Not Me Read online

  Finally I threw the volume down on the side table. My hands felt so dirty. When I looked at them, I saw they were coated with a slimy film of orange-brown dust from the deteriorating leather.

  Then I thought: I could not have been reading it right. After all, my German was rusty—to say the least. But I knew that except for the few words I had to skip over, I’d read with amazing accuracy and speed—Oh, I got it right, all right. I got it right.

  Was my father not my father? Was he someone named Heinrich Mueller? A Nazi war criminal? No! These thoughts were too impossible. Nothing, nothing in his life, in his bearing, in his speech, in his work, could ever point to this. He was a man of light, not darkness. No. It had to be something else.

  Certainly the writing could imply that he was not the Nazi at all, but his victim. Yes, he could have been twice over the victim of Heinrich Mueller! First as a concentration camp slave, and then having lost his identity to him. He had been used, without his knowledge, of course, as a cover for this Heinrich Mueller, to avoid prosecution, to shield him from justice! Surely, the pages to follow would show how he discovered this subterfuge, and how he revealed it to the world, and how he led the police to this…this …(I struggled for the word)—pencil pusher! Or…or…was it all just…a story…a novel…a work of imagination…the result of some sort of twisted, inverted logic of self-abuse…some sort of working out of my father’s guilt in which he turned himself into the villain of his own story, the mastermind of his own degradation—a monster—because…because he could not bear to be a survivor—or worse—because he had done something horrible, something monstrous, in order to survive.

  I had heard of Kapos, of course. The prisoners who were like trustees—who guarded the other prisoners, beat them, lorded over them, taskmasters of their own people. Or the Jewish Sondercommandos who worked the crematoriums, shoving bodies into ovens, yanking gold from teeth, stoking the hellish fires for an extra ration of bread—to live another week, another month, perhaps even another year. Was that his lot? Was he one of those?

  I could not imagine anything remotely like it.

  I felt faint and had to sit down. But I did not want to sit again in my father’s chair. I stumbled toward the kitchen, which, even then, was still to me my mother’s world. The world of cooking, and having a cup of tea, a nice chat, a little piece of something just to tide you over. I sat down at the little Formica table, so small it really sat only two, and I yearned for my mother—something, I had to confess, I had not done at all since her death—not because I didn’t love her, but because it strangely seemed as if she were still alive. How often had I seen her in the years since college anyway? Practically never. Once a year, maybe. And on the phone—how often did I call? And when she would finally call me, what did I have to say? So the fact that she was dead did not really register. It was as if she was merely on the other coast, and I’d see her when I’d see her, and I’d talk to her when I’d talk to her. And now I wanted more than anything in the world to talk to her, to ask her. I needed to know what she knew.

  I tried to conjure up her voice, but there was only silence and the hum of the refrigerator. So I sat there by myself trying to calm down.

  All I could think about was that the table was so small. This made me intensely sad, and I didn’t know why. And then I recalled that when I first came to visit them here, ten years before, the three of us could not sit at this table together, even for a cup of coffee. And it was then that I understood: as far as they were concerned, I existed in some other realm. From now on, it was just the two of them. Like before I was even born. And that’s why we had breakfast in the dining room. And lunch and dinner in the dining room. And the cups of tea, the nice chats, the little somethings just to tide me over? Perhaps they didn’t happen at all.

  I now remembered her saying, “Thank God for Ella! You could get a Nobel Prize, and I’d be the last to hear it.”

  Yes, I was silent in those days. And she was silent now.

  In any case, I reasoned, whatever she knew, she knew then, she knew my whole life, and never said a word. Why would she have spoken now, even if she could?

  I would have to go to him.

  But I was really pretty much out of control.

  I drove the Caddy at sixty miles an hour, careening around all the old people driving their big cars, zipping past the Einstein’s Bagels, the Checker’s Burgers, the Captain’s Table, the Denny’s, their parking lots full of Jews with nothing to hide.

  I kept saying to myself, I’ll just ask him, that’s all. I’ll just ask him.

  But he was in one of his good-bye states. When I entered the room, he asked me if I was there to fix the television.

  “I’m here to talk to you,” I said.

  “Are you the repairman?”

  “No, I’m not the repairman, goddamn it.”

  “The television,” he said. “I can’t get Jackie Gleason.”

  “Dad!” I cried. “Please! Talk to me!”

  “I want The Honeymooners.” Tears welled up in his eyes and he began to sob. “It’s Saturday night!”

  The Honeymooners had not been on Saturday nights for forty years. He seemed inconsolable.

  “I’ll fix the television,” I said.

  “You’ll fix the television?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  That made him weep even more.

  Suddenly I threw my arms around him. I was trying not to falter, for I felt quite faint. I took a deep breath—to calm myself, I suppose—and up came the familiar, even intoxicating, scent of tobacco and hair tonic and the slight rancidness of age. My father! I held him tight. But I had the terrible feeling I no longer knew who it was I was holding in my arms.

  “All right,” I said to Nurse Clara, “I need to know who brought that box of journals to my father.”

  “Why are you taking that tone with me?” she replied. She had huge breasts and a chirpy southern accent. Her tinted hair was cropped short, and she wore a large black crucifix around her neck. She was used to dealing with abusive patients, and I could tell she wasn’t going to take it from me either, but I didn’t care. I just went ahead and raised my voice.

  “Just tell me who brought the goddamned box!”

  “If you keep taking that tone, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she said.

  Normally I would have been contrite, or made a joke, or simply backed down. I was a big backer-downer. But at the moment I was beside myself. Frankly, I thought that quite understandable.

  “Now you listen to me,” I said. “Someone has given my father something that is very damaging, very destructive, and I need to know who it was. This is my father I’m talking about!”

  Now she backed off a little.

  “What are you talking about? Drugs?”

  “Not drugs! Books!”

  “I know this is a very stressful time for you,” she said. “And I’ll try to find out who brought the box.” But I didn’t like her tone.

  “And who are all these visitors you say he has?”

  “This isn’t a prison, you know,” she replied. “We don’t make people sign in, and I haven’t a clue who most of them are. Maybe if you spent more time here yourself, you’d meet them.”

  She smiled at me, but her eyes were almost as blank as my father’s. Then she made a show of going back to her work.

  I was fuming. I was shaking, even. In fact, I realized I hadn’t stopped shaking from the time I’d finished reading that chapter until this very moment. I went back in and sat with my dad. He was mesmerized by the TV. A total zombie. He didn’t even know I was there.

  But nobody else came in to visit him either, and in a couple of hours I couldn’t take any more, so I decided to go home.

  Nurse Clara looked up at me. I could tell she watched until I was safely out the door.

  Later that night the phone rang. It was my son, Josh.

  “Why aren’t you calling?” he asked. I could hear his throat catch. “Why am I the one calling y
ou?”

  CHAPTER 5

  I was standing there in the Florida room, looking at all the journals laid out on the floor. I knew I should stop reading right then. I should put them away in their Cheez Whiz box, and throw the whole lot of it back in the closet.

  Probably he was just making the whole thing up anyway. He’d been a Kapo or something like that, that’s all. So what? I mean, let’s face it, every time you look at a survivor you think, how did he make it through? What did she do to slip through the jaws of death? He was ashamed, that’s all. I could live with that. I could forgive. After all, I told myself, think of what he went through. And probably—knowing him—it wasn’t even as bad as he made it out to be. Okay, maybe he betrayed someone in some small way, maybe he stole someone’s bread, maybe, maybe, he did pull gold out of the mouths of dead people, perhaps he did shove them into the fires—but they were already dead—he didn’t kill them! Or maybe he was the one who told the children not to worry, it was just a game—something like that. Something that made not one bit of difference in the ultimate outcome of things. Who of us, really, in truth, ever affects the ultimate outcome of things?

  I bent down and picked up Journal #1 and shoved it in my pocket.

  I must have really been crazed by then, because I took the book, jumped in the Caddy, and drove over to Starbucks. I ordered a coffee. I stood there like everything was normal and waited till they called it out, Grande double decaf latte! I said thank you. Perfectly normal. I slipped the cardboard heat shield over the paper cup. I added two envelopes of Sweet’N Low. I found a table near someone who was writing on her laptop. She looked like one of those people who is trying to write a novel. Feeling the journal in my jacket pocket, I cried to myself, Why does everybody think they have to write?

  I found myself dialing Ella.

  She sounded asleep.

  “Hello?” she mumbled. I could feel the bedsheets in her voice, I could smell the morning rising off her body, I could feel my ear nuzzle against her back, I could taste her red hair through the mouthpiece.

  Oh, Ella! The comfort of those days flooded over me like chocolate, sweet and pleasantly bitter.

  “Who is this?”—muddled, her voice was chalky. I suddenly realized it was only five in the morning in San Francisco.

  I hung up.

  I saw that my hand was still shaking.

  Why couldn’t I let go? It was three years already.

  “I hate being poor!” she had told me, as if that was a good reason for leaving the father of your child. “And I hate that you always joke about everything. We can never have a serious conversation. You never listen!”

  “I’m ready to listen,” I said. “Just let me get my steno pad.” (Oh God, how I regret that now.)

  “And I hate that you’re on the road all the time. And I hate when you come home, because you disrupt everything. And I hate that you don’t seem to care. You just don’t seem to care about anything.”

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. I did care. It just didn’t look that way because I’m funny. And funny people can’t seem to control themselves. They can’t just drop the curtain and end the show. It’s a curse, believe me. But that didn’t mean I didn’t love her. It didn’t mean I didn’t care about her or Josh, our lives together. I just genuinely thought it was grand to live in a run-down bungalow, put a couple of lawn chairs out on the AstroTurf, rest our drinks on the backs of our plastic flamingo drink caddies, and invite the neighbors in to have a look at our collection of velvet paintings. It wasn’t even a joke to me. I thought it was cool. (So, by the way, did a lot of my comedian pals, but that didn’t seem to have much currency with Ella.)

  “I want to live like a normal person,” she told me.

  Back at Starbucks, the cell phone rang.

  “Did you just call?”

  “Who is this?” I said. (I couldn’t help myself.)

  “You know perfectly well who this is. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Why do you think I would call you?”

  “Oh, please,” she said.

  I heard her flush the toilet. I could imagine her slipping up her panties, dropping her nightgown over her bare legs, rinsing her fingers in the tap water. Her hair would be a rat’s nest sitting atop her head like a crown of thorns. She had a lovely, long, slender body and a mass of ruby pubic hair, and lovely, long, slender fingers, too. And she was pretty. Genuinely pretty. In the summer she had freckles.

  That’s what I saw as I heard her scold me in that old familiar way.

  “Did something happen?” she said. “Your father? He’s okay, isn’t he? Michael, are you there?”

  She had psychic sonar, that one, like a fruit bat. I could never get away with anything. But I always lied anyway.

  “I just miss you,” I finally said.

  “So he’s okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’s fine. Do you miss me too?” I asked.

  She of course ignored me. “You should call Josh more,” she said—it was her usual rap. “He frets.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  “He needs you, believe it or not.”

  Josh, bless his heart, was always my in.

  “I was thinking, Ella,” I went on. “I mean, things are better for me now. I’m doing pretty well. There is a very, very good chance they are going to pick up that pilot I was working on. Very good chance. Probably eighty percent chance. And I’ve been getting a lot of work in Vegas. Almost headlining.”

  “Michael,” she said.

  “I was thinking maybe we should get back together again. For Josh.”

  “Josh is just fine.”

  “Not just for Josh,” I hurriedly amended. “Not merely for Josh.”

  It was like the proverbial dike breaking. “I love you, Ella,” I cried.

  “I love you too,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t mean it in the same way.

  “So why don’t we?” I said.

  She sighed.

  “Think about it,” I said.

  “All right,” she replied. There were a few seconds of silence, then she decided to finish up. “Tell your father hello for me. You know how I feel about him.”

  When I flipped shut the cell phone, I noticed that woman was still typing away furiously. I reached for my father’s journal and set it on the table. I could hear the hiss of the espresso machine like the airbrakes of some cosmic Greyhound bus opening its doors, waiting for me to get on—trip to nowhere—and then the barista calling, Grande soy macchiato!

  The D.P. camp at Geringshof was controlled by the Zionists. There was a woman there by the name of Moskovitz, an Austrian Jew who’d been in Auschwitz. In some ways she was an attractive woman. Thick hair cascading from her kerchief in satin ringlets, and her eyes, when she was aroused with an interesting notion, sparkled like rubbed coal. One day she grabbed Heshel by the hand and said, “Rosenheim. Come. Something you should see.” She led him past the front gate, and they strolled down the dirt path to a field. Perhaps she wants to copulate with me, he thought. She was a strong, fleshy woman now, and he had not enjoyed a female in many, many months. And since he was not alone in being uncircumcised—many assimilated German Jews had avoided that particular barbarism, as he thought of it, in the years before the war—he wasn’t worried on that score. As they walked along he remarked on the weather, and rather gallantly picked a wildflower for her. She took it, and twirled it about in her fingers, but in a moment they had arrived where she wanted to arrive, and he saw that romance was not what had brought the sparkle to her eye.

  Before him stretched several large patches of garden, a machine shop, some hastily constructed farm buildings, and two neat rows of tents. Groups of men and women were planting in one field, while in another, others were bent over young green shoots of lettuces or squash—he had no idea which—weeding with trowels and hoes. They cannot help but be slaves, he thought.

  “Kibbutz Buchenwald!” announced Moskovitz. “Good name, isn’t it?
They thought they would kill us all there. But you see, even that name gives us hope!” She squatted down and drew some earth into her hand, smelling it with deep satisfaction, and then tossing it back with distaste. “But this is only preparation,” she said. “The earth in this place is profane. There is nothing here for us.” She smiled up at him. “We will get strong, and we will go to Palestine where we can live as human beings. Come,” she said, “you can join us.”

  “Why me?” he said.

  “We’ve been watching you,” she said, “like a lost sheep. Speaking to no one. Hiding in corners, watching, listening, as if you still have something to fear. No attempt to find family or friends. You’ve lost everyone, including yourself.” She was still squatting, but now she brushed the dust from her hands and pointed outward, to the workers in the field. “We have a new family now.”

  Rosenheim was stunned. His ruse had been even more successful than he could have possibly imagined. Clinging to his corner, taking his meals alone, keeping his own counsel (as he now realized they said of him), he had studied the fatalistic shrug, the supercilious lifting of eyebrows, the long-winded jokes they thought were funny, the endless flood of caustic commentary, all the little gestures that reeked of Jew. Without moving a muscle he mimicked them. He had lived among them so long! He could intuit their every thought, their every mood, their every excuse for remaining alive. But when she held out her hand to him so he might lift her up, he could not help himself: he hesitated out of a kind of revulsion.

  “It’s all right,” she said, helping herself up. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  She put her arm around him, and every particle and cell in his body cringed. Yet he walked along with her toward the group that had stopped their work and were resting on their hoes, watching them.