by Steve Berman
The pair retreated behind the curtain, their fat bellies bulging the muslin. Thick fingers clutched the fabric’s edge. Four shiny patent leather shoes gleamed at the bottom.
“I’m calling the cops,” Alexander said as he walked over to them. “They’ll take you to dank cells where rough men pee in corners!”
He pulled aside the curtains and found the shoes were empty. Without arms, without hands, the fingers toppled to the floor like weisswurst, sickly pale and wrinkled at the knuckles.
Alexander didn’t call the police. His hands shook as he opened the bottle of Wasmund’s Single Malt, he’d bought days ago as an apology to Henry. The first sip of whiskey went straight to his sinuses. He only realized he’d left the burner on when he wandered to the back of the house and smelled burnt stew and pot, an acrid combination. He finished off the single malt as his dinner.
Mr. Cassey arrived the next day as Alexander catalogued the damage. The exterminator’s navy uniform had a patch on the front (Francis) and a silhouette of people standing around an immense, upturned beetle on the backside. Mr. Cassey smelled like cigarette smoke; he had once told Alexander that only the two packs a day habit protected his lungs from the toxins he used.
“So, any more rat sightings? They’re a colony. Not a swarm.”
“No, I think it’s German children.” Alexander suspected that the house’s insurance policy might not cover such damage.
“Oh, then it’s a hamlin of kinder. Very dangerous. Are they Weimar or Nazi?”
“They’re German, isn’t that bad enough?” Alexander blinked. For a moment, Mr. Cassey’s name patch had read Franz. “Um, they might be Alpine.”
Mr. Cassey nodded. Then he tore the cellophane off a new pack, shoving the crackling wad into a pocket. He went back into his van and came out with a lit cigarette and a metal canister.
Alexander took several steps back. He didn’t know how flammable Mr. Cassey might be. “Why are these kinder here?”
A puff of blue-gray smoke emerged from Mr. Cassey’s mouth as he scratched an armpit. “Normally happens in winter. They’re drawn by the smell of lonely folk.”
With the aid of his handkerchief, Alexander waved aside the smoke. “I’m not lonely.”
“Witches. Bitches. Bachelors.” Mr. Cassey smirked, which bent the cigarette. “Especially life-long bachelors.”
Alexander felt his face flush. “My mother endeavored for years to convey the lofty wisdom she gleaned from her subscription to Redbook, Mr. Cassey. She failed to straighten me out,” he said while stiffening his back.
Mr. Cassey dropped the cigarette on the street and slipped on an old World War II-era gas mask. The round lenses reflected the world askew; Alexander could not see the face beneath the dark rubber. He had a strange feeling that Mr. Cassey was choosing to reveal his true, insectile face. His voice buzzed. Whatever he said to Alexander while entering the house was incomprehensible.
Alexander remained on the sidewalk. It drizzled slightly, possibly ruining the fez he wore. He wished he had a paperback or sudoku or something to waste the time. He considered heading over to browse the shop windows on Antique’s Row.
When the front door opened again, wisps of vapor announced Mr. Cassey’s exit. He doffed the mask. “That should take care of them. I also sprayed for enfants.”
Once inside, Alexander found several kinder lying on their backs with limbs close and crooked to their torsos. Each golden-haired Heimlich and Heidi looked exactly alike, down to their rosy cheeks, fading to gray, and swollen tongues poking through dark lips.
It took Alexander a long time to bag all the children. He filled both trashcans and afterwards had legs poking out beneath he lids. He was sure the garbage men would give him grief over taking them.
“Being single is not a crime,” he muttered as he dialed Henry’s number.
Alexander thanked Henry for holding the bag of takeout so he could find his keys. Worry made him turn the front door knob too hard. Would he find the foyer a disaster? Gnawed ribs of the staircase banisters, wallpaper peeled like the skin of some fruit, and Teutonic tittering in the air?
He sighed and patted his chest in relief when greeted by welcome tidiness.
He walked over to the nearest hat rack and lifted off a Stetson. “Your fav—”
“I think I’ll stick with this,” Henry said and nudged the brim of a garish crimson and white baseball cap.
“Oh.” Alexander attempted a smile.
Henry shook his head. “I suppose knowing the Phillies are one of the oldest baseball teams won’t help.” He lifted off the cap. The sparse hair beneath was matted.
“It’s fine.” Alexander patted Henry’s beefy forearm. “Let’s eat.”
He had made sure to spread a tablecloth over the small card table. He took out from the bag a wedge of Saga Blue. The woman at the cheese shop had promised it was Danish, thus safer than Cambozola, but Alexander eyed its mottling warily.
He asked Henry to get a long knife from a drawer to cut the bread, then looked around to see Henry was gone. A staccato of clinks came from the old house.
Alexander rushed to the dining room. He expected kinder, not Henry removing china from the breakfront. “We shouldn’t,” he said.
“Don’t say these were Grueller’s.” Henry tipped the plate he held against his chest. The gilded rim was worn in spot. “A Trustee’s wife donated the set when she redecorated her Rittenhouse Square apartment.”
“I know.” Alexander sighed.
Henry set the plate down on the long table. “Did we ever get caught? When we came back from Giselle—”
“Your first ballet.” Alexander had begged one of the Trustees to secure him excellent seats.
“My first.”
“And the first time I ever lit the fireplace.” Alexander closed the breakfront.
“After two bottles of wine.” Henry laughed. He touched Alexander’s cheek with his thick hand. The callus on his thumb scratched at the tapered ends of Alexander’s mustache. “Nothing happened. Not to the andirons, not to the screen.”
“The chinoiserie screen,” Alexander whispered. It had such a lovely image of white pebbles spaced along a lonely path leading to a sweet cottage. His eyes closed as he leaned into Henry’s palm. He was aware of the slouch of his own spine, the feel of blood carrying the warmth of that touch throughout his cheek, then face, before descending his neck to spread throughout torso and limbs. How could such a simple gesture weaken him so? “But the Trustees . . . ”
“Tell them you want me here.”
Alexander welcomed the onset of apprehension. “This is about your job?” He stepped back from Henry.
“No. I just thought . . . if I was docent again . . . ” Henry brought up a finger to his mouth and worried the nail with his teeth.
“And the Trustees’ disapproval for our . . . liaisons?” Alexander drew out the last word, turning each syllable to lead.
Henry shook his head. “The Trustees must pay extra for self-hating fags.” He headed for the door.
The fixtures worked in Grueller’s bathroom. Wearing the Stetson, Alexander treated himself to a bubble bath in the old claw foot tub, so massive it took nearly a half hour to fill. The scent of lavender and chamomile did not relieve the knots in his back or the hint of a migraine. The Godiva truffles he’d bought for dessert that night helped a little.
If only he understood the mystery of men as well as he did antiques. He shouldn’t be lonely or ashamed of an affair with fellow staff. It was all such a nuisance compared to the task of having an entire house to worry over.
The doorknob rattled. A piece of chocolate dropped from Alexander’s hand into the suds with a deep plop. The Stetson followed.
Sweet voices came from the other side of the door as fingers scratched the wood.
“Hier stehen die Manner vorm Spiegel stramm
Und schminken sich selig die Haut.
Hier hat man als Frau keinen Brautigam.
Hier hat jede Fra
u eine Braut.”
Alexander heard chewing.
“Go away. I have a gun,” he said, clutching the wet Stetson over his groin as he stood up in the tub.
The first kinder, a Heidi, broke through the thin wood. Half forced its way into the bathroom. One pigtail with a pink ribbon tied at the end dangled to the tiled floor. She gnashed the fragments left in her jaws. He felt her hungry stare.
“Good kinder.” He held up the box of gold-wrapped chocolates. “Candy?”
The Heidi’s round nose twitched. A stream of clear saliva dripped down its mouth.
“Delicious candy.” Alexander slowly stepped out of the tub as the Heidi crawled through the hole in the door. A grinning Heimlich peered through after it.
Alexander threw a truffle at the Heidi’s feet. It picked up the chocolate and smashed it against its lips, devouring the wrapper as well.
He let the hat fall and crushed it stepping back. He tossed another piece near the tub. The Heidi waddled over. The Heimlich already began eating the porcelain sink when it heard the Heidi grunting a sound that Alexander took for pleasure. The Heimlich fought to reach the next piece in time.
Plop! Alexander threw a chocolate into the full tub. Then the rest of the box. The kinder groped and fumbled up the slick slides before falling into the hot bath. They didn’t seem to think about breathing as they dived for the sunken treats.
He pulled on his bathrobe. Two fat bodies began floating face down. The Heidi still clutched a melted truffle in one fist, and the chocolate leaked through the tight grip.
Hanging the tin Closed for Renovations sign before noon the next day on the front door pained Alexander. Sundays brought the most visitors. But he could not permit even one patron to see him taking a hammer to one of the imitation Chippendale chairs, the one gnawed by kinder. Several times as he swung, the Stetson almost fell from his head.
Whenever his mother would end a whine with “Desperate times calling for desperate measures,” Alexander would wince. Now, he found himself muttering the same as he struck that dreadful splat. It splintered with satisfaction.
Sacrifices, not measures, he told himself as he carried the kindling into the kitchen. One proved love through sacrifices. He had left Henry a message, begging him to come to the house for lunch. He had even admitted he’d be cooking for Henry on the Oberlin. After he’d hung up, he regretted leaving a recording of his crime.
Men must demand more than an understanding of historical significance. He fretted over so quickly abandoning his firm beliefs that any single individual paled in comparison to the worth of a hat on a rack or a rare cast-iron stove. He felt cooking this meal to be a bit of sedition, an impious act.
The Oberlin’s hinges moaned when he opened the oven door. Alexander felt it appropriate to murmur gentle words to coax the oven back to life. “Such craftsmanship” and “Cold pans, warm hearth.”
Deep in the back was the reservoir for wood. The gullet had been empty for decades. He hoped the chimney worked and the smoke would rise.
In the back room, he took from the small refrigerator the makings for lunch. Alexander glanced at the cuckoo clock he’d moved from the kitchen after the first signs of kinder infestation. He kept meaning to check the old records to see if Grueller really did own a Bahnhäusle from the Black Forest. Now, he was more troubled that Henry was late by more than a half hour. He checked his cell phone, then the house phone, for messages but there were none. The kitchen grew warm as the wood burned.
He conceded that Henry would not come. Perhaps Henry despised him now. He expected a rush of sadness but could only summon up a mild measure of disappointment that threatened to become annoyance. He reasoned, as he laid the veal cutlets on a skillet, that Henry had only earned his heartache after being a constant at the Grueller House. When he had arrived wearing that . . . cap, he had been almost a different person.
As he lifted one lid from the stove with tongs, the oven trembled like a hound shedding water. That, and a clattering sound from behind him, made Alexander jump, dropping the skillet and lid with an even louder crash.
Flushed, he turned around. A Heimlich brought one glossy, patent leather shoe down hard on what remained of the tin sign—for Ren. It smacked its lips and advanced. Behind it, Heidis dashed from room to room.
With his back against the Oberlin—and he felt the heat through his trousers—Alexander stabbed with the tongs. The Heimlich caught the curved ends in its pudgy fingers and wrenched the tool from his hands. The kinder began teething on the tongs. The Stetson dropped back and landed on the stovetop. The reek of charred felt filled the small kitchen.
“No,” Alexander shouted. “I’m not lonely.”
Something shoved him aside and he looked up from the floorboards to see the Oberlin stepping forward on its iron feet. The stump of chimney pipe had broke loose at the angle reminiscent a shark’s fin. Its door and drawers slammed open and close like so many jaws with flickering tongues of fire.
The slightly burnt Stetson rolled off to land back on Alexander’s scalp. The pan of veal landed at his feet.
The Heimlich tried to run but the Oberlin scooped the kinder inside it. Cries of German lasted only a moment. A new smell, sweet and rich like baked marzipan chased away the stink of singed felt. Despite his shock, Alexander found saliva filling his mouth.
The Oberlin kept shuffling, leaving the kitchen and entering the hallway. Alexander soon heard more Teutonic cries.
Alexander began retiring to Grueller’s bed at night. An indulgence. He’d rise early and make sure to change the bedding with fresh sheets and lay the quilt just right. Then, before opening, he’d let the Oberlin roam the house, on guard for kinder, before leading it back to the kitchen.
Enough lamp oil remained for him to proof his letter to the Trustees asking for an increase to the funds allocated to maintenance. He also adjusted his wording for the new docent ad he’d post tomorrow.
He leaned over the side of the high bed and patted the slumbering Oberlin’s chimney stump. It wheezed from every crevice and the house echoed the sound, which Alexander decided must be contentment. Then he lifted off the cotton nightcap warming over the tea kettle atop the stove and went to sleep.
SET DOWN THIS
Lavie Tidhar
On my brother’s computer, a video file shows an American fighter plane pinpointing a group of men in Iraq.
“Do it?” the pilot says.
“Confirmed.”
“Ten seconds to impact.”
Where the men have been there is a huge explosion, and black smoke covers the grainy grey streets. “Dude,” the pilot says.
I have no faces and no names to put to the men. The black smoke must have contained the atoms of their flesh, their bones (though bones are hardy), vaporized sweat, burnt eyebrows and pubic hair and nose hair (unless they used a trimmer, as I do), in short, the atoms of their being. Later, I think, one could find, lying in the street, a tooth or two, the end of a finger that had somehow survived, fragments of bone, a legless shoe. These men are nothing to me. They are pixels on a screen, a peer-shared digital file uploaded from sources unknown, provenance suspect, whose only note of authenticity is that young pilot’s voice when the smoke rises and he says, quietly— “Dude.”
Let us pick a man at random from the video. His name is, let’s say, Abu Karim. It means the father of Karim. He had given his son the name, perhaps, in honor of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, because even men who die in targeted bombings might like basketball. He is five feet ten inches tall. You could say he is short, but he had never felt it. His son is taller than him, and he is proud of it. “My big son,” he says. In Arabic the word is jabar. There is an Iraqi footballer, Haidar Abdul-Jabar Khadim, who plays for Jordan’s Al-Wihdat club. He could have been named for the American basketball player, too.
We don’t know what Abu Karim was doing on that street, with those others, at that time and at that place. Undoubtedly, the military minds behind the strike know, or at least suspect. Pe
rhaps he is a terrorist, fighting the Americans who are trying to liberate Iraq. Perhaps he is a religious zealot, coming out of a radical madrassa with the other students. Perhaps he is a secular socialist, a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. It is impossible to tell from the video, and in any case his death does not concern us. It is, by its very existence, no longer in the bounds of right or wrong. It merely is.
Did the man have hobbies? Did he like to collect stamps, as pedestrian as that may seem? Did he covet the Cape Triangular, did he receive catalogs in the post from Stanley Gibbons, was his happiest secret moment his receipt of a mint Penny Black?
Poor countries produce stamps for collectors in more wealthy countries. Following the death of Saddam Hussein the Iraqi bank notes and stamps bearing his image were already selling at premium on London’s Cecil Court.
I don’t want to make him into a saint, though stamp-collectors are hardly that. Let’s say Abu Karim is not a nice man. Whatever he was before—before the circumstances of his life changed—he is no longer that. He is, by implication of the bombing that had taken his life, a man guilty of a charge. Perhaps he killed. Perhaps this is not the first time he had escaped an attempt on his life. Another video on my brother’s computer is called “The.Fastest.Man.in.Iraq.” It is filmed from the point of view of a video-equipped guided bomb. It shows the target, and the approach, and in the same frame a man running inhumanly fast to get away before the bomb hits. It’s a funny video. It is filed under Humor, next to Sports Bloopers, Animals and Children. I said he runs inhumanly fast, but now I think inhumanly is not the right word. He runs as fast as he (humanly) can. It could even be that he is Abu Karim, and that, that time, he survived. I don’t know what he was before—a husband? A parent? A juice-seller or a preacher of the Koran or of Marxism?—but what had he become, and how? What led to his death, just or otherwise, and his digital re-birth as an extra in an Internet movie?
Of course I have no answers. Abu Karim is imaginary, after all. I can’t shout after him, Jibel awiyah—bring your papers!—and expect him to present himself with ID and driving license and a passport one can no longer travel anywhere with. I cannot say—Wakef wa’ana batuchek—stop or I will shoot!—because he is both imaginary and, already dead. His ghost recedes away from me when I shout those things. When I try to ask him, nicely, to let me in, to ease my disquiet, when I say Iftach il-bab, ya khmar!—open the door, you donkey!—he won’t answer, and the door to his mind, to his recall, remains closed to me. But more and more, since I had watched my brother’s videos, I find myself in that state of this vague disquiet, and when I sleep I see his face, whole the way it was in life, staring at me with—but I can never tell, what that look in his eyes like black olives is.