you up and around in no time. Ill feed it to you. Goo-goo, ga-ga. Open wide … over the
teeth, over the gums … look out, stomach, here it comes! … No, don’t say a word, mommy
knows best Would you look at him, Emma, he hardly has any hair left and I don’t wonder,
thinking he might never walk again. It’s God’s mercy. I told him that stepladder was
wobbly. I said, “Morris,” I said, “Come down off there before-“‘
She fed him ice cream and chattered for the next hour and by the time she left,
hobbling ostentatiously on the crutch while Emma held her other arm, thoughts of lamb
stew and voices echoing up through the years were the last things in Morris Heisel’s
mind. He was exhausted. To say it had been a busy day was putting it mildly. Morris fell
deeply asleep.
He awoke sometime between three and four a.m. with a scream locked behind his lips.
Now he knew. He knew exactly where and exactly when he had been acquainted with
the man in the other bed. Except his name had not been Denker then. Oh no, not at all.
He had awakened from the most terrible nightmare of his whole life. Someone had
given him and Lydia a monkey’s paw, and they had wished for money. Then, somehow, a
Western Union boy in a Hitler Youth uniform had been in the room with them. He handed
Morris a telegram which read:
REGRET TO INFORM YOU BOTH DAUGHTERS DEAD STOP PATIN
CONCENTRATION CAMP STOP GREATEST REGRETS AT THIS FINAL SOLUTION
STOP COMMANDANTS LETTER FOLLOWS STOP WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING
AND OMIT NOTHING STOP PLEASE ACCEPT OUR CHECK FOR 100 REICHMARKS
ON DEPOSIT YOUR BANK TOMORROW STOP SIGNED ADOLF HITLER
CHANCELLOR.
A great wail from Lydia, and although she had never even seen Morris’s daughters,
she held the monkey’s paw high and wished for them to be returned to life. The room
went dark. And suddenly, from outside, came the sound of dragging, lurching footfalls.
Morris was down on his hands and knees in a darkness that suddenly stank of smoke
and gas and death. He was searching for the paw. One wish left If he could find the paw
he could wish this dreadful dream away. He would spare himself the sight of his
daughters, thin as scarecrows, their eyes deep wounded holes, their numbers burning on
the scant flesh of their arms.
Hammering on the door, a perfect fusillade of blows.
In the nightmare, his search for the paw became ever more frenzied, but it bore no
fruit. It seemed to go on for years. And then, behind him, the door crashed open. No, he thought I won’t look. I’ll close my eyes. Rip them from my head If I have to, but I won’t look.
But he did look. He had to look. In the dream it was as if huge hands had grasped his
head and wrenched it around.
It was not his daughters standing in the doorway; it was Denker. A much younger
Denker, a Denker who wore a Nazi SS uniform, the cap with its lightning-bolt insignia
cocked rakishly to one side. His buttons gleamed heartlessly, his boots were polished to a
killing gloss.
Clasped in his arms was a huge and slowly bubbling pot of lamb stew.
And the dream-Denker, smiling his dark, suave smile, said: You must sit down and tell
us all about it-as one friend to another, eh? We have heard that gold has been hidden.
That tobacco has been hoarded. That it was not food-poisoning with Schneibel at all but
powdered glass in his supper two nights ago. You must not insult our intelligence by
pretending you know nothing. You know EVERYTHING. So tell it all. Omit nothing.
And in the dark, smelling the maddening aroma of the stew, he told them everything.
His stomach, which had been a small grey rock, was now a raving tiger. Words spilled
helplessly from his lips. They spewed from him in the senseless sermon of a lunatic, truth
and falsehood all mixed up together.
Brodin has his mother’s wedding ring taped below his scrotum!
(“you must sit down’)
Laslo and Herman Dorsky have talked about rushing guard tower number three!
(‘and tell us everything!’)
Rachel Tannenbaum’s husband has tobacco, he gave the guard who comes on after
Zeickert, the one they call Booger-Eater because he is always picking his nose and then
putting his fingers in his mouth, Tannenbaum gave some of it to Booger-Eater so he
wouldn’t take his wife’s pearl earrings!
(‘oh that makes no sense at all you’ve mixed up two different stories I think but that’s
all right quite all right we’d rather have you mix up two stories than omit one completely
you must omit NOTHING!’)
There is a man who has been calling out his dead son’s name in order to get double
rations!
(‘tell us his name’)
I don’t know it but I can point him out to you please yes I can show him to you I will I
will I will I
(‘tell us everything you know’)
will I will I will I will I will I will I will I
Until he swam up into consciousness with a scream in his throat like fire.
Trembling uncontrollably, he looked at the sleeping form in the other bed. He found
himself staring particularly at the wrinkled, caved-in mouth. Old tiger with no teeth.
Ancient and vicious rogue elephant with one tusk gone and the other rooted loose in its socket Senile monster.
‘Oh my God,’ Morris Heisel whispered. His voice was high and faint, inaudible to
anyone but himself. Tears trickled down his cheeks towards his ears. ‘Oh dear God, the man who murdered my wife and my daughters is sleeping in the same room with me, my
God, oh dear dear God, he is here with me now in this room.’
The tears began to flow faster now – tears of rage and horror, hot, scalding.
He trembled and waited for morning, and morning did not come for an age.
21
The next day, Monday, Todd was up at six o’clock in the morning and poking listlessly
at a scrambled egg he had fixed for himself when his father came down still dressed in
his monogrammed bathrobe and slippers.
‘Mumph,’ he said to Todd, going past him to the refrigerator for orange juice.
Todd grunted back without looking up from his book, one of the 87th Squad mysteries.
He had been lucky enough to land a summer job with a landscaping outfit that operated
out of Sausalito. That would have been much too far to commute ordinarily, even if one
of his parents had been willing to loan him a car for the summer (neither was), but his
father was working on-site not far from there, and he was able to drop Todd off at a bus
stop on his way and pick him up at the same place on his way back. Todd was less than
wild about the arrangement; he didn’t like riding home from work with his father and
absolutely detested riding to work with him in the morning. It was in the mornings that he
felt the most naked, when the wall between what he was and what he might be seemed the
thinnest. It was worse after a night of bad dreams, but even if no dreams had come in the
night, it was bad. One morning he realized with a fright so sudden it was almost terror
that he had been seriously considering reaching across his father’s briefcase, grabbing
the wheel of the Porsche, and sending them corkscrewing into the two express lanes,
cutting a swath of destruction through the morning commuters.
‘You want another egg, Todd-O?’
‘No thanks, dad.’ Dick Bowden ate them fried. How could anyone stand to eat a fried
egg? On the grill of the Jenn-Aire for two minutes, then over easy. What you got on your
plate at the end looked like a giant dead eye with a cataract over it, an eye that would
bleed orange when you poked it with your fork.
He pushed his scrambled egg away. He had barely touched it
Outside, the morning paper slapped the step.
His father finished cooking, turned off the grill, and came to the table. ‘Not hungry this
morning, Todd-O?’
You call me that one more time and I’m going to stick my knife right up your fucking
nose… dad-O.
‘Not much appetite, I guess.’
Dick grinned affectionately at his son; there was still a tiny dab of shaving cream on
the boy’s right ear. ‘Betty Trask stole your appetite. That’s my guess.’
‘Yeah, maybe that’s it.’ He offered a wan smile that vanished as soon as his father
went down the stairs from the breakfast nook to get the paper. Would it wake you up if I told you what a cunt she is, dad-O? How about if I mid, ‘Oh, by the way, did you know