My Holocaust

by Tova Reich

  Here Maurice paused, as if to give the defendant a chance to respond. This was when he noticed that not only Gloria, but now Bunny too, standing beside Krystyna, who was engrossed in filing her fingernails, was jabbing her arm heavenward, while the two men, Monty and Norman, were listening with slightly cocked heads to something clearly over and on top of them, their eyes turned quizzically to the ceiling, drawing Maurice’s attention in that direction above the crematorium, from which, no question about it, a distinctive noise was emanating. What had he done? He had not realized the extent of his own powers. What terrible spirits had he called forth to rain down fire and brimstone upon them? It was a good thing he was wearing his hard hat, that was for sure. A dreadful crescendo-like rumbling noise was coming from up there, as if the heavenly hosts had been awakened, as if the dead were rising to demand an accounting, the smoke sucked back down through the chimney, the ash turned to bone, the bone like in the vision of Ezekiel to flesh. “Pop?” Norman announced, drawing his words out even more than usual to dominate the moment. “I think you might have finally gotten Him to answer. Congratulations!”

  “This is ridiculous,” Monty said. He pushed out the back door of the crematorium into a stone courtyard, proceeded up the grassy slope flanking the walls of the complex like a scout leading a climbing expedition, with the others, even Gloria and Krystyna wobbling on their high heels, clambering up behind him, until they were all standing together on the flat roof. That was where they saw them—running around like the possessed, shrieking like savages in a demonic trance, pounding and drumming furiously with sticks and stones on the air vents of the gas chamber and the crematorium, on the holes for dropping in the Zyklon B crystals, on the chimney for letting out the smoke of the burning dead.

  It was Eldad and Medad, prophesying in the camp.

  2

  AT DINNER THAT EVENING in the upstairs dining room of Krakow’s Hawelka restaurant, which Maurice had reserved for their private use, justifiably deploying congressional Holocaust appropriations for that purpose, unstintingly ordering a full array of Polish culinary classics specially prepared by the chef—pigeon stuffed with kasha and mushrooms, white sausage, tongue in Polish sauce, pork roast, cabbage pierogi, salmon kulebiak, beet zurek, each presentation accompanied by a wine from the restaurant’s own cellar—Norman felt himself to be utterly disconnected and apart, dissociated from the reality of his companions, like a visitor from another planet who had been dropped on the ice sculpture at a bar mitzvah smorgasbord, the broiled red faces of alien gorgers and fornicators swirling bizarrely around him. Let them think what they want, he reflected morosely as he clinically observed Gloria leaning against Monty, who was stuffing into his mouth something fleshy and glistening and wet. So I’m uptight—a wallflower, a prig, a puritan at a bacchanal, a bumpkin among the sophisticates, gloomy when everyone else is having a blast—I don’t care what they think of me. Oh, a death camp can certainly make a person work up an appetite, like the flagellants in old Russia he had read about who would get so turned on, the priests as a precaution recommended castration. What loathsome lowlifes they were, Norman thought, assessing his dinner companions—revolting!

  His father was kicking him under the table, as if he were an old TV set on the blink, to get him to start running again, entertain them, give them their money’s worth, sing for his supper. Well, he definitely was not about to knock himself out for the old man tonight, no way, not after their curt but painful conversation before dinner this evening when, in response to his request uttered with such obvious trepidation and embarrassment, instead of showing a single sign of paternal tenderness and sympathy toward his supplicant son, Maurice had cut him down without ceremony, icily informed him that there was absolutely no chance in hell that he would ever get his wish, he could just forget about it, turn off his heart’s desire, he would never be named director of the museum, certainly not while Maurice was chairman, and Maurice had no plans whatsoever of retiring in the near or distant future, they would have to drag him off the premises kicking and screaming, or in a body bag even—didn’t he deserve a little tribute and reward after what he went through in the war, why should Norman begrudge him?—that for Norman to push to be director under the circumstances was selfish in the extreme, inexcusably piggish, not to mention suicidal for both of them. “Why you being such a chazzer?” Maurice had demanded harshly. “Why you not satisfied mit what you have? It’s not enough for you to be the big boss from our business, Holocaust Connections, Inc.? What’s wrong mit you? You never heard from nepotism?” “So who’s going to get the job?” Norman had asked, abashed, defeated by the hopeless finality of it all, dreading to hear the answer, which of course he knew beforehand. “Monty—who then? Unless he fucks a goat in broad daylight on the front lawn from the White House—it’s his for the taking, on a silver platter.” The best Maurice could do for his own son at this sensitive time, the old man had added, softening a bit at last as he recognized the quivering little boy about to cry behind the grizzle of the grown man, was to use their contacts in the West Wing to get Norman appointed to the council—Monty’s girlfriend, for instance, that old grandma, that alter cocker who only wanted to feel Monty’s Holocaust pain, the Jewish liaison for the president, Zelda Knecht or whatever her name was, she could maybe lobby for it from the inside. Then, after a decent interval—because even putting his name forward for a seat on the council at this critical time was risky, bound to raise eyebrows, sure to incite their enemies to sharpen their teeth—but still, after a respectable interval, once Norman had become a council member, once he had been sworn in, it might be possible to arrange for him to be placed at the head of one of the committees, Second Generation maybe, or Death Camp Preservation, or, with a little luck, maybe even the heart of the heart where Norman’s trusty vote would earn double value by solidifying Maurice’s majority, the kitchen cabinet, the war room itself—Politics and Perks.

  Then, as if the disappointment inflicted upon him by his own father had not been grievous enough, as he was waiting at the elevators to go up to the privacy of his room for the pitiful purpose of calling his wife to tell her what had happened to him and abjectly accept whatever paltry shred of solace she might condescend to dole out from her vestigial sense of spousal obligation, a clerk from reception scurried over and handed him a message that Arlene had indiscreetly, shamelessly dictated to a complete stranger over the telephone. Norman got rid of the peasant with a few zlotys, unfolded the edible sheet of creamy Grand Hotel stationery, and read: “If you don’t get in to see Nechama, don’t bother coming home.” For Christ’s sake, Norman thought, now everyone knows our business! Instead of comfort from a cold wife, what does she cast at him? Consolatia—their lost child, Sister Consolatia of the Cross. Well, maybe this was the opportunity he had been waiting for; maybe he should shock Arlene out of her smugness, take her up on her offer—and not come home. But, of course, whether he came home or not was beside the point, because after all, more than anything else in the world, he too longed to see Nechama, she was his baby too. What kind of a father did Arlene think he was? He didn’t need her to remind him—or to offer incentives. Almost three years had gone by since anyone from the family had laid eyes on their Nechama, though once in a while a terse letter came, and sometimes even a staticky phone call. So much had changed since she had vanished, above all Maurice being named chairman of the Holocaust, for which, it should be noted, the fact that he had a Catholic nun granddaughter contributed very positively toward his appointment, and the old man, once so appalled by the idea, had not hesitated to package his personal cultural diversity as a major plus. But ever since they had arrived in Krakow the previous evening, not for a single minute had Norman forgotten that Nechama was alive and breathing in the neighborhood—not at Auschwitz today with the Carmelite convent achingly within a short walking distance, and not at this moment either, here at Hawelka, at this obscene dinner party to which Maurice had even offered to invite her, “for some decent food and a l
ittle quality time,” he had said. “What’s the matter?” he’d added when he noticed Norman’s incredulous expression. “I talk mit the president from the United States himself and mit big-shot senators and mit all the members from the diplomatic corpse. You think I can’t talk mit some fershtunkene old Mother Superior? Believe me, they’ll have her delivered to Hawelka wrapped up in a pink bow faster than you can say ‘Pope Pius the Twelfth the Nazi Sympat’izer.’”

  Norman could just picture it: special delivery to this profane restaurant, wrapped in a pink ribbon like a stripper popping out of a cake—his daughter, the nun. Quality time—what a joke! Where did the old man pick up that phrase anyway? Even if Maurice were right and the convent released her for the night to avert a major crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations, he could just picture her here in this garish room in her nun’s getup, squeezed into her grandfather’s tight schedule between the Krakovian duck and the big plunge into Gloria’s pants in quest of her purse. No thank you, Pop; I’ll figure out some other more practicable way to get to her on my own. At dawn tomorrow morning, before they all set out in the chauffeur-driven limousine for their leisurely afternoon tour of the killing center at Birkenau, he would make a pilgrimage alone to the Carmelite convent. He would kneel outside the gate like King Henry in the snow at Canossa, even though it was June now at Auschwitz and the grass was eerily thick, almost blue, thanks to all that human fertilizer. Of course, he would never climb the convent fence like that crazy spiderman rabbi—did they think he was out of his mind?—but he would respectfully and non-violently declare to one and all in the huge crowd that would quickly gather there of high-level clergy, politicians, press, and other assorted celebrities, and also, naturally, ordinary curious bystanders, that he would not move from that spot until they let him see his daughter. “Give me back my Nechama,” he would cry. Norman wondered if he should alert the media.

  He looked around the table, his internal vision bulging with images of his not-so-bad-looking-after-all face splashed across the front pages of all the newspapers around the globe, future prizewinning photos of his really rather strikingly handsome face when you came to think about it, even when contorted with the noble anguish of a father relentlessly and at enormous personal sacrifice pursuing his righteous cause with which any human parent could empathize. His external vision, on the other hand, was still filmed by estrangement. His father, glumly chewing his goulash, did not look happy, Norman could tell—not that it mattered to him at the moment, but he was condemned, even in his present state of supreme indifference, to be privy to the privies inside the old man’s head. Maybe Maurice had finally achieved the exclusivity he had so vainly sought in the death camp tour today by forking over a hefty wad of American taxpayer dollars this evening to this overpriced Polish restaurant, it is true, but the main purpose for which this whole event had been staged still eluded him. Things were not going well at this table. “Tuches oif dem tisch,” Maurice would have liked to say, let’s get our asses in gear, let’s cut to the chase, let’s get down to the bottom line, let’s talk tachlis, let’s deal—five million big ones, Mrs. Lieb, not a penny less, hand them over, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. But no, that was not the way it was done. Foreplay—he was sentenced to kill himself performing fund-raising foreplay. What had there ever been in foreplay for a man? And to make matters worse, he was getting no help from his team. Norman was sitting over there in a mood, on the warpath. Krystyna was stuffing her face like it was the last supper, bending over occasionally to spear a morsel off Bunny’s plate, the two of them exploding in great poufs of giggles that sent disgusting sprays of expensive wet food flying out of the gothic circlets of their matching burgundy lipstick. And his Monty here, instead of sticking to someone closer to his own age, instead of working on the daughter as Maurice had ordered, Monty was doing a major job on the mother, flashing for Gloria’s titillation his professionally packaged Holocaust melancholy, which never let him down, a proven aphrodisiac, it never failed, ladies of every age and shape were driven to recline and comfort him every time. Maurice just watched in awe as Monty wrapped himself in the erotic robes of borrowed suffering, he listened reverentially to the seductive agonizing of his star pupil. “There are no tears,” Monty was riffing, ripping off the most decorated Holocaust gigolo of them all, the Holocaust High Priest. “There are no words, we cannot speak, yet we cannot remain silent; silence is forbidden, talk is impossible, yet talk we must.” Maurice could see Gloria weakening, surrendering, submitting. Monty’s stump speech was as potent as the scent of musk. No woman, except maybe a frigidaire, could listen to this stuff and not have an irresistible urge to immediately go down on her knees and light a candle. Monty shook his head with lyrical sadness. “As for myself, I was not privileged to be there, I was not worthy,” he said—which was, as far as Maurice was concerned, A-plus-plus, a gem, a masterful line, the kid should copyright it. Gloria also appreciated it; she nodded solemnly—she understood. “But dealing with the subject every waking hour,” Monty was going on, “and even in my dreams—my nightmares, I should say—living and breathing this material day and night for the last ten years working in the museum, and for the next I-don’t-know-how-many years also when I’m director, it’s like a life sentence—you know what I’m saying?”

  Yes, Gloria knew—one look at her told you that she knew, you didn’t have to be an Einstein or even a Weinstein to figure that out. The boy definitely had a way with older women, Maurice had to hand it to him. For example, to take another case, the president’s Jewish liaison, Zelda Knecht, not as it happened a still juicy albeit aging broad like Gloria Bacon Lieb, but a bona fide dried-up, decaying senior citizen—it was, Maurice had to admit, to some degree thanks to Monty’s very personal interventions with this Zelda, which you wouldn’t even want to begin to think about, that he, Maurice, had been installed in his wonderful new job of chairman, the dream job of a lifetime, though of course Maurice’s own considerable merit should by no means be discounted, as Blanche never failed to remind him. Nevertheless, Maurice recognized that he owed Monty an enormous debt, and there was no question that as a man of honor he was not only obligated to repay him, but he also wanted to, with his whole heart and soul, he wanted to hand Monty the prize, to make him director of the museum, the two of them together would be an unbeatable team. Monty was the best friend a person could have, and also, it should not for a minute be forgotten, potentially the most dangerous of enemies. Maurice absolutely did not need Monty as an enemy with all the inside dirt and garbage that he had stored away as ammunition, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Still, Maurice made a mental note to himself to admonish the kid not to talk so publicly about becoming director—Gottenyu, why was he counting his chickens already?—even if it puffed him up for a second while oiling the ladies, this “who-knows-how-long as director,” as Maurice had just heard Monty casually let drop to Gloria whom he was still moving in on so disgracefully, neglecting his main assignment, the old-maid daughter, which meant, of course, that for the meanwhile, in this emergency at least, Maurice had to cover for him, Maurice was left with the cheese, with Miss Bunny, to whom, because it was absolutely imperative for the success of their endeavor that the targeted donor’s ferocious maternal instinct not be slighted, he now turned his attention. What in the world did he have to say to her? Even so, for the sake of ultimately milking the mother, for the sake of his museum for which he was ready to endure anything, Maurice strode valiantly into the breach.

  “You know, Bunny”—Maurice made a stab at conversation—“there’s definitely something different about you tonight. You look very pretty, if I may say so. You should excuse an old man, but did your face clear up or something?” Bunny squinted at him, speechless. “Ah, now I know what it is!” Maurice exclaimed. “You’re not wearing your eyeglasses. That’s what it is. It’s very becoming, I might add. And you put on a little makeup too—am I right? That should make your mama very happy.” When Bunny still failed to run with this baton that he had r
elayed to her, Maurice persisted, ready to exhaust himself terminally small-talk y stroking her all night long if necessary until he finally figured out what the hell it was that she wanted. “So you’re a kindergarten teacher, I hear.” Maurice took another shot. “Well, if you want to know mine opinion, Bunny honey, I always say that kindergarten teachers are the unsung heroes from the universe, they have the world’s most important job, the molding and shaping from young minds—what could be more important than that? Tell me please, if you don’t mind! Believe me, I myself would personally not hesitate for one minute to trade in mine own job as chairman from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum no matter how hotsy-totsy everybody and his uncle thinks it is, to be a kindergarten teacher and teach—what do you teach, by the way?”

  “Self-esteem,” Bunny replied sulkily, displaying the contents of her mouth.

  “Very nice, very nice. And what else?”

  “Small motor skills.”

  “Small motor? That’s very good, very useful. You mean, like the children should learn how to fix a toaster?”

  Monty and Gloria now pushed their chairs back and stood up. “I’m going to show Gloria the Kazimierz,” Monty announced, twisting his head with a grimace as he loosened his tie.

  “Yeah,” Gloria slurred as she slumped against him, sliding her hand slowly down the front of his torso in a manner seen only in movies of a certain genre. “Monty promised to show me his Jewish quarter.” She was overripe and reckless from the establishment’s vaunted red wine.