The November Criminals: A Novel

by Sam Munson

  And as a November Criminal, I can say that, while November Criminality may not have been prevalent in 1920s Germany, it sure as shit exists in contemporary America, where it thrives in the most educated stratum of society. I know you don’t believe me. I know you don’t believe thousands of reasonable, bourgeois people violate and corrode through their mere existence the principles of equality, of exceptionless equality, of impossible equality, that the founders of our country articulated and betrayed. No one would disagree that a guy who owned slaves, in the context of the ideal America, is a November Criminal. A traitor. Not in a legal sense. But that’s the point of November Criminals. Their treason isn’t legal. It’s spiritual. Which leaves room for all sorts of less obvious, sublimated forms of treachery. You can decide for yourself, though: I’m going to tell you now what happened to my money. The eighteen grand I won at the dogfight, I mean, won with the savings I had tried to sacrifice to the Potomac. The money that got left behind at the Broadus home during my collapse, and gave me some worried hours during my convalescence. Ladies and gentlemen of the admissions board of the University of Chicago—if that is in fact the appropriate manner of addressing you; if you do in fact constitute a board—I promised you a circus-like closing event. And I’m going to deliver. I just have to explain the setup a little more, so you can appreciate the real piquancy of the whole thing.

  I got back to school on Monday, October 16. My absence had not caused any real commotion. No one asked me why I had stopped answering my pager. There are, after all, plenty of other retail vendors in my particular market. Though the hair had grown back in over the scar a bit, Mr. Vanderleun was obsequious about my wound. I guess he thought I’d received it in a just cause or something. As he’d gotten his. Classwork and homework stopped enraging me. The impulse to shout down everyone in the world seemed to have vanished from my character. Even Alex I could stand. I no longer had to stop myself from correcting her. And there was one really, really awesome thing about going back. I discovered that Digger would sit with me, even if she didn’t talk. And I was okay with that. Talking is overrated. We sat saying nothing, eating our sandwiches and pears; we walked side by side saying nothing in the halls. Silence from her is better than conversation from anyone. Even the decisive way she swings her arms is better than other people talking. And I appreciated her generosity. No one wants to be around people who have involved them in failures. Especially if you have as fundamentally noble a character as Digger does. It made homeroom bearable and lunch downright idyllic. And we walked to and from class together, fellow cadets. We always parted ways when school ended. I didn’t try any more stunts. No grabbing her coat. We shook hands, and that was it. That was how it had to be.

  So we pressed on, for a week, for ten days. Ms. Erlacher, perhaps assuming that my having been out of class for so long had blunted my skills, picked me to do a sight translation of a text no one in class had seen before. This was her way of pop-quizzing us on grammar and syntax. There’d be a block of Latin on the blackboard when we walked into the classroom, and all the idiots would groan about it. We had to translate it, or as much as we could, in the first five minutes of class. And then she would choose one person to read his translation, as a way of keeping all her students subdued with fear, I guess. This time we were being grilled on the ablative absolute, which is this really economical way Latin has of explaining the specific secondary events and conditions under which another, primary event occurred. Like, for example, Urbe capta Aeneas fugit. Which means literally “With the city captured, Aeneas fled,” or “The city having been captured, Aeneas fled,” and in smoother English “After the city was captured, Aeneas fled.” Urbe capta is the ablative absolute, in this example: a noun (urbs, urbis, feminine, city) in the ablative case coupled with a modifying participle (capta, the ablative feminine singular past participle of capio, capere, “to take, seize, or capture”). Get it? There are four basic flavors of ablative absolute: one each using the past and present participles, one where one noun modifies the other, and one where an adjective modifies a noun, although a lot of the time that adjective is itself derived from a past participle, so it’s debatable whether that’s its own thing or not. Whatever. Not that hard, really.

  The chosen passage did not ascend the heights of difficulty Ms. Erlacher thought it did. It was long, yes, and syntactically involved, but once you figured out that it was just an extended series of ablative absolutes explaining the various things that had happened before Caesar sat down to dine in his tent—some tribes were subdued, some soldiers got paid, that sort of thing—piece of fucking cake, right? She never told us the sources of these quotes; she wanted us going at them blind. And that morning she picked me to share my work, her eyes dimming with rage because I finished writing after about a minute. “Mr. Schacht! You seem to have hurried through. As usual. Would you care to share?” I got a hundred. As usual. This happened two Fridays after my return. I really wanted to tell Digger, but I refrained. I managed not to call her that weekend, although the urge had gotten stronger than ever. Instead, I started looking through the college brochures. I found that I could not take my eyes off the totally ordinary people photographed for them, in libraries or on greenswards. And I found myself thinking a lot about my high school’s motto.

  Yes, we have a motto. Yes, it’s in Latin. Haec olim meminisse iuvabit. “Someday it will make us happy to remember these things.” It’s from the Aeneid, actually. Although, with typical dishonesty, my school has shortened it and considerably altered the meaning in doing so. Big A says it during a pep talk to his crewmen. The “things” he’s talking about are the loss of thirteen of his army’s ships, the wreck of Troy, and other catastrophes. And what he actually says is, Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit, which means “Someday, perhaps, it will make us happy to remember even these things.” You see the difference? Kind of a hilarious source for a high school motto, right? I cannot figure out what the fuck our founders were thinking, in both choosing it and then editing it.

  It was with this dubious precept in mind that I walked into homeroom the following Monday, the penultimate day of October. The usual halfhearted Halloween decorations, the orange and black streamers and crepe that were used interchangeably now and during Thanksgiving, defaced our hallways. Once everyone had quieted down, Mr. Vanderleun informed us that he had a “very special” announcement. After some stump wiggling, he revealed that I had, in fact, missed out on something important in the life of John F. Kennedy students. At the beginning of the month an anonymous donor had given the school a “very generous” sum to set up a yearly writing award. It was going to be called the Kevin Broadus Memorial Prize. We all remembered Kevin, didn’t we? (I was tempted to say, Yes, and he’ll be missed. He had a genuine musicality.) He outlined the requirements of the prize: a two-thousand-word essay on a socially or politically “relevant” topic (that’s the word he used, relevant), to be judged by him, Dr. Karlstadt, and Ms. Arango. “We had a real flood of applicants,” he huffed, “just an avalanche.” His tone made me suspect there had been almost none. You know? Over-insistent. Then he said that he was delighted to inform us that the first winner had been chosen. It had been hard, he asserted, to choose from so many. (I was sure he was lying about this, now.) But the grain was sifted, and there would be an assembly that afternoon to announce the winner. And, of course, to commemorate Kevin. “And so, I think if you’ll all just applaud when she stands up, the winner is right here in this room! Alex Faustner, everyone!” Who was surprised by this? Not me! She took a bow. Her gleaming blue-black hair flipped up and down. I looked at Digger and Digger looked back, and no one made a sound, except for Mr. Vanderleun. “It’s a thousand dollars, people,” he said, to spur our morale and applause.

  I told Digger everything at lunch. I didn’t care if she answered me or not. Everything I lacked time to explain to her in Sidney Memorial. About the dogfight and the money. How the Broaduses had kept it, and how I was glad. How they had to be the anonymous donors.
I had no idea how to feel about Alex Faustner winning the prize. Although that’s what she and her ilk do: they win prizes while the wretched suffer. Right? Because they’re such altruists? Digger didn’t say anything, still. I talked at her for ten minutes without stopping, and she didn’t say anything. She had a lot of reason to doubt my deductive capacities. But she didn’t run away, either. Which I assumed meant she believed me. The crimson streak in her hair caught the light. It made her seem younger; it made her face more fragile. At least in retrospect. All I knew then was that it increased my serenity. I took my pear out of my lunch bag and offered it to her. That was the deal. She’d eat half and give it back. For some reason she never has pears in her house. Maybe her mother hates them. She took down about 35 percent of it in a single bite. I could just tell she wanted to say, Good pear. She did not. That’s how strong her resolve is.

  The festivities were set to begin at one p.m. We walked into the assembly together, into the private G&T row, and sat next to each other and waited. I wanted her knee to graze mine. We had not yet reached that phase of relations. This is going to be good, I thought. Whatever else might happen, this is going to be memorable. First we had the Singing Tigers, performing “Mary Don’t You Weep.” Alex didn’t complain this time, that disingenuous cunt! There were three people onstage: Dr. Karlstadt, Mr. Vanderleun, and Alex. A fucked-up, über-proud family. (Where were her parents, though?) Mr. Vanderleun explained what the whole thing was about, talked about social justice, his stump wiggling with vigor, and then introduced Alex, whom he called a “very special young woman.” He ran through her career at Kennedy, and the various encomia her teachers had bestowed on her. Someone from the band was playing the piano the whole time, these cheesy “stirring” chord progressions and recursions. Dr. Karlstadt talked a bit about … Honestly, who gives a fuck? You know how these people talk. I was clenching my fists in anticipation. Not to do violence, but just because of the unbearable tension coursing through me. Digger stared with withering skepticism at Dr. Karlstadt’s flapping scarf until she ended her content-free speech. Then we had more piano music. Alex walked up to the mike, which Dr. Karlstadt had lowered, and twiddled the screw on the side of the stand. She cleared her throat. I’m not kidding: she cleared her throat.

  And then the shit-show began. Alex had chosen, for some incomprehensible reason, to write about the problems of young black men. “The violence in the ghettos is often a sign of competition,” was how she began. A statement that contains no meaning. And it went downhill from there. Her essay was full of fake energy. A dreadful imitation of intellectual activity. She just kept going on and on about violence and African Americans and African Americans and violence, as though all African Americans did was commit violence, suffer violence, think about violence, and as though “African Americans” constitute some ontologically single entity. No particularity—just violence! Now, everyone in the school knew that Alex had never set foot anywhere near these places whose spiritual condition she was bemoaning. That she had spoken to Kevin maybe twice. That she is one of the wealthiest people in school. And that she could not possibly have a single iota of experience to justify the amazing and horrifying generalities she was regurgitating.

  African Americans are violent. This is not their fault, though. That was the basic theme of her lecture. My fault, and yours, and even hers, because … Why? I guess she thinks that even now black people are the slaves of whites, and that their whole existence is defined by their reactivity to whites. Saying, in essence: Okay, guys, so, we enslaved you once and it was the most important and decisive thing that ever happened to you and now you still are our slaves in spirit, and we pity you, so here’re some college admissions and Black History Month and my stupid speech and we’re all good. Right? We’re even now? We paid you back? It’s the ultimate fantasy of a slave owner: to own not just the body, but the soul too. Alex’s outlook rests on that principle, whether or not she’s aware of it. Pure November Criminality, no? Alex and Vanderleun and Karlstadt and the whole disgusting system of G&T, the whole intolerable wreck and mockery of life, created and preserved as lip service to the highest progressive principles, and dedicated in actuality to the perpetuation of hatred. Hidden, covert hatred, yes. But hatred all the same. Social justice doesn’t have anything to do with Alex, or Black History Month, or Mr. Vanderleun’s lost finger. It’s synonymous with hatred. The way youth is synonymous with stupidity. Alex went on and on and on. Mr. Vanderleun eye-balled us, fiddling with his hair, pink tongue shoved out of the corner of his mouth. Like a fucking five-year-old. Dr. Karlstadt kept smoothing her scarf. The chorus seated facing us at the bottom of the stage rustled in their amethyst robes. Yawns, short and infrequent, riffled across the different sections of the auditorium. Alex had been speaking forever. Physical misery had crept into all my bones and veins, and was dragging me into some unbreakable condition of torpor. Nobody said anything. Everyone sitting near me squirmed and averted their eyes. Even Alex’s awful friends. Tehran Wall kept rubbing the bridge of his nose, in the exact way my father does when he’s too mortified to look at someone. There is some decency in the human constitution. Not mine, maybe. I mean the human constitution as a general proposition.

  I just realized something, putting all this down. I totally forgot to tell you how Digger and I met, originally. That’s a big omission. We met in ninth grade, in the second week of class. Geometry class. Taught by Mr. Street. Who is famous at Kennedy for his lacquered-looking toupee. I mean, it sits on his head like a helmet. No single strand ever moves, but sometimes it slips back or forward a bit as a whole entity. This is what introduced me to Digger: I made a loud joke about the toupee: “Looks like the whole support structure is just coming loose there, Bob,” I intoned in the trembling bass of a newscaster watching some tragedy, as the hairpiece slid back. Prompted by one of Mr. Street’s too-violent head nods in the course of a proof. He heard me, as I’d meant him to, and he got purple and furious, and asked anyone else if they thought it was funny. Digger raised her hand. So we both got detention—“custodial duty,” as they call it at Kennedy. It means you have to do the work our slack-ass janitors leave undone. We spent a week picking up trash at Kennedy’s property line. Taking frequent weed-smoking breaks.

  I had been so impressed by the look she shot me when she raised her hand to answer Mr. Street, to agree that she thought my joke was funny, which it wasn’t. She deadpanned, yeah. But this half-smile bowed her lips. This made the ingenuous blankness of her face all the more devastating. And you know what? When I turned to gauge her reaction to Alex’s speech, she was staring at me in the same way: I cannot believe the human species is capable of this unforgivable jackassery. I had to act. I had no idea what to do, but I had to do something. How can you refuse Digger Zeleny’s sapphire-colored imperative gaze?

  Vengeance is the only fit memorial of the dead. You know who said that? This guy! Addison motherfucking Schacht. I’m not saying that the vacuity and heartlessness of Alex’s speech (which, thank God, Kevin’s parents were not in attendance to hear, at least that I could see) justify what I did next. My actions were theatrical and boorish. Shocking, I know. I bounced to my feet, muttering, “Excuse me,” until I reached the center aisle. Down which I began marching. I knew what I was doing would work. Yes, I had failed up until now. I knew this new idea would work because I had no plan, just an impulse. I was singing a funny song I know. I learned it last year, with Digger. We’d gone to see this movie at the Camelot called The Bridge on the River Kwai. Which is an awesome movie. About this tough-as-shit old British soldier who loses his mind. And it has this whistled march in it called “The Colonel Bogey March.” It’s kind of the theme of the movie. The old soldier uses it to keep his men disciplined and cheery. After The Bridge on the River Kwai ended, we went to browse in Don’t Shoot, and the old hippie owner heard me humming the song. “They made up words. During the war, you know,” he said, one finger closed in a copy of some book called Gravity’s Rainbow. (Retarded title, by
the way.) “To the song.” I was stunned and creeped out. But Digger said, “Yeah? Let’s hear them, sir.” So he told us. And I remembered the words now, swinging my arms and knees as I struck up my “Colonel Bogey March” down the sloping aisle to the stage, where six human eyes goggled at my approach in consternation. The song goes:

  Hitler

  Has only one big ball

  Göring

  Has two but ver-ree small

  Himmler’s

  got something simmler

  And Joseph Go-balls

  Has no balls

  At all.

  Pretty good, right? The owner seemed proud of it when he explained. It was a war song. A war song of the British against the Germans, from the Second World War. Pretty clever, right?

  As I marched down the sloping aisle, I belted out these words in my horrible, tune-free singing voice, just fucking up the whole ceremony, all the piety evaporating. Mr. Vanderleun’s stump waggled in boundless fury. I got in a chorus and a half before he had the presence of mind to shout me down: “Do you have something to add, Mr. Schacht?” And I did! “Hey, Alex,” I screamed. “What’s the difference between a Jew and a loaf of bread?” The question that started it all! The eternal recurrence of the same! “That’s not funny, Addison,” Alex admonished into the microphone, trying her best to inject maternal dismay into her voice and producing instead the tones of some drag queen or something, all bulky and throaty. There was a huge silence. Dr. Karlstadt got to her feet and Mr. Vanderleun started to mumble and shout. My assault was crumbling. But then from the back I heard Digger: “I don’t know! What is the difference between a Jew and a loaf of bread?” And then she and I chanted in disjointed stereo, “A loaf of bread doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven!” “All right, all right, all right, all right,” whined Mr. Vanderleun.