The Storyteller

by Jodi Picoult

  "This Anus Mundi," I say. "I've never heard of it."

  Josef laughed. "That was just a nickname. You speak some Latin, yes? It means 'Asshole of the World.' But you," he said. "You probably know it as Auschwitz."

  He could hear every beat of her heart. It was almost in time with her boots, as she ran. She should have known better, he told himself. This was all her fault.

  When she rounded the corner, he hit her from behind. She landed hard on the stones as he reached for the neck of her dress, tearing it halfway down her body while he rolled her onto her back. One arm pressed against her collarbone was all he needed to keep her steady. She begged, they always did, but he did not listen. Her heart was racing now, and it was driving him mad.

  The first bite was the most gratifying, like a blade cutting through clay. Her pulse fluttered like an aspen leaf in the hollow of her throat. The skin was soft; it took only a gentle tug to peel it back so that he could see the exposed muscle, the veins throbbing. He could hear the blood, too, rushing like a swollen river, and it made saliva pool in his mouth. With years of dexterity he carved through the muscle, snapping sinew and tendon like bowstrings as he shredded the flesh, dissecting until the sweet copper blood burst from the artery onto his tongue. It dripped down his chin like the juice of a melon as she went limp beneath him, as her skin shriveled. When his teeth struck her spine, he knew she was of no more use. Her head, connected only by a strip of ligament, rolled a short distance away.

  He wiped his mouth clean. And wept.

  SAGE

  Even though Josef has spoken so much of death that it darkens his lips like a berry stain; even though I cannot get the images out of my head of a little girl singing and a young man pointing to himself and reciting his age, what I find myself thinking about are the others. The ones Josef hasn't told me about. The ones who didn't even leave a mark on his memory, which is infinitely more horrible.

  He was at Auschwitz, and so was my grandmother. Did she know him? Did they cross paths? Did he threaten her, beat her? Did she lie awake at night in her fetid bunk and redraw the monster in her story with features that matched his?

  I have not mentioned Josef to my grandmother for good reason. She has spent over six decades keeping her memories bottled up. But as I leave Josef's house, I cannot help but wonder if my grandmother is one of the ones he doesn't recall. And if he is one of the ones she has worked so hard to forget. The inequity there makes me sick to my stomach.

  It is pitch dark and raining when I leave Josef's house, shaking beneath the responsibility of his confessions. What I want is someone I can run to, someone who will hold me tight and tell me that I'm going to be okay, someone who will hold my hand until I fall asleep tonight. My mother would have done that, but she's not here anymore. My grandmother might, but she would want to know what has upset me so deeply.

  So I drive to Adam's house, even though I have told him I don't want to see him, even though it is nighttime--the portion of the pie chart of his life that belongs to someone other than me. I park at the curb and look in the fishbowl window of the living room. There is a boy watching television, Jeopardy! And beyond the couch a girl sits at the kitchen table reading. Buttery light spills over her shoulders like a cape. The kitchen sink faucet is running, and Adam's wife is washing dishes. While I watch, he appears with a fresh dish towel and takes a salad bowl from her soapy hands. He dries it, sets it on the counter, and then wraps his arms around Shannon from behind.

  The sky opens overhead, which is surely a metaphor and not just a low-pressure system. I start to run and make it to my car just as the night is cleaved by a violet streak of lightning. I peel away from the curb, from this happy family, and drive too fast to the divided highway. The puddles on the asphalt are vast and black. I think of Josef's image, the ground welling up with blood, and I am so distracted that at first I do not see the doe fly from the woods at the edge of the road to leap in front of my car. I veer sharply, struggling to control the wheel, and hit the guardrail, smacking my head against the window. The car comes to a stop with a hiss.

  For a moment, I black out.

  When I open my eyes, my face is wet. I think I might be crying, but then I touch my cheek and my hand comes away bloody.

  For one horrible, heart-stopping moment, I relive my past.

  I look at the empty passenger seat, and then peer through the shattered windshield, and remember where I am and what has happened.

  The deer is lying in the road, screened by the white veil of the headlights. I stumble out of the car. In the pouring rain, I kneel down and touch its face, its neck, and I start to sob.

  I am so distraught that it takes me a moment to realize that there is another car illuminating the night, a hand gentle on my shoulder. "Miss," the policeman asks, "are you all right?"

  As if that were an easy answer. As if I could reply with a single word.

  *

  After the cops call Mary, she insists on getting me checked out at a hospital. When the doctor puts a butterfly bandage on my forehead and tells her I ought to be watched for signs of concussion, she announces I will be staying overnight at her house, and does not allow me to argue. By then my head hurts so much I am in no condition to put up a fight, which is how I wind up in Mary's kitchen drinking tea.

  Mary's hands are covered with dried purple paint--she'd been working on a mural when she was contacted by the police. The painting surrounds me, on the walls of the breakfast nook: a half-finished dreamscape of the apocalypse. Jesus--I'm guessing it's Jesus, anyway, because he's got the long hair and the beard but his face looks suspiciously like Bradley Cooper's--is holding out his hand to those tumbling toward Mephistopheles--who is female, and resembles Michele Bachmann. The poor souls who are falling are in various states of undress, and some are still just roughly sketched, but I can make out the features of Snooki, Donald Trump, Joe Paterno. I touch my finger to a spot on the mural just behind my back. "Elmo?" I say. "Really?"

  "How long has he been a toddler?" Mary asks, shrugging as she passes me the sugar. "He never gets old. Clearly he made a deal with the Devil." She holds my hand across the table. "It means a lot to me, you know. That you called me."

  I choose not to point out that the police were the ones who called.

  "I thought you were angry at me, because I told you to take time off. But really, it's for your own good, Sage." She smiles a little. "Sister Immaculata used to say that to me all the time when I was a kindergartner in parochial school. I never stopped talking. So one day she put me in the trash can. I was short enough that I fit. Every time I complained, she kicked the can."

  "I'm supposed to be grateful that you didn't throw me in the Dumpster?"

  "No, you're supposed to be grateful that someone cares enough about you to help you get back on track again. You know it's what your mother would have wanted."

  My mother. The reason I had gone to grief group in the first place. If she hadn't died, I might never have cultivated a friendship with Josef Weber.

  "So what happened tonight?" Mary asks.

  Well, that's a loaded question. "You know. I hit a deer, and my car swerved into the guardrail."

  "Where were you headed? The weather was awful."

  "Home," I say, because that isn't a lie.

  I would like to tell her all about Josef, but she already dismissed me once when I tried to confide in her. It is like he said: we believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist. Mary can't accept the thought that Josef Weber might be a monster, because that implies that she was duped by him.

  "Were you with him?" Mary asks tightly.

  At first I think she is talking about Josef, but then I realize she means Adam. "Actually I told Adam I didn't want to see him for a while."

  Mary's jaw drops. "Amen!"

  "But then I drove to his house." When Mary buries her face in her hands, I grimace. "I wasn't going to go inside. I swear it."

&nb
sp; "Hello? Why didn't you come here?" Mary asks. "I have enough herbal tea and Haagen-Dazs to compensate for any breakup, and I'm more emotionally available than Adam ever was."

  I nod. "You're right. I should have called you. But instead, I saw him with his wife and kids. I got . . . rattled, I guess. And I was distracted, which is why I hit the deer."

  I realize that I've crafted this entire story without even mentioning Josef's name. I have more in common with my grandmother than I originally thought.

  "Nice try," Mary says. "But you're lying."

  I blink at her, my breath caught in my throat.

  "I know you. You were driving to see him because you wanted to tell him you'd made a mistake. If you hadn't Peeping Tommed the whole happy family scene, you probably would have climbed a trellis and thrown pebbles at the window until he came outside to talk to you."

  I scowl at her. "You make me sound like such a loser."

  Mary shrugs. "Look, all I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt you to hold a grudge longer than a single breath."

  "Isn't that a little Old Testament for a nun?"

  "Ex-nun. And let me tell you, that serenity crap from The Sound of Music? Bullshit. Inside the cloister, the sisters are just as petty as people on the outside. There are some you love and some you hate. I did my share of spitting in the Holy Water font before another nun used it. It was totally worth the twenty rosaries I said for penance."

  I rub my left temple, which is throbbing. "Can you get me my phone?"

  She gets up and rummages through my purse to find it for me. "Who are you calling?"

  "Pepper."

  "Liar. The last time you talked to your sister she hung up on you because you said tutoring a four-year-old to get into an exclusive preschool made as much sense as hiring a swim coach for a guppy. You wouldn't call Pepper if you were trapped in the car and it was about to catch fire--"

  "Just let me check my messages, will you?"

  Mary thrusts the phone at me. "Go ahead. Text him. By tomorrow morning, you're going to be begging him to forgive you anyway. It's your M.O."

  I scan my contacts for Leo's number. "Not this time," I promise.

  *

  Apparently even Nazi hunters take a breather. Although I leave three voice mails for Leo that night and the next morning, he does not answer, and he does not call me back. I fall into a fitful sleep in Mary's guest bedroom, where an elaborate carving of Jesus carrying his cross hangs over my head. I dream that I have to drag a crucifix up a Sisyphean hill, and look down from its peak to see the bodies of thousands of naked men, women, children.

  Mary drives me home on her way to the bakery, even though I insist that it would just be better for me to join her there. Once I'm back in my house, though, I am restless. I don't think I can handle another session with Josef today; I don't want to talk to him until I have connected with Leo, anyway.

  I want to get my mind off Josef, so I decide to bake something that requires my undivided attention: brioche. It's a bread that is an anomaly--50 percent of it is butter, yet instead of being a brick of a loaf, it is melt-in-your-mouth, sweet, airy. To make it on a hot, humid day like this is an added challenge, because it requires all ingredients to be cold. I even refrigerate the mixing bowl and the dough hook.

  I begin by beating the butter with a rolling pin while the dough is mixing. Then I add it, in small portions, to the mixer. This is my favorite part about brioche. The dough doesn't quite know what to do with all that butter, and begins to come apart. But with enough time, it manages to bring itself back to center, to a satin consistency.

  I turn off the mixer and rip off a hunk of dough the size of a plum. Holding it between my hands, I pull it slowly to see if it sheets--growing transparent as it stretches. I set the dough into a container and cover it tightly with plastic wrap, then place it on my counter and begin to clean up the kitchen.

  The doorbell rings.

  The sound startles me. I'm not home during the day, usually, and no one ever rings the doorbell at night. Even Adam, when he comes, has his own key.

  I am expecting the mail lady or the UPS guy, but the man standing on my porch is not in uniform. He's wearing a rumpled suit jacket and a tie, even though it's easily eighty-five degrees out. He has black hair and beard stubble and eyes the color of polished walnut. And he's easily six foot three. "Sage Singer?" he says, when I open the door. "I'm Leo Stein."

  He is not what I anticipated, in more ways than one. Immediately, I shake my bangs forward to cover my face, but I can tell I'm too late. Leo is staring at me, as if he can see through the screen of hair. "How did you know where I live?" I ask.

  "Are you kidding? We're the Department of Justice. I know what you had for breakfast this morning."

  "Really?"

  "No." He grins, and it takes me by surprise. I would think a person like him doesn't smile very often. I would think, given all he's heard, that he's forgotten how. "Could I come in?"

  I don't know if there's a protocol here. If I'm even allowed to turn him away. I wonder if I've done something terribly wrong; if there have been hidden cameras focused on me and Josef; if I am in trouble.

  "Okay, the first thing you have to do is breathe," Leo says. "I'm here to help you, not arrest you."

  I turn in profile, so that he can't see the bad side of my face.

  "Um," he says. "Is something wrong?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Because you're twisted the way I was when I fell asleep at my desk last month. I couldn't straighten my neck for a week."

  I take a deep breath and meet his gaze, challenging him to look at me.

  "Oh," he says softly. "Well, that's not what I expected."

  I don't know why I feel like I've been slapped. Most polite people do not say anything at all when they see my scars. If Leo had done that, at least I could have pretended he didn't notice.

  "It's silly, but I pictured you with brown eyes. Not blue," he says.

  My mouth drops open.

  "I like the blue, though," Leo adds. "It suits you."

  "That's all you have to say?" I reply. "Really?"

  He shrugs. "If you were thinking I'd run away screaming because you have a few silver cyborg lines on your face, I'm sorry to disappoint you."

  "Cyborg?"

  "Look, I don't know you very well, but you seem a little fixated on physical appearance. That's far less interesting to me than the fact that you brought Josef Weber to my attention."

  At the mention of Josef's name, I shake my head to clear it. "I talked to him yesterday. He's done so many horrible things."

  Leo reaches into a battered briefcase and takes out a file. "I know," he says. "That's why I thought it was time for us to meet each other."

  "But you said I would have to talk to one of your historians."

  A flush works its way up his neck. "I was in the neighborhood," he says.

  "You were in New Hampshire for something else?"

  "Philly," he replies. "Close enough."

  Philly is eight hours away by car. I step back, holding the door. "Well, then," I reply. "You must be hungry."

  *

  Leo Stein cannot stop eating the brioche. The first batch has come out of the oven, impossibly light. I serve it warm, with jam and tea. "Mmm," he rhapsodizes, his eyes closing in delight. "I've never tasted anything like this."

  "They don't have bakeries in Washington?"

  "I wouldn't know. My sustenance consists of really bad coffee and sandwiches that come out of a vending machine."

  I have spent the past two hours telling Leo everything Josef told me. In between, I have shaped the brioche into a traditional tete, brushed it with an egg wash, and baked it. It's easier for me to talk when my hands are busy. With each word that passes my lips, I feel less heavy. It is as if I am giving him sentences made of stones, and the more I relay, the more of the burden he is carrying. He takes notes and writes on his legal pad. He scrutinizes the clipping I slipped into my pocket before I left Josef, the one of
him eating his mother's cake that ran in the local paper in Wewelsburg.

  And he doesn't even do a double take when he looks at me.

  "Are you going to talk to him directly?" I ask.

  Leo looks up at me. "Not yet. You've developed a good rapport. He trusts you."

  "He trusts me to forgive him," I say. "Not to turn him in."

  "Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal," Leo says. "They're not mutually exclusive."

  "So you'd forgive him?"

  "I didn't say that. It's not my place, or yours, if you ask me. Forgiveness is the imitation of God."

  "So's punishment," I point out.

  He raises his brows and smiles. "The difference is that God never hates."

  "I'm surprised you can believe in God, after meeting so many evil people."

  "How could I not," Leo asks, "after meeting so many survivors?" He wipes his mouth with his napkin. "So you saw his tattoo," he clarifies.

  "I saw a mark that could have been a tattoo."

  "Where?" Leo holds up his arm. "Show me."

  I touch his left biceps muscle, below the armpit. I can feel the heat of his skin through the cotton of his shirt. "Here. It looked like a cigarette burn."

  "That's consistent with Waffen-SS Blutgruppe tattoos," Leo says. "And with the file we've got so far. As is his claim that he was with the 1.SS Infantry Brigade in 1941, and that he worked at Auschwitz Two after 1943." He opens the folder on the table between us. I see a grainy photograph of a young man in a Nazi uniform with skulls on the lapels of his coat. It could be Josef, I suppose, but I can't tell. HARTMANN, REINER, I read, peeking as he slips the photograph from its paper clip. There is an address in spiky handwriting I cannot read, and the letters AB, which must be his blood type. Leo closes the folder quickly--classified information, I suppose--and sets the photo beside the newspaper clipping. "The question is: Are these the same guy?"