After Dachau

by Daniel Quinn

  “No one feels wonderful about it,” she said with a shrug. “It was necessary and, after all, not without precedent.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The story of human evolution doesn’t follow the same pattern as the evolution of other creatures. When reptiles emerged from the amphibians, they didn’t destroy the amphibians. When mammals emerged from the reptiles, they didn’t destroy the reptiles. But the same is not true of humans. Among humans, each emerging species apparently destroyed the species from which it emerged. This explains why none of those earlier species survived to the present time. In fact, most biologists feel this accounts for the tremendous speed with which humans evolved from lower forms.”

  “So we Aryans were only doing what humans have done from the beginning.”

  “Exactly,” said Miss Crenevant. “And in fact we made it all the more painful and difficult for ourselves by refraining from doing it for as long as we did.”

  “Thank you. But I’d like to return to my earlier question. How long did it take?”

  “It took at least eight hundred years. So long as we knew it was being done—and systematically done—there was no need to rush. In some parts of the world the process was so gradual that there was virtually no resistance at all. It may even have taken longer than eight hundred years. No one knows exactly when the last non-Aryan disappeared.”

  “But in any case,” I said, “this explains why, if you were to visit the bookstores and libraries of the world and assemble all the books you could locate showing photographs of people—movie stars, fashion models, musicians, workers, farmers, people at sporting events, school children, and so on—you wouldn’t be able to find a single face in them that wasn’t white. For more than a thousand years, there hasn’t been such a face. For more than a thousand years, being human has meant being Aryan and nothing else.”

  “That’s correct.”

  I held out a hand to Mallory and said, “We’re done.”

  As she made her way to the front of the room, I thanked Miss Crenevant and the girls for their assistance. Then I asked if anyone knew how Napoleon Bonaparte had defined history. No one did.

  “Napoleon said, ‘History is just an agreed-upon fiction.’ ”

  They looked at me as blankly as if I’d just said something in Greek.

  “I have a question,” Mallory said to them. “You all talked about the author of the Aryan Council’s charter as if this was a single individual.”

  The girls nodded.

  “Let me see if I’ve learned anything here today about how you put this history of yours together. I’m going to guess that the author of the charter was the man who turned the tide against the Jews. He’s probably known as the Hero of Dachau.”

  The girls were amazed and delighted with Mallory’s evident progress.

  “Is his name known?” This question was greeted with giggles and tickled affirmations.

  “Let’s see if I can guess it,” Mallory said. Even before the words Adolf Hitler were out of her mouth, the girls broke into congratulatory applause, coming out of their seats in a spontaneous celebration of her recovery. It was manifest that Mallory’s “amnesia” had been triumphantly cured.

  As we turned to leave, Miss Crenevant deftly interposed herself between us and the exit. “Dr. Reese asked if you would grant her an opportunity to extend a personal greeting to you.”

  “Please convey my apologies to Dr. Reese, along with my sincere thanks,” I told her, “but this has been a more traumatic experience for Miss Hastings than you might be able to guess.”

  It was churlish of me, but we Aryans know when it’s time to be cold as ice.

  MALLORY, never predictable, seemed almost preternaturally calm as we tramped down the school’s echoing hallways and out to the parking lot. She still hadn’t spoken by the time we were in the car and headed back the way we came. Unable to think of anything else, I lamely told her I was sorry she’d had to go through that.

  “There’s no need to be sorry,” she said. “Have you ever had a sliver in your hand?”

  “Of course I have. I’ve led a sheltered life, but not that sheltered.”

  “The last thing you want is anyone digging around for it, but once it’s out, all you feel is relief. You can look at this tiny splinter of wood, see it for what it is, and throw it away. I knew there was a sliver there—I’ve known that from the first day I woke up in the hospital as Mallory Hastings—but it was so huge I was afraid it would tear me apart if it ever came out.” She watched the scenery flow past the window for a while. “Now it’s out and it’s gone, and I feel sort of empty—but not torn to pieces. I’m relieved to know who I am and where I am, and how I got here.” After a bit she added, “But I do feel sort of empty.”

  I left her alone and drove on. When we connected with the highway to Oneonta, she asked me to pull over.

  “This is probably a silly question,” she said when we were stopped, “but I have to know the answer anyway. Are you a not-see?”

  “A not-see? What’s that?”

  She laughed. “Not a not-see. This is a not-see.” She repeated the sign she’d used earlier to characterize me, snapping her fingers together in front her eyes and tossing them away. “Not-see is a sign-language pun.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Not-see equals Nazi—N-A-Z-I.”

  “I still don’t get it. What’s a Nazi?”

  Her eyes widened in amused disbelief. “The Nazis were the collective ‘heroes of Dachau.’ Hitler was the leader of the Nazis—he was their saint, their beau idéal, their knight in shining armor.”

  “I see. But that still doesn’t tell me what a Nazi is.”

  “It’s short for National Socialist—I assume it comes from the original German.”

  “Okay. That part rings a bell. National Socialism was popular all over Europe for a time—but never in the U.S.”

  “But you still managed to murder your Jews.”

  “Is that the real meaning of the word Nazi—Jew-killer?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “And this is why you call me a murderer?”

  She nodded.

  I thought about the charge for a while, then said, “The greatest library of the ancient world, full of unique and unreplaceable manuscripts, was in Alexandria. Near the end of the fourth century, the Roman emperor Theodosius had it burned so as to rid the world of all those horrid pagan works, most of which were lost to us forever, since they existed nowhere else. Did you feel guilty about this act of barbarism when you were alive as Gloria MacArthur?”

  She shook her head. “Feeling guilty isn’t the issue. Certainly it isn’t the issue with those little girls and their teacher. As far as they’re concerned, killing millions of people was like getting rid of fleas on a pet dog—just an unpleasant but necessary chore.”

  There was nothing to say to that. After a minute of silence, I started the car again.

  “Don’t do that,” she told me, and I turned it off. She continued to stare out the window on her side of the car. Finally, she said, “What happened to you people?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was alive back in the twentieth century—back in my twentieth century—people imagined that a great new age was just ahead. All the work was going to be done by robots. Everybody would have personal helicopters and live like kings in a kind of gadget-filled paradise. But in fact nothing’s changed. Everything’s exactly the way it was two thousand years ago. What happened?”

  “I wish you’d asked this question back at the Academy. Then you could have heard the ‘official’ answer.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That the frantic desire for ‘progress’ that drove your nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a product of Jewish greed. The Jews wanted people to buy a whole set of new products every spring and then throw them away for a ‘better’ set in the fall. Nothing was supposed to last. Everything was designed to fall apart so it
could be replaced by something ‘better.’ That’s the answer I learned in school. That’s the answer Mallory Hastings learned in school—and that you forgot during your period of unconsciousness.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “You’re trying to have it both ways. First you tell me the Jews were behind the lack of progress in the Middle Ages, now you tell me they were behind the rush of progress in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Which is it?”

  “It’s both. Do you want to hear how Ava or Nanette would explain it?”

  “I guess I can work it out on my own. But it still doesn’t explain the utter stagnation of your Aryan paradise.”

  “Doesn’t it? Think about it. We don’t believe in novelty for the sake of novelty. Novelty for its own sake is a Jewish thing, you see. We believe in making good things to start with—things that last. And we believe in making them as good this year as we did last year—as good as they were in my grandfather’s day and in his grandfather’s day. The basic systems that make this automobile function haven’t been improved for two thousand years because they don’t need to be improved. We’re proud of this, you understand. This is an Aryan car, not a Jewish car that starts falling apart as soon as you take it out of the showroom. This is the explanation we heard from our parents and they heard from their parents and they heard from their parents and they heard from their parents, all the way back to the signing of the Aryan Council Charter.”

  “I see.”

  “Does the explanation make sense?”

  “I guess it does, if you accept all those premises about Jews and Aryans.”

  “Do you think the girls in Miss Crenevant’s classroom question it?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Certainly not. And why should they? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this good, solid, boring Aryan automobile, after all.”

  “Okay. But is this true of everybody? Doesn’t anybody question it?”

  I had to give that some thought. “I think everyone questions it—but only with about one percent of their minds. We’re ninety-nine percent sure that what we have is truly a wonderful Aryan paradise, as you call it. But then there’s that other one percent that makes us wonder what the hell is wrong with us.”

  “Don’t you ever try answering that question?”

  “No, because maybe we couldn’t stand hearing the answer. We’re afraid to know what’s wrong with us.”

  “I’d be afraid too, if I were you,” Mallory said, and opened the passenger door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going back to Oneonta,” she said, getting out. “I’ll hitch a ride.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  She started to close the door, then paused, evidently thinking of something to add. “Speaking of my being silly, do you remember your concern about my ‘mother’?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t want to take me to New York City without getting her permission.”

  “Right. I remember.”

  “Do you know how many times she’s called since I got out of the hospital? Zero times. Her one and only concern about me was the possibility that my being in the hospital might reflect badly on her. Her only concern was to get me out of there so I’d stop embarrassing her. Which I knew well enough at the time, and you didn’t.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So you should shut up about me being silly. You’re no expert.”

  “Okay, I take it back. I apologize. But there’s no reason why you should hitch a ride to Oneonta. I’ll be glad to take you there.”

  “Your gladness doesn’t enter into it. This is something I’m doing because I want to do it. Understand?”

  “I understand,” I said, and she slammed the door and walked away. I considered hanging around till she got a ride. I also considered hanging around till she got a ride, and then following her northward to Oneonta to make sure she got home safely. But in the end I knew this would only infuriate her, so I turned the car around and headed back to Manhattan.

  WHEN I WOKE the next morning after a pleasant evening with my parents, I realized I’d become a man without a plan or a purpose—something new to me (and not altogether unpleasant). For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t getting ready to do something or waiting for someone else to do something. I was in a position to behave like one of the idle rich: go shopping in elegant stores for unneeded things, meet similarly idle friends for lunch or cocktails, catch a show or a concert in the evening, all of which I somewhat dutifully attended to on that day, a Wednesday.

  The following morning, with no clear plan in mind, I went for a walk and ended up in a bookstore, where I wandered listlessly for an hour, fingering novels and collections of short stories, looking for escapist reading. I felt out of place and a trifle guilty, because in fact I’m not much of a reader. I was afraid some clerk would offer to assist or make a recommendation, and I’d be revealed as an ignorant philistine. At last I selected three novels, paid for them, and fled, feeling like a lapsed alcoholic sneaking out of a liquor store with a bottle under his arm.

  Not caring to go back home so soon, I took my acquisitions to the Metropolitan, which is the only thing the Tulls mean when they speak of “the club.” It has the odd (and probably undeserved) reputation of having been founded in ancient times to cater to an especially worldly and wicked clientele, who are certainly nowhere in evidence today. Still, it’s not quite as stuffy as such establishments tend to be and is stocked with all the usual clubby amenities, though the only ones I wanted were a comfortable chair, a good light, and an occasional glass of sherry at my elbow.

  I wasn’t doing research. Nothing could have been further from my mind. I was making an earnest effort to amuse myself for a few hours, and the novels I’d chosen at the bookstore were presumably written for exactly this purpose. I opened one, read for half an hour, then set it aside in favor of a second—which I also read for half an hour and set aside. I picked up the third and, in a state of bemused distraction, wandered into the dining room for lunch. I pondered matters over a cocktail, spent fifteen minutes reading, then set the third book aside as well when my entree arrived.

  Without intending any such thing, I’d made what was (for me) a remarkable discovery. I’d told the girls at the academy that Napoleon considered history “just an agreed-upon fiction.” An hour’s reading in the work of three different authors revealed an unsuspected dimension of truth in this description. It was clear that all three had studied with Miss Crenevant (or one of her clones), though there isn’t a trace of historical reference in their books. All had a contemporary setting, featuring characters that could be said to be just like me. Not one of us questions the verity that the human race is exactly congruent with the Aryan race—and was “meant” to be congruent with the Aryan race from the foundation of the universe. Not one of us gives a moment’s thought to the absence of “other” faces in our midst. Like me, the characters in these books travel the world, knowing with absolute assurance that the people we’ll see in Tokyo or Shanghai or Johannesburg or Bombay will be as uniformly white as the people in Paris or Chicago or Sydney. For us, indeed, white is the color of people, the way yellow is the color of bananas. To see a red man in Santa Fe would be as startling as to see a lavender lion in Africa. White is the suitable color for people, as tawny yellow is for lions.

  Like me, all these authors and their characters occupy a world in which the Great War is essentially the stuff of legend, as the Trojan War must have seemed in Gloria MacArthur’s day. The Jews have hardly more reality for us than the dragons of the Middle Ages, and the Merchant of Venice inhabits the same fairy-tale universe as the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

  We don’t live in a world that is stagnant, as Mallory dubbed it. We live in a world that is stable—wonderfully stable, blessedly stable, as it deserves to be for the race that is the pinnacle of cosmic development.

  Mallory seemed to think I should live in sackcloth and ashes because my
ancestors exterminated the original inhabitants of Asia and Africa to make room for people like me. I made a mental note to ask her if Jackson Pollock lived in sackcloth and ashes because his ancestors exterminated the original inhabitants of North America to make room for people like him.

  It isn’t just our history that is an agreed-upon fiction.

  When I got home, I was informed that Mother was waiting for me with a guest in her study. This wasn’t food for thought, since my mother receives dozens of visitors a month, none of whom would miss a chance to pat the young master on the head. I was therefore startled to see that Mother’s guest was Mallory, dressed for the city in a dark suit and white blouse. She stood up when I came in, disconcerting me further. What was she expecting? My mother cocked an eyebrow at me in amusement, needing only a millisecond to register my uncertainty. I decided that if Mallory was going to play Lady Caller, I’d have to play Gentleman Host, so I stepped forward and gave her an awkward embrace, punctuated with a peck on the cheek.

  Explanations followed. Mallory had telephoned, but too late to catch me. The call had been transferred to Mother, who certainly wouldn’t let such an opportunity slip by. They’d been together since eleven and had just finished lunch.

  Mother said, “Mallory tells me she has a suite at the Commodore. Have you ever heard of it?”

  I said I hadn’t.

  “That’s a sort of joke,” Mallory explained. “Do you know the Escorial?”

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s a five-star establishment adjoining Grand Central Station.”

  “In quite ancient times there was another five-star establishment in exactly that location, known as the Commodore. I’m sure it’s been gone for centuries, but at the time it was the cat’s whiskers.” She gave me a sardonic wink that she knew my mother couldn’t catch.

  “I see,” I said gravely, not knowing what else to say.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “now that you’re here, we’re ready for an expedition.”

  “We are? What sort of expedition?”

  “The same as yours—the kind you’re not allowed to ask questions about.”