Finally, when I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I stopped and fell against him as convulsive sobs wracked my body.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I should have resisted you. I should have sent you away. But I was weak, and alone. I thought that maybe things would get better if I let someone into my life. I was wrong. You can go now, if you want.”

“Is that
it?”
I asked, pushing roughly away from Jeremiah. “You can go now? After everything I know? After all we’ve been through together? You can
go
now?”

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“No! It’s not what I want. I don’t care who you are, or where you came from. I love you, Jeremiah.” I searched his eyes, and I saw something in them that gave me hope. Perhaps it was an illusion, perhaps he was the greatest magician or the most cunning deceiver in the world, but I
wanted
to believe that he had the power to resist Mengele’s persuasions. God, I wanted so much to believe.

I knew right then and there that if we were going to get out of this terrible mess alive, I would have to be strong. I could not afford any more tears or energy-burning outbursts.

“Jeremiah, how did Professor Friedman get a copy of your compositions?”

Jeremiah stared at me in bewilderment.

“Come on,” I said. “We don’t have time to sit around here feeling sorry for ourselves. Tell me how he got them.”

“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said. “We made some while I was still at school, but I took them all back when I left. Unless...”

“Unless what, Jeremiah?”

“Unless
he
gave it to him.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “They knew each other? Do you think Mengele saw to it that Friedman got a copy?”
I was pacing the floor in front of Jeremiah now, running my hands through my hair trying to fit the pieces of the zaniest jigsaw puzzle in the world together. “We have got to stop them from playing that tape on the radio. Do you understand?”

“The opera’s not finished,” Jeremiah said.

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? Even if you don’t finish it, even if Mengele’s sick vision never comes to its full potential, there’s enough evil in those songs to cause a catastrophe. In a city this size, millions could go berserk and commit suicide, or kill each other.”

I went for the phone and grabbed it up, dialing 911. “I need to talk to someone at the police,” I told the man on the other end.

“What does this concern?” the voice asked.

“It concerns the death of a Doctor Friedman last night and a tape that was found near him. They don’t have to play it on the radio. I know who the composer is.”

“Do you now, Miss Templeton,” the soothing voice answered and I froze in terror.

“Who is this?” I asked through numb lips, but I thought I knew.

“It is your friend from the zoo. The executioner. You remember me, don’t you, Miss Templeton? By the way, how is the dear little kitten, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, Jesus,” I breathed. “How did you know—?”

“Where my son is concerned I, know everything.”

“He’s not yours, you sick fuck!”

“Ah, but he is. Nothing you do or say will ever change that.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“I’m upstairs playing with the dead. We’re preparing to have a little party in preparation for the completion of our fine opera, and the debut of some of its songs on the greater metropolitan airways. The opera cannot be finished without its esteemed composer, so, if you don’t mind, I would appreciate you bringing my son to me now.”

I threw the phone away with revulsion and looked at Jeremiah. His eyes were round and wet and filled with terror. “He got through, didn’t he?”

I nodded as tears of terror slid down my cheeks.

“I never should have opened that door.”

“Oh, Christ, Jeremiah,” I said. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We’ll go to the police and tell them the story and beg them not to play the tape.”

Jeremiah nodded earnestly, looking as though he was relieved that someone had thought of this simple solution.

“What time is it?” I asked, noticing through the window that it was nearly dark outside.

Jeremiah looked at his watch. “It’s almost quarter to five.”

I lunged for the door, grabbed the doorknob, turned, and pushed, but the door would not move. I pushed all my weight against it and still it did not budge. I screamed in frustration.

“Let me try,” Jeremiah said. I moved aside as he slammed his weight against it. It still did not open. He turned and grabbed up a chair, and in a rage smashed it against the basement window behind the sofa. The chair’s legs hit the glass and shattered into splinters. The glass remained intact.

“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s him. He’s not going to let us leave.”

“There’s only one thing we can do,” said Jeremiah.

“What?”

“We have to give him what he wants.”

That’s when Jeremiah’s eyes began to change. It was just a subtle change, like a calm body of water that has suddenly been rippled by a passing squall. My body stiffened as I watched the change, knowing beyond a doubt now that something supernatural did lurk behind Jeremiah’s façade of complexities. I began backing away, moving my head slowly from side to side. “We can’t,” I said.

“We must,” Jeremiah said, coming forward and taking hold of my wrist. “It’s the only way we’ll get out of here alive.”

“At what cost, Jeremiah? Haven’t enough people died by that butcher’s hand?”

Jeremiah put the index finger of his other hand vertically against his lips to shush me, and I knew that he was right, that the only chance we had of escaping this nightmare was to make Mengele believe that we would give him what he wanted. Jeremiah let go of my wrist and picked the phone up off the floor putting it to his ear. “Are you still there?” he said. He nodded a couple of times and said no more. He laid the phone back in its cradle and went to the door, motioning for me to follow.

* * * *

It opened this time, only instead of turning left toward the outside, Jeremiah turned right toward the stairs. I followed him, the urge to bolt strong in me. I was just kidding myself. I knew the door wouldn’t open. We were in this for the long haul, like it or not. So I followed behind Jeremiah, the dread growing in me like a tumor. At the end of the corridor Jeremiah stopped as we both stared at the door to apartment #2. Without touching it, the door began to creak slowly open.

From somewhere beyond, music played.

Jeremiah stepped over the threshold and into the darkened kitchen, halting to accustom his eyes before he began again, a cautious step at a time. I followed, feeling numb, absolutely certain that each breath I took would be my last. At the archway to the living room, Jeremiah halted again. There was a murmur of voices from within, almost whispered, delicate and cadenced, like a television with the volume on low. Behind the cadenced voices the music played on, poignant, gorgeous, the sound of angels weeping. I began to cry, for I recognized the melody as one of Jeremiah’s compositions.

Jeremiah stepped into the room and I followed, moving to his left and gripping his arm tightly. I was not sure that I wanted to witness whatever atrocities Mengele was offering up even as my wet eyes remained wide open in inquiry. At first, I saw nothing, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dim light, the room began to give up its secrets.

Jeremiah gasped and took a step back. I dropped my grip on his arm and took another step forward, squinting to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I was. There could be no mistake. Aaron and Eva Gideon were alive. Hours ago, they had been dead, both sitting at the piano with their blackened heads bowed, knitting needles protruding from their ears. I wasn’t really surprised. Since coming to New York and meeting up with Jeremiah, my life had been filled with illusions. Why should this moment be any different? The illusion could be that they were still dead, I supposed, not alive, as they now appeared, and this intimation of life might well be the deception. Or perhaps they had never been dead at all and what I’d seen then was the illusion. Ah well, there wasn’t much point in further speculation. I would know the truth, sooner than later. I was suddenly quite sure of that.

The Gideons were sitting side by side on a sofa against the far wall, staring toward me and their son. A burning candle on the coffee table illuminated their features in ghostly relief while casting their shadows against the wall behind them like dark monsters. Back to at the piano, playing Jeremiah’s composition sat a man I recognized immediately, even from behind; the gray hair, the impeccable clothing, the white gloves. There could be no mistake. The executioner had come calling. He did not turn to greet us, just kept playing that maddeningly beautiful song.

“Come,” Aaron Gideon said, motioning me forward, “and bring our son with you.” I turned and saw the frozen look on Jeremiah’s face. I took his hand and pulled. His feet reluctantly came unglued from the floor as he followed along, not for a moment taking his astonished eyes off his parents. The song played on. I made sure to skirt the piano widely, not wanting to come within reaching distance of the executioner and his intentions, whatever they might be.

“It’s good to see you,” Aaron said as we approached. I noticed that they were dressed as they had been earlier: Aaron in his black tuxedo, Eva in her white evening gown. Both garments were immaculate now, clean and impossibly unruffled. Hours earlier, draped on corpses, they had been moldy and tattered.

“What is this?” Jeremiah said, the incredulity harsh in his voice. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“We’ve come back,” Aaron said.

“Back?”
Jeremiah echoed. “How? Why?”

“It was Josef,” Eva replied. “He found out about us and brought us back.” Eva smiled at her son, but there was nothing pretty or sincere in the gesture. It was a forced smile, that of a mannequin, as though there was a hand in her head shaping it. Jeremiah sensed the wrongness of it too, I could tell by his hesitation.

“You’re not real,” he said. “You think you can fool me, but you can’t.”

“Yes, darling, we’re real,” Eva said, the disconcerting smile frozen on her face. “I don’t know how or why, but we are. We’ve just had a long sleep, that’s all.”

“Sleep?”
Jeremiah said, his voice sharp with amazement. “Is that what you call it? Sleep? You were dead. You killed yourselves like cowards, and then you wouldn’t allow me to tell the world, or even bury you!”

“We couldn’t.”

“Is that monster my father?” Jeremiah asked, pointing toward Mengele, who was still sitting coolly behind the piano playing the gorgeously impassioned melody. “Is all of that shit you wrote and left me the truth?”

“Yes, he is the father,” Eva said. “It is all true.”

“
The
father?” Jeremiah asked. “Is he
my
father?”