Too Many Men (27 page)

“They put this stuff on the windows to keep out the cold,” Edek said.

“It looks pretty bad,” he said, after a few minutes. They walked through to the courtyard where Rooshka had spent many hours studying and doing her schoolwork. The courtyard was bleak and barren. Filled with lines of washed and worn, torn, and faded clothes.

Edek put his hands over his eyes. “There is nothing left,” he said.

“Mum used to study here,” Ruth said.

“I know,” he said. “I did used to visit her. I used to beg her to come out for an ice cream with me. But she always said no. She said how would she become a pediatrician if she went out all the time for ice creams with me.”

“Where in the courtyard did she sit?” said Ruth.

“Just here,” said Edek, pointing to two steps. “She was always here.

Every night, after school. She was so happy to do her studies. Not like me.

She was a lovely girl, your mum.”

“I know,” said Ruth. Edek walked up to one of the windows of the Spindlers’ former apartment. He tried to look through a crack in the window.

“It’s pretty decrepit, isn’t it?” Ruth said.

“It is good Mum did not see this,” said Edek.

Chapter Eight

R
uth was sitting in the lobby of the Grand Victoria Hotel. She felt terrible. Her head ached. Her body was tired. Lethargic.

Why did her body feel so tired? she wondered. She was exercising less than she did at home. She wasn’t running as much, and she wasn’t lifting weights. Yet, she was more tired. She was exhausted.

Her father was upstairs, in his room. He was reading one of his detective fiction books.
The One-Armed Alibi
. She hoped that
The One-Armed
Alibi
was taking Edek’s mind off his visit to Kamedulska Street this morning. The cover of the book hadn’t looked enticing. A man, with a bloodied stump of an arm, was being strangled by an even stranger-looking man.

Still, she thought that nothing her father was reading about could be stranger than this trip. Ruth had wanted Edek to have a nap. But Edek had insisted that he was not tired.

“You’ll feel better if you have a short nap,” she had said.

“I feel fine,” he had said.

“Well, at least read quietly in your room for an hour or so,” Ruth had said.

“You speak to me like I am child,” Edek said. “I don’t sleep during the day in Melbourne. Why should I sleep during the day in Poland?”

“Because it’s more stressful being here,” she had said.

“For me, the stress did happen a long time ago,” Edek said.

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Ruth had felt worried about her father. He hadn’t eaten any lunch. “I’m not hungry,” he had said when she suggested they stop for lunch. He looked well enough. Maybe no one would want to eat lunch after the sort of breakfast Edek had had. Her father looked in pretty good condition, she thought. Especially considering the fact that he never exercised and ate with abandon. He seemed to be in better shape than she was.

She had showered, again, before coming down to the lobby to do some work. Working reassured her. She was composing a list of possible new subjects for letters. She thought she would try to expand her range of business letters. Business letters were so much less taxing than personal letters.

People, Ruth found, needed help with the briefest of letters. A simple acknowledgment of the receipt of a letter could be rendered useless or incite a fury in the recipient with a lack of information or the wrong tone. It was important, in these letters of acknowledgment, to be brief and concise, but never brusque, abrupt, or terse. The letter should identify the correspondence which was being responded to, and state the action that would be taken. This way, people would know that their query or complaint or request had been heard.

Letters of resignation were also an area in which it was easy to trip and fall. There were lawyers all over America who could be consulted about the legalities of a resignation. The lawyers looked after the client’s legal position but seemed to lack an understanding of the emotional aspects of a letter of resignation. Ruth had written out a set of rules, for Max, for this category. Letters of resignation seemed to incite people to make inflamma-tory statements. A course that was clearly not in anyone’s best interest. It was crucial, Ruth felt, that a letter of resignation should have no accusations or recriminations. Threats and blame were to be avoided. And, if at all possible, a complimentary line or two should be included. Ruth had had a lot of success with her letters of resignation. Twice, clients had told Ruth that their resignation letters were so effective that they had eliminated the difficulties that led to their intended departures.

Word of mouth was how most clients came to Rothwax Correspondence. Ruth had covered enough territory, on paper, to have traversed most of several of her clients’ lives. She had written holiday greetings letters, the accepting and declining of invitations, birth announcements, sympathy let-

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L I L Y B R E T T

ters, and letters of apology for her clients. Ruth felt that she knew these clients better than most people knew each other.

Ruth wrote on her list letters to public officials. She must write a few more prototypes in this category. Rothwax Correspondence was receiving more requests for letters to public officials. A letter to a public official could be very effective or have no effect at all. The right letter made a big difference.

Ruth added to her list praise-for-staff letters. She thought that this category could prove useful to many businesses. It seemed, to Ruth, so easy to spread goodwill. One brief letter of praise every other year seemed to bring results that far outweighed the effort involved or the money expended.

Ruth added answering reference requests, welcoming new customers, mul-tidenominational holiday greetings, and rejecting-a-job-applicant letters to her list.

Ruth had had requests from parents to write letters on behalf of their children. She usually said no. She felt insincere adopting a six-year-old’s tone. More fraudulent than she ever did voicing an intimacy or intensity for an adult, as part of a business transaction. Ruth had also turned away a large volume of business writing college application essays for the children of clients. So many highly reputable and successful clients doubted their children’s ability to write a good essay. “Wouldn’t it be morally compromising if I wrote the essays?” she had asked one of her clients, the head of a large charitable foundation. “No,” he had replied. “Not any more morally compromising than if I helped him to write the essay.” “But you would only be helping him,” Ruth had said. “I would be writing the essays.” “What if I bring in his half-written essays and you polish them up?” the client had asked. Ruth had refused. She didn’t want to pass herself off as a teenager, even if it was only on paper. But writing college essays was clearly a market somebody could move into. Ruth wondered if it was common for kids not to write their own essays in America. Probably only among the middle class and the wealthy, she decided.

A fax from Max had been waiting for her at the Grand Victoria Hotel when she got back from Kamedulska Street. Ruth had been surprised to hear from Max on a Sunday. Max was obviously taking her responsibilities as acting head of Rothwax Correspondence seriously. In the fax, Max had told her that Bern’s mother was coming in for a handwriting test on MonT O O M A N Y M E N

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day. This had been Bern’s idea. According to Bern, Max said, his mother had very good handwriting. “I’m going to give her a speed and accuracy test,” Max had said in the fax. Speed and accuracy? What did Max think she was running? IBM? “Everything is under control,” Max had added.

What did Max mean? How out of control could a business become in this brief period of time?

The lobby of the Grand Victoria was mostly occupied by men. They were not the usual run-of-the-mill businessmen found in hotel lobbies. They looked more like criminals. They were middle-aged and skewered and circled with gold necklaces and bracelets and an occasional earring. Most of them wore large rings on their fingers. They were all smoking.

Several of the men had young women by their sides. Very young women. The young women looked adoringly at the men and sent them fetching glances whenever the men looked back. The women batted their eyelashes and patted the men on the arm or shoulder. Two of the young women were staring at Ruth. It was probably her computer, she thought.

They probably didn’t see too many businesswomen.

“You are having trouble with your father?” a voice said.

“Oh, no, not you,” Ruth said. “No, I’m not having trouble with my father. I’m working. Why don’t you disappear?”

“I can help with this trouble,” Höss said.

“Troubleshooting would not, I think, be your strong point,” Ruth said.

“I know what the problem is,” said Höss. “You do not know what you need to know.”

“Most of us don’t,” she said.

“I know what the problem is,” Höss said again. “And I know the answer.”

“Your answers are not the answers I’m looking for,” Ruth said. “Anyway I am not having trouble with my father. We have both simply embarked on an extremely troubling trip.”

“You do not know what you need to know,” Höss said.

“Neither do you,” she said. “You’re stuck in Zweites Himmel’s Lager.”

“Let me help you.” said Höss.

“You could just disappear,” Ruth said. “That would be a big help.”

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L I L Y B R E T T

“Ha, ha, ha,” said Höss. He thought it was a joke.

Ruth was irritated. “It’s not a joke,” she said. “I want you to go away.”

He laughed again. What aspect of what she was saying could possibly appear humorous? She couldn’t read Höss’s laughter. It sounded like ordinary laughter. Was he laughing at her? Was he remembering an old joke?

Why didn’t she twist her heel into the floor? Why was she allowing him to stay? “Piss off,” she said to Höss.

“Why are you being so difficult?” Höss said.

“Piss off,” she said. “Can’t you hear me? Are you going deaf in your old age?”

“I can hear very well,” Höss said. “And I am feeling remarkably well.

My bones do not bother me so much. I feel youthful. Almost like my old self, again.”

“Your old self?” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t head in that direction if I were you. No one in their right mind would want to return to your particular old self.”

“Really?” said Höss.

“You’ll be in hell forever if you can’t understand that,” Ruth said.

“I am in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” Höss said.

The other people in the lobby of the Grand Victoria seemed oblivious to the fact that she was talking to someone. Even the group of gold-chained and -linked men, clustered in a circle of armchairs next to Ruth, didn’t appear to have noticed. Their girlfriends certainly hadn’t noticed. Maybe talking to dead people wasn’t as obvious as talking to living human beings.

Why did Höss have to turn up now? She had just been beginning to relax.

She had planned to make notes for Max on the structural aspects of a handwritten letter. How to select the paper and what size paper was required for particular text lengths. Until now, Ruth had selected and purchased all the stationery that Rothwax Correspondence used for handwritten letters and documents.

Ruth had planned to give Max a list of points to be taken into account when selecting envelope size and quality. And a corresponding list about paper selection. For example, Ruth always chose plain paper for formal letters, and made sure that casual letters were not written on paper that was too formal. She made sure there were no sentimental flourishes, colors, patterns, or borders on love letters.

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She also made sure that the weight of the paper reflected the subject matter. Ruth chose fragile Japanese paper for people who saw themselves as more idiosyncratic. In certain careers idiosyncrasy was an asset.

Where was Höss? Ruth realized that she had slipped into a reverie. A reassuring reverie in the self-contained, well-ordered world of letter writing. In letters, if you were careful, there were no slips and spills. No one to take a thought or sentence into a direction that you hadn’t intended. No one to question the sentiments and statements. The letter was all yours.

And, if there was a response that was less than what you hoped for, it was made out of your presence.

Ruth could feel Höss’s presence. She knew that he was still around. She wondered why she was so sure of this. She couldn’t easily define why she was sure. It was something in the air. A thickening. A coarsening. “I really am feeling so much better,” Hoss said. Ruth nodded to herself. A congrat-ulatory small nod. She knew she was right. She had known Höss was still there. “I have been thinking about the various prisoners in Auschwitz,”

Höss said.

“Wow, you must really be trying to get out of Zweites Himmel’s Lager,”

Ruth said. “Some more thoughts in this direction and you’ll be the star of your sensitivity-training class.”

“Thank you,” said Höss. “Of all of the prisoners in Auschwitz, it was the gypsies who caused me a great deal of trouble, but, ironically, they were, and I must be careful to phrase this correctly, they were my most beloved prisoners.”

“You just lost all credibility,” Ruth said. “No wonder you’ve been stuck in the sensitivity-training class for fifty-two years. It’s not smart to make statements like that. It doesn’t have even a hint of reality about it. Your most beloved prisoners? What were you doing, walking around Auschwitz as the director of a love fest, a love-in?”

“I was very fond of the gypsies,” said Höss. He sounded hurt. “I am telling you the truth,” he said.

“I bet,” she said.

How could he be so stupid? Ruth thought. Men, on the whole, seemed to be so much less aware of what they were saying. She looked at the men around her. They were still in their armchairs, smoking and drinking. They had no idea of how unattractive they were. They held themselves with the