News of Our Loved Ones by Abigail DeWitt

Author:Abigail DeWitt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

Which is the mystery? That a person arrests Jews, all the while thinking about his migraine and wishing he were home, basking in the praise of his Sturmbannführer? Or that André Naquet spent the day painting when he could have run? Naquet might be the greater mystery, but I’m the Nazi, not the Jew. I’m supposed to take him downstairs now, out into the armored truck.

I could punish him for painting. Push him over the balcony, beat him with my belt, the only thing that’s forbidden is to let him go. I could put my gun to his head and demand an explanation. “I like to paint,” he’d say. It’s always something like that, something that doesn’t add up.

Sure enough, my head’s hurting again. It scares me to death when it starts and I don’t have any powders.

Once, after Mother and Father died of their rotten livers, I dreamed I was flying. In my dream, I was back in my room at the university, and the window was open, calling to me as if I should kill myself. I went, spread my arms, and jumped, but the air buoyed me and I thought, Of course, this was always possible. All I had to do was spread my arms. I didn’t go very high—there were buildings I had to circle around—still, I was airborne and when I awoke, I knew: I couldn’t fly in this life, but I’d be able to in the life to come.

I doubt it now. Whatever greatness might have been mine isn’t going to come to me, in this or any other life. The Americans have reached the coast; we’ve been sent to catch the last Jews because we’re losing, and the Sturmbannführer will have no job to offer me when it’s over. So why not keep sitting here a while longer, pressing my thumb into my eye? Or get up and paint a marigold! Why not?

What if I did? What if I set his canvas on the easel, squeezed the tubes of paint onto his palette, and began? And if, after fixing his terrible marigold, I let him go? Why not take my clothes off and dance a jig in the street? You can’t stop what you’re doing and change course. I mean you. You, Jew. I did, in fact, like painting. When it was going well, I hardly noticed the brush, just the image taking form. I might have applied to Düsseldorf, if I hadn’t been so disgusted by Herr Grindberg.

You won’t say what you were thinking even with a gun to your head, will you? How could anyone make sense of such a thing? You blow up train tracks, get word to people about what we’re doing, pretend to be a gentile, and then, when you’ve been found out, you act as if this weren’t a war at all. As if you thought yourself a Rembrandt. You go outside to paint. Where, Jew? Where did you go for your marigold? I ought to paint it over, a black square, just to show him.

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