RON SAVAGE CONNECTICUT NAZI Rosalie bought me a telescope for my fiftieth birthday, an expensive brass one with a tripod, but the woods surround our new house and there's nothing to see. She's a typical social worker, who assumes reality can be shuffled about like the takeout items on some Chinese menu. "-- Max, honey, pessimism isn't an attractive quality." And propping her naked self up, elbow against the mattress I'd hauled into the empty living room last night, Rose winks and says, "Learn to look past the trees." My cryptic angel. We've been married less than a week: the bride, a twenty-six-year-old knockout Rumanian from the Lower East Side; and the groom, strictly Central Park West via Brooklyn, an orthodox Jew, addicted to whatever might smuggle him beyond his tenuous middle-age. I have a lymphoma. It's in remission, almost eight months, but I feel awful, you know? I honestly feel the pain. A July sun is glittering the front windows, light fractured by all those trees, the morning sticky and hot. Rays thread the shade of the living room, glaring the dust white, the oak floor covered with scattered clothes and toiletties, four open suitcases, and a battery-powered mini fridge near the bed. The movers promised to deliver the furniture Monday, the day after tomorrow. They're Third World refugees, very superstitious, and believe weekends in Connecticut damage the soul. I didn't make an issue. Who wants a Haitian voodoo curse and cancer. Now the exquisite Mrs. Rosalie Nicole Kravitz nee Cuza sits crosslegged on the mattress, stiffening her back, yawning audibly, her skinny girl body deep in the brightness and shadows. "Maybe you should've tipped the guys a few dollars," my bride says, meaning the movers. She's staring down at her small breasts, as if instructing them instead of me, the nipples dark and the size of baby fingers. "People need motivation, honey. Tickets to a Mets game, an extra hundred--" "Our first born," adding to the list while I lug the telescope toward another window. Besides the damn lymphoma, I'm also getting a hernia. "Where'd you find such uh. . ." act nice ". . . interesting gift?" "Beckman's," she says, and stands, arms stretching above her head, black hair tangled from sleep. God, the woman is definitely gorgeous. "C'mon, Max, you remember: Lower East Side, the antique shop off Canal Street." What am I, senile? I'm shooting the summer project there, in the Hasidic district. I do a couple of films a year -- since age thirty-seven -- the latest being a serio-comedy about sex, Jewish mysticism, and death, three favorite subjects. Yesterday my analyst said I had become far too successful to end these obsessions; she claimed I was an international neurotic whose art and anhedonia were indistinguishable. Everybody's a Pauline Kael. ". . . Darling, but real emaciated." The lovely Mrs. Kravitz recounting Beckman. "He'd been a prisoner in one of those camps, no lie, honey, a Treblinka survivor." The old man has stumbled into her social worker's heart, her odd passion for tragedy and strangers. "We had coffee and ramcake, right in the back of his store, the cutest apartment. Oh, the stories, Maxy!" Words turn cautious, "He . . . He knew your mother." The telescope faces the corner window. I adjust the brass tripod, staying quiet, not wanting to discuss Momma or her camp friend. Then Rosalie's embracing me, flushed and damp from the morning heat; she, chest-high even on the tips of her toes, gazing up and asking, "Are you sorry?" ". . .'Bout us?" The bride nods, says, "Uh-huh." "I adore you," I tell her, and it's true. I've been married twice, both raging disasters. My fault, their fault, who cares. But finally I'm blessed with an endearing, benevolent person; even more unnerving, and how dissimilar to the international neurotic's previous choices, an actual Jewish woman. (The others were of the shiksa persuasion.) What I don't tell her is the baseball bat story -- same city, different shoot, the winter project -- where the insane Beckman demolishes a 35mm Mitchell BNC, lenses included. The police had to come and drag the old man off the set. Fantastic scene: five cops wrestling a ninety-pound maniac, his fists whacking the air; him shouting, "Big comedian! Anti-semite! Mumzer! You're not funny, Kravitz! Our suffering ain't funny! May Jehovah bring a curse! Let the Jews laugh at your misery!" He's probably booby-trapped the telescope. Rosalie and I met on Christmas Eve night, Seventh Avenue and Fifty-fifth, the Carnegie Deli just a footstep away. I was lying in the snow, holding my left thigh, the pain scaring me bad enough to wet myself, and not one clue, you know, that was the terrifying part. Nothing unusual had occurred; certainly nothing to cause an injury. When I looked down, I saw blood, the protruding bone. And I fainted. Only to be revived the hard way: by the Salvation Army abusing "Deck the Halls." Trumpets fought shrieking clarinets as I peered into the snowfall, the flakes big feathery, reflecting Carnegie's yellow light. I remember watching Rose kneel and the bits of ice on her eyelashes, the nonstop shiver, her cheeks and nose chilled raw; remember the smile too, half concealed in a frayed, navy blue scarf. "I -- I phoned the ambulance," she said, and took a deli bag from the pocket of her denim jacket. "You like corn beef?" Precious Rosalie. Mount Sinai had Drs. Cohen and Cohen, the cancer boys. They did a biopsy of my bone marrow; that, and radiation therapy for a multiple myeloma. The Cohens also showed me their video. Cartoon viruses wore Nazis uniforms. The Cohens wanted to talk Movie Deal while the Nazis invaded unsuspecting cells in the shape of eastern Europe. "Okay, wait, wait," said a Cohen. "You'll appreciate our dramatic effect." Darkness began slipping along the landscape, the letters DNA super-imposed. Soon swastikas materialized, blip blip blip, marking the defeated countries. "Get the concept?" I stared at the TV. "Nazis are in my body." "We used a film noir approach," said Cohen. "Sort of zombie Nazis," said the other Cohen. Rosalie visited during the evenings, brought paperback books, hot sandwiches, and wedges of chocolate cheesecake. I loved her immediately. But divorce can take a person's confidence. With two divorces, you're ready to date inanimate objects. My anxieties hadn't bothered Rose -- not the busted marriages or the cancer -- she ignored my fears, laughed at all the jokes, and played gin rummy like a convicted felon. Death didn't have the chutzpa to face Rosalie the Rumanian. Cohen and Cohen swore they'd stopped the lymphoma. I pictured the zombie Nazis on the run, a retreating gloom, cartoon swastikas vanishing in the video rewind. plib plib plib But as I packed to leave Sinai, old thoughts reappeared. What if the Cohens had won the battle and not the war?" What if the Nazi viruses were plotting new strategies? What if I'm walking down the street a month from now and my bones dissolve? Listen, it could happen. Another thought: Beckman. May Jehovah bring a curse! The insane Beckman knew your mother knew your . . . Momma spoke a lot about Treblinka and the boy; he would have been eighteen then, in 1943, four years younger than her. "You should've seen him pray, Maxy. Tears, moans, the works. My hand t'God, a regular rabbi." She'd be gazing out the kitchen window, rinsing the supper dishes, attending to images that had always eluded me. "His prayers killed a guard. Did I mention?" Saying an old fact, "He prayed a guard dead." Terrific. The lunatic nebbish has connections. I can't sleep. Rosalie's snoring, not loud but the rhythm is irregular, a gummy clicking at the back of her throat. The forest noises don't help, either. Tiny hooves patter through the leaves. Birds scream. Suicidal insects hurl themselves against the window screens. Connecticut nights are comparable to living in a zoo, except the animals here do shift work. Moonlight powders the oak floor with silver, disrupting the shadows. I glance around the living room, the clothes separated into neat mounds, suitcases stacked, the telescope a phantom on scrawny tripod legs. This weekend business is Mrs. Kravitz's idea. Our Honeymoon Getaway. We've no electricity, so forget air-conditioning. The heat won't quit. My body fluids are down two quarts; I'm positive the lymphoma will snap a bone. And earlier she pouted, wanting to know, "Where's your romantic spirit, Max?" Am I supposed to answer that? Maybe the damn thing took a suite at the Sherry Netherland. I would. Why do women. Whoa . . . Jesus, whoa! Light rushes from the lens of the telescope, laser-fine and brilliant, flaring across the room, hovering over the mattress, inches above me and the still unconscious Rose. I keep watching, squinting up, feeling my stomach constrict, hand groping the top of the mini fridge for my glasses. Trees stir, branches scrape the house. I smell urine and bowel -- country ambiance, no doubt. Oh God. The light's vibrating. It blooms suddenly, the room cut with such intolerable radiance that I have to shut my eyes. But the light is here and gone. Rosalie hasn't budged. Amazing. I drape the blue sheet about her breasts, kissing the bride's perspiring forehead. She sighs, fingers kneading the pillow, asleep yet mumbling, ". . .woveyoumex." "Love you too," a whisper as I move toward my brass phantom. The telescope looks normal. I tap the cylinder, the lenses, and automatically fantasize being the kid on Mr. Wizard. What would Don Herbert say? Got a storm coming, Max. Freak lightning. Brass is an excellent conductor. Of course, right. Lightning. Or . . . I peer out the window. "Or?" . . . Or the insane Beckman's praying again. My thigh bone starts to throb. The lymphoma is worse than a conscience. I decide to go with the lightning hypothesis but scan the woods to be prudent. Branches clatter; the breeze enters the open windows, carrying the odor of urine and bowel. Leaves shiver under the moon. I mutter, "Are you there, Beckman?" and imagine the old man leaping from behind a shrub, inflamed by Torah and Cabala, waving his fist and prancing among the trees. Then I peek into the lens of the telescope. We've been at the train station twelve hours now, since the morning, your Aunt Zadie, myself, Grandpop. Neighborhood people, mostly. I ask a young soldier why there isn't any food for us, any water. Such a handsome boy, Maxy, the grayest eyes. He says to be patient; he says, "The cooks have prepared a splendid feast. Our camp's small. But if you lose your way, just follow the Road to Heaven. "And I think, what a pretty name. And the young soldier smiles. . . I'm hearing Momma's voice, the telescope forming the images: her memories fixed with a son's details, a son's invention, images collected from stories and from the photos she had arranged on the walls --histories pinned together and assigned to pewter frames, pictures done in grainy tints of yellow and brown, strangers who belonged to me but had never visited Brooklyn -a son patching the dead faces to the dead lives, a way to explain her nightmares, her cries, her distance. . . .The train arrives sometime during the night. We're told to hurry and board. I hear the guards yelling, "You don't want to miss supper.t Aren't you hungry? Aren't you thirsty?" I'm climbing into one of the cars when I notice a little girl squat on the platform and defecate. We hadn't been allowed to use the bathrooms. . . A soldier is next to the child, the young man who'd spoken to my mother, both spotlighted in the beam of an overhead lamp. I see him holster his pistol and absently unstrap the rifle from his shoulder. Everything pantomimed, everything silent. Steam rises off the long train as the last of the passengers step inside the darkness. Only the soldier and the child remain. She's gazing up at him. Her age six, maybe seven, I don't know. Strings of black hair web her cheeks. She is shaking tearful. The soldier lifts his rifle, lamplight glinting the barrel. He sends the butt of the weapon into her skull. The train begins to glide past them. Arms and hands reach between the wooden slats of the boxcars. The child is lying in the luminous circle, her limbs crooked, blood obscuring her face. Now the young soldier nudges the body with the toe of his boot. The asshole is actually grinning. Did he enjoy the evening? Will he and his psychotic friends grab a beer later and swap child mutilation techniques? After six analysts and nineteen years as a couch junkie, I still can't fathom the madness of my mother's life. A hunched figure is running atop the boxcars. He -- no, no, she, it's a woman -- she drops to one knee and pivots, aiming a pistol at two soldiers who are chasing her. The lamplights float by them, the smoke of the train. Both hands grip the pistol, her arms outstretched, rigid, then the recoil and tiny flashes. One guard collapses in place, the other toppling backwards. All of it seen but not heard. The young soldier on the platform brings his rifle to eye-level. Again the woman fires. Once, twice. Chunks of the boy's neck rip away. A dozen or so guards hurry across the moving boxcars, toward the woman. Their weapons spike flames, cracking the shadows. She's been shot. Her leg . . . I immediately feel pain in my left thigh. I'm beginning to question the whole multiple myeloma thing. Cancer wouldn't be this empathic. Her leg . . . Our wounds match. Whatever I had experienced Christmas Eve is identical to what I am seeing here: her blood, the protruding bone. And she's looking at me. Isn't she looking at me? The yellow lights blink over her. I adjust my glasses; my eyes blur and focus. That face. The woman crawls to the far edge of the boxcar, hesitates, then falls into the night. I turn from the telescope, huffing a breath and scanning the living room, the moonlit suitcases, the folded clothes on the oak floor. Beckman, you sonuvabitch. Our bed's empty, sheets bunched in points and cuds. No mistake. The woman was Rose. Trees line the highway, rimmed with a pink, early morning sky. I am driving the Cherokee, heading for the city. A leatherbag containing the telescope and tripod rests upright on the passenger seat, fastened by a safety harness. I've been plotting strategies, how to confront Beckman while managing my homicidal impulses, but each plan ends with me strangling the guys yelling, Thief] Where is she? Where's Rosalie? I won't report him to the police. What do you say, exactly? An obsessed hasid prayed my wife into World War II? Uh-huh, sure. Film at eleven. The sun is traveling low behind the woods, flanking the road like a shy companion, golden amid the damp branches and leaves. My pain's disappeared. Totally, poof, G-O-N-E. I am trying to stay indifferent, you know, composed. Mother always said, "If God's miracles get you too excited, He'll change His mind." (The mysteries of celestial justice. I To be without pain is remarkable, though, a blessing. Momma didn't trust miracles. Pleasure was the intermission of an ongoing catastrophe; serenity, a betrayal of old ghosts: she couldn't forgive herself for escaping Treblinka. I grew up hearing the sobs, waking to her private horrors, and I'd see Mother huddled beside my bed, knees to chest, rocking, rocking her shape thin and delicate beneath a cotton gown. The dreams did not vary, the same lonely terrain, the same anguish. Factual dreams: a German soldier raping hers Aunt Zadie murmuring "...Let him. Don't you want to live, Chesia? God made you beautiful for a reason. Please, offer yourself -- let him." When she became pregnant with me, the German hid her in the back of his laundry truck and drove to a town four kilometers to the west, Wolka Okranglik. This was the day before the Committee of Resistance torched the camp. Three hundred and fifty inmates got past the barbed wire fence. My analyst says escaping Treblinka didn't mean you survived; that living and surviving aren't necessarily synonymous. Perhaps it's true. But how does a son grieve a dead parent with a pulse? I know she would look at me and see only that soldier, her months of imprisonment. The night Mother killed herself, a lifetime ago now, I'd been doing stand-up at Village Gate. Her brother Abe had called and read the note: Max, I am sorry. Grandpop believed our souls can't remember us after we die. Hope he is right. Love you. Drs. Cohen and Cohen neglected the genetics. I am inhabited by a zombie Nazi. Momma said my father died while driving her to Wolka Okranglik. "We're closed." "Beckman, open the goddamn door." "I got a gun." Jesus, he does. I'm staring at him, a hand cupped above my brow and pressed to the front window of the store, the telescope bag strapped over my left shoulder. Beckman is crouching, knees bent, waving a .357 Smith & Wesson, his style reminiscent of Dirty Harry, except for the yarmulke, the tallis, and the maroon plaid, alte kocker bathrobe. "I have bullets," he says. "-- A gun with bullets." He also has a palsy tremor. "You understand my English? We're closed, no Saturday business." "Hey, it's me." The old man squints. "Me who?" "You blind putz, get your glasses." "Wait. I should put on my glasses." Beckman tucks the .357 magnum under his arm. Fingers burrow into the robe and retrieve a pair of wire-rims. He hooks them around his ears, through the white, hasidic ringlets. His eyes go bright. "Ah-ha! Kravitz, the movie star! Mr. Comedian! Ha!" "Where's my wife, Beckman." "The birthday boy! Ha!" What a fruitcake. "Hold the horses! Hold the horses!" He's shuffling over to the door, each step excruciatingly slow; muttering,"A privilege, Mr. Hotsy-Totsy Kravitz." I hear the lock click, then a metallic thud, the sound of the pistol hitting wood. Crazy Beckman starts to slump to the floor as I enter the shop, and I catch him, grasping his waist. Skinny legs fold inward. His breathing is all wheezy. For a moment he has the appearance of a frail, confused bird. It doesn't last. He shakes loose from me and hobbies away, a teetering beeline to the rear of the store, his monologue soft, continuous, "Maxy Kravitz, pretty Chesia's Treblinka kid, ha!, wooo-weee," disappearing behind a velour curtain. Wonderful. Beckman's sincerely deranged. But fight now I'm not feeling too sane myself. The walls seem to creep in and shrink the room. Antiques fill the comers with dark points. Okay. How bizarre can he be? Relax, handle the situation. Demonstrate your tremendous inter-personal skills. I brace the telescope bag against the counter and follow him. Beyond the curtain, his dimlit apartment smells like Vicks Vaporub. Newspapers and books litter the Persian rag. Lopsided piles are wedged about the furniture, expensive pieces, two Queen Anne wing-backs, a mahogany desk, and a partially refinished Louis the Something chiffonier. Beckman whispers," -- Crummy heart. The doctors, they think I'm supposed to be dying." He is sprawled on the sofa, eyes shut, bathrobe and tallis open to a wide V, exposing his neck, the small blue veins of his chest. "The telescope belonged to your momma's friend." A voice raw and weak, "That German bum who helped her escape." "Let's discuss Rosalie," I say, verrry non-confrontational, Mr. Smooth, determined not to excite the old man. "Tell me the problem. Why hurt my wife? Seriously, she's an innocent person. Isn't this between us?" The approach has class. I am Brando in The Godfather, asking for compassion; hoping for reasonable men. 'q murdered him," he says. ". . .What?" "Chesia's lover, her Nazi with the laundry truck." Beckman sits up, crosses those chalky, twig legs, tugging on the hem of the robe. "I prayed him dead." The room turns warm, the odor of Vicks burning my throat and nose. I feel jittery inside, brittle. His prayers killed a guard. Did I mention! Yes, Mother, absolutely, but you never said which guard. Nor do I remember her connecting the two stories -- the German and the teenage hasid -- or maybe I had quit listening. ". . .'A sweet baby,' Chesia called me. 'You're still a baby, Yetzel,' she'd say." The old man's caught in history, speaking of the Treblinka days, how he worshiped Mother and hated her soldier, the years spent finding his peace. "So last winter, three shyster doctors decided I was dying, and again I got angry. I gave up too much. Children. Grandchildren. But who could marry?" He does a wobbly rise off the sofa, his words sly, "We know the miseries of love, huh, Kravitz?" "I do now, yes." "Ha, good." Beckman is gripping my arm. We walk toward the mahogany desk. It's cluttered with photographs, fifteen, perhaps twenty, brass and silver frames reflecting a fluorescent glow coming from the stairway near the curtain. He nods at the pictures. "You recognize anyone?" Glare and shadow smear the images. I tilt my head to block the light. Nobody's familiar. His collection reminds me of the photos that had covered our wall in Brooklyn, the faces worn to the skull. "C'mon, pay attention," says Beckman, obviously irritated. Fingers clutch a silver frame and twitch out weird Parkinsonian rhythms. "Look, Mr. Show Bid'ness, look." Like a dummy I'm being accommodating, bobbing along to his tremor. Finally, I snatch the thing. The old man stares at me as if I've slapped him. "Chesia's Nazi boy," he mumbles, his hands quivering. And louder, "It's in the blood. You and your poppa, both Nazis." Right. Take a pill for Christsake. With enormous control, I apologize, demeaning my impatience, pretending to study the damn picture. I will not be provoked by a maniac. Life won't be worth the effort unless Rosalie's safe; unless we're together. He wiggles his eyebrows, Groucho style. "Such a funny Nazi boy." I ignore the comment. Sticks and stones, etc. There are no new names, none I haven't said to myself. Even his photograph's demented. A cluster of ten prisoners stand among the trees, skeletons wearing only muddy underwear and dark caps. Written beneath this scene, the penmanship shaky, the ink a faint brownish-yellow: Committee of Resistance, August 2nd, 1943. Success at last! Beckman speaks quietly, close to my ear. --And Jehovah says, "What can I do for you, Yetzel?" And I say, "Lord, Chesia's Nazi boy ought to feel our pain. "And God says, "You want mental or physical?" And I say, "Please, a little of each." She's in the first row, second from the left end, her thigh bandaged, a piece of soiled cloth wrapped tight and knotted, the blood dried to a half-dollar sized disk. Rose? Oh Rose, is that you? The black hair shaved, eyes uninhabited, gazing straight at the camera, porcelain bones and paperskin: another zombie on the run. Did you survive? Beckman mutters, "The soldiers brought her to the camp," and giggling, poking my shoulder, "your bride didn't stay." The old man died, three months ago now. His heart. And the telescope arrived the week after the funeral. Death apparently doesn't phase him. The guy's relentless, my hasidic Terminator. A note from his attorney said I'd been "bequeathed item #38-5." He hoped Mr. Beckman's thoughtfulness would ease my grief. Lawyer humor. I've set the telescope on the balcony. Across the street is Central Park, a spectacular view of autumn. Though relieved to be back in the city, I haven't had the desire to leave my apartment, and the answering machine's loaded with messages which remain unanswered. Today I did the usual. Peered into the lens; watched other people's lives, judged performances. It's what I do best. The park was glorious this morning. An intense October sun ignited the trees, all frost, all fire, red-orange and lime. But I felt dissatisfied with the angle of the frame, the skewed distribution of light, the histrionic colors. Blah blah blah. Forever the methodical auteur, forever the observer. Some prisons are harder to escape than Treblinka. Where's my Committee of Resistance, Beckman? When does the laundry truck arrive? The old man swore Rosalie hadn't known his plan, repeating what Grandpop once told Momma, Souls forget, they don't keep their memories. Then Beckman confessed, The woman didn't recognize me. And if you went to her, she wouldn't remember you. I am the second generation heir to the living dead, feeling exhausted from this incredible, desperate emptiness, reluctantly trailing the zombies. But it'll be done soon. I can feel that too. The evening's here. I go to the balcony; the wind, abrupt and gritty, stinging my hands, my face. Beckman hasn't finished with his Nazi boy. A farewell torture, Rosalie is on the other side of the lens. She appears at sundown, one show a night -- the pursuit over boxcars, torching the camp, the panicked race to the woods -- and these scenes were consistent until recently. Now I've begun seeing the shape of a man jogging behind her. Through high, reedy brush, amid pine trees, the silhouette's undefined yet present, shadows failing to camouflage his inept stride. The runner is me, unmistakably me. Who cares what Yetzel Beckman said. The guy didn't have the Jehovah franchise. Anybody can pray. And tonight I will be with her, a celebration on the other side of the lens; if not tonight, hopefully tomorrow, or the next day. Whenever. I've been reading the Cabala. You know, lewish mysticism. The book says, our souls are paired from the exact moment God creates them. It also warns us, nothing's guaranteed, lifetimes may pass before the right souls meet. But we know, instantly, intuitively, we know the contours of that devastating fit. I don't need Rose to remember Maxy Kravitz, swooning at our reunion isn't necessary. All I need her to do is turn around. You listening, Rose? Just turn around and wait for the runner.