The Last Witness (2 page)

Jack smiled at the diminutive likeness of his great-granddaughter. She was so real that for a moment he forgot it was just an image – a three-dimensional image – and started speaking to her.

“Christine I …”

But she wasn’t finished. Not yet. Her hands clasped behind her back, she raised her head and made eye contact with him once more.

“By the way, you’re going to get another message from me and you’ll be amazed at what I found. I can’t wait to tell you about it. Meanwhile, I have some unfinished business to attend to but I know you’ll get along fine without me. You always have. Always remember that I love you dearly, Jack. Your little Christine.”

3

“That’s the guy. Jack Fisher. He’s a hundred years old and he’s supposed to be the last one.”

“You sure about that?”

“I have an aunt, I mean a great aunt, and she knows everyone in this place. That’s what she said.”

“How old is your aunt?”

“Great aunt.”

“Okay. How old is she?”

“Eighty-two. She’s one of the younger ones around here but still pretty spry. She wouldn’t make it up.”

“Maybe I should meet your aunt first. Great aunt I mean.”

“We can do that.”

The two NYU students, eighteen and nineteen years old, walked across the floor of the lobby of the Greenwich Village Seniors Center and headed for the reception area, a bit dumbfounded to be in a place like this. A stout, middle-aged woman was behind the desk.

“We’re here to see Jack Fisher. Is he around?”

“Jack Fisher? Where would he be going? He’s our next member of the Hundred Club, you know. In fact, today is his birthday.” With that, she motioned to the big column in the middle of the lobby. “It’s all there.” She had a hint of a drawl and skin as black as night.

“We saw it.”

She nodded. “The cards and e-notes started coming real early for him. Over a month ago. The man has a lot of relatives. You family?”

They looked at each other. “Not exactly,” one of them said.

“What are you then?”

The second one, whose great aunt was not a resident in the building, replied. “We’re from NYU and I write for the
NYU Hotline
. It’s a blog. We want to speak to him.” He pulled out his mini. It was the latest model.

“I haven’t seen one of those,” she said.

“Pretty compact, isn’t it?” He brought it close to her face and showed it to her. He rubbed his thumb on the little screen and it doubled in size. “You could write a thousand ezines on this thing. The chip will last forever.”

“Isn’t that something. So you want to see Jack Fisher?”

“Yes we do.”

“And you’re not family?”

“No.”

“And why do you want to see him? Because he’s a hundred?”

A hesitation. “Yes. Because he’s a hundred years old. That’s why.”

“It’s not so unusual. We get more of them all the time now. What’s so special about Jack Fisher?”

A shrug and a nod to his friend. “Well his aunt … his great aunt … lives here and she said he’s an interesting guy. Besides, I never interviewed someone who’s a hundred years old before.”

“He’s a novelty then?”

“Maybe and I think he may have gone to NYU.”

“He did? Jack?”

“Yeah. About eighty years ago.” The one who was doing the talking laughed and his friend’s face hinted it might not be true, but she didn’t catch it and joined in the chuckle.

“Is he expecting you?” she asked, more seriously now.

“Yes.” He lied again.

They waited as she called the room. “I’m afraid no one answers but Jack’s hard of hearing. I guess that’s what we all got to look forward to when we get to be a hundred. I’ll call the nurse on his floor. Hold on a minute.”

“Thank you.”

Another wait. Longer this time.

“I’m afraid no one’s there. Would you mind taking a seat?”

The two of them sat down and looked around the cavernous lobby where old people were milling about in all directions, some of them in mobilers – high-powered wheelchairs – while others had walkers, and those ones moved at their own speeds. All of them slow. Their bodies were at different angles, the more adept among them upright and walking with a steady gait, but those with a stoop to the back were methodical at best. A few were bent over at ninety degrees. It was bizarre watching them inch their way across the floor, pushing their walkers as if steering ploughs through dense brush or muck. A relentless, plodding army going nowhere in particular.

“You sure he’s the last survivor?” said the one with the mini in his hand. He was already growing impatient.

“That’s what she said. The last living survivor of the holocaust.”

“What holocaust was that again?”

“The Jewish one. You know. With the six million dead.”

“My uncle said it wasn’t like that. That it’s exaggerated.”

“Some people say that.”

“What if they’re right?”

“She wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

“Who?”

“My great aunt. She says it happened just like they say.”

“But how does she know? She wasn’t alive then, was she? You say this guy Jack Fisher might be the last one … the last survivor … ”

“The Jews say it happened.”

The nineteen-year-old who wrote a blog for the
NYU Hotline
was playing with his mini, checking his 3DEs. “Of course they do. But ask people who aren’t Jews and what do they say?”

“Like your uncle?”

“Yeah.”

“But there’s all kinds of stuff about it. Information I mean.”

“Look, I can find information about a lot of things … even things that never happened. Once I was supposed to write this bit about a leopard that escaped from the zoo. People said it was running through Central Park. There were even sightings! We checked it out and it never happened. There were never any leopards in the zoo but still there were sightings! People called the police. They said they saw it.”

“So did they?”

“They think they did. Someone hears about it and the next thing you know you got witnesses. It’s like things from outer space. You remember all those reports about aliens right after the Mars mission? I mean the first manned one? Remember that?”

His friend nodded with an agreeable sigh.

“Exactly. People see what they want to see and they believe what they want to believe.” He passed his thumb over the surface of his mini as he talked, 3D images popping up by the second only to disappear a moment later.

“Those death camps were supposed to be real.”

“I don’t know if any of them are around anymore and just because they were doesn’t mean that’s what they were for. Killing people, I mean. They could’ve been used for anything.”

“Like what?”

“A factory. There was a war going on, right? They had tanks in those days. Maybe they made tanks there. Or guns. It could have been anything. A munitions factory. That doesn’t seem so far-fetched.”

“Wait a minute. You’re forgetting something. We’re talking about
millions of people
.”

“Yeah but if you want to kill
millions of people
why round them up and stick them in camps? Why not put them in one place and drop a smart bomb on them? Boom! They’re gone and it’s all over.” With that, he keyed in ‘smart bomb’ on his mini. “Here. Look. It tells you how to make a precision-guided missile with a laser sensor.” He held up his mini and in the air was a 3D image of all the components for a smart bomb. “See? Like I say. Boom and it’s over.”

“You’re forgetting they didn’t have stuff like that in those days,” said his friend, nodding to the mini. “Besides, it would take a lot of smart bombs to kill that many people.”

“Not if you got them altogether in one spot.”

“You mean a stadium or a place like that?”

“Maybe.”

“You’d need a lot of stadiums.”

“You would. But say you put a hundred thousand people in there. The next day you bring in another hundred thousand and the next day another hundred thousand. In ten days you kill a million people. It’s possible. Do that six times and you have your six million.”

“But the stadium would be gone too.”

“Not if you use gas. All the people are dead but the stadium is ready for the next day.”

“It would have to be enclosed.”

“So enclose it.”

“But you think moving a million people is so easy? You don’t know how many people that is. It’s a whole city. But maybe that’s what they had those camps for. To organize them. Before they killed them, I mean.”

“I don’t know but let’s talk to this guy and see what he says.”

“Don’t forget he
is
a hundred years old. Who knows what he can remember? And if his hearing’s gone maybe his memory is too.”

The woman at reception tossed them a wave and said she got through to the nurse’s station on Jack Fisher’s floor. That would be the sixth floor of the Greenwich Village Seniors Center. Fair to limited mobility. Mild to severe osteoarthritis. Early onset stages of dementia.

“Jack is resting in his room right now. At his age he’s always resting. I guess he didn’t hear the phone but like I say he’s hard of hearing. He’s a real sweetheart though. He always says hello and he always asks how I’m doing.”

“So can we see him?”

“You’re lucky. It’s a good time for him right now because it’s between breakfast and lunch. You see their day … their whole life … revolves around meals so here’s what I’m going to
do. I’m going to have Mary Lou Bennett … she’s our Director of Care … take you up but you may have to wake him. He tends to fall asleep real easy. God I wish I could do that.”

“No problem.”

“Mary Lou will stay in the room with you a few minutes just to make sure he’s comfortable. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No. We don’t have any secrets. We just want to see what NYU was like eighty years ago, that’s all.”

He smiled and she smiled right back. “Jack at NYU. That’s a good one. I like that. Mary Lou will be right with you.”

4

Christine Fisher rushed through the hall of her school to the parking lot. She was in a frenzy. She was carrying a hardcover book – a dinosaur – and a bag with her portable e-book reader. There were hundreds of titles in it. She climbed into her car and threw everything into the seat beside her. She had charged the power cell that morning with just enough mileage for this trip. Christine was always frugal that way. Never one to waste. She got behind the wheel and waited for the onboard computer to recognize her.

‘Hello Christine. Driving conditions are ideal today.’

The car started itself and she was off. She took Regional Road 22 out of town, crossed the Conestoga River and headed north through the rolling hills and farmers’ fields, the silos and barns, the signs advertising fresh maple syrup and the lonely cows on either side of the road. The hills soon gave way to flat open land and she liked the fact she could get lost in the country in fifteen minutes flat. Up a bit more and the image of a deer appeared on the screen of her dashboard. The voice of her computer came on again.

‘
Be careful. It’s not far off the roadway, about two kilometers up number 22.’

Sure enough, a moment later the deer appeared at the side of the road, but one glimpse of the car and it ran off, disappearing through the grasses. Christine watched and then there was that familiar sign – ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ – and further up the road another sign. It marked the boundary of the town of Salem, or as it more accurately noted, the Historic Hamlet of Salem. A few minutes longer and she pulled into the next town.

Elora.

It was a quiet community in the Southern Ontario countryside, an hour’s drive west of Toronto. Christine had been here countless times and was familiar with the old stucco homes that sat beside the road not too far off, but then again they were, and for all she knew they could have belonged to the original settlers. They looked ancient enough.

She was twenty-five, a teacher at Williamsburg Senior Public School, part of the Upper Grand District School Board, and she was a very good teacher, too. At least, she wanted to be. If only they would let her. She often wore a sharp edge about her, but today it was a razor.

Christine loved the drive to Elora. It was an escape, a respite from the hustle of the busy work week at school, and she liked the people here. They were different, not in as much of a hurry, and she knew all about them. She had always been a voracious reader and more than anything it was history that intrigued her. People intrigued her. Where did they come from? What did they do? How did they handle their hardships? But for people in Wellington County, life was good. The area was teeming with families that went back one and even two centuries. Elora was typical.

It was full of stone buildings, shops and eateries with names resonating from the past. Antiques Arts Books. Shepherd’s Pub. The Yarn Bird and Kids Boutique. In the center of town they all came one after the other in a streetscape that looked make-believe. The shops were connected in a long building that rose from the ground on a base of stone slabs and brick. There were creaky doors and window frames of weathered wood, and signs for businesses hanging from wrought-iron arms that swayed effortlessly in the breeze. The sidewalk in front of the shops was uneven with a gentle slope leading to the street, its stylish bricks sitting as pieces of a puzzle, the odd piece missing, and behind this ramshackle collection was the unmistakeable sound of rushing water from the Grand River.

Christine knew the corner of Metcalfe and Mill Streets well. Right across the road was the Elora Mews with more shops still. A kabob house called Jenny’s Place. The Enduring Elegance Gift Boutique. The Karger Gallery with its fine pottery and artwork. All of them had been around for years. Beyond the shops was the Elora Mill Inn where the water was loud and the wind strong. She spotted an elegant swan riding the current to where the water began to drop and it looked as if it might go over the edge and down the waterfall, but at the last moment it turned around and swam back the other way. Like most everything in Elora, the five-storey inn – a veritable skyscraper in these parts – stood on a foundation of stone. One glance and anyone could tell it was old with long meandering vines climbing up the side all the way to the roof.