The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  “No, no, it’s still wrong. Pretend you have steel in your spine.”

  “Begging your pardon, madame, but that sounds uncomfortable.”

  “Yes, walk like you’re uncomfortable,” said Aubrion. “I always get the feeling Nazis are uncomfortable.”

  I marched around the room like a flagpole, until Tarcovich stopped me thus: “I think that’s good enough. Show us your Nazi salute.”

  I threw up my arm in the familiar way. Spiegelman flinched.

  “Keep walking,” said Tarcovich. “March a little.”

  “What is your favorite book?” asked Victor.

  “I don’t read much, monsieur.”

  “Incorrect. It is Der Pimpf.”

  Aubrion laugh-snorted. “Der what?”

  “Mention your heritage.” Spiegelman talked as if he didn’t want to be heard. “Do it often. If you run out of things to say, tell them your family has a rich Aryan lineage.”

  Tarcovich put a hand on her chest. “‘I’m a blond, blue-eyed son of the Reich, with the waters of the Rhine flowing through my veins. I await the day I can thrust my flag into the moist soil of the Fatherland.’ That sort of thing, you see?”

  “And use the words stock and breeding a lot,” said Aubrion.

  “Right.” René Noël untied his apron. “Let’s go make fools of ourselves, shall we?”

  * * *

  We gathered in a storeroom behind a senile old coffeehouse to sell Nazi Germany a school that did not exist. The tiny space had a drooping ceiling, pregnant with mold, and drafty brick walls that let in a smell of sulfur. It was there that the men from the Ministry came to call.

  “I am Isaak Jund.” Aubrion stifled a laugh as Jund—a fit man with full gray hair that belied his unlined face—shook his hand. Only I knew what was so amusing: Jund looked like a caricature from a parody of a male potency pill ad that our comics had drawn last week.

  “Good to meet you, Jund,” said Aubrion.

  Jund gave a swift nod. “These are my associates, Herr Royer—” Royer held out his hand; the fellow was bald, with a square jaw and a thick blond beard. “And this is Herr Hoch.” Of the three, Hoch had the least impressive hairline, a defect that was offset by visible muscles and striking blue eyes.

  The three men took seats around a low, straining table. They watched us as we prepared for the meeting; Tarcovich placed the crate of “textbooks” near the table, Aubrion wheeled a chalkboard to the front of the room, and the others stood back with their hands clasped, trying to look stately, or at least like they hadn’t spent the past few days hiding a crate of pornography in their print-house.

  Ferdinand Wellens—who Noël and Victor had persuaded to dress conservatively for the occasion, which meant an olive suit and bow tie—marched up to the blackboard. He shifted around for a bit, sweating around his collar. And then he began his pitch, and we were off.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen of the Ministry. I am Ferdinand Wellens, a humble businessman.” Aubrion smiled, for Wellens said the word humble like it was in another language. “At the very beginning of this great war, I recognized the nobility of the Nazi purpose. As such, I wasted no time in pledging my support for the Reich, promising I would spare nothing—not even my life—so that the Reich could march across the earth. The system of education I propose to you today, my own Schule für die Erziehung von Kindern mit ewige Liebe—” Wellens said it a tad too quickly, but his eyes filled with triumph that he’d managed to say it at all “—is a product of that devotion.”

  I craned my neck to see the Germans’ faces. They were, however, unreadable.

  “Gentlemen, our mission is public enlightenment.” Wellens wrote ENLIGHTENMENT on the board—in pudgy capital letters—then grinned at us like a ham-handed Siddhartha. “Through the application of our curriculum, which combines lessons on obedience and strength, we will forge the minds of the youth in the furnace of our classrooms. The Nazi aim—”

  “All right, all right.” Jund put up a hand. His wedding band caught the light. Aubrion wondered what sort of woman would marry a fellow from the Ministry of Education. A failed schoolteacher, perhaps: a woman named Gertrude with an overbite and thick legs. “We’ve heard quite enough.”

  Wellens recoiled. “You have?”

  “We’re busy men.” Royer stood, as did his colleagues. “The Reich is growing and changing. Every time a church or a coffeehouse closes up shop, someone wants to start a school in the ashes. We have six appointments today—thirty-three of them this week.”

  “What my colleague is saying,” added Hoch, “is that we’d appreciate it if you would get to the point.”

  Jund smiled. “What is it you need from us?”

  Wellens blushed all the way down his neck. “Uh—um—we need—”

  “We have a need for supplies, gentlemen,” Victor spoke up. “Paper and ink is expensive in times such as these.”

  “How much of it?” said Royer.

  “About two hundred thousand sheets of paper,” said Aubrion.

  “Two hundred thousand,” said Hoch.

  “Correct. And two hundred barrels of ink.”

  “Are you quite sure you need so much?”

  “Think about how much paper and ink the average student could go through in a day.”

  “We have ambitious plans for our school, sir,” said Victor.

  To our surprise, Wellens added: “And reason to believe they are justified.” He held up a thick folder. “We have put together a curriculum that spans fifteen weeks of educational material. It is poised to become one of the best in the nation. Our materials include—”

  “Would you do us the honor of letting us observe one of your lessons?” asked Royer.

  Victor blinked. “I don’t see why not.” He flipped through the (largely empty) file to buy time while he fished around for a topic about which he knew something. It had to be suitably innocuous, acceptably patriotic. “All right,” he said. “Gentlemen, the lesson we have scheduled for this afternoon deals with the mathematics of—”

  “Surely you have a lesson on the völkisch ideology?” said Royer.

  I watched Victor’s face turn red, then purple. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The völkisch—”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You do?”

  “We do, of course.”

  Ignoring Wellens, who was making eye contact with the exit, Victor dropped the file on a table and approached the chalkboard. He picked up a piece of chalk, seeming unsure what to do with it.

  “The völkisch ideology,” Victor said in a tone I had never heard from him, dignified and commanding, “teaches us two things.”

  Sitting cross-legged before the chalkboard, I began copying Victor’s lecture. I wrote felkish: 2 things in round, deliberate letters: a bastardization of Marc Aubrion’s handwriting.

  “The first thing it teaches us is that our society is old.” On the blackboard behind him, Victor wrote 1) Society = old. “Very old. Rooted in a tradition that comes from thousands of years of noble history. The second thing it teaches us is that our society represents the proper order of things.” 2) Society = proper order. “Anything less than our society is chaos. Anything more is decadence. We are at an equilibrium unmatched through the ages. Any questions?”

  I raised my hand, as Wellens had instructed me to do: “They might ask him to teach, and no matter what he is teaching,” the businessman had said, “you should ask this question. Even if he is lecturing on animal husbandry, it will be appropriate, I assure you.”

  Victor called on me. For a second, but only a second, I struggled to recall the word Wellens had taught me with his overenunciated vigor. “What about ethnocentrism?” I asked Victor.

  “Excellent question,” said the professor. I heard Royer and the others mumbling with appreciation. Faint lines appeared around Wellens’
s eyes and mouth. “We believe that our race is superior to all others because we have evidence to suggest that this is true. This is a common misperception—that our views are simple racism. Not so. A good Aryan would never accept anything without evidence—” Victor wrote EVIDENCE on the board and underlined it three times. His chalk rained snowy powder. “And we have evidence in abundance.”

  “What sort of evidence?”

  “Another excellent question. We have much evidence, to be sure, but the main bits of evidence are fourfold. In the days of the Holy Roman Empire—”

  And so Victor went on: four pieces of evidence, three reasons for each, two historical roots of our public consciousness, three vignettes, five reasons Hitler owed everything to the völkisch ideology—an ideology, I remind you, about which Martin Victor knew nothing. The lecture leaped from the head of our professor, Athena-like and impeccably outlined. It was the grandest, most boring magic trick I had ever seen. When Victor had gone on in this way for about ninety minutes, Hoch held up a manicured hand.

  “Thank you, Professor.” He smiled. “Your knowledge is limitless. We are impressed.”

  “May we see a blueprint of the schoolhouse you plan to build?” asked Jund.

  Of course, we had no such blueprints, as we had no plans to build a schoolhouse. But Ferdinand Wellens had prepared for the possibility that the Germans would ask. On cue, I got to my feet.

  “Es zittern die morschen Knochen, der Welt vor dem großen Krieg.” I sang the anthem of the Hitler Youth, which I still carry with me now, words forged in memory and time. “The rotten bones are trembling, of the World before the great War. We have smashed this terror. For us a great victory!” The men from the Ministry grinned like boars on the hunt. “Wir haben den Schrecken gebrochen, für uns war’s ein großer Sieg!”

  When I was done, I took a seat, the rafters still trembling with my high voice. Royer turned to Jund and nodded. Wellens turned to Victor and did the same.

  “How splendid,” said Royer.

  “I’m interested, if you don’t mind, in speaking to this young man here.” Jund smiled at me. “What’s your name, boy?”

  I felt Aubrion’s hand tighten around my shoulder. For all our preparations, we’d neglected to come up with a name for my character. “Hermann Sommer,” I said, quickly thinking of street names.

  Royer gestured at the others. “How do you find your instructors, young Sommer?”

  “They’re grand, Herr Hoch.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tarcovich put a hand on her chest. I straightened my posture.

  “What have they taught you?”

  “Obedience to the Führer.”

  The three men nodded to each other.

  “What else?” asked Royer.

  “Um—well—a great many patriotic songs.”

  Jund sensed my hesitation and pressed me. “Such as?”

  “The, um—the one about our good stock and breeding.”

  Tarcovich snorted. Hoch turned to look at her, his blue eyes running up and down her body. Her jaw clenched.

  “Are you an instructor, fräulein?” Hoch asked Tarcovich.

  “I am, Herr Hoch.”

  “Do you like it? Teaching the young?”

  “It is an honor.”

  Hoch stepped closer to her. “Do you wish to have children of your own someday?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Folding his hands to obscure his wedding band, Hoch said, “Are you married, fräulein?”

  “Not yet, Herr Hoch.” Tarcovich smiled without humor. “I haven’t found the right man, I suppose. And my excitement at finding a husband is matched only by my excitement at serving the Reich.”

  Aubrion drowned a laugh in a cough.

  “Well, I believe we’ve seen enough.” Jund walked over to the box of textbooks, which was flanked by Spiegelman and Mullier. He absently picked up a book. The room felt tighter as everyone—save the three Aryan specimens not privy to the textbooks’ contents—held their breath. “You seem poised to do well, I think.”

  “I concur,” said Hoch.

  Royer nodded.

  Jund turned over the book. The cloth cover, a simple tweed that demurred, in cautious lettering, Die Fibel (A Primer), slipped. I heard Aubrion stifle a gasp as Jund was momentarily exposed to a blushing corner of A Big, Bad Love Story.

  “How many textbooks do you have here?” said Jund.

  Victor wiped the sweat from his eyes. “A few hundred.”

  “They’re of your own design?” asked Royer.

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “Excellent.” Jund turned the book over again.

  “But, sir,” said Victor, panic creeping into his voice, “these are preliminary versions. They’re not quite ready to pass muster, I think.”

  Chuckling, Jund said, “I’m sure you are being unnecessarily modest.” He opened the book, and his expression changed immediately: to that of a man confronted with more nudity than he’d bargained for that day. Jund turned to Victor and choked out, “What is this?”

  Victor held up a hand before Wellens could say anything. “Give it here.”

  Jund passed the book to Victor, who opened it. Though, to my knowledge, Martin Victor never received any theater training, you never would have guessed in that moment. His face contorted in shock and fury. Trembling, he dropped the book into my hands.

  “Are you responsible for this?” said the professor.

  “No, Herr Professor.”

  “Then who is, lad? Am I? Are our friends from the Ministry?”

  I hung my head. “My apologies, Herr Professor.”

  “What do you have to say for yourself, lad?”

  “I take full responsibility.”

  “For?”

  “Putting those dirty pictures in our schoolbooks.”

  “Don’t be too hard on the boy, Victor.” Royer rested a heavy hand on my shoulder. “The boy is young. This is the natural order of things.”

  “I think we have seen enough, haven’t we?” said Jund, glancing between Hoch and Royer. “Congratulations to you all.” Jund shook hands with Spiegelman, Wellens, Aubrion. “I shall report to the Ministry immediately. Anything you need—starting with the paper and ink you requested—will be yours.”

  “It has been our pleasure.” Wellens bowed.

  Jund put on his fedora. “Be good, lad.”

  “I promise,” I said, properly abashed. But as they turned to leave, I began to grin beneath the lie.

  10 DAYS TO PRINT

  MID-MORNING

  The Gastromancer

  SOME DAYS AGO, Aubrion had given Spiegelman a pocket watch. This was no small gift. I was not the only pickpocket in Enghien at the time; every week, the Nazis ransacked our homes and our schools, searching for metal to melt down for bullets and tanks. There were hardly any watches left, no wedding rings, few eyeglasses; people whittled spoons and forks out of discarded wood. Spiegelman kept the pocket watch close beside him as he worked, though it reminded him of his warring desires: to use his words in service to Faux Soir, or to August Wolff; to help realize Aubrion’s mad, beautiful dream, or to help grant Aubrion immunity under Wolff’s command.

  Spiegelman positioned the pocket watch atop a stack of books. He’d just finished “Effective Strategy,” garnishing his parody of the Le Soir column with a paragraph on German defense strategies. Only a month ago, Spiegelman had remarked to August Wolff: “Elastic defense, hedgehog defense...it’s all the people hear about, all the papers ever talk about! What does it even mean? Do people care to know that—” Spiegelman waved his hands “—High Commander Rolfing created a network of strong points to advance in depth and break the momentum of the Allied offensive?”

  Wolff’s face had wrinkled up in an approximation of a smile. “That was very good.” Despising himself for it, Spiegelman had blushed at th
e Gruppenführer’s praise. His grandmother had warned that the dybbuk’s purpose would become his own, that he would inhabit the body and soul of his host; each day proved her story. “You are right, of course—the people do not care about such details.”

  Spiegelman had said, “Then why is it in all our news? Our propaganda?”

  “It is good to expose the people to information they don’t understand. They’ll believe that the German army is using the most advanced techniques to wage war—which, of course, means we must be winning.”

  The pocket watch slipped, tilting onto its side. Spiegelman wrote: The tactics of hedgehog-retreat and—Spiegelman fished around for an equally ridiculous animal—porcupine resistance have been succeeded by elastic defense. The success of this should not be put into relief; beyond the fact that it brings the most striking rebuttal to the misrepresentation that the Reich lacks rubber, it also demonstrates in the least penetrating manner how little intellectually evolved is the idea that Stalin and his generals have of modern warfare. Up till now, they have not been able to oppose elastic defense, except through attack without truce or respite.

  “What else, what else?” he muttered, rifling through his copy of Le Soir. Words skipped past him; he was a train passenger watching their gentle blur through the window. That was it: he still needed to write on the Eastern Front. People always expected to see something on the Soviets: nothing substantial, just a reminder of the Russian Bear’s existence. Spiegelman turned over his paper, the color of fresh buttercream, unpocked by faulty presses.

  German Communique, Spiegelman wrote at the top. On the Eastern Front, despite notable changes, the situation remains unchanged. Spiegelman closed his eyes, willing himself into the body of an overstuffed general weighed down by medals and wine. In trapezium-shaped Krementchoug-Odessa-Dnipropetrovsk-Mélitopol triangle, the enemy’s attempts at penetration have been crowned with success everywhere, except in the places on the front where our soldiers have impeded the Soviet advance by the clever maneuver of surrendering en masse. In the structure of a colossal elastic defense, all towns have been evacuated by night and on tiptoe. Spiegelman nodded. It would have to do.