Sweet, Sour And Sad 2d3615

Sweet, Sour and Sad

Short Works

Norman Keifetz

Copyright © 2012 by Norman Keifetz.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918274 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4797-2590-8 Softcover 978-1-4797-2589-2 Ebook 978-1-4797-2591-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

STORIES

Coca Cola Tables

Egg MacGuffin

Lying in Wait

Purloined Violins

Crime Scene

PLAYS

What We Dropped

Oven Men

“I much prefer a compliment, insincere or not, to sincere criticism.” —Plautus, Mostellaria

Praise For Earlier Writing

“A witty and nimble tour de force’’ —The New York Times

“Writes with understanding and a feel for the human condition.” —New York Newsday

“Lively, full of the unexpected.” —Heywood Broun

“Skill as a writer and weaver of intrigue.” —The Denver Post

“Fascinating and full of surprises . . . turns unforeseen corners.” —The Library Journal

“What Keifetz does well is portray the torment that rages in his flawed hero.” —Metro DC Area

“Suspense, originality and, not least, comion.” —The Sunday Oregonian

“His writing is breezy, insightful and always captivating.” —Buffalo Evening News

“A knack for creating bizarre characters and making them totally believable.” —Robert Creamer,-Sports Illustrated

STORIES

Coca Cola Tables

Matt had been the current custodian of his cousin Rey’s Coca Cola tables when a handsome young American woman arrived in the market in Juarez. Somehow, he’d seen a flash of her blond hair out of the corner of his eye. She had parked no more than 50 feet from where he was resting atop three of the tables, a makeshift bed. She tipped the uniformed custodian of the parking meters, and headed to the entrance. And there, just inside were the tables. She stopped, cast her eye upon them. Matt saw that she counted the 25 each with its set of four chairs using a bouncing index finger. She moved in and out among them to study them more closely. The tables and chairs were special. Well crafted, they were made in the early 1940s. Baked red and white enamel featured the distinctive Coca Cola logo. She could not know that they belonged to Rey Pascua, his cousin, well, his aunt’s cousin. Neither could she know that the man sleeping atop three of the tables at the far end was Matt himself, their sometime custodian. Maybe she thought he was one of the Mexican homeless, or a worker from the market on siesta. That was not her concern. It was her business to know the tables were marketable. She saw they were semi-antique at best, but “campy,” their value nostalgic and, in that sense, desirable. When she entered the market, she tried to find an owner, or the person who saw to the tables or maintained them. She interrupted the reverie of a stall-owner to ask. The man had trouble understanding her broken Spanish and he sent her to another stall in the market to find the owner of the Coca Cola tables. The people in the other stall spoke some English and told her they thought they’d seen the man she sought in “blankets,” but the woman selling blankets and clothing said he was upstairs in “troche-moche,” which turned out to mean ticky-tacky, stalls selling plaster images, trinkets and toys, stuffed varnished bull frogs playing base fiddles, and cow heads, tin chimes, cheap mirrors and papier maché figures looming from the ceiling like specters of whimsy. In “troche-moche” they told her they’d seen him at the corner barbershop. At the barber shop they said he was back at the market, at the Coca Cola tables. Irritated, she walked back to the tables, frustrated by the wild goose chase. She saw the sleeping Matt again.

“The tables are his, right?” She asked a man who was just entering the market, wanting to be sure. “Rather, Señora, his to watch. They belong to his cousin, Rey.” “Well, that’s the same, isn’t it?” she asked. The man shrugged. After a moment he asked, “Do you own what is your cousin’s?” Ugh, she must have thought to herself. Her frustration could not have left her very much patience for these fine Mexican distinctions. She began to pace, weaving in and out among the Coca Cola tables, bending to look at legs, examining for rust spots, running her hand across the tabletops. She couldn’t help seeing that they had held up remarkably well for what… perhaps fifty years? She pulled a chair out to study it more closely; it made a grating noise against the floor tiles of the market. She stopped, instinctively, so as not to wake the sleeping man, but then dragged the chair along the ground again, now hoping to wake him. But Matt pretended to sleep on. She checked her wristwatch, walked up to the sleeper, and loudly cleared her throat. He didn’t budge. He knew his body appeared completely relaxed on the tables. Growing bolder, she gently shook his leg. “Excuse me.” Matt made no response. She moved away, knocking loudly on table tops, scraping chair legs noisily. Unaware that Matt was already awake, she turned to find that the noise had accomplished its purpose; the man was up now, in fact, standing on a table. Matt moved gracefully from tabletop to tabletop, stopping at a table closer to her. “My cousin who owns them always said a devil with a thousand eyes roams these tables… one has to stay alert, be on top of it, yes?” She turned to see him steadying himself atop the table. She was amused. “A devil?” A pause. “Silly,” she added, though he knew she meant unrealistic, impractical.

“Well, you see, he signed a contract with the Coca Cola company not to sell them and, to him, it became ironclad, a contract one couldn’t break.” She found his voice cultivated, carrying a slight intonation, a Mexican edge that lent it a soft charm. In fact, Matt had added the Mexican lilt to his voice. He often did that when he met a new gringa in Juarez because he believed the Americans expected it of him. “Unbreakable? My lawyers tell me there isn’t a contract made than cannot be broken.” “You’re a business woman, Señora?” Matt hopped down from the table top. She must have seen that his hairline had begun creeping up a little at the sides; otherwise, it was dark and wavy. He caught her looking at the scar the divided his eyebrow. Matt saw that she took care to study his eyes. She extended her hand. “I run an antiques shop in a department store in Dallas. My name is Juno Holiday. And you are Mr. Pascua, right?” He took her hand, ignored the question, addressing himself to her earlier point. “Ahh, the contract. My cousin could not afford lawyers, Señora Holiday. And he believed he would never have the money to fight Coca Cola if he did not keep the agreement. There was a $500 fine for violation of the contract. And so the agreement went beyond being sacred. It became something like a pact with the devil.” Matt was aware that he had begun to act, playing the poor Mexican one minute, the sophisticate the next. She was a woman he wished to play with. Juno got up, freed her hand from his grip, began studying the tables again, walking among them. “After all these years the tables have held up very nicely. Just enough nicks and wear-spots to make them charming. I could see why your cousin would cling to them.” “Cling. Yes. My cousin Rey Pascua held on for dear life. He was always worried the American shoppers would finally seduce him.” He smiled.

Matt had a debonair quality, something she did not expect, she would tell him later, from someone short and ebullient. At that time she was not aware she was with a man who enjoyed being with women and, because he did, had learned to understand them, at least as much as a man could. She would one day confess that she loved his smile almost immediately, his eyes too, with lashes that were very long and very straight. The scar fascinated her. “What about the Mexicans around here? No interest in the tables—?” Inside, he winced a little at the “Mexicans around here…” There was always that attitudinal thing about gringas, he realized, that made him want to appear as Mexican Mexican as he could. When he was with his own family or with Latinos he felt free to blend in. But Matt had always believed he had a neuron here and a ganglion there attached to a woman’s sensibilities, and that he could present himself, in whatever guise, as the kind of person a woman wanted to know everything about. “No. No interest. The locals aren’t engaged in the same yearning for some reason…” He gestured at the tables. “Maybe because the tables were always here to see and use, already a part of their lives at the market.” Years later she told him that he reminded her of a particular Italian actor, a handsome guy, or was he French? She never did recall the actor’s name, though she ed Matt had the same slightly wavy dark hair and white skin. “So only the Americans want them—” “Yes. For the most part, Señora Holiday. But, of late, the Japanese have come to Juarez, and the Canadians. They seem to have some longing, or at least many inquiries about them.” “I’m surprised your cousin didn’t sell a few sets. If he sold just a few, he’d have more money than the possible fine imposed by the contract with Coca Cola.” “Ahh, business, yes?” He shrugged. “Maybe he was not good at business.” “I’m surprised there’ve been no thefts. They just sit out here exposed to any common thief.” He smiled at that. “Rey always said the Americans are afraid of our jails. And

the local people couldn’t get away with it because everybody in Juarez, including the border guards, have always known the tables were Rey’s.” “May I ask… oh, perhaps I shouldn’t—” “No, please, Señora . . .” With a gesture, he urged her to finish her thought. “Actually, I’m Miss Holiday. Miss Juno Holiday.” “Ah, Señorita Holiday, you were saying—?” “I guess I wanted to know why were you walking on the tables?” “Ah, I should say I did so because it was the quickest path to you! But in truth, I’m not sure. I thought I sensed the hot chill of the devil in the air. Silly of me… like my cousin Rey…” He stopped suddenly. “Ah, I see. You are worried about the nicks and scratches, Señorita. Yes. Perhaps I should give that my attention too.” “Is this all you do, guard the tables, keep the devil away?” He smiled. She said she had noticed—when was it, at that moment, or later?— that his eyes showed another color in the rays of the sunlight. “Who could aspire to more, Señorita? But no. Some years ago, when Rey became too ill to watch over the tables, he turned the job over to me. But I still have my own work—” “Let me guess!” she interrupted. He could see that she was looking him over. What stood out, she was to say, were his sweet face, and his grace. And,of course, those eyes and his scar. “You’re in the arts? Theater, music perhaps. No! Dance. You’re a choreographer!” He looked pleased, flattered, but waved off the suggestions. “Not so grand, Señorita. More down to earth.” With that hint, he allowed her to continue guessing. “Okay, I still say you’re graceful. An athlete of some sort, or a coach?” Her hand goes to her mouth. “You’re not a famous bullfighter, are you?” She sat at one of the tables.

He was pleased with her guesses, thought about entertaining more, but saw he was being too vain. “No. I’m a plant scientist, Señorita. But my goals are hopeless. So I guess I’ve inherited my cousin’s… how did you put it… silliness?” She must have wondered if her saying “silly” had slighted him because the Latins always seemed so touchy about certain things. “I don’t believe anyone should have a goal that he can’t reach.” “Well, Señorita, my goal is to find food for the hungry.” He waited a beat before asking with a smile and without hostility, “Hopeless enough for you?” She smiled. “Now that is unreachable. Get yourself another goal!” “It is a daunting, hopeless task, Señorita. Just too many without. But I’m straying from the subject, yes? I was telling you about the other pact with the devil, the one ed to me by my cousin.” “Guarding the Coke tables, you mean—” “Yes, since I came to look after them, when I can, the Americans have made countless runs at me for the Coca Cola tables. Dream deals… money flashing… talk of riches.” “But you couldn’t be seduced, right?” “Oh, I’m not like my old cousin, Señorita Juno. I’m seducible.” She sensed a change, perhaps because he had used her first name, reached for a chair back to assist herself from the seat. She rose, stretched seductively, perhaps from true stiffness. “Ummmm…” She came closer to Matt, sat back down, but at the same table. Her hand lightly touched his. He glanced quickly at her touch. Took a moment to reflect. “Oh, yes. I’d probably give them up if I could get over my hurdle.” “Hurdle?” “Yes, you see I’ve worked with the hungry so long, I tend to stay away from thoughts of banquets. I don’t know why, but in my lifetime I’ve always worried

when a prospect looked too golden or a bride too beautiful. There is always a hard turn to a nice road, right?” “You mustn’t be so negative.” She put her hand in his, and he turned his to take hers, lifted it and gently kissed it. “Wow! Very old fashioned of you… very Spanish, aren’t you?” She stretched back in her chair. He saw she had emphasized her form. “You and my cousin, the owner of the tables, Rey Pascua, have very similar shapes to your names, Juno Holiday. You are aware of that?” “Rey Pascua?” “Well, yes, Pascua means Easter in Spanish and Rey means king, one of the important figures of the Old Testament, I believe. He’s Nathan Easter and you are Juno Holiday. Same idea, you see? But where were we—?” Smiling, “I was trying to get you to be more positive. Mr.—?” “Mateo Rael. Matty in American. Yes, positive. Yes, yes yes. You know, Juno Holiday, I have to keep separating myself from dark thoughts, but no matter how I try I always come back to the darkness. I think it is the specter of Fernando Valenzuela that haunts me.” “Fernando Valenzuela?” She deliberately blew out her cheeks, stretched her arms to indicate girth. “You don’t mean that tubby guy who once pitched for the Dodgers?” Matt showed no response to her physical caricature. “Yes,” he answered. “The great Valenzuela. You know Fernando once said that the game of baseball broke his heart. Just when you think you are ahead, the game is suddenly lost and just when you are an untouchable star, you are on the waver wire; the management is looking to deal you. And in your finest moments, he confessed, you always worry that your arm will die and, alas, you will be sent first to the limbo of the orthopedic surgeon, then to the minor leagues to rehabilitate yourself, and finally, to the end of your life.”

She studied him for a brief moment. “Pardon me for saying this, Matty, but you really should lighten up. It’s supposed to be better for the health.” With some reluctance, he allowed an acknowledging nod before she continued. “But let’s talk about the tables and chairs. How can I seduce you into selling, Mateo Rael? How about this: I’ll buy not one but all… at whatever price you name within reason. I have a budget. I can go overboard, but I can’t let myself drown. So what will it take in dollars and cents?” Matt didn’t respond for a moment. He saw she believed he was weighing the deal, setting a price. Finally, he asked: “Do you love the tables, Juno?” Of course, she didn’t expect that question. He saw her take a breath. “I’m a business woman. I’m not only buying them because I love them, but because I know I can turn them over to people who would cherish them as objects.” “Cherish. Yes, that’s a nicely chosen word. It means more than ‘value them,’ am I right?” He came down harder with his Mexican lilt, playing the simple man. He could see she thought she had struck the right note with this odd man. “I would like to get down to figures, if we can. Just what are they worth?” “Figures? You have moved away from cherish, Señorita Juno, and back to value, yes?” “Well, we have to establish a price—” “Rey always said the Devil finds a way to dance on the Coca Cola tables.” “The devil is within us. There is only a devil if we imagine it.” “By devil you mean temptation, Señorita Juno?” She blew out a deep breath again. “Listen: you’d like to sell, wouldn’t you, and make lots of money? And get this burden off your back so that you can go back to your work with the poor—”

He considered. He could see she believed she had drawn him back. “When I hear the word ‘poor’ I think of our old market,” he said, pointing to a distant spot in the sky, but clearly meaning a direction over the nearby buildings that obscured the old market. “it is out there in the shadow of the biggest church in Juarez. There are lice-ridden beggars there with sores on their feet. Have you ever been?” “No. I haven’t. And you don’t paint a great picture of it.” “Like you, Americans don’t like to go to that market. The sick beggars seem to make them uncomfortable.” “I wonder why?”—clearly sarcastic. But Matt seemed indifferent to her new tone. “Maybe Americans don’t realize you can get the same goods there that you get here at half the price.” “But no Coca Cola tables, right?” “Once, when I was being hounded by gringos who wanted these tables, I moved them to the other market for a while.” “But you brought them back, I see.” “I had to. The Americans still kept after me. But instead of asking me if I’d sell them, they asked who I sold them to so they could buy them from the buyer, you see?” “Perfect! People with their tongues out, drooling for the tables. A seller’s market. How nice for you! Come on. Let me unburden you, free you from these hounding buyers. I’m sure you’re tempted to sell, right? Come on! What would you charge me?” “I couldn’t charge you, Señorita Juno. Because if I gave you a price and you agreed, I would no longer have the tables. I’d only have hopelessness.” “That’s not true. You’d have lots of money… and the freedom—” “Yes, temptation again. Is it just my cousin and me who sense the devil dancing

on the tables? I wonder—” “The only devil in business, Matty, is when someone says, ‘no deal!’” Matt got up on a table and began gracefully to walk the tops. “So you are up there again.” “I don’t think I’ll scratch them. My shoes are almost as soft as moccasins.” He looked back over his shoulder, smiled at her. “Some people say that under our trade agreement, NAFTA, the Americans will teach us about business and it will elevate us.” He reached the spot where he had lain before. With a sigh, he lay down again. Juno walked toward him. “Come on, Mateo. Don’t tease! We’ll both make a lot of money on this deal.” He looked up to the sky. “You might be right. But we’ll have to see. We’ll see if like the great pitcher, Fernando Valenzuela, the rise will only make the fall harder. We’ll see if a business deal, like pitching in the big leagues, is a humbling experience.” He could see her growing expectant, sensing a softening in his resistance. “Come on, Matty. Name a price!” He studied her. “The fever of the chase, Señorita Juno. It makes you glow.” “Mattiiie. What do you waaant?” “I want to be fair.” “What’s fair?” He closed his eyes for perhaps a moment, opened them. “Did you know that in Juarez—of course, I only live here when I’m helping Rey out—I’m considered charming and attractive? Must be putting gringo values on things these days! I’ve studied at the University. I’m considered a sensitive man because I worry about the hungry and the poor. I’m unmarried. In Juarez, I’m

what you call in the U.S. ‘a catch.’” “I can see that. You’re an interesting and attractive man. What are you leading to?” She squinted. “Well, now that the hunt is in its last moments, I wonder if you would like for us to kiss.” She jumped back. “Would I like us to? I have a choice? “Oh, how simple life would be if we didn’t have to make choices.” He said this holding his arms out to her. “Is it worth it? Is one Coca Cola table worth one kiss, Juno?” Juno widened her eyes. She withdrew, began to pace, winding around the tables as she weighed the proposal. She came back to him. “Now what are they really going to cost me, Matt? I’m not going to sleep with you. That’s out!” “You don’t count kisses?” “Well, sure I do. But it’s childish, isn’t it? I’ll kiss you and you’ll give me a chair. Then I’ll kiss you again and you’ll give me a table. I know what you want.” He studied her eyes. “You’ve cornered the rabbit, Juno. Won’t you make the kill?” “I’m not sleeping with you!” “I’m sure you know that if you don’t bite the rabbit, the rabbit bites you.” “I’m sorry! Forget it! Forget the whole thing!” “I thought you said that in business the only devil was ‘no deal!’” “Quite a clever little operator, aren’t you!?” He looked at her to study her face. “By operator you mean someone who cuts deals, am I right, Señorita Juno?”

Her face had changed; it had become harder. “Why do you keep calling me Señorita? You seem quite comfortable in English.” He realized that it annoyed her that he had put the question in a way that suggested he was having trouble understanding English nuances. But he answered her question simply, ignoring her annoyance. “Oh, yes. I see what you mean. Yes, ‘Miss’ is a simple word to say in English. But sometimes when I’m excited or speak without thinking I lapse into Spanish. You see, I dream in Spanish.” Because it fit, he wanted her to think he was Mexican. “What does that mean, dreaming in Spanish?” “It means I might just be too Mexican to get anything past you.” “You know what I think? I think the devil you are so afraid of might just be you.” “I think I’m falling in love with you. I love the U.S. The women are fearless, effective, beautiful. So soft, yet so firm… so directed.” Standing erect, her head aloft, she said, “Just like you, Señor Mateo, I’ll have you know I’m thought to have a striking figure.” Matt had to nod. “Perhaps one day we’ll kiss with no strings attached.” She moved closer to his face, her lips touched his. “I wouldn’t bet your remaining tables and chairs on it if I were you,” she whispered. She kissed again, three little, light kisses and pulled her head back to observe. He smiled softly, and she bent for a longer, deeper kiss. She lingered in his arms. “Of course, I could decide not to sell—” “You better not screw me on this, Matt.” She kissed him lightly on the lips, blew softly into his face. “Juno, how can anything go wrong?” She freed herself from his arms, lined up three tables next to his, and lay down

beside him. Sometime in the next moment, she said, “You know, it’s kind of nice up here, different.” She took his hand. “For some reason, one kind of settles into a calm. Very peaceful.” “Yes. I’ve always felt life looked better up here somehow… something about these tables. Once you feel the—” rolling his hand as he pretended to try to pull up the English word—“the rapture… no, the charm, ah, the delight! Yes, the delight of the tables. Once you feel it, Juno, it becomes harder and harder to separate yourself from them.” “Do you mean I won’t want to sell them?” “I don’t know business, Juno. Maybe if they were yours, you would walk the tops, and that would be enough. Sale… resale… it could interfere with your delight.” She looked over at him. “I’m not going to get screwed in this right, Matt?” “Señorita Juno, by screwed you mean… ?” “We still have a deal, don’t we?” He took her hand, kissed it. “Cast in stone.” He scrunched up his nose. “What? The wheels aren’t coming off our deal, right?” “I think I should tell you I was born and grew up in…” He pointed to the horizon, in the direction of west Texas and New Mexico. “What!? You’re an American!? You fraud!” “Fraud,” he said, weighing the word. “Yes, it’ll do.” They both started laughing so hard they had trouble catching their breath. After a while, she asked, “Matt, do you ever nap anywhere else?” “Yes, in a little while I’ll show you where. I keep a little place in San Elizario that cousin Rey found for me. I refry my beans there when I’m not feeding the

hungry.” He laughed. “You fraud!”

# # # #

Over the next ten years there were many more kisses and different places to nap but, as yet, no sale. discomforts and ill-ease of life. So for Matt the miserable Dallas weather was nada Dallas had always been a strange garden to him, but Matt realized that probably to anyone who had grown up in Remedios, Dallas might seem forbidding, as unconnected to the psyche as the eastern plains of Columbia or Salitral. “Oh, Mattiiie—” He had been standing at the window of Juno’s apartment, watching the rain, his back to her when she called, a call that sounded as if she was in bed, dangling her panties from her big toe. Actually, she had finished dressing. He too was dressed, necktie and all. They were going to a cocktail party at a country club, a celebration of some significance to Neiman-Marcus department store heads of which Juno was one, and executives, their spouses, significant others or friends, like Matty. Juno was the one woman he always came back to. It was true there were moments when she seemed a sort of empty-headed business woman, but for him she reeked pheromones. Maybe she knew this; she chose to position herself in such a way as to indicate a confidence that she would always close a deal. Matt had known attractive women, feature for feature more so than Juno, and yet unlike her they all behaved as if they did not believe they were able to spin the spider’s web that would ensnare the wings of their desires. If a man managed to get caught, such a woman did not believe she had accomplished it, but rather that something accidental was afoot, a serendipitous occurrence, the moon in the right position. He had always loved observing women. It was almost a preoccupation. He would rather spend social time with women than with men, almost any day. They

were a hundred times more complicated, interesting. They could, quixotically, reveal a great intimacy in a conversation that started out as mundane and innocent as talking about the weather. Even if he could magically produce the presence of James Joyce or Marcel Proust or Miguel de Cervantes at his beckoning, he believed he would not like them as much, and that he could get more, if not learn more, from the heartfelt utterances of even an ordinary woman. If there was an image that expressed all women, he thought, Juno or Marilyn Monroe—it was the mirror on the wall that always seemed to reflect that something was wrong, that they were not nearly pretty enough; they didn’t even look cute; their skin was not right; their hair was either too frizzy or too straight, not long enough or short enough to be hip or chic; their eyes were dull or unexpressive, liner and mascara uncorrective, their lips not full enough, or lined in the wrong place. No matter how nice they looked, they didn’t agree with the mirror. When he swung around at Juno’s urging, she was, of course, at the mirror, and he waited for her to turn before reassuring her that she looked really beautiful.“Una rosa enflorese,” he told her, like a rose in bloom, he repeated in English. “That’s so sweet, Matt. I’ve decided to believe you, even though you’re a fraud and I’ve never gotten the Coca Cola tables.” It still amused her. “I’m going to surprise you on that, my rose in bloom, you’ll see.” “Oh, you phony baloney.” He took her face in his hands, studied it, and kissed his blooming rose lightly on one of her petals, the tip of her nose.” “You’ll see, Señorita Juno, mi rosa. You’ll see what I’ve planned.” “Ummm.”

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

He thought of his purpose—his mission. He pulled up to a gas station just inside the Dallas city line to call Juno. “Matty, how sweet! What a nice surprise! Where are you?” “Underneath your window with my sweet guitar, getting ready to serenade you like only a Mex-Tex can.” “Tex-Mex, you mean—” “Yes, well, I’ll go so far as to it that that fine distinction comes and goes.” “So which one are you now, Matty?” “Whichever is the romantic one.” “Ummm. But, you see, I’m working now, my dear.” “Should I put my guitar away?” “Heaven forbid. Serenade me later.” “Okay, I’ll find a place to park my big RV.” “Umm. Is that something dirty—?” “What, a recreation vehicle? Should I park at Neiman-Marcus and wait for you?” “No. Go to my high-rise and park there. I’ll tell the doorman to expect you. He’ll let you in the apartment. Besides, he knows you.” “Yes, but every time I’ve been there, I’ve been with you. I wouldn’t want him calling calling out the gendarmes.” “My dear, the doorman loves you. He asks after you all the time. And he’s MexTex, a compadre, in case you didn’t notice.” “Can they handle an RV in your basement garage?”

“Baby, this is Dallas. Nearly everybody’s got an RV. I’ve got to run, love. Bye.”

When she came home, Matt was in a chair with his eyes closed, listening to music. He’d had a lot of trouble, as always, finding something to listen to in her collection of CDs—Bon Jovi, Hootie and the Blowfish, Pearl Jam, Everlast, Tommy Boy, The White Zombie, TLC. It was not that he’d rummaged through her collection to find Segovia or Casals; he only hoped for Sinatra or Jimi Hendrix. He had settled for Richie Havens. He knew it was Juno who entered the room by her smell. “Ah, Cyperaceae,” he said with his eyes closed. “What do you mean ‘ah, cyberspace?’” “Not cyberspace, Cyperaceae carex. It’s Latin. You smell wonderful, like flowering sedge.” “I thought you once said I smelled like a rose in bloom.” “You are a rose in bloom.” She smiled happily, said. “I see you never did put the RV in the garage. I saw it parked out in front. Couldn’t Paul accommodate you?” “Ah,” he said, “I asked a favor of Pablo.” “So it’s Pablo now—?” “Yes, he’s a border rat. I am too, in spirit, as you know. He has family in Matamoros. That’s sort of like the Juarez to Brownsville.” “Pablo liked your new moustache.” “And you—?” “I just love it.” “Good. Now that you’ve seen it I can shave it.” He got up and kissed her. “Have you made love to a man with a moustache?” He whispered. “I’ve been with a man with no hair at all.”

“They say women like bald men.” “No. I mean no hair at all—anywhere.” “Ah, yes, a Chihuahua con pelo, a Mexican hairless. Very exotic.” He kissed her again. “Ummm. A Mexican hairy.” She slowly pulled away. “Let me get free, you know, comfortable.” “Yes. You change into your robe. I’ll shave. Then we’ll go down to the RV.” “No. We’ll go down to the RV later. And no shaving! I want the moustache.” “But it will spoil things, Juno. I want things as they were when I first met you.” “You can’t have that, Matty, dear. You’re already ages older.” “You look as I first met you in Juarez 12 years ago.” “Nonsense. I’ve been looking up names of plastic surgeons.” “Your presence, your aura is that you are a sexy woman, Juno. It has nothing to do with crow’s feet.” “So even you see the wrinkles—” “I it only to one crow’s foot.” Matt said, “Besides love is blind to a crow’s foot.” She did leave to change into her robe. When she came out of the bathroom she started for the bedroom, beckoning him with her finger. “First the RV, Juno, my love.” By way of a response she turned to face him, and flashed open her robe from the navel down.

It wasonly later, after they’d both taken a short nap, that she agreed to go down to the RV, but insisted on wearing shorts, tank top, sandals, no robe. When she entered the side door of Rey’s RV, her mouth opened. Matt had six Coca Cola tables and chairs set up cafe-style—sort of the way they looked in the Juarez market when they’d first met. The rest of the tables were stacked one upon the other in a corner of the vehicle. The chairs were folded and stacked alongside. “Matty, I’m flabbergasted. What have you done—?” “I’ve finally closed the deal. They’re yours.” “Oh, I couldn’t. You’ll have to take them back.” He had put on his best quayabera, a pleated Mexican shirt with pockets that she had never seen him in or even known he had in his wardrobe. He was not an ethnic dresser. It was clear he was putting on a show to amuse her. Matt then picked up his guitar and played a romantic Mexican tune for her—several bars of it, anyway. She did laugh. “Juno, I love you.” She stopped laughing; she suddenly looked serious, if somewhat overwhelmed. He held out one arm, the other held the guitar. “Come closer, please.” She came closer, so close as to hug him. He’d put the guitar down. “I want you to have the tables and chairs.” She held his face in her hands. “Why?” She asked softly, even a little sadly. “I’ve always thought the fun of it was that I never got them and you never gave them. That was our special thing together—” “That part is over now. I want these to be my engagement present to you.” “Wait! I’m confused. Your what—?” “I love you. Do you accept—?”

“Matty, your life is traveling, studying plants and soils. Mine is here in Dallas.” “If you accept, I’ll even stay here and work with the Methodists.” He told her about an offer to do research at SMU. “So, do you, Juno, my love?” “No, not yet,” she said. She pulled out of his arms and aligned three tables—then three more parallel to the first three. Then, she got on top of three of them, and stretched out. A smile spread across his face. He climbed up on the other Coca Cola bed she’d made. “You know,” she said, taking his hand, looking up at the underside of the RV roof. “Life is better up here.” “Do we have a deal, Señorita Juno?” “Deal—?” “To marry.” “But I’m not Catholic and I don’t think I can become one at this stage.” “I’m not Protestant,” he answered. “And you don’t think you can become one, right?” She asked. “So it’s a justice of the peace, okay?” “That’s so bolillo, my love.” “What’s that mean—?” “You know, so… white bread.” “Well, when I was in college, my roommate was married in the park by a selfordained priest. They both wore cannabis headbands, you know, grass—” She caught herself, and with some embarrassment said, “Oh, my God, listen to me go on… it must be the proposal. God, you’re a plant scientist.” “And I’ve lived upon this earth,” he said. “I feel so dopey.”

They were still atop the tables where things were more possible. “Maybe we could have a Jewish ceremony,” he suggested. “Jewish!?” “You don’t think you can become a Jew at this stage—?” He could see she was considering it. “Well, my grandmother’s mother was Jewish. I never thought to tell you that. You know what we say in Texas—that’s blooood! Maybe itty-bitty blood, but still blood.” There was a simplicity about Juno that had always fascinated him. Maybe it was her pheromones, her sexiness that overrode all considerations. But maybe the simplicity had to be coupled to the pheromones to make her irresistible. “So the itty-bitty blood defines you—?” He left out the rest of the question, even more than Christianity? “Well, it does for Blacks in the eyes of a lot of people in this country.” She explained, her gift of simplicity at its best. “Good. Let’s be Jewish.” “But what about you—?” He thought of the poor conversos forced from their faith during the Inquisition. “I’m itty-bitty too,” he said. But she didn’t seem to have heard him and she didn’t seem to be interested in that subject any longer because she said, “What would be really cool would be to have a wedding reception with the Coca Cola tables and chairs as the theme.” He stared at her for a while with a smile spreading across his face. A businesswoman! He had to it he adored her.

Egg MacGuffin

One wouldn’t think that here in the early-70’s there would be such a craving for a.44 Magnum Model 29, but after the movie “Dirty Harry” came out a couple of years ago, sales for the powerful six-shooter went from 200 dollars to almost 1000 bucks. And now my Dad just got an offer of $25,000 dollars to find a particular one! No, he’s not a gun dealer. You might say my father finds things. People think he’s got the magic touch. Usually it’s a missing spouse in our Russian community here in San Francisco that he turns up, but last year he found a valuable Faberge Easter egg in a shop in Riga, Latvia, and offered it to the Faberge Foundation. Of course, they sent one of their egg specialists to San Francisco to confirm the egg’s authenticity. My father got a plaque of “Honor” for his troubles, and his picture taken with the actor, Cary Grant—now a Faberge representative—and 15 grand to show their appreciation. Today, The Foundation considers my father their good luck charm. He told the Faberge representative that his grandfather, who had been a policeman in Russia, claimed he once had the honored duty of escorting Alexander Faberge around the 2.4 km grounds of the well-known Russian Church of St Sergius Lavra while the famed jeweller’s son drew sketches. Mr. Faberge was churning his creative juices, Grandpa always had insisted. Now somebody wants to find the actual gun used in the Dirty Harry film. Because the offering sounded so outrageous to my dad—who’d pay that much for a movie prop?—my father called me to ask if anybody had been popped with a Model 29 in the past few weeks. “I guess,” I said. “Whaddya mean, ‘I guess?’” he wanted to know. “Lotta people get shot in San Francisco, Pop. Over the past few weeks we might have had three, five, eight shootings. Not in my precinct, though. We’ve been dancing through raindrops.” “Well, if you hear anything…—excuse me, Pytor, the other phone…”

“When my father got back on the line he apologized for the interruption. “Just that Tchaynik again.” Tchaynik is Russian for a whistling tea kettle, in this case someone who calls all the time, a pest. “Who’s making the offer?” “What? You think the Tchaynik? No, no, he’s what you call a prop master for a movie studio in L.A. Wanted to know if I still had the Fabrege egg or could get hold of one. They’re making a movie. Wants to borrow an egg. He calls every two days. Worked with the big directors—Roman Polanski, Nunnally Johnson, and others.” “I meant: Who wants Dirty Harry’s gun, Pop?” “I don’t know. They sent a little girl from Haight-Asbury, a cute hippie. Probably paid her a couple bucks to make the offer and she gave me an envelope with 300 dollars in it. Wouldn’t tell me who was behind the retainer so I gave her the money back.” “So case closed. And now—?” “Now, Pytor, see what you could find out.” “Me? Why me?” “You’re charming and appealing and sweet. You’ll find out from the delivery girl what I couldn’t.” “I see. Case open.” I imagined my father shrugging.

As I was leaving the station house, I heard there had been a shooting on Polk Street. “Nail the perp?” I asked. “No.”

“Find the weapon?” “No. But they got the shell—.44 Magnum. No big surprise there, eh? Every lowlife and highlife in San Francisco has a Model 29 these days.” “Yeah, that old “Dirty Harry” influence. When did the shooting happen?” “A couple of days ago.” “Who got whacked?” I asked. “A guy from LA, worked in films. Name is…” the officer checked the report sheet. “Peter Headings. Mother runs an antique museum in Tulsa.”

On Fisherman’s Wharf she had set herself up on the street. No, don’t jump to conclusions; she was not selling herself, rather her wares—painted masks, jewellery, bangles, knotted rope bracelets, amber wedding bands, rings made of bronze bolts, and strange earrings fashioned from silver cutlery, 70’s peace signs and then, from her Noah’s Ark earring collection—foxes and hares, hippos and rhinos, pigs and goats, snakes and lizards, silver bumblebees and finally, anachronistically a black cardboard box, labelled, “Magnum Force, $5000.” She was the 70’s—long, straight, sandy-blond ponytail, tie-dyed tee-shirt, long, loose, colorful skirt, and sandals: the traditional tradition of our time! When she spotted me I was wearing black shirt and tros, carrying a matching black jacket. I studied her wares slowly before I offered, “I like your St. Francis grouping.” “Well, thank you kindly,” she said. She had a slight but unmistakable southern accent. “I like your costume.” Then, while I was fingering the animal earrings, she told me she had a mask she thought I would like, and fumbled in a shopping bag behind her and came out with a colorful, glowering satanic face. “What do you think?” She held it up. I feigned jumping back, ducking, covering up, as though I was about to be struck.

“You’re funny. Well, cute too,” she said. “And you have pretty eyes.” I pointed in the direction of downtown. “I’m at St. Vladimir’s seminary,” I told her. “Really? Oh, my! God, a seminarian—” She swung the mask behind her back. “I should have bitten my tongue, shouldn’t I?” “No. Not at all. Get that mask back out here. I’ll take it.” I said. “Oh, I see, you were putting me on about the seminary—” “No, really, I’m hoping to be ordained one day.” She looked sceptical. “Well, what do you study to become a priest?” I saw she required proof. “What do I study? You want to know what I studied?” “Sure, prove it, that is, if you can, darlin’.” “A challenge. Well, okay. We study Morals: that is, ethics, right and wrong, and Obligation; that is, duty and imposition; then there are Moral Sentiments: such as, approbation; and Moral Condition: probity, virtue, vice, that stuff; and Moral Practice: you know, that’s chastity, sobriety, poverty, temperance. Then there are what you might call the Supernatural, you know, heaven and hell, angels—“I reached out and took her hand that held the mask.”—and the DEVIL! “Stop! Okay, I believe you. I accept: you are as you say. Hey, do you have to get back to that seminary of yours?” “I’m actually not a seminarian,” I confessed. “Though I did try it a few years back. We all agreed I wasn’t good enough.” “But you still wear the… what do y’all call it?” She pointed to my black outfit. “No, I’m on the job,” I said. “What job is that, darlin’?”

“It’s the family business.” “You in the funeral business?” I smiled. “No, I’m an investigator, S.F.P.D.” “I have a peddler’s licence, ya know.” Her lips tightened. “That’s cool.” “You shutting me down?” I pointed to the black box. “No. I’m interested in your Magnum Force.” “Oh, that’s just a come-on, darlin’. People see it, ask, and they usually find something on display that they buy.” “Ah, clever.” “What are you investigating?” “Like in the seminary, moral condition, I guess.” I offered a shrug of helplessness. “Can’t get away.” She started packing up her things, closing the cardboard boxes, and loading the shopping bags. I saw they would all go into an empty baby carriage that was against a wall behind her. I reached out, took her arm. “I’ll go. You don’t have to. After all, this is your spot, and I’ve taken your time.” “I’m packing up so we can go have a cup of coffee and a talk. I know a neat café. It’s not far. Here,” she handed me some shopping bags, but clung to the black box, “help put these in that baby carriage. So what’s your name—? “Pytor Lemingrov.” “Lemon grove, cute. I knew a Peter once. Peter Headings. His father was a Pentecostal minister back home in Hatcher, Oklahoma. Mother couldn’t stand him anymore, the husband, that is. Upped and left for Tulsa.” I didn’t tell her, Yeah, I know. “Ran a museum, I hear. You went to my father

—?” “Ah, Serge Lemon grove. Didn’t want any part of me, your daddy.” “Peter Headings is dead.” “I know, darlin’. Papers reported he was shot a few days ago on Polk Street with a .44 Magnum.” She didn’t seem broken up. I was expecting more hysterics, or maybe a welling in the eyes. “You didn’t like him?” “Peter? You mad, darlin’? I adored him.” “You seem so cool.” “That’s cause it wasn’t my Peter Headings y’all found on Polk Street.” “But they found ID.” “Peter was generous, gave away things, clothing, possessions.” “You’re saying the dead man was wearing Peter Headings’ clothes, with things in the pocket that identified him? Where would he have gotten them?” “I don’t know, darlin’. She shrugged. “Church bin. Local thrift shop, maybe. He saw me quite a bit up here. Old homie, y’know.” I wondered how she could be so sure it wasn’t the real Peter Headings. “The department is probably calling his mother in Tulsa as we speak.” “Um, I wonder if she’ll be bewildered, tormented or just plain angry at y’all.” “Whaddya mean?” “I mean Peter’s been dead for over a year. His brain exploded… Po’thing.” “So did the guy’s on Polk Street.” I told her.

“Brain aneurism I mean, darlin’.” I was the one who was bewildered. Tried to recover. “You didn’t shoot him with that, did ya?” I asked, pointing to the black box. “There’s nothing in the box but a lil’ interesting trinket. Told you it was a comeon, darlin’” “Why’d ya go to my father, Miss… er…” “Brendabelle Demphery,” she said, and gave a short “hello” wave of her hand. “Wanted to see if I could trust him. Heard your daddy’s good at finding things.” Brendabelle started to push her baby carriage loaded with wares and a fold-up table. I followed. “Good, you’re coming for coffee. For a minute there I thought we scared each other off, darlin.” And then she asked, “You don’t carry a gun?” Actually I did in a leg holster. “Awful things,” I told her. In the cafe, she ordered coffee for both of us. She had left the baby carriage outside, her merchandise covered with a pink blanket. She kept the black box with her. “Aren’t you worried about your wares?” “Believe me, nobody wants to steal a baby in this town.” The coffee came. I took a sip. “Can we be friends?” She asked suddenly. “Friends?” “No good—?” “Yes, good. I can always use a friend… especially someone who knows more than I do.” She had a small, sweet smile on her lightly freckled face.

“Want to come with me to my warehouse?” I looked at her for a long time. Things were moving faster than I thought possible. I had no real answers. Just confusion. And, of course, the pleasure of her company.

Her place was off the Panhandle in the Haight, I expected to find boxes full of devil masks, tye-dyed shirts, earrings, trinkets, what-nots. But none of her supply of goods, or Fisherman’s Wharf display, was in evidence. Instead, her warehouse was a quiet, simple place with bare polished wooden floors, a pull-out bed, an inviting two-person couch, facing a Philco TV which was mostly cabinet, a small neat kitchen and, in an “L” off the kitchen, a little room with good light that contained a pullout sofa, a night table, and chest of drawers. “This is where Peter Headings stayed when he was in town. All his treasures are here.” “Treasures—?” What now? I wondered. “He collected stuff from Hollywood. Bogey’s raincoat in Casablanca, Marilyn’s billowing white dress from The Seven Year Itch, Elvis Presley’s jewelled belt, Burt Lancaster’s prison uniform in Brute Force, the hat Gary Cooper wore in High Noon . . . Who knows if they have any value? But I’m sentimental. They’re keepsakes for now.” She went to the chest of drawers. Opened the top one. “Here, take a look. Tell me what you think.” As I went to look, I was thinking, Here’s this little street peddler, this seemingly poor thing who like Pip in Great Expectations and Eliza Gant in Look Homeward Angel was sitting on holdings that could be worth a huge wad. “Take a good look, darlin’” Most of the stuff was wrapped in cellophane bags. I looked into the three drawers. From behind me she said, “Left it to me in his will, along with the bills of purchase. Official as can be.” When I turned to face her she had a .44 Magnum pointed at my chest. My God,

it was Dirty Harry’s gun—the gun she wanted my father to find! Of course! Once Peter Headings told her he had left her this valuable film memorabilia she must have popped him on Polk Street and has been twisting my head with all this charm of hers. Jeez, and I, the enchanted, had begun to fall for her. “So you had the gun in the black box all along.” “No, it was in the first drawer, darlin’. I slipped it out.” I was trying to calculate if she had strength to handle the recoil of the Model 29 Magnum. Could her skinny little wrist keep the powerful gun from flying skyward? The problem was she must have kept it steady on Polk Street. I’d never make it to my .38 on my leg. As I was thinking of diving low at her legs, she said, “Don’t, darlin’. My Grandaddy brought a Springfield rifle back from World War I and we lil’uns trained on its big kick.” Then she fired. There was a thunderous noise. I was still standing. “You see, darlin’ they had to adapt Harry’s gun to shoot blanks. This isn’t even a Model 29. Wasn’t in production at the time of the film. Old dear Peter told me the studio had to plead with Smith and Wesson to get it made from parts. This is a cross-breed, essentially an elongated .45 Colt with the .44 Mag chamber.” She handed me the gun. “See?” “My, my.” I was thrilled and amazed that she knew all this inside information. “Come on. Shoot me with it,” she urged. “Why?” “So we’ll be even, darlin.” And then it hit me. “But you paid my father to find this?” “That’s ’cause of the black box. What’s in it, I mean.” Did a pretty girl ever make your head spin?

“I think we can all trust each other now—can’t we, darlin’?” “Clear my head, please, pretty please.” “Ever hear of the Church of St. Sergius Lavra?” “Hear of it? It moves in my very bloodstream. It’s a part of our family lore.” I told her about my great grandfather. “Well, it’s inside the black box.” “What is?” I asked. “St. Sergius Lavra,” she answered “Darlin’—” now I’d started calling her darlin’ —“St. Sergius is on a huge estate that holds the Trinity Cathedral. It alone has an 86 meter refectory, and an 88 meter five-tiered belfry.” “It’s a miniature,” she said, “Say, did you call me darlin’?” The next thing I’m going to tell you is so whacky and preposterous that anyone would have difficulty believing it. We got married, Brendabelle and I… well, after a time. The black box contained more than a magnum force. But I didn’t find out till the Viet Nam war ended—the very day we brought our daughter home from the hospital. My father was there to welcome the new baby and Brendabelle handed him the still unopened black box. When he got the lid off, he grew pale, felt weak, had to sit down. “My second one,” he said as though it was his find. He held his heart. Glaring at him, glaring up at all of us, was a beautiful shiny bleu d’azur Faberge egg. At its top was a tiny replica of St. Sergius Lavra. Peter Headings had found the egg in his mother’s museum, bought it and, of course, willed it to Brendabelle. “I’ll tell you this,” my father said. “This time, we’re not settling for a picture taken with Cary Grant.” Over the years my father never understood why Brendabelle had come to him with that money to find a gun that she had all along.

“Huh? You wanted to see if I was honest, Brendabelle?” “That’s it, Serge, darlin’. I had to hatch the egg. Couldn’t very well give it away to a fox.” “Or a fool,” my father said, “who was so full of pride at finding the egg in Riga, he practically gave it away for a clap on the back.” “No, Serge,” Brendabelle said, “it was that wonderful lack of avarice of yours that made you so appealing to begin with.” “And you proved all,” I said to my father, “by sending her away with her 300 dollars for a gun request you couldn’t fulfil!”

Oh, yes, the body on Polk Street. Turned out to belong to a Gil Totten, one of our many homeless, who had been picked up and booked for vagrancy and drunkenness more than two years ago. Prints matched. Killer, alas, still unknown. I looked over at my father to see if he was still beaming about our baby girl and Brendabelle’s Faberge egg, but saw only a sad look in his eyes. He put the egg down, caught me looking at him. I gathered from his gesture that he wanted us to talk, privately. He ambled into another room. We were alone. “What?” I asked. “The tchaynik,” he said. “The tchaynik?” “You the Prop man from Hollywood… he called this morning.” I don’t know why I knew this had to do with Brendabelle and her movie memorabilia collector, Peter Headings, her benefactor, and the dead guy that had been shot on Polk Street almost two years ago. I felt that I was staring at an oncoming tsunami. There was a knot in my stomach big enough to tie the Queen Mary to its slip.

My father looked at me and I could tell he was hoping I would insist: forget it, Pop, case closed. “Let me have it,” I said. “At one time, Peter Headings and the dead man on Polk Street and Brendabelle all worked for the tchaynik in the studio property department. The one who was shot… what’s his name—? “Gil Totten—” Wait! Brendabelle worked in Hollywood!?” “Not exactly. She was a weapons expert, put together the guns for Dirty Harry and other movies. Worked for a company called Okie Arms, a family business that did contract jobs for the big gun makers.” “Whaddya sayin’?” “They’re making a another Dirty Harry film and the three Magnums the tchaynik had in his Property Department are missing?” “No, Pop. About Brendabelle!” “The tchaynik said she could change a gun from cold to hot in minutes.” My father was saying that she could have fixed the Dirty Harry Magnum to do damage on Polk Street and then to shoot blanks to seduce a love-smitten cop. His lips were pursed. “What?” “Husband-cop/possible wife-suspect, love, a sweet little baby in between it all, funny interview, you see, Sonny?” He made a helpless sign with his hands. He didn’t have to say more. But he did: “let it be.”

The next day with a sense of dread hanging over me and in the darkest of moods I went down to L.A. to for a talk with the Tchaynik. Sure, I did study Brendabelle’s Magnum before I left, brought it to our police lab. That gun could

shoot live ammo, as well as blanks, the guys in ballistics told me. It took a master craftsman to make that possible. Who was that, Brendabelle? I looked up the file on the Polk Street victim, Gil Totten, compared the markings on those slugs with “our” magnum, that is, Headings’, and then, of course, from him to Brendabelle. An apparent match. I read through all the reports on Totten. In the file were photos of Headings’ jacket, the dead man, the contents of his bindle the precinct had found in a flop house—a pair of mismatched socks, threadbare underwear, loose packaged tobacco, and papers for rolling cigarettes, a book of matches from the an L.A. bar and restaurant, the Tashkent Tennis Club. A phone number had been written. You don’t even have to be simpatico to know how I felt. Maybe my father was right. Let it be. Almost two years had past. There’s a baby now. But Pop hadn’t studied at the seminary. Unfortunately, I did, even if I have long strayed, married without religious ceremony, and nary a thought of christening. Let is be. And all the piles of money we eventually got from Faberge for Brendabelle’s egg went to charities in the name of Peter Headings. It seemed only fair; we were sitting on oodles from his collection of Hollywood realities, fantasies.

Lying in Wait

When it comes to love, attraction, flirtation, as a younger man I was out in left field. A person would have to throw herself at me or, at least, project an especially longing look before I got the idea that she was interested. I can’t count the number of times women hit on me… because I didn’t know they were! How could I when I kept missing the pitch? I don’t know why I wasn’t ready. I guess my sensing system was ensnared in some dense field of unawareness. In truth, it shouldn’t have been. Certainly my family tried to alert me to the fact that since I was a pretty good looking guy I could expect some attention from the girls. If my mother told me once, she told me a thousand times, “You are a beautiful boy.” I had dimples, and a smile, my aunties said, that could take a girl’s breath away. Let’s just say there must have been lots of girls that took a run at me because I produced some kind of chemical or physical lure. After a while, you’d think I would have seen enough pitches to have earned a major league contract in recognizing a come-on. But, alas, I remained buried in the lowly minors, blind not to the curves, but the pitch. As it turned out, maybe I didn’t know how lucky I was.

Once, when I was on leave from the Navy I dropped into a local bar and there, sitting on a stool, legs crossed, was a blonde with skirt high. She seemed familiar, though I saw at once that she’d been drinking for some time, and I don’t just mean that night. Her eyes were tired for a woman in her early twenties, her face beginning to puff from a spell of cocktails that had gone on for too long, I guess. Even her broad smile didn’t disguise a face that had suffered some. She called me by name, first and last. And then I realized she was Lillian Van Haart, the girl of my dreams from the time I was in the first grade! Her folks were from The Netherlands, at least her father was.

Back then she looked the picture-book image of the little Dutch girl, blond pigtails, eyes of blue, cheeks of rose. I longed to hold her heart-shaped face in my hands and stare at it, but never did. She had never given me a tumble, not

then in grade school or later in our teens when she had become the dish of dishes. We’d say hello, exchange a sentence or two, or just nod, every now and then because we had known each other from early days. Once—or was it twice? —we had walked home from school together—well, on one occasion, almost together. I was behind her watching her pigtails move and shift. There was something stimulating about the part that divided the pigtails, or at least I think now that I thought that then. I know I wanted to stay those 10 or so feet behind, eyes fixed on the pigtails, the divide of her hair, only briefly dropping them to take in the rest of her. She stopped suddenly to pick up… what?—a book? a pencil?—and I had to make a graceful side-step move to avoid running into that lovely pleat-skirt of hers. I’d caught a glimpse of the back of her thighs above the knee. Her skin was so creamy. I think now if the fates had been kinder, I wouldn’t have been so graceful. I should have at least brushed her as I slipped to the side. She turned her head from that bent-over position and smiled ever so slightly. “I missed you,” I told her. “You missed me?” “I mean I avoided banging you.” “How’d you avoid banging me?” She got good grades in school, but I wondered if beyond the grades there wasn’t something slow about her that I had not seen before. But that day I think maybe I was the one who was behind. When was the other time we’d been together? We must have come into school at the same moment. Anyway, there she was with the slight smile, carrying books and a small white shopping bag. I pointed. “Lunch?” Words of answer came there none, but I thought I detected a shake of the head. I couldn’t think of what to say next. Finally I managed, “Bulbs?” “Bulbs—?” “Tulip bulbs.”

She laughed; then pushed me. Did you ever love being shoved? I just loved what she did. The bell rang sounding the start of classes. She rushed off, with her paper bag, seemingly out of my life if not my desire, never to be playfully pushed again. Or maybe dimples and all, I just wasn’t her type. Over the years I’d see her hanging with guys three and four years my senior. The bigger guys, the older guys. And when you’re 15 someone 18 or 19 is a man! She went her way. Eventually I went into the Navy. And then suddenly her confession at the bar: “You probably have a girl—maybe many? I’d guess many. It’s funny now, strange I mean, odd—” (She meant ironic in the unfortunate sense, The Gift of the Magi sense, it turned out). “—I was in love with you from the first grade, and you never found me alluring. You never even turned your head. You seemed to avoid me like the plague.” She said that she used to stay up at night and pray to the gods of wooden shoes and dikes that I’d fall in love with her. “I wanted to take your face in my hands—” “I know,” I interrupted, “and just stare at it and adore it, right?” “No. Put it to my heart—” I protested. I apologized. “But you went with the older guys. Seemed if you thought of me at all it would only have been as a classmate. I didn’t realize. How could I have known?” “I was madly in love with you,” my tulip from the Zuider Zee declared.

I recalled as she confessed her childhood longing that about the time she was supposedly so madly in love with me and found it so difficult to tell me, I was engaged in the pursuit of another not so fair lass, a dirty blonde with darker skin. This one didn’t wait 6 years or even 6 minutes to declare herself. She led me to a wooded area around a 17th Century graveyard about a mile or so from my house where she displayed the magic of the female form—the glow of its arousal, the taste, touch, texture, scent of its being. What a find! No struggle; no doubts; no effort; no tears. And no remorse. Oh, this one hadn’t put my head to her heart, but it found its way there. I somehow learned to do that on my own. After all, my aunties had predicted that one day I’d take a girl’s breath away.

“What was in the bag, Lilly?” “Bag? What bag?” “That paper bag you used to carry to school? I a particular day…” “Lunch, I guess—” shrugging, smiling, throaty “—It wasn’t Jack Daniels.” There was an arch look on her face, the look of a burlesque queen who’d said something smart. My God! She didn’t have a jar of some cheap booze in that paper bag? No! She couldn’t have been a drunk at 13. Then my feet started growing cold. Increasingly I got the feeling that maybe Lilly Van Haart had spent too much time on the stool, and maybe she didn’t have the money for so many drinks all those nights. And she had to get some from johns she’d hustled at bars like the one we were in. Who knows? Despite these obstacles, maybe we could have made it this night. I’d encountered other “tight” women in exotic ports of call. But I think Lilly and I were a couple of drinks too late. I bought her one, and she kissed my cheek. “Whaddya doing these days, Lilly?” “Oh, nothing much. Work on a factory line assembling remotes for TVs, toys and stuff. Boring.” “Yeah but better than standing the dog watch aboard ship.” She shrugged. She had no way of comparing them. “Do you Neddy Cooper?” she asked. “No. Was he from The Point?” “No, from Sound View, just down the road. He hung out with the guys from The Point though.” “Ah, the older guys, you mean—” Those guys that took Lilly from me.

“He was a motorcycle nut.” “I think I ed the Navy about that time. Didn’t know Neddy, but I knew most of the older guys.” I didn’t tell her I resented them because they had all her attention. I signalled the bartender to give us a round. When it came, she drained it. “Went to jail for ‘reckless endangerment,’ as they called it. Four years. Just got out.” She stood, seemed to wobble a bit. Maybe from my tavern largesse, maybe from that last one she’d downed too quickly. “Leg fall asleep? I know. It happens to me sometimes when I sit in one spot.” I didn’t add “too long.” I didn’t want to make value judgments. Who didn’t drink? “It’s been asleep for nearly five years,” she said, “first trauma, then a stubborn infection, then titanium. Good stuff titanium. Almost don’t miss it.” Of course I was speechless. I’d hadn’t heard she’d lost a leg. Had she been to Iraq? I knew that some of the girls from The Point had gone into the service, or were activated from the National Guard. “Baghdad?” I asked. “Nothing so noble. Neddy Cooper’s motorcycle. He was showing off. Bike wasn’t in gear, he said. He was up on the walkway, revving it, making that roaring noise. Next thing I felt was this terrible searing pain. Somehow, he’d tripped the gear.” Oh, God, my poor Lilly. “C-Leg, newest thing, cost 20 thou. I didn’t pay for it. Some doctor in Baltimore were studying prosthetic limbs for the military at the university medical school,” she laughed. “Took me on as a Guinea Pig. Maybe he needed a female.” We left the bar together. I noticed she had another shopping bag. I pointed. “More tulips?”

She smiled. “You’re so cute, ya know? You were always so cute.” I didn’t respond. “Won’t you walk with me?” “Sure. Where to—?” “Neddy Cooper’s out of jail. I promised myself… well…” I did wonder how it was so easy for Lilly to forgive. “He called to beg forgiveness,” she allowed. “Asked me to drop by.” “You’re bringing him tulips.” I pointed to her shopping bag again. She laughed. We had walked a way. And then she stopped. Neddy Cooper’s house? Must have been living in The Point these days. Anyway, there was a Harley-Davidson parked outside. I guessed even this terrible accident hadn’t knocked the sauciness out of him. Ah, for the love of a bike. “Well,” I said, edging away. Sadly, clearly, Lilly and I were a couple of rounds too late. I promised I’d call her for a drink sometime knowing I wouldn’t. The next day I read in the paper that there was an explosion at the basement apartment of an ex-con, Neddy Cooper. He’d lost at least one limb. The police were considering the possibility that a bomb, placed at the site, had been triggered from a remote location. I suppose I should have called the cops. But it all could have been coincidental. My leave was up and I had to get back to my ship in the morning. And then, too, there’s always the “eye for an eye” thing.

Purloined Violins

There was a strange call from one Horst Knauerhase looking for my grandfather. I told Knauerhase I was sorry to say that Grandpa was dead—almost two years now. “Well,” he said in extremely good English with only the slightest trace of an accent around his Ws, “your grandfather’s client, rather his former client, Wilhelm Neuder, had been in possession of some property owned by my grandfather.” I told him I wouldn’t know about that, though I knew where Knauerhase was going almost immediately. He was after the violin. “You see, I just must have this property,” He laughed—sinisterly, I thought. “I’d kill for it.” Kill for it. Scary. I can’t say I was really terrified, but little did I know that it would come to that soon enough.

#

After Grandpa died we made no mention to the tax people of Wilhelm Neuder’s violin case high up in Grandpa’s coat closet. Whenever my mind fixed on Mr. Neuder’s violin case in years past, I just felt that someday therein lay the family’s real ticket to paradise. Wilhelm Neuder had been a client of Grandpa, an older man who’d fought in the Great War, I think on our side, though Grandma couldn’t swear to it. “He may have been one of the Kaiser’s boys,” she said. Neuder and Grandpa met at a Knights of Columbus meeting. Neuder had been looking for a lawyer and some

jolly Knight, a city councilman from Yorkville, had brought him over to Grandpa. By that time, Neuder had established himself, made some money in a business that forged the metal rings that held beer barrels together. His s were the local breweries mostly—Piel’s and Schaefer and—but Grandma said, “Willi Neuder was getting inquiries from Schlitz and Miller.” It mattered not because during World War II Neuder Iron, Inc. grew beyond Willi’s wildest dream after he retooled his factory in the spirit of the war effort—abandoning the beer drinkers—to make gun turrets for B-52 bombers and housing for ship cannons. Grandpa and Wilhelm Neuder had become not only clients but friends; it was nice that they both played violin, Grandma was fond of saying. When Neuder died in the early 70’s no one in his immediate family was still alive. His wife had slipped away in 1937 of some undiagnosed disease as people did for centuries before her, falling into a weakness or swoon before sinking rapidly. Then Neuder’s two sons were killed in the war. It was an unkind touch of irony that German bullets and munitions had taken his sons, one in the “Bulge,” the other at Salerno. When he himself died, almost all of Neuder’s estate went to the Catholic Charities save for perhaps a tiny percentage for Grandpa to settle his estate, and one other benevolence: a small trust established to maintain the building that housed the first foundry of Neuder Iron, Inc. The building was set in a decrepit neighborhood in Red Hook. “You might say that old factory and your Grandfather were his charities too. Old, dear Willi was sentimental,” Grandma said. And, of course, Grandma always seemed to give things a wry turn. Her family name had been Joyce and maybe it was the Irish in her that lent her that ironic wit. Over the years since Grandpa died I’d asked Grandma if she’d ever seen Wilhelm Neuder’s violin and with one of those oh-dear-boy waves of the hand, she said, “Dozens, dozens, oodles of times. Willi and your grandfather played in this very house with me at the piano.” Grandma had been a grade school teacher and had an old fashioned style at the piano, taught to her by a Hungarian martinet, who insisted on a very straight back and hands that bounced high off the keyboard so her performance seemed more robotic than relaxed and in the swing. “‘For vye you slump the shoulder? For vye the back not straight?’ Tap, tap, tapping on my back with his baton.” So to imagine the three of them playing, picture these two pot-bellied guys with fiddles in hand, facing one another across from a properly seated woman with hands flying up to gather up the proper notes, or to counterpoint the sound of the violins.

“Oh, we never really knew, of course, but your Grandfather assumed Willi’s violin was quite valuable.” My Grandfather, Dietrich M. Engelson, LLB, wasn’t a man to talk about the value of things, but you could get almost anything out of Grandma. She loved to talk, gossip, even shock, especially shock. Marion Mandy Engelson got a kick out of seeing your mouth drop open. Well… Willi Neuder, it turns out, still had a friend in —an old school mate who had risen in the German Army, and maybe even the Third Reich itself. And he coveted rare musical instruments—for either love or future profit. As the Wehrmacht cut through Europe, two rare violins had been “confiscated” and sent to Neuder Iron, Inc. in New York City where Willi would hold them in safekeeping till the end of the War. “Oh, dear heart,” Grandma used to say, “Willi probably had them protected beyond every possible onslaught, and stashed them away in that factory of his in Red Hook.” Grandma laughed. But, alas, the stolen instruments were not in as safe keeping as the confiscator had thought. German soldiers had taken Willi Neuder’s beloved sons. And Willi took their violins. “For all I know, the one up in the closet is a purloined Stradivari,” Grandma said chuckling, “Who could possibly know? Willi did say it was by the great master, but we thought he was joking.” The thing about Grandpa is that he kept files and copious notes, as many lawyers do. As I was asked by Grandma to go through his papers, I came upon a rather thick folder on Wilhelm Neuder—some of it about Willi’s old factory and how it was to be maintained after his death, copies of wills detailing how his money was to be donated, and various papers of incorporation. Then there was the folder labeled “Music.” In it were letters in German, in envelopes bearing Adolf Hitler stamps, dated from August, 1939 to September 1941. We all knew some German in the Engelson house as Grandpa’s family had emigrated in the 1870’s from a little village called Schierke in the Harz Mountains. And Marion Mandy Engelson née Joyce had majored in German Literature in college. In WW II, she put her translating skills to foreign documents supplied by the U.S. Army—all the while raising two daughters and her youngest, my father. Alas, Dad was one of a group of five GIs who died in an ambush one morning in Da Nang about a year before the hostilities in Vietnam ended. The letters had come from der Oberest Erich Knauerhase and seemed to be

friendly greetings from Willi’s home—Bremen, as it turned out—chatty stuff about friends they’d known. I gathered the Colonel was a collector of music boxes. Two of his letters mentioned “the nice little music box” that he’d come across and would be sending shortly, one which played “Lilli Marlene.” So these purloined violins of Neuder’s were merely music boxes? How had the threatening caller described them? Property. He called them property, not violins, not music boxes. For a moment all of this was deflating till I figured out that “music boxes” must have been code for rare violins! Grandma was always right. The keys to the old factory in Red Hook were in the file too. I pocketed them. Then I called out to Grandma, “Is it all right if I take Mr. Neuder’s Stradivarius to be evaluated by an expert.” “Shouldn’t you be accompanied by a SWAT team, dear boy?” I assumed she was being wry again. “It may come to that yet, Grandma, you never know.” I was thinking of the phone call from Horst Knauerhase. Hell, he said it himself: he’d kill! Yes, I did my research. I found a local expert listed on the website of the US Association of Violin and Bow Makers, called him, made an appointment and showed up at his shop and showroom without a SWAT team. But I was really excited. Who knew how valuable Neuder’s violin really was? I had flashed a light inside Mr. Neuder’s violin and read from the label: “Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonenfis Faciebat Anno 17.” I actually gasped. My God! It was a Stradivari! The expert was a snazzy, little French guy, Remy Girodout, who suggested that he take the case and violin to his backroom workshop for “special study.” I was nervous about that, and he spotted my anxiety. “Oh well, Monsieur, you’ll accompany me.” Girodout turned it several times, looked inside, and declared, “it’s only a poor student’s violin.” My heart sank. I’d been riding high, but now, god, only a poor student’s violin. What did Girodout mean by that? That a poor student once owned it and that his bad playing beat up the instrument or that it was the kind of violin only a poor student violinist could afford. “Are you sure?” I asked dejectedly. “Oh, absolutely. No great value—in today’s prices perhaps 1500 dollars at best.

It’s South German, early 20th Century, one of the mass produced violins, made perhaps in part by hand, but largely by machine.” “I have to tell you, Mr. Girodout, The inside label says Stradivarius. You saw that, right?” “There are hundreds of thousands of violins that bear this label. And they are all really marginal. The makers just labeled them as the master did. This one was made in Bremen.” Sheepishly, I asked, “Have you ever made a mistake?” “No!” Girodout responded testily. He seemed offended by my asking and eager to dismiss me. Then he said, “You have a provenance, Monsieur, that makes you question me?” “No, how would I have that? This violin was made long ago, years before the owner willed it to our family. If there was any ownership history I guess it would be long gone by now.” “Ah, well then, if you’ll excuse me, Monsieur . . .” He was still annoyed. “How much do I owe you for—” I was about to say this bummer, but I said instead: “your studied advice.” He told me he normally charges $100 an hour. “But for you, there is no charge.” He was eager for me to leave. “If you ever come upon a fine violin with a provenance, I’ll be happy to guide you.” I then asked him if I could pay for 15 minutes of his time to guide me on recognizing a good violin so that I wouldn’t waste his time. I realized the request was outrageous. He rolled his eyes, but then laughed. I guess he was amused at my audacity in thinking I could learn a zillionth of what he knew in 15 minutes. “Come,” he said. As we walked toward his showroom, he asked what I did. I told him the truth: I was an entomologist who worked for a chemical conglomerate. And at the moment, I was studying body emanations of the Sphecidae and Vespidae. I used the family names for wasps just to show him that he was not the only expert. “Wasps,” I explained, “often lay their eggs in butterfly larvae. So I’m breaking down the chemicals on the wasps’ bodies to see

just how they’re able to enter nests of other insects without being attacked.” “L’homme incompris,” he said. My German was better than my French. I think he called me an unappreciated man. And then he started talking about rare violins. He began with a bit of whimsy about a Stradivari that supposedly existed but was never exhibited, quoting a 19th Century French violinist, Delphin Alard (who, he added, had married to the daughter of Vuillaume, the famous French luthier): “Your violin is like the Messiah… One always waits for him, but he never appears.” I took notes. Twenty minutes later in a nearby coffee shop I pulled them out. The violin case was at my feet. Before my visit to Girodout the “Stradivari” would have been on my lap, now that it was declared essentially valueless I was comfortable with the floor. While Girodout had been talking to me everything went by quickly but made sense. Now, in rereading, my notes seemed almost comprehensible. Nothing seemed cohesive so that I still couldn’t really tell a fine violin from a poor student’s violin.

Rare violins: show damage but not deterioration from decay. Reason: propolis from bee hives was used as a sealant. Kills bacteria. Many top-notch violins made 300-500 years ago from spruce trees in Cremona and Venice.There were few infestations.

Extremely dry air poses a danger to wood—dries out as the humidity in air drops. Violin can become inflexible, wood can shrink, leading to squeaky E strings or slipping pegs. A blond, brawny guy sat opposite me in the coffeehouse. He was reading a magazine, or pretended to. He cast a glance in my direction about every 20 seconds or so.

When I looked up again, the blond man was standing near to me, holding his paper cup of coffee. Had this guy been sent by Girodout to follow me? Had my violin evaluator been less than candid? No, I was being paranoid. Girodout had been straight with me.

He was just too indignant about my challenge to have been otherwise. I returned to my notes

Provenance: Look in violin case for letters from previous owners, dealers and auction houses, authenticity certificates containing photos, letters of evaluation. Old violins hardly have untouched areas. Lots of patchwork will be reported in documents.

“You’re Brom Engelson, Dietrich Martin Engelson’s grandson?” “Just L’homme incompris,” I answered, suddenly realizing who he was. His French was worse than mine. I gathered he thought I’d said something about not understanding. He looked puzzled. “Horst Knauerhase, right?” I asked. Smiling, he sat down at my table, without invitation. He talked about the violins —how his grandfather had found the instruments in Europe and sent them to Willi Neuder for safekeeping. “The whole German Army wasn’t safe enough? Mr. Neuder offered more protection?” I laughed. “Ah, I see,” I said snidely in German—“Hat Wilhelm Neuders dieses Nestei ist heute für dich aufgehoben?” (All this time Willi Neuder has saved this nest egg for you?) Or at least that’s what I thought I said. It’s easy to say something in a language that you don’t use everyday, and have it come out off kilter. “You haven’t been stalking me, have you, Horst Knauerhase?” I don’t know how I managed to sound so cool. I was nervous. Hell, the guy had threatened to kill me! “Vell, following my property, let’s say—” “You have the provenance?” I was delaying. “As a matter of fact, I have all the authenticity you’ll need.” He reached into his

jacket pocket and pulled out a thick envelope, removed the papers and pushed them along the tabletop to me. I looked at them. There was no provenance for the violin that I’d just shown to Girodout. “These documents are copies,” I said, delaying. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I can produce the originals.” I went through the material. There were letters from former owners, as Girodout pointed out. And a description: “The 250-year old instrument was crafted by Nicholas Gagliano, one of Italy’s premier violin makers. Precious spruce instrument with a rosewood chin rest and a discolored patch of golden varnish just to the right of the tailpiece. The bridge is placed on the line between the fhole notches. But the f-holes are cut out lower than usual. Pegs and tailpiece inlaid with white ivory rings. Clean workmanship throughout. Pleasing instrument, good tone.” The last known owner was a man named Karol Brosheski who lived in the Polish city of Poznan at 27, Sawka ulika (probably a street name). He was a musician. The other violin, made by another Italian luthier, Pressenda, from Torino indicated the varnish bore damage from the bridge approximately 10 mm lower than the f-hole nicks, more damage 20 mm down the tailpiece. The varnish was extensively worn out around the bridge both above and below the f-hole nicks. Bridge placed low, closer to the tailpiece. Its back made of well-natured, finely grained maple, finished in an amber varnish. The last owner in 1941 was Guido Lancilotti of Trentino, Italy, a music teacher. “Can I keep these?” I asked. I slowly pushed my violin case toward him with my foot. His eyes shifted from the violin I was moving toward him back to me. I could tell he was getting excited. Probably wondering which violin I was edging toward him—the Pressenda or the Gagliano. I didn’t want to be around when he discovered it was only a poor student’s violin. I pushed the violin case every closer to him. Then, I excused myself. He watched me head for the men’s room. When I saw him bend to pick up the violin case, I ducked behind a partition in the coffee shop and slipped out a side door. I was lucky to find someone getting out of a cab, and I brushed by the exiting enger, jostling him a bit to get into the cab. An indignant comment from the enger was ignored. I gave the driver the address of Willi Neuder’s old factory in Red Hook. By now, Knauerhase was probably on a roller coaster of emotion—excitement, elation,

puzzlement and dejection, anger. My cell phone rang. I answered knowing it was Knauerhase. “Du bist allein Klug.” I translated the German to mean, You alone know everything but I had a feeling he was saying,” You think you’re so smart! In English, he threatened to slit my throat! I hung up. I’d been to Neuder’s old factory twice before with Grandpa in the 70’s, both times on a Sunday—once when I was ten and the very first time when I was perhaps eight. Neuder had been dead and the factory building long closed. At the time, the building had been looked after by an energetic, stocky man with black wavy hair. Grandpa called him Pippi, though I later came to learn that his full name was Pippi Strella, and he was a cousin by marriage to the once famous mobster, Frank Costello. I never forgot the name, Pippi, because in our house, it was the name I used for the baby pacifier mother put in my mouth to shut me up. I loved my pippi. Most of the windows in Neuder’s factory were boarded up, except for one section where Pippi and his wife and children had lived. The Strella girls were probably grown and off somewhere in their own lives. His wife had died about five years ago, I’d heard. Pippi actually came to the door. He’d aged, now looked to be about 70 and gray. He was thinner. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t seen him for over 25 years! There was a large brown Labrador between Pippi and the door jamb. Unlike most Labs, this one did not appear friendly. No tail wagging, no joy in seeing a stranger. It was surprising the dog hadn’t barked when I rang. “I’m Brom Engelson,” I introduced myself. “Dietrich Engelson’s grandson.” He studied me for a while, frowned; then showed a look of recognition. “Yeah, yeah, I now. He brought ya around a couple of times.” I nodded, though I don’t know how he recognized me as that kid. “You takin’ over for him? Ya know, he came, took the City bills for property, water, paid the extra expenses just like Mr. Neuder wanted. I got a bunch of dem inside—two years’ worth. The bank still has some money for paying gas, electric—things like dat. But I ain’t had a cost-a-livin’ raise in a couple a

years, since ya Grandpa died—” “You’ve been patient,” I said. “Well, I figured one of his kids would show up and take care of it,” Pippi explained. It only really struck me now that Pippi was on a real social welfare system— medicare, pension, paid housing. Called Willi Neudercare! And that this old factory was not meant to be abandoned, but to stand as a shrine to Willi’s life in the U.S. Cut into the cornerstone were the words, “Neuder Iron Works, established 1924, closed 1968.” If I’d gone one subway stop away from the factory to St. Mary’s Cemetery I couldn’t find a bigger mausoleum! “Yes, but right now I’ve come to look at the violins.” “Yeah, I’ve been keepin’ ’em just like Mr. Neuder said. Lemme show ya.” He told the dog, “Go sit down, Frankie.” The dog silently moved to a position outside an inner doorway before he sat. After undoing its three locks, Pippi led me through that door, down three flights to the basement. He was light on his feet for guy in his 70s—no caution—he took the steps smoothly and steadily, and didn’t even hold the railing. We must have been 45 feet below street level. When he turned on the light, I saw what I imagined to be three large iron-bending kilns. They had to have been more than 80 years old but looked so pristine they still could be used today. “Wow,” I said, “they look new.” “Yeah,” Pippi said, “when Mr. Neuder hired me I got into heating and plumbing.” “I bet you’ve always done that—” He laughed. “Well, there was a time I was what you call a porter for my wife’s cousin, Frank Costello—the mobster. He got killed.” “And that’s when you went into the plumbing business—?”

“Nah, Frank made me stop. Wanted me to get legit—for the wife.” “A porter’s a pretty legit job, isn’t it?” “Yeah, well, by porter I mean I cleaned up for Frank, took some of the trash away, ya know what I mean?” He laughed. Pippi reached behind his back and pulled a gun out of his belt. “Frank gave me this for a goin’ away present. Comes in handy. A stranger comes to the door and I stick it down my pants.” He had a sheepish smile. “I didn’t know who you was at first.” I looked around. Off to the side there was a huge beer barrel, the size of an 8 x 10 x 10 room. It had a door, just like a room, even if it was a barrel. “Did that hold beer at one time?” I asked. “Nah, I built it for the violins. I keep the humidity in dat barrel between 40 to 60 percent. Just where you want it so the violins don’t dry out. I use distilled water so it don’t leave any mineral deposits. Dat’s important in the winter months.” He explained that the heat could make it like a desert in the barrel. When he opened the door on the big barrel and walked in, I saw the Gagliano and Pressenda described in the provenance hanging from a rail across the center of the room. Strung up that way, it looked as if I’d caught two delicate royal dancers in the midst of a 17th Century waltz. They’d been in Pippi’s wooden palace for about 60 years! My cell phone rang, startling me. It was Knauerhase again, saying he’s waiting for the instruments. “I can make your resistance very painful to you,” he threatened. “They’re not yours,” I told him. “They were taken from two defenseless European musicians, Karol Brosheski and Guido Lancilotti by your uniformed grandfather glowering at them with the might of the Third Reich.” “Finders keepers.” Knauerhase said. “No, not finders keepers. They’d been held safe for 60 years and now you, who never owned them, have the gall to demand them back—mit Zins und

Zinseszinsen!”—not only with interest, but compound interest. “Mein herz zappelt,” My heart quivers, he said. I could just see him sneering. “I’m stepping up the pressure. You’re not going to like it, Engelson.” He gave Engelson a German inflection as though it was spelled EngelSOHN. Perhaps that was its original spelling. I hung up. Then I heard footsteps upstairs, hoped it was Pippi’s wife, not Knauerhase. But I ed she was dead. Maybe Knauerhase had an accomplice assigned to follow me when I left the coffee shop. I hoped my nervousness was making me hear things. “You in trouble?” Pippi asked, “You look worried.” I told him about Knauerhase and his demand for the violins. “Pippi, I need my computer. The problem is my computer is in my apartment and he’s probably watching the place.” He nodded. I thought I heard a noise upstairs. “Did you hear that?” I pointed upstairs. “My hearin’ ain’t so good no more.” “The dog didn’t bark,” I pointed out. I wondered if an invader had—my god!— put him to sleep, or worse. “’Cause he’s trained not to bark,” Pippi said, “He’s a huntin’ dog. He don’t want to scare the game. If anyone’s up dere, he’s still dere. That’s the thing, Frankie’ll let anyone in. He just won’t let ’em leave.” “Should I call the police?” I held up my cellphone. “Cops? Nah.” Pippi put his index finger to his mouth to silence me. He indicated he was going up to look. I watched him disappear. He must have been gone about 12 minutes, but it seemed like 30. At one point, I quietly moved half way up the stairway. I heard voices but couldn’t make what

was being said. Then there was a thump. Torn between bursting in to see if Pippi needed my help or going back down to look for a hiding place, I cowardly choose the later. There was a darkened area to the side of the giant barrel, and I ducked into that spot. My foot hit against a baseball bat. Great. A weapon! I could only guess the bat was there in case Pippi was disturbed when he wasn’t packing his heat. Good Old Pippi. It then occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t Good Old Pippi after all. Maybe he was protecting the violins because by now, after all these years, he saw them as his. I shook my head. My anxiety was making me paranoid again. Then I heard someone coming down the stairs. I was sure it wasn’t Pippi, because the movements of the person on the stairway were not light and easy like Pippi’s but cautious and heavy. I tightened my gripped on the bat. When I peeked out, I saw Pippi carrying two chairs. I came out, the bat still gripped in my hand. “Hey, be careful with dat. DiMaggio and Mantle signed it. Could be woit more then dem violins.” He laughed. “By the way, ya were hearin’ things, kid. Frankie’s at his post.” He set the chairs down. “Here, I brung ya a seat. Nuttin to sit on down here.” I let out a big sigh. Then, curious, I asked, “You call the dog Frankie for Costello?” “Nah, Costello might not see it as an honor. I named him for Sinatra.” My cellphone rang again. I said hello softly, anxiously. It was not Knauerhase, but Grandma! “Bromie, dear boy, I’m entertaining a nice young man who knows you and is related to Willi Neuder—” My God! Knauerhase was with Grandma! I told her—whispering—that he was a bad man and she must try to get him out of her house. “He’s trying to steal Mr. Neuder’s violins, Grandma.” “Oh, dear, he seemed like such a pleasant lad,” she said. Before she hung up I could hear her talking to him, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I told Pippi that this guy who was after the violins was at this very moment s at

my grandmother’s house threatening her. He wants the violins.” “I’ll go dere, check it out, make sure she’s okay” Pippi volunteered. “He won’t know me. She still lives in Carnegie Hill in your Grandpa’s brownstone on 94th Street, right? I know the place.” “I have to get my computer,” I said. “Stay here and use mine. Come on, it’s upstairs. Grab one of these chairs.” Pippi amazed me. He had a computer!? If anyone, was l’homme incompris, it was Pippi. His daughter had bought him a computer so he could play the horses on the internet! “Whatever you do, don’t try to leave da house.” Pippi warned. “Oh? Why’s that?” “Frankie. He won’t be happy with it.” “What about the bathroom?” “Oh, yeah, well, ya just point and say, ‘Frankie, I’m goin’ to the John.’ He’ll understand. But stay away from the front door.”

While Pippi was gone, I entered chat room after chat room and the international missing person web sites looking for the relatives of Karol Brosheski and Guido Lancilotti, the true owners of the purloined violins. I kept surfing the web to keep from worrying about Grandma. I was at it for two hours when he returned. I looked at him nervously, inquiringly. He made a gesture of brushing his hands to indicate it’s all over, taken care of. “Jus like in da old days with Costello.” Pippi smiled. Man, I thought, if anyone has earned the best retirement in the world, the total Neudercare, it was Pippi. I vowed to make sure his pension would continue. And I was sorry I had had a moment’s doubt about him.

#

It has been several months now and there is no sign of Knauerhase. Pippi had arrived at Grandma’s house to find Knauerhase asleep on the couch. Grandma told me later that because I’d frightened her so, she’d “slipped some laudanum” in Knauerhase’s hot chocolate. The laudanum turned out to be a heavy dose of a sleeping medication her doctor had prescribed, and an old sedative she’d found that had belonged to Grandpa. I eventually located the relatives of Brosheski and Lancilotti in Cleveland and Chicago. We’d arranged to exchange their undeniable proof of identity for the Gagliano and Pressenda violins at Girodout’s showroom. Of course, Girodout stamped these instruments as authentic. The Gagliano was worth $360,000, the Pressenda, $440,000. He, of course, made a hundred bucks from each of them. I arranged that Pippi was to get both finder’s fees—established at ten percent of the value. Of course, Pippi wouldn’t hear of it when I called to tell him. “No, No, sonny. Costello, never did business dat way. And I ain’t neither. You get 20 percent for bringin’ in the bid’ness. Dat’s the way it woiks.” The Engelsons still have the poor student’s violin. It’s back in the closet in Grandma’s house. Oh, of course we got Pippi’s check for $16,000, made out to me, not Grandma. Probably Pippi was sticking to the Costello business code. After all, I was the one who’d actually brought in the business. How I came by it was immaterial to Pippi. I haven’t seen him since the day he took care of things. I keep promising myself that I’m going to go over there and pay him a visit. But I’ve been resisting. Pippi never did tell what became of the slumbering Knauerhase. Maybe he frightened him back to Bremen, though sometimes I wonder if he isn’t hanging from the railing inside the barrel in Neuder’s factory basement—now probably under mummy-preserving conditions. But wouldn’t Frank Costello have expected something smoother from Pippi—at least a colder trail?

Crime Scene

It was a pleasant winter morning in Tucson, temperature about 65 degrees. Vlady was completing the process of wrapping yellow “police” tape around the three wooden horses that encircled the chalk outline on the sidewalk, where the body had lain on North Mountain Avenue. He checked his watch, 6:13 a.m., stepped back to see that the tape was secure and orderly. He didn’t like sloppy work around a crime scene, and it made him uneasy whenever officers put up tape in a haphazard manner, leaving it at the mercy of late afternoon Arizona desert winds. His was a neat, tight job—the crime scene protected, sacrosanct. Any erby couldn’t help but respect the tape boundaries when he saw all the care that had gone into the work. And it was fortunate that Vlady lived so close— maybe 150 yards—in his small adobe on E. Pima Street, between Campbell Avenue and the scene itself. If he’d wanted, he could actually keep an eye on this setup from his back window. Vlady had rushed out to get to the spot early for the job. It couldn’t have been much past 4:45 a.m. when he arrived in his pickup with the wooden horses and “police” tape. No traffic at all so the work went quickly. He’d brought his Nikon so that he could photograph the stages of his preparation for the record. Vlady looked down at the white cover “socks” over his sneakers, and seeing the ends of his jeans realized he’d worn street clothes and not a uniform under his kneelength white lab coat today. He removed the coat and shoe covers and put them into his equipment bag, tossing it into the back of his pickup. Never did get into his sand-colored police issue this morning, didn’t even bring his shield or weapon. Little use, anyway, in cordoning off a crime scene. In a couple of hours the business day would start for most, and there’d be vehicular and foot traffic going by the site. As Vlady started back home, a squad car turned down N. Mountain Avenue. Seeing its tag number, he could tell the car was from the North Tucson station. Vlady recognized one of the officers, the driver. “What happened here?” asked Butch Potts, a cop Vlady had often seen patrolling these streets.

“Crime scene.” “I can see that,” Butch said with some irritation, “Somebody get shot?” “Don’t know, body was gone when I got here,” Vlady told him. “But where’s all the buzz, the activity—cops, TV, newspaper people, department helicopter?” “Beats me,” Vlady said. “Didn’t you guys get an alert on your radio?” Vlady rubbed the chalk from his right index and middle finger. “Not a word. Betcha it’s some hush-hush, political thing.” “I guess,” Vlady said getting into his pickup. He started toward his adobe. Out of the rear view mirror he saw Potts on the phone. He’ll find out, Vlady thought.

Butch turned to Solomon Suerte, his partner. “You heard that, right? They don’t know spit about any shooting at the station.” Both officers got out, studied the crime scene, walked around it three times. Then they expanded their investigation in increasingly wider circles, though they weren’t sure what they were looking for—an expended cartridge, blood, a weapon? “Say, shouldn’t we leave all this to homicide?” Suerte asked. “It’s clear they’ve gone over this same ground with a fine-tooth comb.” “It’ll be a coup if we find somethin’ homicide missed.” “Yeah, but I don’t think we will, Butch. The crime scene is meticulous. These were careful homicide cops.” “Ya never know. It’s those extra careful ones that can’t see their hand in front of their face sometimes.” The officers’ widening circles had now taken them to the edge of a pocket park. “Haven’t we gone far enough, Potts?”

“Wait!” He bent down, picked up a small object with a tissue, held it out for Suerte to see. “So? It’s a piece of chalk, maybe 25 yards from the crime scene.” “Belongs to the crime scene cops,” Butch told him.

Vlady watched the officers from his back window. What had they found that far from the crime scene that he’d missed? Couldn’t have been a shell or blood. He would have seen that. He’d covered that very ground himself. Vlady had made sure there was nothing of significance around. His cell phone rang. It was a familiar phone number, Sammy Beck’s. They’d worked together in Southwest Tucson about three years ago. Beck was another crime scene specialist. Made Lieutenant, he heard. Vlady wondered if he was now required to address him as such, or stick to old Sammy. Beck was considered the best there was at crime scene work. Two years Vlady’s senior, Beck had been a star pupil at the Los Angeles Crime Laboratory. One so quick and smart.” Yeah, but back in Tucson, Vlady had finally messed up on a job, contaminated a scene—stepped on blood, missed a discharged shell. And Sammy had to put it in his report. Even though the department knew Vlady’s marriage was crashing at the time he’d blown the crime scene, they had taken him off the field, given him some time on the bench, behind a desk. They could have been nicer to him, more considerate of his woes. In the end maybe it was good they’d taken him out of the action. He’d fallen into a deep depression—in fact he was so blue and down, he had to take 90 days’ medical leave. In those three months on heavy antidepressants, he often felt worse about his crime scene screw-up than his wife’s leaving him. It was his little daughter he missed terribly. He was so close to the kid. Everything went haywire in his life after that terrible day at the beach in Santa Monica. His screw up at the crime scene, the deep, deep hole in his heart, his crashed marriage all resulted from that little family vacation in California. In the hospital, Vlady had been urged to talk about that experience but he never could. It was only when he got home from the hospital that he wrote about it— and a poem at that. Poetry. Odd for a cop, eh? But he’d written poems in high school and college. There was even an English professor who’d encouraged him. Of course, he knew where he’d stashed the poem about his sweet little girl. How could he not? Before he called Beck, he got it out to reread it for what—the

hundredth time? “Exodus,” he’d called it. After three years, Vlady still found it extremely painful to read his own words.

Were we porpoises that day, or corks, the kid and me? I caught her face, she was not afraid, though they warned the undertow was wicked. We bounded out, into the biting surf. I told her to take my hand and never let go.

She obedient, went unafraid with Daddy. I asked her if it was fun, she shook yes, her face said no.

The surf was cruel; she allowed that she hadn’t felt ground for a long time, my good girl, her tiny hand, still holding mine.

I knew then that we would not both get back, yet it was past the time to return.

She kicked as hard as she could, as did I, neither with much progress, in an evil undertow, they’d warned about.

My plan was to throw her

to safety, where she could crawl the beach or bring her close to my mouth, where I could give her all my breath, knowing neither would work. We thrashed and kicked, in the evil undertow, where I died of a coronary so I would not see, my little girl drown, when in that moment I knew Moses, and our Red Sea parted, and I took my kid up and ran, with my heart bursting, all the way to Jerusalem.

If people ever read it, Vlady wondered, would they know he’d given it a happy

ending. He needed to write that way even though the poem was false, a lie, wishful thinking, even though she was gone, even though there was no Exodus?

“Lt. Beck,” said the familiar voice. “You called?” “Vlady?” “Yeah.” “Look, Vlady, we had a report from a patrol car in your neighborhood about a shooting and a vacated crime scene. Did you see anything?” “Of course. I can see it now from my back window.” “But what happened to all the police? Homicide has nothing. Did you see cops, onlookers, reporters—?” “Only that one squad car. Did those officers call you?” “Yeah, but it’s the weirdest thing—” “You’re right. It is,” Vlady said. “Look, I’m going to go by there. It’s drivin’ me nuts. Would you meet me at the scene?” “Me—?” “Lissen, I’ve been thinkin’, you wanna work directly with me again down here, I mean? I’m the head of crime scene squad now, Vlady. Even up for Captain.” Vlady hesitated. “I dunno,” he said softly. “Oh, congratulations.” “Hope you don’t hate me. I had to issue that report, you know?” “Yeah, I was freaked out,” Vlady itted. But he did hate him for submitting the report knowing that he was at the end of his rope.

“And who wouldn’t have been after what you went through. I don’t know how many times marriages go out the window when a guy loses his center, feels down and frozen in despair. Look, why don’t you meet me at the crime scene. Let’s talk about your coming back, please. Okay?” “Okay… I guess. What, 15 minutes?” “Make it 25.” Beck said.

Vlady was in a neatly pressed uniform, spit-shined shoes. He thought he’d put his best foot forward. This time he’d brought everything—shield, gun, ammo. Beck’s car turned down North Mountain Avenue. Vlady swung around, ducked under the tape he had established earlier, walked to the center of the chalk outline, his back to Beck. He hadn’t seen Potts’ car coming in the other direction. When he finally did, it didn’t matter, really. Maybe it was better that Potts and his sidekick were there, too. “Vlady, what are you doing inside the crime scene?” Beck asked. Vlady turned, his gun at the end of his outstretched arm. Three shots were fired. Vlady fell back, outside the chalk outline. Somebody’d have to redraw it, he thought before dying. “Hey!” Beck screamed at Potts and Suerte. “Why in hell did you shoot!? He’s one of us! Didn’t you knuckleheads see he was a cop!?” “But he was pointing a gun at you, Lieutenant—” “No! No! Call the station, idiot!” Beck rushed to Vlady, saw a paper in his dead associate’s hand. There was blood on it. A poem called Exodus. He read. And then Beck knew with a sinking heart: this was Vlady’s perfectly planned suicide. In a hail of police gunfire.

PLAYS

What We Dropped

One-Act Play

Cast

Rudy Rael, an 18 year old. Isaac Rael, a priest, Rudy’s uncle Aloisa, Rudy’s aunt Elodie Starr Non-Speaking extras/dancers

(The scene is the present. It is a beautiful New Mexican evening in the Plaza of Remedios with dusk falling. People can be seen in the shadows, at the sides of the stage, couples talking, getting ready to leave the plaza. The light gradully picks up two figures—RUDY and ISAAC(in priest’s collar)

Father Isaac (gesturing back at a spot in the darkness we cannot see)

Did you mind being pulled away from that game on TV?

Rudy

Nah. They were getting pounded anyway. The Giants were launching some tracers out there. It looked hopeless. I was getting ready to pop on a music video.

Isaac

I couldn’t help noticing that you seemed upset by the prayers, our… how shall I put it? Our family ritual. You looked edgy, uncomfortable.

Rudy

Yeah, I guess I was twisting in my seat a little. My father laid it all out for God again, didn’t he? You heard him back there. He even told God about my baseball scholarship at UCLA. I thought he was going to tell God I bat lefty. And doesn’t God know Gil is going to the seminary in my place? And then he tells God that you’re named after old Isaac Stern. Does God really care who we were named after or how many priests our family has given to the church?

Isaac

It’s part of the tradition that we give the news to God. It’s been done that way for generations. It’s the ritual we use in the Rael family to approach God. We talk these Friday evenings of our greed, sins, gestures, deeds, hopes, ambitions.

Rudy(looking up, pointing)

Yep. That’s us Raels. I should be used to it by now.

Isaac

It’s hard to get used to, I know.

Rudy

Yeah, but it should be easy, right? Look up there at our church. (Looking up, Rudy points. Lights pick up the church wall. We see a Star of David underlaying a cross on the facade of the church.) It’s no wonder our family has these weird rituals. We live in a village that’s weird. We Catholics pray in a church that has a Star of David on its wall.

Isaac

Well, that’s old Isaac Stern’s doing. My namesake. He rebuilt our church in the in the mid-1800’s. Part of the deal was that Star of David. Maybe he saw some ecumenical purpose that we didn’t. Maybe he thought that someday more Jews would come to Remedios and their people could use the church when we Catholics weren’t.

Rudy

Isn’t funny that through the years the Bishops and the Monsignors let the Star of David remain?

Isaac

The Church has always had its practical side. Then, of course, in more modern times, as you know, Pope John XXIII blessed this church when he heard about the Star of David.

Rudy

It’s just wierd. We Raels are wierd. But if it’s all right with the Pope John… (He shrugs. Then, picking up a small stone, he tosses it at a drinking fountain some distance away. We hear a clunk) Bingo!

Isaac

Why am I getting the message that there’s more to be said?

Rudy

You mean about the star, or the family ritual?

Isaac

One, either, both… You tell me if you want. I don’t know. I’m just whining, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I’m mostly fond of my parents. It’s just that that Friday night devotion. I don’t know… it bugs me, I guess. It’s confusing. I don’t think of Fridays as being special for devotion. Why don’t we do it on Sunday? And not only that. My parents speak perfectly good Spanish, right? And they can be precise in Spanish when they want to be. Believe me! But on these Fridays… I don’t know. They use the wrong words for planting seeds. They use words that mean they dropped the seeds in some ive way. Why don’t they just say, “We planted seeds,” because that’s what they’re calling on God’s graces for… a harvest, right?

Isaac

Your father is just following the family tradition to the letter. He’s using the verbs his father used. The language of the ceremony has been ed down that way through the years. My father’s father had said it that way, and his father’s father before him. They were all farmers then. And through the years we were convinced that if the prayers were not sounded in that special way not so much as a sprout would come up.

Rudy

Yeah, I guess. It’s no big deal. There is heavier stuff to worry about, right?

Isaac

May I ask what burdens you? Rudy(considering whether to say more): I don’t know. I’m worried about Gil. I’m worried about his feelings in this switch… (he pauses) I’m worried that the priesthood has been thrust upon him because of me. And nobody seems to be taking in how he might feel about it… (he pauses; he’s somewhat reluctant to go further) Can I be frank with you… ? Well look, he’s making a big decision in his life and I think he feels he’s got no one to prop him up. I’ve tried to make him believe that he’s going to be a real plus to the Church. But it’s no good if I tell because I’m not an authority to him, you see? He needs to hear it from a Force. He needs to hear it from you.

Isaac (nodding, then taking his arm)

Well, I haven’t exactly come here from LA to see that you get to baseball practice on time, though I would be pleased to have your company on the return trip. I came to see Gil. And yesterday we spent most of the day together and I’m happy with what I heard and I agree he’ll be a plus to the Church. (Reaching out to take Rudy’s shoulder) But what do you need to hear from a Force?

Rudy(quizzically)

What? Me? I don’t understand.

Isaac

How can this poor parish priest comfort you?

Rudy

I’m okay.

Isaac

Maybe your father should let you conduct the Friday observance…

Rudy

Why? You think I have things I have to say aloud to God that He doesn’t know? You think He knows I don’t feel great about Gil being asked to go to the Seminary in my place.

Isaac

You’ve heard of Barabbas, the poor prisoner released in preference to Christ?

Rudy

I know Barabbas… from the gospels of St. Mark and St. John, right? I never gave it much thought when I read it, except that I wouldn’t want to be Christ or Barabbas in that situation. Oh, I see what you mean! I helping Gil fullfil his mission… (ironically) Guilty no more because like Barabbas I’m graced because I gave my place to Gil, is that it? (They have reached a corner of the plaza where we see the street side of a tavern, the Malabarista Cafe.)

Isaac

(gesturing at the Malabarista Cafe) Will you me for a light beer or a heavy one?

Rudy

In the Malabarista? I had a lot of trouble allowing myself to go into that place. When I was a kid my mother warned me off. She said it was a place where bad boys went… the bad Catholics. Look at it now, it’s one of Remedios’ tourist attractions…

Isaac

You don’t like it?

Rudy

Well, you get good music and good Catholics now, but the enchiladas and salsa have no zip. Strictly for Anglo tourists.

Isaac

Well, if you’ll feel corrupted by the place… or have some special loathing…

Rudy(quickly)

No, no. I go there a lot. I like the place.

Isaac(as they enter)

You know what Malabarista means in English…

Rudy

Yeah. Juggler or sometimes Sly Thief. Well, into this den of sly thieves we sly thieves go…

Isaac(looking concerned)

Rudy, I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but the Malabarista Cafe is a baby’s crib next to some of the everyday gruesome on the streets of L.A. It’s a Grand Guignol, Dada. It’s not Remedios. I want you to be aware of that.

Rudy(smiling)

I don’t know Grand Guignol or Dada. I’m guessing it’s some kind of French psycho-delic horror show or something. But don’t you think it’s funny that a priest is warning me warning me about L.A.? Do they eat their young out there or something? I’m not a backwoods Chicano. I watch MTV. I wear a “Bad Religion” T-Shirt, except when you’re in town.

Isaac

Bad Religion?

Rudy(nodding)

A hard core rock group.

Isaac

Ahh, rock… In the 70’s, we believed that music brought everybody a little closer —gay and straight, black and white. It got all people into one groove. I hope it hasn’t changed with hard core.

Rudy

Same code. Just more in-your-face.

Isaac (grabbing him in an affectionate head lock)

Let me get out of your face, and buy you a frosty.

(They enter the cafe. Inside, soft rock plays. We see tables and chairs and a bar. Couples are moving slowly, some merely moving rhythmically in place. The dancers are moving to the sound of the music at the back, almost in the shadows. Rudy and Isaac take a table., facing the audience.)

Rudy (studying him)

Can I get you to listen to something that’s been bothering me?

Isaac

If you can’t, I’m in the wrong business. Is it about Gil?

Rudy(rising)

Indirectly. No, more than that. It’s about a sly thief. But wait! Let me get the beers first. (Rudy gets up and heads toward the bar. As he goes by the dancers, they acknowledge him with a mime of a baseball swing. He is handed beers and returns with them. He drains his half way; Isaac sips and lets his sit.) All right. Here goes. I guess I was about 11 years old. Aunt Aloisa and I were alone in her house. She was sort of babysitting for me because my parents had gone off somewhere, a vacation or to visit the cousins in San Diego. I don’t know where Gil was… probably at some after-school thing. The older cousins weren’t around either. Uncle Paul was at work. Aunt Aloisa was playing the piano when I came into the living room. We started to talk, first about the music she was playing. I it seemed so somber. We talked about the melancholy music, but she had the family curse. She didn’t say melancholic. Instead she used words in Spanish that meant mournful. You know pitiful, like a gloomy funeral-words like lastimero and fúnebre. And then she let something slip… only a hint of a family secret. But I pounced on it. God, the thought of hearing about a skeleton in the closet. You know. I was only 11 years old and when you’re that age and there’s a hint of something you shouldn’t know your curiosity drives you crazy. I worked on Aunt Aloisa for an hour. You would have thought it was the Rodney King trial and I was the prosecutor.

(Lights out, then up. We see ALOISA alone on stage at the piano. There is no 11-year old boy with her, but the actress must make us believe the boy is questioning her).

Aloisa

- Poor Dolores. Poor Dolores. - What? Yes your poor Aunt. - Yes, Gil’s mother. You know I took Gil in when he was a infant, don’t you? - Yes, Dolores died. - I don’t know. She died like people die. - No, not of a heart attack. - No, not cancer. - I don’t , Rudy. She died. Why is it so important how? Dead is dead. - Why won’t I tell you? Because it’s a secret. - Yes, your parents do know how she died. - It’s a secret because other people don’t know. - Yes, you can call that a family secret. - Yes, Rudy. You’re in the family too. - Because you have to be older to know things like that. - No. It’s not anything dirty. Can’t I be left alone to play my music? (She returns to her music, plays for few seconds, turns to her inquisitor.) - Rudy, please. I’m playing. - What about the music?

- No it’s not funeral music because your aunt Dolores died. It’s sad because that’s the way the composer wrote it. - Dolores’s husband didn’t take Gil after she died because he died too. - No. Not of heart failure or cancer. He was killed. - I don’t know. In an accident. - No. It wasn’t a skiing accident and he didn’t smash into a tree. And It wasn’t a car accident. He didn’t fall off a mountain. And nothing fell on his head. - I don’t know how many other accidents there can be, Rudy. Please… - No, I will swear on my children’s lives that it was an accident. Now please let me play the piano.

(She turns back to the keys, plays for a few seconds then strikes a single, deep chord) - Yes, he was murdered. But don’t tell anyone ever. You must promise me. Swear on all that’s holy. Not a soul, especially Gil. - Yes, Gil knows he’s not my real child. He knows his mother and father died, that he’s blood and I raised him as my own. And I feel he’s mine, just as if I bore him. - No, he doesn’t know that his father was murdered. Now let’s hope your morbid curiosity is satisfied. - Not another question. I don’t know who murdered Gil’s real father. Let me please finish this piece!

(She turns to play the piano, but instead of playing she lowers her head and sobs. Finally, she gets control, wipes her tears and blows her nose)

- Okay, it was Aunt Dolores. He was a drunken beast and he beat her all the time. One day she shot him. They called it “temporary insanity,” and sent her to a hospital for a few years. I took Gil with me. I was going to see to him till she got out, but she died there. - Rudy, please, if it was a prison I would have told you. - Rudy, stop. I just don’t know why they called her condition temporary and kept her for years. - No. - Yes, they used the word temporary. - Okay, prison. You want everything. She killed herself. Now you have everything. - Okay, hung herself in prison. Yes, that’s really everything. And now I must ask you to be a man and I must swear you to secrecy. Forever and ever. Promise me. Promise me.

(The lights go out and come back of on Rudy and Isaac in the Malabarista)

Rudy

Of course, I never told anyone that I knew. I mean no one, ever, ever… till tonight. I knew my parents knew. And I knew others, like you, knew. You knew, didn’t you? Who knows, maybe the whole town of Remedios knew, except me and Gil. It must have been in the newspapers…“Young mother shoots husband, then hangs self in prison cell.” or some headline like that. But I never told anyone.

Isaac

Yes, it was all over the papers, but they lived in New Orleans, and nobody in this town found out because they called her Dolly in New Orleans, and she was married to a man from the back country of Louisiana named Bressane. Dolly Bressane murdered her husband, Frank Bressane, and hung herself in her cell. Dolly Bressane was a long way from Remedios’ Dolores Rael. So it’s still a family secret in that sense. One of our skeletons, as you put it, though the door of the closet was cracked, and all one had to do was open it wider to see it.

Rudy

Well, that’s all she wrote. The last confession.

Isaac

Well… unless you’re a saint, there’s always a confession hanging around. But I thank you for allowing me to listen.

Rudy (anxiously)

Can I get you to listen to something else? We’re in modern times here, right? The family no longer offers the youngest boy as a priest, just because he’s the youngest. I think we now believe the most deserving should be the priest. And it has to be clear to everyone that it was Gil. So why wasn’t Gil tapped to begin with? Why did I have to beg off for them to look to Gil? Why wasn’t the family

looking at him right off? It makes me think the family held back because of the murder and suicide, and that maybe they thought it tainted Gil in some way. Or is the family just blind? Do they know who anyone is, anyway? Do they know Gil? Do they know me?

Isaac

Of course, how stupid of me! Your vow to Aloisa. What else could you think? You were made to carry a burden in silence. No, I can assure you. (emphasizing each word) Gil is not and has not ever been considered anything other than Aloisa’s and Paul’s child, a cherished thing, as adored and ired as you are— maybe more because of the events. (speaking normally) If you sensed any hesitancy in the family choosing Gil, it was not because of what happened in New Orleans, it was because you were a puzzle to the family…

Rudy

Puzzle? How?

Isaac

You see, the family always found you reflective, a deep person. Even as a little boy, you had a curiosity, a wonderment about people, the skies, heaven… Rudy(interrupting) About family secrets…

Isaac(smiling)

Yes… that was part of it, I guess. We thought that if there ever was one in the Rael family who would become a Bishop or a Cardinal, it would be you. You always seemed to have a mature sensibility somehow. The baseball skills surprised us.

Rudy

Me in a high station of the church? Why? Are they looking for left-handed power hitters?

Isaac(smiling)

Isn’t every one?

Rudy

I’m not that spiritual. I’m not unreligious, I suppose, but I doubt that I’m marked for the clergy. (hesitating) You should know that there have been some carryings on in the back of parked cars—once with a cousin… that’s my own blood, our blood, and I won’t tell you who it is for her sake…

Isaac

Of course. Your hands are tied. Honor insists upon it.

Rudy

I think my hands are tied more in preparation for the stake. You see there were other adventures… alcohol, drugs, even the needle… not your ideal priest material, you see. (A pause. Rudy studies his uncle to see if he’s upset him. Isaac looks back imively)

Rudy

Were you chosen for the priesthood by the family for your special qualities, Tio? Or were you just the youngest, like me and Gil, so wouldn’t be the first to run the farm or the businesses because those would belong to my father, the first born?

Isaac

I had the calling. They didn’t bring me to the church in irons, pleading for release.

Rudy

I don’t have it… the calling. I want to make the majors. (he pauses) I didn’t mean to put it that way… like a dumb jock or something. I do want to study history… Spanish, European history. (he pauses, continues uncomfortably) Did you ever have any doubts?

Isaac (sighing)

There has been temptation, a pulling, curiosity. When you were born and then again when you were confirmed I wondered what it would be like to be a parent, a daddy. (pausing) Of course, when you asked you said “doubts,” but I think you meant regrets.

Rudy

Say, I can use another beer? By now I really need one. (He gets up and goes by the dancers to the bar; he nods at a dancer. The dancers say “Babe Ruth” and “Hank Aaron” and hold their thumbs up while they continue to move to the music Rudy speaks to an unseen bartender)

Rudy (continuing)

Would you throw a shot of tequila in one of those beers? Thanks. (Rudy returns with the beers; he slugs his down. Isaac sips his at first, then drains the glass. He wipes tears away from in his eyes)

Isaac

Let me tell you a story. I met a young woman in the late 60s in San Francisco during my second year in the seminary. She was very exotic, pretty, extremely intelligent. She taught me many things, opened my mind to ghosts, things buried. We became very close friends, good friends. I think we loved one another. (sighing) Like you we were interested in history. We wanted to have fun with it. Her name was Elodie Starr. Her family came from Oklahoma. She once joked that she was named after her father’s roll in the hay as a lad. It amused her that I would become a priest called Father Isaac. These kinds of special amusements made us kindred spirits. At least I felt kindred to her, uncomfortably so. (gesturing helplessness) I was in the seminary, don’t forget. We studied our family trees… not so much from any real historical perspective… more because it became one of our entertainments. But we didn’t get very far. As near as we could determine, her forbears went west, two brothers they were, who had set out from New York, parted in St. Louis. Her great great grandfather came to Oklahoma. She could trace her people back to and Ireland. She’d heard talk when her grandparents were still alive of family ties in Frankfurt and Kilmoganny. But something about looking back got to bother her. She declared one day that a real tree for an vagabond was hopeless. “I’m just the brat of dust bowl brats, blown in on the wind. One day another wind will gather me up and take me to my dreams.” That was her style… she had that strange poetic way of talking, or maybe the future seemed more available to her than the present or the past. I loved being with her. (We are suspended in the Malabarista Cafe as the lights briefly darken. When they come up again Elodie and Isaac are entwined in an embrace in the shadows of a room, their bodies barely visible. The lights rise further and we see Elodiee covering her nudity with a robe)

Elodie

Are you in pain?

Isaac

Later perhaps. At the moment pleasure, delight, ecstasy.

Elodie

And tomorrow lament, agony and self-loathing.

Isaac

You know, I came upon a small volume of Hemingway poems. It is hardly Yeats or Cummings, but there’s a line or two that come back to me now. One begins. “I know monks masturbate at night…”

Elodie

It’s not my fault your Church won’t let priests adore life.

Isaac

Yes, my bawdy one.

Elodie

Is that the next line?

Isaac

No. You’re my bawdy one. The other line I recall is from another Hemingway poem, “They ordered us to dance and they put us in iron pants.”

Elodie

Forged their iron creeds to shut us out, dear one. Give me a big, big hug.

Isaac

And never let go—?

Elodie

Never ever.

(Lights go down then and come back up on the Isaac and Rudy in the cafe)

Isaac

Then, at that moment, seemingly out of the blue, I recalled that she and I had gone to a horse jumping event, a competition in skill. I ed that, at the beginning, we each picked out a horse and rider we thought would win the competition. The idea was that she would pit her wherever-she-came from knowledge of horses against my New Mexican. Then the horse she had chosen fell. And she uttered something—a phrase, a part of a sentence—that was instantly familiar to me. I wanted her to repeat it. I wanted to question her. But at that moment I saw the face she was making, wrinkling her nose, and I took her face in my hands. The phrase fell out of my mind because it was the first time we had kissed. At the time I was going through a lot of things about identity— spiritual and otherwise. Rudy (holding up his hand) You needn’t say, Uncle Isaac. In all truth I’m dying to hear more. But you don’t need to tell me. (Rudy swallows hard, choking the words out)

Rudy

Nothing you can say or not say will keep me from being extremely fond of you —from loving you.

Isaac

I’ve imposed this venture so that we can talk. There are things that I want to tell you—things that I want you to know. Perhaps you even know them already.

Rudy(inquiringly)

Know what?

Isaac(quickly)

That day I felt I wanted to get home before Friday prayers. I made certain to skip vespers and leave the Seminary earlier than I needed to so that I could be in Remedios to watch the draping of the saints and hear the words I’d heard hundreds of times before. I had to listen this time, really listen.

Rudy

Yes, I know. “The seeds fell out of their hands,” right?

Isaac

Not those. They used another way of saying it. They dropped the seeds that

night.

Rudy

They just never get the verbs right.

Isaac

, I told you Elodie used a phrase that troubled me at the horse competition? (Rudy nods) She said something Oklahoma Indians say. When a horse falls, her Indians actually use the expression, “he dropped seeds.”

Rudy

I don’t get it. Are you saying we fell, our family fell in some sense?

Isaac

In the larger sense, we fell. We’ve abandoned it all, except maybe for Friday observance.

Rudy

What do mean? Abandoned what? (covering his ears)

Isaac

Where we come from, Rudy, who we really are, what we left behind, what syllables, what letters we Raels had dropped. The Friday prayers were not for the crop to come in, not way back then when our family left Spain for Mexico. The prayers, the covering of the holy images, were a reminder then that we were really Jews in hiding, that these holy images did not belong to us. And all those Fridays throughout time our people were indicating just that. And we of later generations could no longer recall why the saints were draped. We were Catholics… devoted. But they were not seeds we dropped. We dropped letters from our name, our identity and those letters were…

Rudy(cutting him off)

I and S! We hid the letters I and S, didn’t we? Not Rael. That’s not our name. It’s ISrael! God, our name is Israel. Each Friday we asked forgiveness for hiding the truth, for having draped our essence. Those were the dropped seeds they meant, weren’t they?

(Rudy begins to cry, and Father Isaac takes him in his arms. There is a long pause. Isaac looks down)

Isaac

Once you begin to look at it, it’s overpowering. There is a kind of heritage in the unrealized memory so that when you hear a thing you know it is true. From then I searched for evidence of hidden Jews in New Mexico—in the records of the libraries in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. And in Mexico. I looked at marriage and baptismal certificates… church records… everything. It was there… proof positive.

Rudy (pain, hysteria in his voice)

I don’t want any proof positives! Why’d you tell me? I didn’t want to know anything like this. I’m going to school. I want to play ball. I don’t want to flop. My head is full this pressure now. I can’t be thinking about this stuff now. I was a Catholic ten minutes ago. Now I’m what? A Jew? I wanted to be a ballplayer. I don’t want my world turned upside down now. Why’d you have to tell me?

Isaac

You already knew, Rudy. I saw it. When I first had hints of it myself way back then I asked, “Why Fridays?” I looked at the star on our church, as you had, and I knew that beyond that symbol was a bigger, more meaningful one for the Raels. And when I saw the truth making its way out of your being tonight and I knew you would know very soon. (taking his hand) And you would be alone. I wanted to be here to comfort you.

Rudy (freeing his hand, squeezing his head with both hands)

But why did it have to be now, at this time, when I’m starting out on something that is so important to me and yet so nothing compared to what I just learned. I just want to be another Chicano like I always was. I can’t deal with being a Jew now.

Isaac

The thing is you were never another Chicano. None of us ever are. Hard things come up, life things, and there is never a right time for them. But you don’t have to decide now, Rudy. In fact, you can’t decide now. And you shouldn’t. Wait. Let it sit. Let it nurture.

Rudy

You were the first to find out. Why didn’t you tell someone?

Isaac

I don’t know. I just let the secret remain. I think the experience of those who went before us was still a part of me in a way. I know I was experiencing something like the pain they must have felt. I was troubled in knowing that the church had persecuted Jews in Spain. I wondered how I could be a part of something like that. I had to deal with that. I had to get through it. I was entering the priesthood, don’t forget. Was it up to me to tell the family?

Rudy

You were the one who knew.

saac

And if I told someone, your father, for instance, would he feel obliged to tell someone else, and then would he and they be ostracized in the family or in the community? I weighed all of that. You live in Remedios. You know how tight things are here. Were we Catholics, or were we what we were 12 generations ago?

Rudy

We were Jews. Maybe apostate Jews. But we were Jews. You wanted to continue to hold it inside of you?

Isaac

There’s more than 400 hundred years of Catholicism in us. I couldn’t become committed to what our great, great great grandfather’s grandfather was. I could only acknowledge this heritage privately. I wanted to embrace a religion I knew, and be embraced by it.

Rudy

And you didn’t think our Jewish brothers in the synagogues would embrace you?

Isaac

I don’t know. I never tried because I couldn’t get comfortable with it. But that was not the issue. You’ve never told Gil that his mother had killed his father because that was only the historical truth of it. It was not what Gil is and what he has become. So you kept your vow.

Rudy

And you kept ours.

Isaac

Until now.

Rudy

You chose me. I wish you didn’t. It would have been better if you waited. If I only could have given you some silent message that I wasn’t ready. If I only could have signalled for more time. I’m not really ready for this. I’m not ready. Shit!

Isaac

You knew. I saw that you knew. I wanted to help. I didn’t want you to face it alone. I wanted you to know that I’d always be there to talk… to help

Rudy

What about Gil? Is he to know?

Isaac

He’ll come to it when it’s right for him to know it.

Rudy

So he’s getting a time out. It’s right for me and not for him? He’s going to be a priest. Shouldn’t he know our family were Jews?

Isaac

You may want to tell him. Or I will when I think he knows. I’ll watch.

Rudy

You want to spare him the agonies that you went through when you first learned. Okay, I’ll honor that for now. Because I haven’t figured out what’s right for myself.

(They rise, leave the cafe, walking in the direction of the church)

Rudy

And that woman, Elodie—Starr-?

Isaac

We made love. She was the first and the last. Silly of me but I always wanted to believe her forebear was our old Jewish neighbor who took the fork out of St. Louis and headed south for Oklahoma, while his brother, our Mr. Stern, came to Remedios. Star is Stern in German.

Rudy (in almost a whisper)

So we are all of us Jews. (now louder) God, look at me, like all the generations before me, I’m whispering. Old Mr. Stern didn’t whisper. He made it possible for us to pray under the Star of David. My parents aren’t aware of the truth, right? My father doesn’t know. I feel that. But now I wonder. I know that our church in

Remedios is very much his church. He plays the organ on Sundays; he teaches Sunday school; he uses his skills with a paintbrush to restore the fading statues of the saints and the Stations of the Cross. But now I wonder… because when he restored the stations of the cross, he put Mexican faces on some of the people pictured with Christ. So did he know the secret? Were they really Jewish faces he was painting?

Isaac

No. Your father doesn’t know what we know. If he knows, he knows it unconsciously. It’s buried. He did the paintings as a Mexican, not a Jew. Those were Mexican faces in the paintings, not Jews.

Rudy

God! We missed the haunting suggestions… We all went through life, like our Catholic generations before us, on hopes of the crop coming in… Jews with Catholic devotion… hidden even from ourselves.

Isaac

I chose the church, the faith our family had known all this time—my faith. And I have given you pain… and for that I am sorry.

Rudy

Pain? If it were only that. I was brought up to believe one thing, but I am someone else. It violates what I know about myself and my life(pausing) . . . And it all started so simply, so happily. A baseball scholarship, a dream. Now you’ve offered me another, a very hard scholarship I may never get over… a scholarship of the soul. (Curtain)

Oven Men

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Much has been written about the Holocaust and “The Final Solution.” In OVEN MEN the subject is approached not from looking at the Nazi leaders’ role in the genocide, but from another perspective. I hoped to explore the minds and reasoning of men who designed and built the cremation ovens at AuschwitzBirkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau and other extermination camps where more than six million people were murdered. While this is an imagined work, perhaps the truth of what really happened is not that far away from this story. Surely, there were crematoria and gas chambers at the death camps and men who built and maintained them. I make no claim of Holocaust scholarship. I’ve relied on the works of those scholars who had spent their lives and souls in this study—historians Gerald Fleming, Robert Gellately and Idith Zertal; journalist Gitta Sereny; and Paul Berben, as writers and witnesses to history. Their work hung in the air around me as I wrote this play.

OVEN MEN

A screen play

Cast

Greier Heizrohr Schleuder Frau Greier Pedrova Pulham Gavigan Woman Soldier

1 INT—AM SPEIEGELGRUND CLINIC—VIENNA—DAY (1940)

A long corridor, dimly lit.

At the far end a small bright blue glob appears. It grows larger and larger until it turns into a fleeing 7 year-old girl naked under a paper gown.

. . . the child is clearly terrified, crying, running away from a NUN and a WOMAN in a white coat. The women are YELLING at her to stop, come back!

Two men then emerge from a doorway, the child runs to them, hides behind their legs. Faces of ERNST HEIZROHR and LUDWIG GREIR: they’re annoyed, uncomfortable, try to get away from this wretched, clinging leg bone thin child, clearly appealing for their help from the pursuing nun and nurse. The men are both in their forties wearing three-piece dark suits, respectable citizens, middleclass businessmen, tailored, padded, close buttoned, self consciously upright with a child trembling at their hips. HEIZROHR is portly, red-faced, light brown hair beginning to gray. Normally he would have a jolly look, but this fleeing, now clinging child disturbs him. His gestures show his discomfort, like someone suddenly discovering an insect on his clothing. GREIR has a severe countenance, or is it nervousness? He grimaces, adjusts his wire-rimmed glasses, his clear blue eyes made larger by the lenses. He draws on a cigarette. Perhaps without the presence of the child he would have a calmer demeanor.

. . . from another door emerge a priest and a doctor in a white coat, both surprised and annoyed, troubled by the fleeing child.

GREIER (sternly, reaching for the child clinging to him)

Get away from us! Wir Konnen nicht ihnen helfen. Go with the Sister! Now!

CUT TO: sign on the corridor wall: “Am Spiegelgrund,” the name of the clinic.

VOICE OVER

This Vienna clinic, like others euthanasia facilities in —at Hartheim, Hadamar Sonnenstein—has been established to carry out experiments on thousands of children deemed by the Nazi government to be physically, mentally or otherwise unfit for Hitler’s vision of the Third Reich. It was all perfectly legal and sanctified by the Church five years ago under the Erbgesundheitgesetz, a law to safeguard the health of the German people.

FADE OUT

2. EXT—DAY—(1939)

A young German soldier stands near the front door of a military car. Something draws his attention.

V.O. (continuing)

Often desperate parents waited outside these clinics hoping to get word or catch a glimpse of their forcibly hospitalized children.

. . . now we follow the soldier’s eyes to show a woman holding up a PHOTOGRAPH of a child. As soon as HEIZROHR and GREIER emerge from

the front door, she approaches them, offering the photograph. She seems to be asking for information about the child in the picture. They draw back, shake their heads, push her hand away, then gesture for the soldier’s help. He rushes forward throws the woman to the ground.

3 INT—MILITARY VEHICLE—(1939)

. . . focusing on the faces of HEIZROHR AND GRIER through the window of the car.

. . . the soldier tries to dispatch the woman.

WOMAN

My child, my little boy was taken from me. He was fine, only had a slight limp. I want my baby back! You hear? Give him back!

. . . the soldier throws the woman to the ground, kicks her. We hear her grunts, moans of pain

. . . HEIZROHR and GRIER look troubled behind the car window.

HEIZROHR

Ach!

GREIR (resigned).

Känn nichts hellfen(can’t help)

3. INT—APARTMENT—ERFURT, (1946)

. . . a small gathering of perhaps a dozen people.

PAN CROWD

SOUND: LAUGHTER, the CLINK of glasses, INDISTINCT CONVERSATION, but clearly a small party BUZZ. TALK slowly fading out. MUSIC UP AND UNDER: the conclusion of BEETHOVEN SONATA FOR PIANO AND CELLO is heard for a short period, followed by APPLAUSE.

HEIZROHR (TINKLING on a glass).

Thank you all for coming. And thank God we still have this little apartment. Our occupiers haven’t snatched it away yet. Well, it’s almost three years since the unpleasantness, ya? So we are happy to have invited you, our old friends, back

to the place where Luddi Greier and I used to hold our little musicales—him with the cello as always and me on the piano.

SOUND: APPLAUSE, CHEERFUL LAUGHTER up and out.

PAN CROWD

. . . Greier is seated with his cello

GREIER (privately, to Heizrohr)

Ernst, you heard?

HEIZROHR

What? Heard what, Ludwig?

GREIER

A military intelligence unit—Russians—has captured the files and documents at Auschwitz-Birkenau… and from who knows where else.

HEIZROHR

How do you know that, Luddi? It’s not something the Soviets would broadcast, is it?

GREIER

Hans told me.

HEIZROHR

SCHLEUDER? How would he know?

GREIER

From his cousin. You the Hauptsturmführer, Erich SCHLEUDER. It seems he was at an nearby army headquarters company when the Soviets overran the camp… I’m really worried. Scheiss! I’m beside myself, Ernst.

HEIZROHR

You’re worried? Beside yourself? It didn’t stop you from playing the cello tonight—

GREIER

Only because I’m trying to stop thinking about it.

HEIZROHR

So they have documents, files. We didn’t kill the Jews. It’s got nothing to do with us.

GREIER

We built the furnaces, Ernst. Our names are in the camp records. The company nameplate is on the ovens. I’m its technical director!

HEIZROHR

Please, Luddi. We were questioned by the American Third Army more than a two years ago and we were released to help the Americans rebuild the infrastructure here.

GREIER

But now the Soviets will tell the Americans and the British what they found in the files.

HEIZROHR

Tell them, what? That we were engineers and technical people—?

GREIER

Engineers? Just engineers, Ernst? Engineers of what? I just can’t face them again. You what happened last time.

HEIZROHR(in hushed tones)

Please, Luddi. Please don’t start getting morbid. We’ll talk tomorrow, prepare a response if we’re questioned again. For now, let’s stay calm.

MUSIC UP AND OUT.

4. INT—BUSINESS OFFICE OF FURNACE FACTORY (1947)

SOMBER MUSICAL BRIDGE

SOUND: chairs MOVED, liquor POURED.

HEIZROHR, GREIER, and HANS SCHLEUDER—tall, blonde, thin 40-year old, long narrow face, pale blue eyes, thin lips—seated around office desk. . . . now on the anxious face of GREIER.

(V.O.)

GREIER

I can’t believe how calm the others are. Why am I the only one so upset about the Soviet agents finding the camp documents. Didn’t these two fully see what a threat to us this is? Look at them, here we here supposedly to talk of danger and there is our jolly Herr Heizrohr, our rotund director, Knecht Ruprecht, Santa Claus, with the red cheeks and “ho ho ho,” the ever cheerful Ernst, and with him, the scholarly, severe, often nasty SCHLEUDER. Both seemingly oblivious… already enjoying the schnaps. You’d think they’d be running for their lives right now. And maybe I should, too.

SCHLEUDER (making circles with a whiskey glass on the desk)

What’s the mysterious occasion, Herr Director? And very nice whiskey, by the way. Must have cost on the black market. We’re celebrating something—?

GREIER

Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it—

HEIZROHR (cheerfully interrupting)

We’re celebrating a significant occasion, my friend. Have you forgotten we’re in the clear, my friend? At least, I hope.

GREIER

Clear? Have I missed something?

SCHLEUDER

Yes, clear of what? All around us are our occupiers—Soviets, Americans, British.

HEIZROHR (continued cheerfulness)

Put your mind to it, my friend. An anniversary… come on! See if you can pull it up.

GREIER

Wasn’t there something more urgent about this meeting? I must have a drink. SOUND: liquor being POURED in glasses

HEIZROHR

SCHLEUDER, nearly three years have ed since the American officers interrogated us. And nothing dire happened. They didn’t love us, but they didn’t arrest us.

SCHLEUDER

That was then, but now they have the documents from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Who knows?

GREIER

That’s what I keep telling him.

SCHLEUDER

I don’t know. Ludwig’s not all wrong. We were interviewed, they asked questions. Luckily, in the end, they didn’t drag us off to the dungeon.

GREIER

Oh, my God!

HEIZROHR

Please Luddi. What can the documents say? We built the ovens. They already know that. Besides, look at the Judenräte, all the Jewish Councils. They had more to do with the death camps than we ever did. They helped pack their own Jews off to the so called resettlement camps. And don’t think they didn’t know where the rail cars were going.

SCHLEUDER

Yes, my cousin Erich told me the SS didn’t have the personnel to gather the names of all those people without the Judenräte. They relied on the lists provided by the Jewish Councils.

GREIER

But the Judenräte did it under duress. How does it explain us?

HEIZROHR

I keep telling you. We were only oven engineers. Ordinary citizens.

SCHLEUDER

I agree. It’s no secret we were in the furnace business. We were obligated. Our country was at war. We couldn’t very well say no to the SS, go find another company. Besides, it was our duty to help. We did our duty.

HEIZROHR

I would think that the directors of Degesch must be thinking along these lines, too. After all, they supplied the gas, Zyclon B.

SCHLEUDER

And I’ve heard of no reports of Degesch arrests. Many suppliers of goods and services had histories with the camps. How far are they going to carry it?

GREIER

Oh, how I hope you’re right! Excuse me. Nature calling. GREIER gets up. chair SCRAPING, hurried FOOTSTEPS. He moves to the toilet, closes the door behind him, locks it. He reaches into his inside suit jacket pocket, removes a small revolver, checks that he ed to load it, tucks into the small of his back.

O.S. (calling)

I’ll be right back. Don’t say anything important till I return. Please, Ernst, Hans, promise me, not a word till I get back.

HEIZROHR(sighing)

Poor Ludwig, he’s worried to death about the seizure of the camp documents. We should try to lift him up. He was devastated last time.

SCHLEUDER

Whatever did happen in his meeting with the American officers? I never got the full story. It just seemed to have ended in that scary way.

HEIZROHR

You didn’t hear? It was straight out of Chekhov.

5. INT—INTERRAGATION ROOM, U.S. ARMY BASE (1945)

GREIER is seated facing two uniformed American OFFICERS. In pantomime, he answers unheard questions.

HEIZROHR

As Ludwig was answering a question some spittle accidentally came out and sprayed the American Colonel’s cheek. Spray of spit hits OFFICER’S face.

HEIZROHR (V.O)

God in Heaven! You see? There he is facing these officers, like being encircled by the Gestapo. Of course, he’s terrified. GREIER observes the glances that he reads as critical, even derisive. He jumps up, pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, offers it to the American COLONEL who doesn’t accept it. The officer runs his hand over the accidentally insulted cheek.

GREIER

I’m so sorry. I see you’re upset. I beg forgiveness. Please. Could you forgive me?

The COLONEL’S gesture seems to be saying “forget it,” but his face continues to show annoyance. He’s clearly upset. So GREIER seems to be apologizing again. The COLONEL slams the table with the flat of his hand. WHAACK!

5. INT—GREIER’S HOME—THAT NIGHT—(1945)

V.O.

HEIZROHR

When Luddi gets home after the interrogation and Frau Greier sees his face…

FRAU GREIER

What happened Luddi? You look like a ghost.

GREIER

Ach! Don’t ask. In talking I spritzed der Oberst’s face. An accident. I saw the spittle fly out of my mouth…

FRAU GREIER

Oh, my God! You apologized, didn’t you? You told him you were sorry? GREIER (holding his head with one hand) Over and over. Over and over. GREIER gets up suddenly, goes to his desk, sits, SIGHS. He feels weary, uneasy, places his elbows on his knees, buries his face in his hands… .

FRAU GREIER

You okay, Luddi? What are you doing now?

GREIER (looking up at his wife)

I’m going to write to the Obrest, begging his apology.

GREIER suddenly slumps over his desk. FRAU GREIER SCREAMS.

6. EXT—HEIZROHR’S FACTORY—(1947)

Several armed soldiers gather, making every effort not to be heard. They follow the hand signals of their squad leaders, taking positions outside the factory. Part of the squad is an American Captain, TIM GAVIGAN, a British Major, GRACE PULHAM, a Soviet Major, IRINA PEDROVA. The soldiers in the squad are wearing American, British, and Red Army uniforms.

7. INT—HEIZROHR’S OFFICE—(1947)

The force quietly makes its way inside. Four SOLDIERS stop at the door of HEIZROHR’S office, wait for orders. At a signal from a woman Major PEDROVA, the door is kicked in, SPLINTERING wood, CRACKING glass. GAVIGAN and PULHAM enter followed by the PEDROVA who steps boldly into the room. She looks like a redheaded, green-eyed young Sarah Bernhardt, buttoned up in a Soviet major’s uniform.

GASPS from HEIZROHR and SCHEULDER, chair falls, bottle SMASHES. SCUFFLING.

The squad burst into the inner office carrying rifles and pistols.

Rifle bolts CLICK into firing position.

HEIZROHR (daringly)

What is the meaning of this!? What have we done?

PEDROVA

That is to be determined. Let’s get the other one hiding in the bathroom out here.

PULHAM—blonde, turned-up nose, country face, but clearly an offspring of the employing class—walks over, stands to the side of the toilet door. A soldier moves with her, takes a position opposite.

PULHAM (mockingly)

Come out, come out wherever you are… Oh dear, he appears to have ed out, Major PEDROVA.

PEDROVA

Let Captain GAVIGAN see to that for the moment. He’s the one with a medical degree.

GAVIGAN

I’m a psychiatrist… let’s not forget. I haven’t been on rounds for ten years… since medical school.

HEIZROHR

Careful! He’s got a bad heart…

PULHAM

Pity.

SCHLEUDER

We’ve done nothing! Wir taten, was uns erzahit wurde. You’ve no right to burst in here like this.

PULHAM

We’ll decide about that… (checking her note book) . . . let’s see SCHLEUDER, isn’t it? Hans SCHLEUDER, Chief Engineer for the company, ed the National Socialists practically before you were asked to. Eager to sign up with the Führer, were you?

PEDROVA (calling)

How’s that other one, Captain GAVIGAN?

GAVIGAN

Coming around. His pulse is quite rapid, though. That can be anything—from something serious to nothing.

PEDROVA

He’s able to us?

GAVIGAN

I guess… give us a couple of minutes. I’m at a disadvantage. I usually work with neuroses… you know, when ordinary things suddenly become achingly vivid. I haven’t faced emergency cardiac woes in ages.

HEIZROHR

Ludwig had a heart seizure about three years ago. The doctors urged him to avoid stress.

PULHAM

Stressful business… the furnaces. Call them Krema, do you?

PEDROVA moves her hand in circles, indicating that she wants the other officers to her at the table. The two others take their places at the table.

PEDROVA

Okay. All seated, I see. And here comes Herr Ludwig Greier, the technical director…

GREIER comes in slowly. PEDROVA indicates where she wants him to sit.

PULHAM

Looking a bit ashen, he is.

SCHLEUDER (grumbling)

We’ve done nothing.

PEDROVA

As I said: that is to be determined. War crimes are defined broadly. Of course, the Nazi SS has been declared a criminal organization guilty of exterminating and persecuting Jews and killing prisoners-of-war and slave laborers.

HEIZROHR

None of us are SS. You see?

PEDROVA

Umm. But you should also know that a war criminal is defined as anyone who was a principal, accessory to, or consented in the commission of war crimes, or anyone who was a member of an organization or group connected with the commission or sanction of such crimes.

SCHLEUDER

We were questioned by the American Third Army almost three years ago. Herr Heizrohr told you that.

HEIZROHR (somewhat indignant)

Yes. And cleared! That’s the main thing. Why, we even erected and repaired

waste incinerators and furnaces for the American army. Was the work not satisfactory?

PULHAM

We’re not here to complain about furnaces you put up for the Yanks, are we?

GAVIGAN

Let’s go through all of it again, if you will. We’re new to the scene and we’ve been asked to confirm the affidavits you gave to U.S.Third Army earlier. I’m Captain GAVIGAN. To my right is Major PEDROVA and across the table is Major Pulham. I’m sure you’ve come to recognize our uniforms by now.

SCHLEUDER

Shouldn’t we have legal representation to protect our rights?

PULHAM

I’m afraid all’s fair in love and war, eh?

PEDROVA

Actually, Hans SCHLEUDER, at this point no representation is needed. This is unofficial, an informal inquiry. We’ll just be putting some punctuation on the U.S Army report of 30 months ago.

SCHLEUDER

Soviet punctuation?

PEDROVA (snidely)

We’ll be conducting the inquiry in German, as you no doubt see. And, of course, the punctuation will be universally understood.

HEIZROHR (obsequiously)

Yes. You all have excellent German… idioms and irony, too, with hardly any accent.

PEDROVA

Then you all should have no difficulty understanding the questions. Now, for you, Hans SCHLEUDER. You’re chief engineer of Heizrohr und Söhne—

SCHLEUDER

We answered that question 30 months ago. I don’t see why—

A chair is SCRAPED along the floor. PULHAM rises, moves toward SCHLEUDER. Two SOLDIERS come forward.

PULHAM

That’s enough out of you. Get up! Move! (to the soldier) Take this one out of here till we’re ready for him. Put him just there… in that outer office… and close the door.

The SOLDIERS take hold of SCHLEUDER and begin assisting him to the outer office.

SCHLEUDER

Don’t drag me, please. I can still walk on my own.

GAVIGAN

Watch him! Don’t leave him alone. If he pisses you go with him. You others get the tape recorder set up. Put it on the table right here. Now, Herr Director, we’ll start with you. Take the seatthat Schleuder had, facing Major PEDROVA.

HEIZROHR doesn’t move.

PEDROVA

Ernst Heizrohr, we asked you to take Schleuder’s seat.

PULHAM

H-e-l-l-o. The accents confusing you, are they? You’re in a daze, Heizrohr. Your attention’s required. Now walk to the chair.

HEIZROHR rises with GROAN, moves to the chair indicated by PULHAM.

(continuing)

Atta’lad. Take the seat now.

HEIZROHR

Sorry I was startled by the sudden burst of anger. And the tape… the recording. They didn’t record the last time.

SOUND: SHUFFLING of papers, HUM of the tape recorder.

PEDROVA

Perhaps it’s best if we spoke to them all individually. Escort Ludwig Greier to the outer office, please. Maybe he’ll stop trembling.

GREIER is led to other office. He walks as if in a dream.

GAVIGAN

Gentle with him guys. He’s in bad shape.

PEDROVA (shuffling papers)

Good. We’ll begin now, Ernst Heizrohr. As we understand it, your company was started by your grandfather. Your father and uncle ran it till World War I, when both were killed in . Your Grandfather took over again and stayed in that role until you were named Director. You have two children. A son named Helmut—served with Field Marshall Rommel’s divisions—and was killed in

North Africa. Your daughter, Leni, left this city before the war. Appears to have moved to Switzerland. Correct so far? . . .

PULHAM

For the tape. Heizrohr has nodded. Herr Heizrohr we’d prefer that you speak.

HEIZROHR

Correct, correct.

PEDROVA

You hired Ludwig Greier eight years later in 1928 and Hans Schleuder in 1929. None of you served in the Nazi military.

HEIZROHR

I hired Schleuder in 1930. We were one of the few companies holding up during the Great Depression.

PULHAM

Good management, was it?

HEIZROHR

Perhaps. And some luck. Greier and Schleuder had refined our funerary Krema. So like in the funeral business itself, there is no season… no slow period.

GAVIGAN

Things went well for Heizrohr and Sons and, then, from 1938 on business got even better! You got some new orders, new consultation fees from the General Foundation for Institutional Care. The headquarters of this foundation was in an exclusive section of Berlin. You were invited to report to Tiergartenstrasse 4 for a meeting.

SOMBER UNDERTONES, then out.

HEIZROHR

May I have some water?

PEDROVA

Did you know then what Tiergartenstrasse 4 was?

HEIZROHR

We were summoned to Berlin by the Führer Chancellery. Couldn’t very well refuse. After all, the Chancellery…

9. EXT—BERLIN STREET—(1938)

HEIZROHR and GREIER entering the building at Tiergartenstrasse 4, in a posh neighborhood encircling a clean, manicured park, a tree-lined street, ing a woman with a baby carriage.

CUT TO

10. INT—TIERGARTENSTRASSE 4

In the hallway, German soldiers at attention, Third Reich flag, portraits of Adolph Hitler. HEIZROHR and GREIER men in SS uniforms. Ahead of them in the corridor are a PRIEST and a DOCTOR

V.O.

PEDROVA

So you knew what T-4 was?

HEIZROHR (V.O.)

It was hush-hush. SS, Gestapo, high courts. Occasionally one heard T4 referred to in some private government doings. But what went on there was not really known. Not by us, anyway.

HEIZROHR and GRIER catch up to Priest and DOCTOR in the hallway. They men turn, smile. Then, an SS officer suddenly appears, walks past priest and doctor, stretches his arms to welcome HEIZROHR and GREIER.

HEIZROHR(pointing)

We’re with them.

ALL LAUGH, CHUCKLE. HEIZROHR and GREIER follow the DOCTOR, PRIEST, SS OFFICER into a conference room; seated is a grey haired BISHOP in clerical robes. The others also take seats.

SS OFFICER

Five years ago, as you know, we in set out to establish a community of the true German people. And I don’t have to tell you that meant unburdening ourselves of social outsiders, including all the so-called problem cases and the chronically ill.

HEIZROHR and GREIER shoot quick glances at one another, slightly more demonstrative than a movement of eyes.

SS OFFICER (continuing)

Ah, I see our furnace designers are wondering why we asked you to the Fuehrer’s Chancellery.

CUT TO

11. INT—HEIZROHR’S FACTORY OFFICE—(1947)

PEDROVA

You got there and were told they were planning to conduct a cleaning out of unwanted populations, a euthanasia program.

GAVIGAN

For the recording: Heizrohr’s sweating, the lines on his forehead have deepened.

HEIZROHR(boldly)

I take issue with that description. I’m nervous, uncomfortable and hot. That’s all.

GAVIGAN

So fear possesses you. Not guilt.

HEIZROHR

I’m prepared to answer. Ludwig and I were introduced to some doctors who would making decisions about the patients. These were top people. If there were a book of the best doctors in , their names would be in it. There were also church people in the room, a Bishop smiling benignly.

PEDROVA

They signed on, the church people? They were part of the elimination of the unwanted?

HEIZROHR

They were present. I didn’t ask their part. All I know is that the priests nodded when the doctors told me that every patient in the program would be studied diligently.

GAVIGAN

Studied diligently? Did they tell you how?

HEIZROHR

They explained that a series of tests would be carried out and that at least two doctors would sign off on who was absolutely incurable.

GAVIGAN

I’m a doctor. Doctors do make mistakes, even two doctors looking over a patient’s findings can get it wrong. Did you think of that?

HEIZROHR

I don’t recall. Like always, doctors make the diagnosis and one just accepts it.

PULHAM

What was your first reaction, then?

HEIZROHR

I didn’t know what to say. Then I told the SS officer that, yes, we didn’t understand why we were chosen to build the Krema. After all, any company could build them.

PEDROVA

If I were them, it would sound to me like you were either fishing for compliments or perhaps getting ready to decline. How’d they react to that?

HEIZROHR

They were not really troubled. I was told that their asking me to take this assignment showed proof that they could count on us, the people in our company. We’d be given a top rating, though we wouldn’t have anything to do with the program. We would merely build the Krema.

PULHAM

Top rating meant you’d be considered indispensable and, therefore, protected?

HEIZROHR

Yes.

PEDROVA

You’d be building crematoria for people who were going to be killed? You weren’t bothered?

HEIZROHR

Well, you see, I didn’t allow myself to dwell on it because they explained the program would be carried out by these important doctors who were in charge of the nation’s health.

PEDROVA

Sounds like you were given a choice, Herr Heizrohr.

HEIZROHR

I had no choice! Several times they mentioned that the health of was at issue. My company had the technical expertise. Didn’t I care about the nation’s health?

PULHAM

How did they know you had the expertise? d it, did you? Or did you actually volunteer? Bring Greier and Schleuder with you to sell yourself?

HEIZROHR

They ed me, asked me to bring Ludwig along.

PEDROVA

Let’s bring Herr Greier back in now. Get him seated.

CUT TO

GREIER feeling the gun, tucked in his belt. A Russian SOLDIER approaches. GREIER rises wearily, walks slowly, dejectedly to take his place at the table.

GAVIGAN

Put him there next to Heizrohr. Herr Greier we’ve just been told that you at a meeting at Tiergartenstrasse 4 with the euthanasia group.

GREIER moves a handkerchief to his mouth.

GREIER (words muffled somewhat)

Only to answer technical questions.

GAVIGAN

Remove that handkerchief please. Why is it there? Do you feel like throwing up or something?

HEIZROHR

It’s the spritzen.

GAVIGAN

The spray? I don’t understand.

GREIER

When I’m nervous… sorry… the spittle comes out sometimes. I don’t want to embarrass myself or seem offensive in any way.

PEDROVA

We’re at least three feet apart. You can speak without covering your mouth. You were a member of the National Socialist, Herr Greier?

GREIER (words muffled)

One had to be.

PEDROVA

So it wasn’t your choice? You just want to show us how disengaged you were? And we asked you to remove the handkerchief. Please do it.

GREIER (voice somewhat clearer)

Sorry, Major. I have to say it was my own choice to the party.

GAVIGAN

Oh, so it was not that you were forced. You wanted to. May I ask, why?

GREIER

I grew up in a family that was very much aware of race. My parents felt the country was going to the dogs—degeneration, moral decay. I was a young man, suggestible, I guess. The National Socialists seemed right, a way to correct the ills. And there was the threat of—

HEIZROHR reaches out to GREIER.

PULHAM

For the tape, Heizrohr has touched the hand of Greier, a cautioning touch perhaps.

PEDROVA(severely)

I asked you to put that handkerchief away! The threat of what? Communism?

GREIER

Yes. We were afraid of it over running our society. I’m sorry to say this to you. I know you must be faithful to the land of your fathers. And I was too.

PEDROVA

So the Third Reich didn’t turn you off. The Nazis’ ideas were okay with you.

GREIER

I’ve already told you about my family, Major.

PEDROVA

And was that how you brought your children up? (shuffling papers) Let’s see, is that what you instilled in your two daughters—Gertrude and Hanne?

GREIER’s hand slowly reaches back to feel the shape of the gun.

GREIER

I never discussed politics at home, certainly not with my children. I was very careful there.

PULHAM

No need, eh? Left the super race talk to Grandma and Grandpa Greier, did you?

PEDROVA

Was there a social consensus in of Hitler and the Nazis?

GREIER

I don’t know about any social consensus.

PEDROVA

I mean the Germans didn’t need orders to follow. They did it willingly.

GREIER

Little people, big people, intellectuals participated in the war effort… as far as I could tell.

PEDROVA

And your daughters were good Germans—married German officers.

GREIER

Everybody served. My sons-in-law are dead. One was killed in Italy, the other in .

PEDROVA

So there you and Heizrohr are in Berlin, at T-4, with the euthanasia committee, two men with children of your own, and what is being proposed is the incineration of children with maladies all of whom had been labeled Rückkehr nicht erwünscht—return not desired—and neither of you stop to think, what if it was my child?

HEIZROHR gasps, then has a nervous coughing spell.

(V.O.)

HEIZROHR

Oh,Gott! They know everything (cough, cough) Or am I imagining? Should I be silent or strong? (cough, cough)

GREIER reaches out to pat HEIZROHR’s hand.

PEDROVA

Wait. What’s not being said here? Seems the children touched a nerve, did it? Let’s see my papers. (crinkling) All the children ed for—Greier’s two daughters, Heizrohr’s son, Ah, but where is Leni Heizrohr? No record of her having married a Nazi officer. No current record at all.

GREIER

She’s not in this city, or anywhere in .

PEDROVA

Oh… she fled, Heizrohr?

HEIZROHR (tightly)

She lives in Switzerland.

PEDROVA

So she was not patriotic enough to remain here as a good National Socialist?

HEIZROHR

She’s been in a Swiss convent since she was nine years old.

PEDROVA

And now she’s a nun? The records indicate you and your family were Lutherans. She must have converted.

HEIZROHR (behind gritted teeth)

I don’t know what religion she is. I haven’t seen her since she was a child.

PEDROVA

I see. But let’s leave her in Switzerland for the moment. You seem too upset by these questions. Let me take you both back to T-4 and the Waffen SS.

HEIZROHR (dejectedly)

If you want.

PEDROVA

Surely, when they said “technical expertise” you must have understood they were not talking about burning up a couple of dozen sick people in your Krema who had been hanging on by their fingertips. It must have occurred to you that this was not to be a handful of mercy killings but the deaths of a very large number of children.

GREIER

We were told that the merciful euthanasia program was justified, and that it would be carried out on careful medical grounds with the permission of the parents.

PULHAM

Nonsense! You knew what it was all about. They had to tell you about the euthanasia institutes, as they called them, gassings would take place. You built crematoria in 3 or 4 special sections. Did you ever ask if any of the patients they examined were returned to their families?

HEIZRORH

Ours was an engineering assignment. We were not medical experts, or sociologists. It would be an inappropriate question to ask.

GREIER

They told us the patients were terminal or had diseases that made them unable to function in society.

PEDROVA

You remained disengaged? You were without any moral discernment?

PULHAM

\Didn’t you ever think of your own family? What if it were your own mother, wife or child?

GREIER

Ah, but they told us that any relatives of staff or people of the program would be protected, immune, you see…

PEDROVA

But why would good, healthy, patriotic Germans like you and Heizrohr here need an exemption anyway? Ohh… I see. Ah, yes. Leni Heizrohr, the little convent girl. There was something the matter with her—?

HEIZROHR (tightly)

My daughter had a rare blood dyscrasia, an anemia, with low platelets and red blood cells.

GREIER (appealing)

We had to save Leni. You see?

PEDROVA

And you, Herr Greier, which Greier did you have to save?

HEIZROHR

He was worried they’d look into the health of his wife. She would occasionally get bouts of depression.

PULHAM

But he didn’t send her to a convent. So even with the protection they promised, Heizrohr, you didn’t trust the Waffen SS. You sent little Leni away to the nuns.

HEIZROHR

My wife was worried. The SS didn’t personally give her assurance. “Out of sight, out of mind,” she told me, “what they didn’t see, they didn’t see.”

GREIER

Wait! Please. You made it seem like Eva, my wife, was a depressive. But she wasn’t. She merely had the blues for a short while after she gave birth to each of

our daughters. And that’s all.

PEDROVA

Okay. So Leni was sent away never to be seen again. Let’s say, Heizrohr, that you were keeping her out of their clutches. And Greier didn’t want Eva’s postpartum blues to get misdiagnosed by the famous institute doctors, exemption or not. Am I right, Herr Greier?

GREIER

I was worried. Things could get misinterpreted.

HEIZROHR

There was talk that one of the Füerher’s relatives, his cousin Aloisa somethingor-other, had been gassed at an institution in Linz, Austria. The rumor was that she was a mental case, a depressive.

PEDROVA

Ah, even Hitler’s cousin wasn’t spared as the Reich pursued a master race. So both of you knew what was being planned at T-4. You knew they weren’t conducting some merciful program of assisted suicide for a handful of malformed, terminal misfortunates.

HEIZROHR

We didn’t look into it that deeply. Only the Krema.

SOUND of children’s chorus singing requiem mass up and gradually under.

GAVIGAN

But you saw the set up at least 3 of their units where you built and serviced the Krema. You knew what was going on. These weren’t only people on their last legs lying in bed with empty eyes in their hospital gowns, pleading to be put down.

PEDROVA

The fact is there were not only very sick people in the euthanasia program. Later on, you also saw there were some Jews and Gypsies and later homosexuals and political people with unbecoming attitudes, or people who had contravened the Nazi race laws. Didn’t you ever ask who are all these patients being put down.

HEIZROHR

We knew inappropriate curiosity could get you in trouble. We plunged into the

technical aspects of the furnaces.

PEDROVA

But you saw the patients. Did they make them wear differently colored inverted triangles on their gowns with pink for homosexual and purple for Jehovah’s Witness, and blue for emigrant? How many Jewish stars did you see? Or didn’t they use these symbols in the training camps?

GREIER

What training camps?

PEDROVA

Surely, at some point, it must have occurred to both of you that these euthanasia sections were training units for the death camps to come… And that you were all honing your skills for Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald and the rest.

MUSIC: CRESCENDO building

GREIER(rapidly)

It was all very legal. We were told that judges drafted several confidential legal memoranda that sanctioned the program. They showed us the documents.

PEDROVA

No, actually the SS went forum shopping for those opinions. There were, in fact, a few German judges who opposed the Euthanasia Program on legal grounds.

HEIZROHR

We only knew what we were told by the officials and the doctors. The said the patients were no good to themselves and a drain on the country’s economy. At best they would only live a short while. Their plan was to deliver them from misery.

PEDROVA

No, their plan was the legalized extermination of the undesirables, what the Nazis called the inferiors, the dregs and the rabble. And both of you were part of it. You knew what they were doing was vile and unconscionable. It must have occurred to you that you must remove yourself from this mass murder.

HEIZROHR (shouting)

We knew none of this! We were not lawyers or doctors. We knew nothing!

PEDROVA

But then it all became very clear. Over the couple of years you were consulted as Krema engineers in the building of five extermination camps.

HEIZROHR

We were told the bodies were being burned there were for sanitary reasons. The dead were prisoners of the state who had succumbed to disease.

PEDROVA

But you knew better, didn’t you? Because the doctors in the euthanasia program had told you all the tests were fake, all the evaluations were once-over lightly. Or did they just wink? And you saw when you visited these euthanasia setups that no patients were returned to their families, except in cardboard boxes that ed for urns.

GREIER

We never saw anything like that.

PEDROVA

These were patients who didn’t want to die. They wanted to go home to their families, their lives.

HEIZROHR

We were engineers. We were not engaged with the parents. We were not involved in patient treatment.

PULHAM

There was no treatment. The treatment was gassing. Or the inoculation of fatal chemicals. That was the plan. The euthanasia units were laboratories to train people for mass murder. And you knew that when you moved on to the extermination camps with your Krema.

HEIZROHR

Not true! We knew nothing of the sort.

PEDROVA

You deny that you were schooled for death camp work?

HEIZROHR

We were not trained for this. We were not involved with this. We served an engineering function only.

MUSIC: NOW LOW SOMBER TONES UNDERNEATH

PEDROVA

You were conditioned at the euthanasia units to accept and tolerate the gassing and cremating of patients. (shuffling papers). Here, these are the records from the Euthanasia Program. Take a look at this entry. No! Let me read it to you. “Periodically, the engineers were shown how the gassed bodies were delivered to their Krema.” Wasn’t this part of your schooling and training?

HEIZROHR

No! No! We only saw how die Brenner went about their work so that we could determine the proper entry path.

PULHAM (breaking in)

Die Brenner? The burners? You mean those who worked in the crematoria?

GREIRER

They moved the bodies along.

PULHAM

Oh, they moved the bodies along, did they? Make sure there was no pile up on the assembly line or at the mouth of the ovens. Couldn’t have that, could we?

SOUND: WHISPERING—WORDS INDISTINCT

GAVIGAN

For the tape Major PEDROVA and Major Pulham are consulting. I’m turning the tape off at 7:08 pm.

SOUND: CLICK. MACHINE WHIRRING EVER SO SOFTLY.

Tape is now running again. 7:10 pm

PULHAM

I’ve interrupted Major Pedrova. But I’ll continue to make the observation which s the Major’s point that the euthanasia institutes were a training ground for the extermination camps. According to the death camp records, the people involved in the euthanasia program were chosen to be sent to the camps in Poland because they had been conditioned in callousness. They arrived at the death camps inured of feeling, prepared for the next phase, just as Heizrohr and Greier had been.

PEDROVA

And didn’t you also look at film of people being gassed.

HEIZROHR

There was no filming of people dying. I understood that doctors had some slits, these little windows, to tell when it was over.

PEDROVA

So you saw how it worked in all the institutes. You were trained for the next phase. You went on to the death camps washed of feeling, just like the doctors and the nuns and the priests. By the way… these religious people… they weren’t all Catholic, were they?

GREIER

At various times, Lutheran ministers were present. You could see how we thought the program was sanctioned and on the up and up.

PEDROVA

But no Rabbis, except as so-called hopelessly sick ones begging to have their lives snuffed out, right?

HEIZROHR

We didn’t see very many patients. And we didn’t ask their religion.

PEDROVA

You only saw how the corpses were shoveled into the Krema, right? But were these viewings only for technical study or were they part of the desensitization aspect. After all, you had work to carry out in Auschwitz.

HEIZROHR

We were not schooled to accept death. We were just engineers.

PEDROVA

Well, if you were not schooled, trained, conditioned for work in the death camps then one can only conclude you were volunteers because your natures were particularly suited to mass murder.

MUSIC GROWING LOUDER

SOUND: THE TABLE IS SLAMMED. FOOTSTEPS SHUFFLING

MUSIC LOWERED AND OUT

HEIZROHR (hysterical, loud)

She’s a Jew! I know it. I feel it. Don’t you see it? A communist Jew. Accusing me. How dare she? How do you others allow it? Go on, Major PEDROVA tell them you’re Jewish. Maybe they can’t see though you because they are English and American. We know Jews when we see them.

SOUND: A BLOW, A GRUNT, A YELP. CHAIR AND BODY HITTING THE FLOOR. CHAIRS SCRAPING, FOOTSTEPS.

GREIER

Oh, my God! Ernst? Ernst? He’s unconscious from the Major’s blow.

GAVIGAN

Turn that damn tape recorder off!

PEDROVA

No. Not a Jew! I’m an atheist. But even a godless person like me can recognize what both of you failed to see, that you Nazis had begun a journey into the total evil of our time. Both of you stood on a mound of corpses and ashes without batting an eye.

GREIER

Oh Gott! Ernst’s lips are turning blue! Maybe he’s had a stroke.

PEDROVA

Could you see to Heizrohr, Dr. Gavigan?

SOUND: SPACED OUT DULL THUDS, A FIST POUNDING A BODY

GAVIGAN

Whew! Good. I think my thumping on his chest has improved his heart rhythm.

PULHAM

His color does seem to coming back a bit.

PEDROVA

Good. Keep him alive, if you can, I want him to have his day in court, and then hopefully a date with the hangman.

PULHAM

Now Greier’s looking pale.

GAVIGAN

You men, help Greier to that couch against the wall. I’ll get to him in just a minute. Heizrohr’s about to say something.

SOUND GRUNTS. HEAVY BREATHING. FOOTSTEPS

HEIZROHR (breathlessly)

Please… Take me home… I don’t want to die like this. I want to be with my wife, and with Leni, my little daughter. Leni… oh Leni Leni… . Where are you now, Liebling?

PEDROVA

What did he mutter? I didn’t get it all.

GAVIGAN

His court date, Major, was here in his own factory office. Heizrohr’s dead. There’ll be no hangman.

PULHAM

Better get these two to the medical unit immediately. We’ll want a definitive cause of Heizrohr’s death, though it seems obvious. I don’t think Irina’s blow killed him. But we’re turning into a cardiac ward. Have you noticed? Need to get Greier to a hospital and very soon. Let’s move him, men! Quickly!

SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS, GRUNTS, MOVEMENT

PEDROVA

Let’s retain Herr Schleuder, though. We’ll question him as soon as the others have been taken out.

MUSICAL BRIDGE

GAVIGAN

As much as I’d like to, I don’t think we’re supposed to clobber them.

PULHAM

Did seem to touch a nerve for you there, Irina.

PEDROVA

A nerve? That’s the least of it. You didn’t see what the Nazis did in my village, and dozens like it. Everyday they lined up innocent men, women and children

and shot them. Not only Jews. Little blond children with blue eyes like the ones in the photos we carry next to our hearts.

GAVIGAN

Still, I think we ought to take ourselves out of it and let them tell it. I think we should assess the circumstances of their involvement from their point of view, not ours.

PULHAM

You want the sightlessness of justice, Tim? Don’t you just want to spit in their faces. Of course, I realize the plan was to terrorize, menace, burst in upon them, make them think we were some accusatory rogue squad that would just as soon shoot them if they lied.

GAVIGAN

Yes, and then let them tell it for themselves—their motivations—patriotism, fear, hate, swept up the madness of the Third Reich, whatever.

PEDROVA

I apologize for my unprofessionalism. I should have better control.

PULHAM

No, we’ve been through a lot. The Blitz, the siege of Stalingrad, the Battle of the Bulge. It takes its toll on one’s composure.

PEDROVA

And of course the death camps. There was a man from my village, a sweet, gentle artisan. He was in the Soviet army, captured and sent to Auschwitz. They forced him to work cramming bodies into the gas chambers. After a few days, he went mad from doing it. He was being readied for the gas chambers himself when our army overran the extermination camp. Now he lives in the country, near Leningrad, crazy as a loon. Spends his days picking up twigs and cutting thin slats of wood. With the twigs he makes hundreds of little three-inch skeletons, with the slats a conveyor belt and a furnace. When his construction is complete, he crushes it with is foot and screams out, ‘Mat vashu tak!’ In English it means “This should happen to your mother.” Then he begins all over again with the twigs and the slats.

GAVIGAN (sighing)

I know it’s very personal. A relative, was he?

PEDROVA

Oh, much more than that. We were once lovers.

PULHAM

I gather you’ve seen him. He recognized you, of course?

PEDROVA

Nobody is able talk to him. I tried. I got nowhere. All he’ll say to anyone is “V grobu ya tebya vidal!” In English it means, “May I see you in your coffin!” But you are right. I think you two should interrogate Schleuder. All of us have a duty here to see if we can find the nature of evil.

GAVIGAN

Right. There’s a lot we don’t understand on how a society goes mad.

PULHAM

Look, like Irina, I’m prosecutorial. You want sociology and psychology, Tim? Fine. But I don’t. (calling to the soldiers). Bring in the next lovely thing… Let’s have Herr Schleuder. You handle the interrogation, Tim.

GAVIGAN

I can’t swear to be a model of restraint. You know?

PULHAM

Better than us at any rate.

MUSICAL BRIDGE UP AND OUT

SOUND FOOTSTEPS

PULHAM

Recording at 8:17 pm. Herr Schleuder wants to speak for the record.

SCHLEUDER

I didn’t hear all that what went on in this room before, but I heard enough. My two colleagues were carried out on stretchers. One must ask, just what are you conducting, anyway? What kind of tribunal? It seems like one where we are made to answer questions we’ve already answered until we collapse or you beat us?

GAVIGAN

No. We’re going to lay it out for you. We’re going to give you the “why” and the “what for” of the situation. After you were questioned by American forces 30 months ago, the Red Army has provided captured files of the central building istration of the Waffen SS at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These documents spell out in detail the technology of mass death employed. You name came up in the documents. So now we have some questions.

SCHLEUDER

Same old stuff.

GAVIGAN

Let’s get down to it, shall we? Did you take part in the building of the Krema at the death camps?

SCHLEUDER

I was the chief engineer from about 1930 to the present. I built the furnaces at Auschwitz. Before that I designed smaller funaces for the euthanasia program. Heizrohr and Greier were the initial s.

GAVIGAN

You mean Heizrohr brought in the business?

SCHLEUDER

They sought his advice. Greier went with him.

GAVIGAN

They?

SCHLEUDER

The Waffen SS.

GAVIGAN

And you took it from there?

SCHLEUDER

I didn’t deal with the SS at all. I consulted with Heizrohr and Greier in the design of the furnaces.

GAVIGAN

How often did you visit Auschwitz and why did you visit?

SCHLEUDER

A few times, maybe a half dozen in the beginning in 1940 to 43. The first was to receive orders about where the Krema were to be situated. Then to look at the site. After that I went to check on a fault in the chimney. Then, there were inspection trips. The last time was in the fall of 1944 because the camp commander wanted to move the Krema… the front was getting closer.

GAVIGAN

So you must have watched the Krema operate—

SCHLEUDER

On one morning I saw them prepare the corpses—men, women and children of different ages—for incineration.

MUSIC UP AND UNDER

GAVIGAN

How did that affect you?

SCHLEUDER

Affect me? I had an engineering problem. I had to see the pathways of the corpses to determine what to advise.

GAVIGAN

You saw the Jews gassed?

SCHLEUDER

I knew there were gas chambers.

GAVIGAN

And what did you think?

SCHLEUDER

Sickness. Jews struggling for life. Why delay their agony, you see?

PULHAM

Um… May I, Captain Gavigan? Couldn’t they have recovered, Herr Schleuder? Maybe their sickness was a misjudgment. Maybe they were killed because they were Jews or Gypsies, sick or well. Just murdered! Were you conscious-stricken by the possibility of innocent people being murdered?

SCHLEUDER

I didn’t think of it as murder. I thought of it as gassing people for health reasons, sanitary reasons. Anyway, I was there to look at the functioning of the furnaces. I didn’t make decisions on who was to be gassed, and for what reasons.

GAVIGAN

But privately you must have had some qualms… and then when they asked you to build and attend to the Krema at other camps—Buchenwald, Dachau,

Treblinka—how did you react?

SCHLEUDER

If I thought anything, I assumed that these prisoners could not overcome their crimes against the State.

GAVIGAN

And you believed that so many prisoners had fallen to epidemics in the camps?

SCHLEUDER

Well, you see, whatever I felt, I knew that I was a contract employee with Heizrohr und Söhne, instructed to design and build three muffle furnaces, and I was aware that the work was important to the Reich… And there was the possibility of being killed myself if I refused.

GAVIGAN

Are you saying you went on building them out of fear for your life?

SCHLEUDER

My life wasn’t actually threatened. I was told by Heizrohr that it was an order from the SS Command, and that there was an urgency to complete the order. I designed the furnaces. The plans were approved first by Heizrohr and Greier and then by the SS Command at the other camps.

GAVIGAN

You were considered the best at your work… ? (pause) That shrug a yes, Herr SCHLEUDER?

SCHLEUDER

People thought so.

GAVIGAN

Why then did the brick lining of your muffles break down in a few months?

SCHLEUDER

Ah, because they had put an impossible strain on the furnaces. I couldn’t anticipate that.

GAVIGAN

What was it, they overloaded the ovens with dead Jews?

SCHLEUDER

Well, of course. You see they had the gas chambers right next door. And they got these thick, brawny peasants and trained them to push hundreds of Jews at a time into the room with a capacity for a third of that.

GAVIGAN

Then they squeezed them into the ovens too?

SCHLEUDER

Sure, even you can imagine what a problem it created. The linings of the furnace couldn’t take the strain. They pushed the Jews in maybe a dozen times a day. What did you expect? The Krema had to give out. I didn’t design them for that kind of a load.

GAVIGAN

The ovens gave out?

SCHLEUDER

Of course. I told them that kind of heavy load would put a strain on furnaces three times the size of mine.

GAVIGAN

So it was a never-ending fight to repair the muffles and bricks? And you must have worried your expertise would come under question.

SCHLEUDER

Well, it never came to that but, yes, I worried about it. I told Heizrohr and Greier that it was impossible under those conditions to keep them running efficiently.

GAVIGAN

At any time did you know that innocent people were being gassed and burned?

SCHLEUDER

I came to know. In the beginning I just accepted what I was told about these sick people. But then you had to be an absolute dummkopf not to know they were killing the Jews the unwanted, and political enemies.

GAVIGAN

But you knew before. Stories about the concentration camps were widely reported in the press. Hitler never tried to hide it.

SCHLEUDER

Yes, but that was for social outsiders.

GAVIGAN

A long list of social outsiders wasn’t it? Let’s see. Jews. Gypsies, criminals, prostitutes, foreign workers, homosexuals, the chronically ill. How did that make you feel?

SCHLEUDER

What could I do? I was under pressure. I was under orders. The furnaces were failing from the overloading. I couldn’t let myself think of anything else. I threw myself into the engineering.

GAVIGAN

You were worried about your reputation. What was it, each day another 12000 human beings were railed in to Auschwitz?

SOUND: TRAINS MOVING, WHISTLES, STEAM FROM THE ENGINES HIS AND THEN UNDER, SOFTLY

SCHLEUDER

Ah, so finally you see the problem. Who can maintain a reputation with that load. You want to know what I thought of? I thought of mean temperature differential, heat transfer, radiation emission and heat loss through the furnace walls. That’s all I could think about.

GAVIGAN

But on a human level, you must have thought these poor people had been herded into box cars, unloaded at extermination camps, separated from their families, abused. Surely, you saw they were terrified, wondering what next, what was in store for them.

SILENCE

SCHLEUDER

I couldn’t save the Jews.

GAVIGAN

So the oven breakdowns were uppermost in your mind.

SCHLEUDER

Yes. I finally decided to redesign them with a higher capacity, and employ a conveyor belt system so the bodies could serve as uninterrupted fuel for the Krema.

GAVIGAN

How would that work exactly?

SOUND: THE THUMP OF BODIES DROPPING ON METAL GRATE. CONVEYOR BELT GRINDING.

SCHLEUDER

Well, the bodies on the conveyor would be carried to the ovens, fall first on a heavy metal sieve and then dropped in a timed way into the flames. They’d be slid into the furnace in a precise fashion so the incineration could be carried out efficiently.

SOUND: BODIES STOP DROPPING. CONVEYOR BELT STOPS.

GAVIGAN

And so you designed this highly efficient method?

SCHLEUDER

Yes. Well, it wasn’t in use very long—a few weeks maybe… as an experiment. It was more of a prototype.

GAVIGAN

Why, what happened?

SCHLEUDER

Well, you see, our defenses were coming under siege. The front was closing in…

SOUNDS OF BATTLE: PLANES, BOMBS, ARTILLERY FIRE UP AND OUT

(continuing)

The SS were wondering if it wouldn’t be prudent to blow up the furnaces.

GAVIGAN

But your design… it couldn’t have been carried out without knowledge of the gas chambers, could it?

SCHLEUDER

How could it? I had to see the showers.

GAVIGAN

Showers? What do mean by showers?

SCHLEUDER

Liechenkeller, then.

GAVIGAN

Morgues? You mean gas chambers, don’t you? You engineers and the SS only referred to them as showers for the official documentation, isn’t that right? You were masking the truth for the books in case they ever got into the wrong hands.

SCHLEUDER

What did I know about official documentation? That’s what they called them.

GAVIGAN

Who called them?

SCHLEUDER

The officers at the camp.

GAVIGAN

So in the beginning you were involved in the design and ventilation of the gas chambers too? And you knew about the mass liquidation program?

SCHLEUDER

Look, I accepted that I was helping win the war. I was a German furnace engineer. No different from a rocket scientist whose designs are used to kill our country’s enemies.

SOUND: FOREBODING MUSIC UP AND OUT (PERHAPS EXCERPT FROM SIBELIUS’ 2ND SYMPHONY)

PEDROVA (narrates)

I simple couldn’t stand listening to Schleuder. I saw that he would insist, maybe even while we put a noose around his neck, that he was merely employing his professional discipline. The whole thing was infuriating. I couldn’t help thinking of my poor Dmitri. I saw so clearly what haunted him—the long black triangle of a conveyor belt, leading to an upright box-shaped tunnel and atop of this tunnel a smoke stack. I see, as Dmitri saw, four limp bodies, white in death laid out at the base, two others closer to the apex, two others closer still, and finally at the apex itself, a body is halfway into the oven about to be turned into ashes.

SCHLEUDER

I don’t want you to think the conveyor belt system didn’t present engineering problems.

GAVIGAN

It was hard on you?

SCHLEUDER

Well, I had to plan how to space the bodies. I had to figure how many centimeters per body. Of course, the children didn’t take up as much room. Then I had to consider the spacing between the bodies and from the edge of the belt to the bodies and from feet to feet, you see?

PULHAM

Tell me, Herr SCHLEUDER, was there ever a God at Auschwitz?

SCHLEUDER

God? Well, there must have been. But there was no time for the spirit. And certainly no time for me make a fine distinction between tragic misfortune and evil. Any oven man who could have seen all the bodies would know what I was faced with. Furnace walls are held at constant temperature throughout the heating cycle by firing at the maximum rate when the load is at minimum temperature and reducing the firing rate with rising load temperature.

GAVIGAN

A world without God, Herr Schleuder?

A SINGLE DEEP MUSCIAL CHORD

SCHLEUDER

Maybe God wanted to give the Jews another jolt, like the old floods and plagues (now in a nearly surreal voice) But you see the furnace we had at Auschwitz was an enclosure with a floor, walls, and a roof of refractory brick, loosely held together by a structural steel binding. The roof was a sprung arch that rose and subsided with temperature changes. Combustion air was induced by stack draft. Temperature and fuel air ratio—

TABLE IS SLAMMED.

PULHAM

You’re losing us, Herr SCHLEUDER.

SCHLEUDER(still lost in his rant)

For furnaces there are dozens of considerations. How many inches of uninsulated high heat duty firebrick go with the number of inches of firebrick with 2000 F. insulation and then how many inches of 3000 F. insulating firebrick —

GAVIGAN

SCHLEUDER! We see! We get it. It was just an engineering esthetic and “contributing to the war effort” thing with you. However, your views do not really differ from that of the most hard core Nazis.

SCHLEUDER

Why? Because I was quick to the National Socialist Workers Party? I only thought, why wait? I’ll have to the party sooner or later. I was a German. I had to the laws of our government. It was for the Germans. Macht das Leben schöner.

PEDROVA

Makes life more beautiful? The murder of millions of innocent people? A

genocide?

SCHLEUDER

Oh, you’re referring to the Jews? I must say that the Third Reich is not alone in hating the Jews. It’s been going on in Europe for centuries—Spain, Italy, England, Poland, name it. You loved your Jews in Russia, Major Pedrova? You didn’t butcher them? You didn’t imagine they went to their synagogues to think up the ritual killing of helpless Christian infants? And then, later, your Stalin didn’t murder Jews? Oh, and didn’t you, Captain Gavigan, like us and the Polish and the English think the Jews had too much money?

GAVIGAN

What in hell are you talking about now?

SCHLEUDER

The Gold Train. Don’t tell me US Army intelligence didn’t know about it. Yes, we Germans loaded up over 20 box cars with the wealth and treasures of the Hungarian Jews—gold, diamonds, family heirlooms, paintings, oriental rugs and put them on to a train for Berlin, but the US Army intercepted it. And guess what happened? Your officers took most of it home with them to their wives and mothers. And the Hungarian camp survivors got Nichts. Nothing.

PEDROVA

Schleuder, stop fogging the air around your Nazi war crimes. We’re referring to a systematic murder, a political design, a Nazi program that started with the brainwashing of school children and ended up with these now grown SS people planning and carrying out death camp orders.

SCHLEUDER

I didn’t find the German society, the German culture breeding grounds for evil.

GAVIGAN

Oh, didn’t you? So you’re not blaming Hitler or Himmler or Goebbels?

SCHLEUDER

I went to the best schools with Jews. They became teachers, lawyers, architects, doctors, journalists, artists, musicians. In my school maybe we had 5 Jews for every 12 Christians.

GAVIGAN

They don’t sound like the dregs of society, useful to no one.

SCHLEUDER

Yes. Well, in 1933 the atmosphere changed. There was a movement for a racially pure community of people. The English call it ethic cleansing.

GAVIGAN

And a largely agreeable population happy to welcome the movement.

SCHLEUDER

That wasn’t my point. I was saying nearly half my class was Jewish. And I was about to ask if there was the same kind of enrollment in Moscow schools, or at Oxford or Cambridge, or at Princeton University.

GAVIGAN

So you Germans loved your Jews, is that it?

SCHLEUDER

Who loved the Jews better? Was it the Catholic Church, the English, Winston Churchill, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, the Polish, or was it you Americans, Captain Gavigan, and your beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt who couldn’t find room anywhere in the U.S.A, for a couple of boatloads of escaped Yiddish refugees? And when the Americans and English knew the Jews were being sent to concentration camps, did you bomb the railroad lines that carried the Jews to the their end?

GAVIGAN

The Pope spoke out against the Nazis and most of the rest of us brought you Germans to your knees.

SCHLEUDER

Oh, I see. You’re a Catholic first. Okay, so am I. But as one Catholic to another let me ask you: is that what they told you in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Captain Gavigan, that Pope Pius XII spoke out against the Nazis. Yes, but I’m afraid it was not until 1943. And did the church tell you how many Jews were gassed and cremated in one year at one concentration camp from 1942 to 1943. Don’t bother looking it up. The answer is over one million.

GAVIGAN

Nothing of what you say excuses the Nazis.

SCHLEUDER

I’m only asking, who are the Nazis? The Russian? The English? The Catholics? Only the Germans are Nazis—?

SOUND, RUNNING FOOTSTEP

Soldier

Major PEDROVA, the prisoner, Ludwig Greier, has killed himself.

PEDROVA

How? . . . How did he get his hands on a weapon?

SOLDIER

It wasn’t a gun, Major. Greier snatched a syringe in the medical unit, and injected air into his vein! His heart stopped.

SCHLEUDER

It’s a question, is it not, of who has the most shame?

GAVIGAN

Wait! Did I hear you correctly? That’s your eulogy? Wasn’t Greier your friend and associate for 17 years?

SCHLEUDER

Well, yes, I was subject to him. Anyway, I grieve in my own way.

GAVIGAN

Subject to him—!?

PULHAM

What are you saying here? He didn’t give you enough credit? He took it all for himself with the SS?

SCHLEUDER

I did a good job. I kept those ovens going when it seemed they were falling apart. Without me—

GAVIGAN

Pride in your work? Are you saying that’s all it was for you?

MUSIC: SOMBER, FOREBODING, JUST BARELY AUDIBLE BUT SLOWLY RISING

SCHLEUDER

Well, don’t you have pride in being a good soldier and a facile interrogator?

MUSIC: RISING EVER SO LOUDER

PEDROVA

We’ve come to the end. I’ll turn off the tape recorder.(CLICK) Schleuder, you haven’t absolved yourself, you haven’t spread the blame. We are not guilty because there is evil in the world, or because mistakes were made by our churches or governments or leaders. Or even because prejudice walked the halls of our institutions. And you are smart enough to know—whether yours is a game, or an insane denial—that you represent the worst of your evil countrymen. But what I truly believe is that you’re a monster without remorse. See this gun. I

struck Heizrohr with this pistol. And now I going to kill a monster with it.

SCHLEUDER

Stop her! She’ll do to me what she and her soldiers did to Heizrohr and Greier.

SOUND: MOVEMENT OF CHAIRS, CHAIR FALLS.

PULHAM

Major, NO!

GAVIGAN

Irina, no! You mustn’t! Noooo—

SOUND OF A STRUGGLE

PULHAM

No! No! Don’t do it! Give me that gun!

SOUND: A SHOT IS FIRED.

MUSIC CONTINUES UNDER, PERHAP A SELECTION FROM MAHLER’S 7TH SYMPHONY

PEDROVA

I wanted to kill him! I wanted him dead!

SCHLEUDER

I demand to be released. You saw, you both saw, she tried to kill me. She itted it.

PULHAM (to the soldiers)

Get this monster out of here. Lock him up… now! Put irons on him.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS

MUSIC: OUT

PEDROVA (sighs, then sadly)

What worries me is that I hate to see time . I wish it could stand still at this horrible moment.

GAVIGAN

Why?

PEDROVA

It worries me that in 60 years we might even deny that so many people were murdered, or that those they labeled dissidents were not sent to death camps to be openly humiliated or worked to death… if not killed outright.

GAVIGAN

You’re not really expecting that what happened will disappear from our consciousness.

PEDROVA

They’ll start. You’ll see. First Holocaust deniers. Then years will and the death camps for our great grandchildren will never have existed. Let’s not forget that World War I was the war to end all wars. And this one? Is it really the genocide to end all genocides?

PULHAM

We’re going to guard against that, Irina, keep anything like that from ever happening again. We stand together. This one will forever be a reminder.

PEDROVA (sighs)

Maybe it’s my dark Russian soul. I feel a profound sense of dread. Let’s hope we’ll all act early—at the very first sign of the maggots making noise under the rocks.

END