“Tell me you aren’t affected emotionally by his music.” Friedman said.
“Well, of course I am.”
“There, see.”
“I still don’t know what you’re suggesting.”
“Tell me his music doesn’t run your emotions through a gamut.”
“I can’t deny it,” I said. “But—”
“Listen to me,” Friedman interrupted, and his voice had become sharp and hurtful. “I’m here trying to strike a correlation between Jeremiah’s music and the despair in the death camps. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that’s what you’re doing here as well.”
I nodded, realizing that he was absolutely right. Coincidence, I told myself, but was it really?
“Exactly,” Friedman said. “But I tell you, there’s something wrong. Jeremiah may not be in total control of his own compositions.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Of course he is—”
“No!” Friedman said. “You must listen! The mathematics is skewed; the compositions are tainted with something. Please believe what I’m telling you. I used to be able to listen to his compositions at length...” Dr. Friedman’s eyes glazed. “Now...I...cannot so much as bear even a single...passage before the despair overwhelms me...wanting to make me do things that are...against my better judgment...against my moral character. Each time I try, the despair nearly consumes me. I can’t talk about this anymore,” he said. “Please forgive me. Just thinking about this nearly does me in.” Dr. Friedman covered his ears with his hands, as if he was trying to block out unwanted sounds. The headaches and the dreams and the despair that I’d been experiencing over the past couple of months came rushing up on me, as palpable as a cold shower. My knees weakened and my gut churned with nausea. Friedman’s eyes were sick with anguish and they were wet with emotion as they rolled nearly helplessly in their sockets.
“What does it make you want to do?” I demanded. “Please, I need to know.” The professor did not answer me; instead, he turned abruptly and walked briskly, yet unsteadily, down the library aisle, leaving me sick and shaken and wondering.
* * * *
That had been my second tangible inkling that something was horribly amiss. Again, I did not mention it to Jeremiah. I believe I was afraid to, if you want the truth; afraid that the fragile glass house I had constructed around myself since arriving in New York would shatter into sharp and dangerous shards. The truth was—although I had not mentioned it to Dr. Friedman—Jeremiah’s compositions were affecting me in much the same way Friedman had described. As each rehearsal session closed, I would stagger home with blinding headaches and intense nausea, feeling empty, sick, and depressed. I would lay awake well into the morning hours, afraid to fall asleep, terrified of facing the naked lady in the corner with the shocked eyes, the lacerations, the imploring arms.
I should have ended it all then, but I didn’t, I couldn’t have even if I’d tried, because by then I was past the point of no return. I was falling down a spiral without end and I desperately needed to see what was at the bottom.
* * * *
The third inkling that my world was in the process of coming apart came a little more than a week later. Jeremiah and I were out for a stroll. We were walking past a series of dingy shop windows when I spotted animals in cages behind dirty glass. There were several mongrel puppies and a slate-gray kitten that could not have been more than four weeks old.
We stopped and peered in. It soon became apparent that the animals in this shop were sorely neglected. I took Jeremiah by the hand and started for the door. He stiffened and stopped.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He was staring at the storefront. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “This used to be Pop Shaw’s music emporium. I haven’t been down this way for almost a year, but now there’s no sign it ever existed.” He stepped back, shading his eyes with his hand, looking up. The black-painted sign above the door had, PETS, lettered on its face in gold leaf. It appeared old and weather-worn. Dogs barked and whined, and cats meowed from within.
I tugged on his hand again, frowning. Finally, his feet came unglued from the sidewalk as he somewhat hesitantly followed me into the shop.
An elderly man with iron-gray hair, a bushy mustache, and sagging, sallow skin greeted us with a yellow-toothed grin. His eyes were piercing and inquisitive, but cruel somehow. He might have been handsome as a younger man, but now he looked drained and defeated. A cigarette smoldered between nicotine-stained, white-gloved fingers. The shop was dingy and cluttered and smelled of animal excrement and cigarette smoke. The man was impeccably dressed, however, and the white gloves were an oddly eccentric touch.
“May I help you?” the gentleman asked. His voice’s timbre was smoothly melodic, his accent thickly German. I saw Jeremiah stiffen at the sound of it.
“Yes,” I replied. “I was wondering about that kitten in the window.”
“Ah, yes,” the man said. He went over, opened the cage, and with his white-gloved hands he took the small gray bundle of fur out. Holding the animal dangerously close to the business end of his smoldering cigarette, he began stroking it roughly. The kitten mewed in irritation and began to writhe. The man squeezed his hand around the animal until it stilled. I wanted to snatch the kitten from him. He was repulsive and cruel. I had this sudden and horrific vision of him snapping the kitten’s little neck with those mime-white hands of his. “None too soon,” the man went on, handing me the animal. It curled up to me immediately and began purring and I felt relief that it was still breathing.
Jeremiah was glancing curiously around the shop. “What do you mean none too soon?” he asked.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the man. The cruelty fled from his sallow face, replaced by the yellow-toothed grin. He stiffened and came to attention like some gross parody of a soldier. He thrust out his hand, clicking his heels together. “Wilhelm Schroeder,” he said. “Welcome to my zoo. Here, they call me the executioner.” I took an involuntary step back as Jeremiah stared. Schroeder continued to showcase his yellow teeth.
“Executioner?” I repeated. He nodded, still grinning, still holding out his white-gloved hand and I had an almost overwhelming urge to turn and flee from the shop. Instead, I took hold of his hand and shook it. I did not know what else to do. My parents taught me to be polite. I didn’t like the feel of his skin through the thin material of the glove. It was too cold, too clammy. It did not feel even remotely human. I pulled my hand back quickly and when I thought he wasn’t looking I wiped it on my jeans with revulsion.
“You see,” he went on in that smooth, nearly hypnotic voice of his. “Most all of the pets here are strays brought in by concerned citizens. The little one you’re holding is scheduled for the needle tomorrow.” His cruel eyes seemed to shrink and all but disappear into the folds of loose skin beneath his bushy brows. He leered forward, the yellow smile now a frozen rictus on his sallow visage.
“The needle?” I said, sheltering the kitten beneath my arms and backing slowly away. I could feel my eyes widening in horror.
“I can only afford to keep them for so long, you understand, and if nobody claims them...or adopts them, well...” His voice trailed off, even as the unspoken thought lingered there between us.
“You inject them with something?”
“Oh, no, Miss...ah, what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” I replied, “but it’s Templeton.”
“Miss Templeton. Ah, yes. You see, Miss Templeton, injections would be much too costly. I simply stick a long, sharp-pointed needle into their brain through the openings in their ears. It is quick and perhaps painless, and much less expensive than poison.”
I did back away then, totally and unequivocally horrified, suddenly quite afraid of this terrible man. I was reminded of something in that momen
t: the books I had been reading on the death camps and of one man in particular, a monster really, a Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as The Angel of Death. I remembered reading that he liked experimenting with human subjects; he would kill them in exactly the same way that Schroeder had just described. In a way, this little shop that disguised itself as a humane society was no more than a death camp for animals. Wilhelm Schroeder was its grinning executioner.
He must have read the look of terror on my face because he opened his dreadful mouth and laughed. “I do more good than bad, young woman,” he said in a meticulous tone. “I can assure you of that. A lot of these animals find homes through me. It is far better than them living out their miserable lives in the streets where a multitude of horrors abound.”
I wasn’t at all sure that I agreed with him, but I nodded nevertheless.
“What happened to Pop Shaw?” Jeremiah asked.
“Pop who?” Wilhelm Schroeder said in obvious irritation.
“Pop Shaw,” Jeremiah repeated. “This used to be a music store, you know.”
Wilhelm Schroeder’s cruel eyes once again retreated into his skull and his sallow skin seemed to sag on his face. “I’m afraid you’ve made some mistake, boy. I’ve been here since before you were born.”
Jeremiah stared expressionless for a long moment, but there was something in his posture that alarmed me, some deep-rooted rage that might surface at any moment. Schroeder had called him boy, and I remembered reading a reference that the Nazis had called male Jews ‘boy’, just as white southerners had once referred to blacks.
“Let’s go,” I said, turning and nudging Jeremiah toward the door.
I hugged the little gray kitten to my chest. “I’ll take her,” I told Wilhelm Schroeder, suddenly afraid that he would refuse to relinquish her in favor of the pleasures of execution. “What’s the charge?”
“There will be no charge,” he replied with a slight smile. “Saves me the cost of food...and, of course the unpleasantness of...well...you understand.”
I understood, all right. Somehow this twisted man found joy in killing. I could see it in those cruel, yet gleeful eyes and in that terrible yellow smile that now seemed more like a grimace. I shivered.
“Wait just a moment,” Schroeder said, looking at Jeremiah with circumspect eyes. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”
“No,” Jeremiah said, turning to leave. Schroeder grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
“Ah, but I believe I do. Your name is Gideon. Is it not?”
Jeremiah nodded, but he could not hide the incomprehension or the terror on his face.
“I knew your parents long ago,” Schroeder said.
“I don’t think so,” Jeremiah replied.
“Ah, but I did. I haven’t seen them about in quite some time. You look very much like your mother, you know. In fact, the resemblance is almost...supernatural. Tell me, are they well?” Schroeder’s gray, bushy eyebrows rose in inquiry above his cruel eyes and his revitalized grin was the most terrible thing I had ever seen.
“You’re mistaken,” Jeremiah said matter-of-factly.
“Tell me,” Schroeder inquired. “Where are your parents now? I would very much like to...see them again.”
“Fuck off!” Jeremiah said, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me toward the door. By the time we hit the sidewalk Jeremiah was shaking badly and I was near the point of tears.
“That anti-Semitic bastard,” Jeremiah said. “There’s something wrong in there, something about the feel of that place.”
“I know. I can’t stop shaking. He’s so creepy.”
“I don’t care what he said. The place used to be a music store.”
I shot Jeremiah a puzzled frown. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Jeremiah glared at me. “I grew up in this neighborhood. Pop Shaw’s music emporium was sandwiched between an Italian restaurant called Gino’s and a Chinese laundry. Tell me what you see there.”
I looked back and stared open-mouthed. There was indeed a Chinese laundry and an Italian restaurant called Gino’s. When I looked back at Jeremiah, I saw some kind of dreadful enlightenment come over his face.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t give me that, Jeremiah. What was all that about your parents?” I felt suddenly very confused about everything. Who was Jeremiah Gideon? Why wouldn’t he talk about his past? How come he lived in the basement of a large brownstone dwelling that had been mostly closed off from the world? Other than Jeremiah’s basement apartment, I had never been allowed in any other part of the house. On several occasions, I suggested the possibility of a guided tour, but Jeremiah always remained adamant in his refusal to allow me—or anyone else, as far as I knew—admittance into that seemingly sacred realm.
“It was about nothing,” Jeremiah said. “That sick bastard was just being nosy.”
“I don’t think so, Jeremiah. He knew your name.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“You haven’t talked about it at all!” I replied, anger inflaming my words. “I know nothing about you, for fuck’s sake! Jeremiah, we’re lovers. You have got to start trusting me.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“That’s right, you don’t, Jeremiah. I don’t even know who you are. Screw you!” I turned to leave. Jeremiah gripped my shoulder. I wrenched free of his grasp and whirled to face him. There were tears in his eyes and I felt tears of my own sliding down my cheeks.
“What you don’t understand, Roxanne, is, I can’t confide in you.”
“You can do anything you want.”
He shook his head adamantly. “I’m afraid,” he whispered, and it was the first time I ever consciously realized it. He was being clandestine because of fear, not arrogance. Jesus, he was afraid, but what on earth was he afraid of?
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he said with a sigh.
“You didn’t drag me into anything,” I reminded him, softening like a little fool. “It was I who forced my way into your world. Remember?”
Jeremiah nodded and his gaze held mine. I thought again of the night I’d seen him through the window encased in some sort of fleshy sac. I’d been having nightmares ever since, afraid to fall asleep, beating myself up, seeing things, hearing things, thinking that I was the crazy one. Now, I wasn’t sure of anything. Jeremiah held my gaze and for the first time since making his acquaintance, I sensed something terrible inside him. There was something in those soft, sad brown eyes that wasn’t real, wasn’t natural.
He lifted his hand up and gingerly caressed the scar on his face, and then he put his hand out to touch my face with the fingers he’d used to touch the scar. I winced and drew away. Jeremiah showed no emotion. I stood on that sidewalk and I could not look away from his hypnotic stare, nor could I find my tongue to speak any more useless words.
* * * *
We parted company then, Jeremiah going his way, me going mine. My heart ached deeply. I did not want to lose him, yet I understood then that he had never really belonged to me. I think it was the first time I consciously realized that Jeremiah could never belong to anything except his dark destiny.
I did a lot of soul searching on the walk back to my apartment. I needed answers to a thousand daunting questions. In the beginning, it had been enough just to be with Jeremiah. Or so I’d told myself. The logic was always there, of course, that eventually I would be able to break down his barriers. Now, I was further away from that goal than ever before, and my heart ached with a terrible knowledge, a terrible burden. I could not just let him go, I realized. He was much too important to me. I now needed more than secrecy and empty hope, and I knew what I would have to do to get those things.
As my mind worked, I stopped at a market
and bought cat food and a litter box. Out on the street, a cold autumn wind cut through the lonely canyons of brownstones. In the distance, the city groaned like a hibernating beast. I tucked the little ball of warm fur between my coat and my body and could not shake the eerie feeling that I’d just saved a living soul from the clutches of some unspeakable evil.
* * * *
I slept poorly that night. Nothing new in that. My mind would not let me rest. The plan that had been just a seed earlier in the day had now germinated into this ugly little bud that wanted to blossom. I kept it at bay, terrified of bringing it into the light. It would not go away. In the morning, I put a pot of strong coffee on and went down to retrieve the paper.
Upon my return, I discovered the yet unnamed kitten awake and mewing for milk. I busied myself feeding her, trying to occupy my mind with possible names. I could not concentrate. I poured a cup of coffee, sat down, and opened the paper.
The morning headline shocked me to the foundations of my being. It read:
POPULAR AND GIFTED JUILLIARD MUSIC PROFESSOR, DR. MAX FRIEDMAN, COMMITS SUICIDE
For a long moment, I could not breathe. I went back to the headline, hoping that it was a mistake, praying that it was another Max Friedman. There must be two Max Friedman’s in a city this size, my mind insisted. Perhaps there were, but the man I had encountered at the library that day more than a week ago was staring out at me from a recent photograph. There could be no mistake. I read the article and then read it again.
It seemed that Dr. Friedman’s body had been found by his wife at 1:00 AM, slumped over his desk in his study. It was presumed that he had been listening to a student’s compositions (something he did often for the purposes of grading and critique) because a portable cassette player was found on the desk before him with the power turned on and a tape in the slot. It was reported that he had left a suicide note, but that the contents were being withheld pending an investigation.
It seemed that Dr. Friedman had driven separate ice picks simultaneously into his brain through the openings in his ears. Both picks were embedded to the hilt, the handles still firmly gripped by blood-drenched fingers now inflexible with rigor mortis.
The Holocaust Opera Page 4