A Reunion of Ghosts by Mitchell Judith Claire

Author:Mitchell, Judith Claire [Mitchell, Judith Claire]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, General, Family Life, Fiction
ISBN: 9781443437004
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

Mein Vater, Hermann Gläser.

Todesursache: Zyklon.

Meine Mutter, Ruth Baumgartner Gläser.

Todesursache: Zyklon.

Meine Schwester, Eva Gläser Hirsh.

Todesursache: Zyklon.

Meine Schwester, Anne Gläser Bierman.

Todesursache: Zyklon.

Mein Bruder, Bernhard Gläser.

Todesursache: Zyklon

Meine Nichte, Katherine Hirsh.

Todesursache: Zyklon

Meine Nichte, Ada Hirsch.

Todesursache: Zyklon

Feel free to start skimming, because, as you will see, it goes on for pages. Of course it does. Imagine how many pages it would take you to list the names of everyone you’ve ever loved, liked, tolerated, despised, or just been introduced to at some party; everyone you’ve ever worked with or gone to school with or just run into from time to time or chatted up once or twice at a coffee shop. Many more nieces. Many more nephews. The children of the nieces and nephews. The children of those children. Her cousins. Her cousins’ children and her cousins’ children’s children. Her classmates. Her daughters’ classmates. Her teachers. Her daughters’ teachers. Her husband’s aunts, Rose Emanuel Ziegler, who she never met, and the long-widowed Lily Emanuel Klein, who she adored. The children and grandchildren of her husband’s aunts. And neighbors, grocers, butchers, bakers. Dye workers. Hardware store owners. Page after page, name after name. Cause of death: Zyklon. Cause of death: Zyklon.

Maybe someone else has a diary even more aged and yellowed, with columns of names and next to them: Cause of death: chlorine gas. Cause of death: chlorine gas. If Iris had lived, perhaps that diary would have been hers. But Karin, at least in her youth, never thought to object to the gas. Quite the opposite. She was proud to marry into the family of Lenz Alter, war hero. When she became Lenz’s daughter, if only by marriage, his development and deployment of the giftgas had still been a triumph, still something to trumpet.

Karin and Richard and their three daughters, one of whom was our mother, never considered the development of chlorine gas reprehensible because Lenz had done it for Germany—his country! his love! his life!—and because it had been wartime and because he’d been feted and celebrated and promoted to captain. What had he said when people—the generals themselves—recoiled at the horror of gas?

“Death is death,” he said.

Our great-grandfather, the Gertrude Stein of chemical warfare.

But now—May 1945—a second war ending, Karin sees how mistaken she was. Now she recognizes his invention and promotion of chlorine gas not only as a crime, but also as the first sign of a pattern that led to this, his destroying her world.

Richard hasn’t stopped weeping since learning about the Zyklon. He’s been a drinker all his life and is a full-out drunk now, and a drunk of the worst kind: he’s melodramatic, emotionally flabby. Every day, it seems, there’s another article he wants Karin to read, another revelation, another reference to the horror, but also to the irony: the poison was developed by a Jew.

Talk about too smart for their own good, an editorialist writes.

Karin stands at the kitchen sink, the same one that will someday hold the remains of our final cocktail. Wearing her American muumuu, her

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