Epitaph

by James Siegel

  "But what about his guilt?"

  "It wasn't for them. Not for Gushenow or Leibowitz or Cohen or Samuelson or the eleven children of Chaim Mendelssohn or any of them. Jean didn't care about them-not when he was selling them a ticket on the Petoit Express and not after either. Jean only cared about his. Understand. You see Jean made a mistake. He never told his wife what he was up to-of course he didn't- but he did leave an address with her, a way to find him if he should ever not be there when she needed him. When he was picked up, he wasn't allowed to notify her. Of course no one was allowed to notify anyone when the Nazis picked you up. You just disappeared, and that was that. So there was poor Mrs. Goldblum waiting at home, without a word from Jean. Days went by, and still not a word from him. So finally, she did what Jean told her to do if he suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. She went to that address. To Dr. Petoit's house. For help. And Dr. Petoit gave it to her-the very same type of help he gave to everyone who came to his door in need. He gave it to her, and her two children. All this, of course, Jean found out later. But it wasn't hard. It was their bodies the firemen discovered in the furnace that day. Theirs. And Jean found out something else later too. All that time, they'd had him incarcerated in Gestapo headquarters just down the street. The day of the fire Jean could smell the burning. All day and all night he could smell it. And all day long a gray soot kept coming in through the window till it covered every inch of his cell. Everything-even him. Later when he learned just whose bodies were found, he understood. He understood that the soot that covered his cell that day was the bones of his family. Of his children. He never forgot the feel of it. He never forgot that smell."

  William felt ill. He was ill. He needed to go back to the hospital and shoot himself full of morphine. He needed to go on vacation with Mr. Leonati and not come back. He needed to disappear. Where is William? they'd say, but William would be gone. He was almost gone already.

  "Oh, he felt guilty. Sure. Guilty as sin. He'd made a dreadful mistake, hadn't he. He'd killed his wife and two children, murdered them, just as if he'd placed them in the furnace himself. That's why Mauthausen became like a penance for him. A penance for them. That's why he rejected a rescue he never expected and never thought he deserved."

  So. There it was. Everything he'd hoped was remotely good about Jean wasn't. Everything he'd thought was horrible about him was worse. Thinking now of Jean on his knees to a woman in SS black, accepting a punishment that lasted fifty years. Only it was the wrong penance; he was answering for the wrong crime. Those numbers on his arm represented more than time served; they were the mark of Cain. There you go, Jean might have said to him, talking like a priest again.

  "You wanted to know why Jean changed after the war. He didn't. He was what he was. A moral monster. Not quite the psychotic Petoit was. Jean couldn't have killed a dog at nine years old. He would've been the one holding it down. He couldn't murder someone on his own. But then, he didn't have to. He could send them on to someone who really enjoyed it."

  William was beginning to feel something both strange and familiar. Yes, definitely. He understood now that horror sort of sneaks up on you and smacks you in the face. First you go ouch. Then you go numb. But when the numbness finally ebbs away, it leaves something behind. Like frostbite leaving those little splinters of pain. What was this pain? Well, it felt a little like betrayal, that's what it felt like. It had been ages since he'd felt that- sure, from time to time he'd felt the vestiges of it, an amputee feeling pain in a leg that's no longer there. And now that he felt it again, he remembered why he'd worked so hard to avoid ever feeling it again. He had, after all, done a bang-up job on that score. He'd retreated from all but the most superficial human contact and he'd bolted the doors behind him just to make sure. He'd made peace. Okay, so maybe it was like Geronimo's peace, the terms dictated by the victors as he was sent packing to a barren corner of the reservation. But then, then he'd come out for one last turn around the carousel-and even if his motives had not been altogether altruistic, even if he'd plunged ahead as much for his sake as for Jean's, there'd been one eyes-closed belief he'd taken with him. Like the simple Christian believes in two distinct forces- good and evil-he'd believed in two distinct Jeans, a prewar and postwar. And the postwar Jean was worth doing for, because the prewar Jean had earned it.

  "I told you," Dr. Morten said. "I told you to forget about it and go home. You wouldn't listen. You wanted to know. So, now you know. Now you have to live with it."

  William was about to agree, he was about to bow out, if not gracefully, at least quietly. He was about to go away and lick his wounds-after all, it seemed to be his season for wounds. But something stopped him. What stopped him was that he'd forgotten something. He was absolutely sure that he'd forgotten something. Forgotten, in fact, the only real reason he'd climbed out of bed to begin with.

  And he remembered what Dr. Morten had said.

  I thought about getting up and leaving him. About just refusing him as a patient.

  But Dr. Morten hadn't gotten up and left him. Dr. Morten hadn't refused him as a patient. Jean was a case. Cases are like that. You don't have to like them. You just have to finish them. Dr. Morten and himself had both seen a Jean that wasn't. Fair enough, life is full of nasty surprises. But cases have a life of their own. Jean had known that. So had Santini. But that's what William had almost forgotten, had nearly just misplaced somewhere beneath the shock and revulsion. The case. The case was neither Jean nor him. It just was. You find what you look for, Jean had said. So be sure you look for the right thing. And now, at last, he was. Not for self-respect, or second youth, or even justice. Just for a solution. And if he had to do it for someone-for inspiration if nothing else, and he could no longer do it for Jean-he could do it for them. Arthur Shankin, Doris Winters, Alma Ross. Because he knew where they were now. He came in, Mr. Weeks told him, looking like a ghost. Just like a ghost. But Mr. Weeks, out of touch as he was with daily human lingo, had, of course, gotten the expression wrong.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  They were finally going to do something about the local lot-the Garden of Weeden as Mrs. Simpson so aptly called it. She'd gone and organized a committee, not, to be sure, a very large one, but with just enough pluck, and more importantly, enough hands, to get things done. That something needed to be done was obvious to one and all-even to Mr. Jeffries, who used it as a literal dumping ground for his household waste, not to mention his dog, Bumper's. Just fertilizing, he'd say.

  And perhaps he was right. For the weeds had reached Olympian proportions this year, snaking out over the sidewalk and even pushing up through the cracks, so that the neighboring block was beginning to resemble nothing so much as a Mayan ruin-that is, civilization gone to seed. The houses that bordered the lot-including, of course, hers-seemed to be only awaiting their turn-just more fodder for the predatory jungle. Mrs. Simpson was determined to fight back. They had three large cutters-they being the committee-plus one rather ominous-looking machete that Mr. Jeffries claimed to have wrestled off a Japanese soldier in the Philippines. Work would begin soon-she had pledges from both Mrs. Tyler and her husband, though she had a sneaking suspicion it would turn out to be mostly her out there, hacking away like a geriatric Jungle Jim.

  Her husband, of course, was indifferent to it all. He'd taken to sleeping a lot lately, that is, sleeping even more than usual, and she lacked the heart to pester him. Though sometimes, in her more anxious moments, she wondered if this was the way it was going to be-him sleeping more and more till one day he just wouldn't wake up. The doctor had told her not to expect miracles-after all, to be up and about after two massive strokes was, in a way, miraculous enough. But she couldn't help hoping for a return to the way things used to be-if only for a while, if only for a moment or two at the end of a summer day.

  In the meantime, she had her gardening-and she had her lot, her mission improbable.

  And sometimes, when she was bent over a particularly stubborn shoot of crabgrass, or poised lik
e a fountain with the sprinkler in her hand, she had him. Her little watcher. Her memories of him.

  For she had never been able to completely remove him from her thoughts-perhaps had not really wanted to. In a way, they were linked together-the lot and him, though the fact that he'd stood in its shadow was the least of it. Maybe it was that both of them were projects, her projects, and just as the lot both frightened and frustrated her-so had he. There was something uncivilized about both of them-something stalkish. And now that she was about to root one of them out of her life, she couldn't help thinking of the other.

  And the truth is, she felt just a little guilty. As if she was about to destroy the nest of last season's bird-who might, or might not, return. She was betting the house on might not, but reality, after all, didn't have much to do with it. It was more a psychic murder she was committing here, a cutting of ties, and she wasn't at all sure she wanted this particular tie cut.

  She had, of course, fled from him, right back into her garden mitts, to her shears, weed cutters, and root grouters, back to more harmless pursuits. But after a while, after he'd refused to show up again, she'd begun to realize just how close harmlessness is to death. And she'd recalled what that woman had said to her frightened child the day they'd stumbled onto a convalescing Mr. Simpson in the front yard, just weeks after his stroke and still mostly drool and grimace. He's harmless, the woman had said. That's all. And she'd been right of course.

  Life had turned sort of harmless for both of them- and she, for one, didn't like it. Most people her age wanted to be left alone, but she wasn't most people. She was-as her grandson might have put it-a bit harm- lessed out.

  Which made it all the more remarkable that on a certain Monday morning, two days before the committee was due to begin its dire work, nine and one half weeks After Noticing Him-another one showed up.

  TWENTY-SIX

  To begin then, begin at the beginning. Begin with a French Hungarian named Jean Goldblum, who peddled people for profit. Who sought out men and women who were innocent of everything but poverty and sent them to the good doctor like sheep to the slaughter. Begin there. Then go on to the family-the smiling boy, the apple- cheeked girl, clinging to their mother like baby 'roos. The family portrait, the kind that's passed around over beer and sausages. Turn it into an archive. Every case for Jean was the same case and the case was his own. Picture Jean in a camp called Mauthausen, where he watched the bodies pile up like firewood while he only waited his turn. Death row Mauthausen was, and Jean the condemned man. But something went wrong; Jean was liberated. And when the well-meaning refugee committees gawked at his record, they proclaimed him heroic and quickly dispatched him to the land of opportunity. Where thanks to the beneficence of Mr. Klein and certain of his own innate gifts, he became a detective. The first eye of the Three Eyes Detective Agency, the detective who could spot guilt at fifty paces, then put a price tag on it.

  You find yourself in a terrible situation. A situation where you have to do everything imaginable. Understand?

  Yes, Jean. Now we understand.

  Thirty years later, Jean was pinching children off the streets and selling them back to their parents. Same old Jean.

  But then, something happened.

  He came in, Weeks said, looking like a ghost. Just like a ghost.

  And he said, I've got a case. A real case. The biggest case of my life.

  What case is it? the woman asked him.

  But Jean whispered, I can't tell you. But it's the biggest case…

  I know, she said. Of your life.

  Every case was the same case, and the case was his own.

  And after Jean began to investigate this case, after he'd gone down to Florida and found what he was looking for, he'd come back and paid a visit to a clinic.

  What sort of clinic?

  A bad sort, Weeks said. That's what sort. They did some job on him.

  And when Weeks asked him why he did it, why he'd went and had his numbers burnt off, Jean said: Because I've earned it. Every case was the same case, and the case was his own. And soon after that, Jean died. And William, old friend, old dupe, saw his obituary in the newspaper and went to pay his last respects. Which led him to Rodriguez, which led him to a phone book, which led him to the woman, which led him to Weeks, which led him, at last, to the case. Twelve old people who'd taken the banana boat to Florida and never reached the shore. Strange case. But a little, just a little, like another one. The perfect crime, Dr. Morten said. Because no one asked what happened to them-these Jews. The neighbors because they didn't care, the families because they did. Just another old person, Rodriguez said. Another old person with nobody. Family, yeah, Raoul said. But not to speak of. Twelve old people with nobody. With, that is, almost nobody. For the somebodies had gotten postcards. Dear Greely-The weather's lovely and I'm doing fine. Letters, Dr. Morten said, ostensibly from Argentina, just to let them know that everything was fine. Twelve old people. Like most old people these days. The herd, Mr. Brickman described them. Refugees, William had thought on the plane, running from the crime, the cold, the loneliness. Are there Nazis there, Mr. Gushenow asked. Are there Nazis in Argentina? No…just coconuts. Like in Florida. Where there are coconuts too. Twelve old people who'd taken a wrong turn. A lot like that other case, maybe more than a little like it. In fact, you could almost say that they were one and the same. Every case was the same case, and the case was his own. Twelve old people. Twelve refugees. Why did she go there? William had asked Raoul, the janitor. I think her doctor recommended it, he'd said. The doctor thought it'd be the best thing for her, Mrs. Goldblatt said, talking about another of the twelve. And when Weeks had asked Jean to seek medical help? I've already been to a doctor, Jean answered. And laughed. Begin at the beginning. Begin there, and if you can't swallow it, spit it out. But if you can swallow it, you have to swallow all of it. Even the last part. How did he die? he'd asked Rodriguez. Heart attack, Rodriguez said. The doctor came. But too late. The doctor came. But no one had called the doctor. Weeks hadn't. Neither had Rodriguez. But the doctor came. Every case was the same case, and the case was his own. His own. He came in looking like a ghost, Weeks had said. But Weeks had gotten the expression wrong, he had. People don't look like ghosts. People look like they've seen one. So Dr. Morten had been wrong too. They never found Marcel, he said.

  But someone, of course, had.

  The someone who could recognize him, the someone who'd been staring at his face every night for over fifty years.

  Jean.

  Jean had found Marcel. One night, one day, he'd taken a stroll and bumped into a ghost. And then, before he could do something about it, the ghost had found him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  He wasn't like the other one. He showed with the same regularity, he stood in the same spot-he was, give or take a few years, the same age. But he wasn't like the other one.

  Mrs. Simpson hadn't exactly figured out why she believed this. Other than a rather strong feeling in her gut- pancreatic gas, her husband called it-she had no particulars she could hold up as evidence. No exhibit As or Bs to lay before the jury; it was hunch pure and simple.

  But then hunch had served her fairly well so far in life. Hunch had picked Mr. Simpson out of a crowded college mixer. Hunch had told her this house would be a happy one-despite its mortgage payments, which, at the time, had threatened to break them. And hunch had told her that the Watcher wouldn't be coming back. Hunch had been right; in all three cases, right.

  Now it was telling her, fairly screaming at her, that this watcher wasn't like the other one.

  Perhaps it was a matter-as dog show judges phrase it-of demeanor. Of bearing. This watcher wasn't quite as sure of himself as the other one was-she was certain of this. The other one had stood like the palace guard; this one stood there like the palace interloper. This watcher, despite no visible movement to speak of, was jumpy.

  Hunch told her watching this watcher was going to be interesting.

  Already her pri
orities had undergone a shuffle. Her interest in transforming the lot-her Johnny Appleseed complex as her husband called it-had suddenly paled, revealed perhaps, as the simple sublimation it was. For sometimes watching is real, and doing is chimera; that's what instinct told her. And there was something more: if last season's bird hadn't come back, last season's species had. She wasn't about to level the nest just yet.

  But what was the watcher watching? This time, she was determined to find out.

  She would take another stroll-another reconnaissance. Under the pretense of surveying her lot, she would survey him instead. She would get a reading. And this time, the sight of a firearm wouldn't make her turn tail.

  It was important to do this, absolutely necessary. Because she had another feeling about this watcher-in fact, her hunches were working overtime on him. And they told her that if her maternal instincts had been misplaced the first time, they wouldn't be now. This watcher needed a friend. And she could be a good one. If he was worthy, she'd prove ready.

  Now to the fore.

  She waited till mid-morning of a rainy Thursday. She slipped on her rubbers; she tied on her rain hat-vinyl with little daisy decals. Then she plodded out, plodded out because she suddenly felt heavy, clumsy, as comically obvious as an elephant stalking a mouse.

  He was back at his corner of the lot, as faithful as a crossing guard-more faithful, considering the fact that the crossing guard at the local school had been fired for drinking-or so Mrs. Tyler had recently informed her. The street was fairly soaked now; she had to pick her way between the puddles, resembling, she imagined, an uncoordinated child failing miserably at hopscotch. She actually felt herself blushing-would wonders never cease-when she reached his side of the street she found it difficult to actually look at him.