A surprise, he said, and I recalled how Zelda had done that very thing, when we were children, when I was sixteen and she was six, how she appeared one afternoon as I was playing Space Invaders on the old Atari and said she had a little surprise for her older brother, "so close your eyes." I did, and was blindly led out of the house, through the kitchen, to the patio, into the backyard and up the old chestnut to the tree house our father had recently built for her. "Close your eyes," she kept saying; "keep your eyes closed"--even when we were already there. Then I heard her shifting things around, wood touching wood, and glass and strings and all kinds of things; I sensed a strange odor, a candle or incense, I thought. She was preparing a spectacle, a puppet show, or she was going to reveal one of those weird structures she used to build out of sticks and stones and clods of earth and steel wire and all kinds of things. But when she finally said, "You can open your eyes now," and I did, she was gone, I was alone, and there was nothing to see, nothing and no one in that tree house but yours truly. I never was able to discover how she learned to project her voice that way, so that it sounded like she was right there in the tree house with you, even though she was down below.
Joe's surprise was different. I wasn't expecting anything, and this is what I saw in his office: on one wall hung a striped outfit with a pink triangle at the breast; in one corner lay a bale of barbed wire, in another corner a heap of little skulls, children's skulls; and against the wall opposite the striped outfit stood a glass case displaying about fifty yellow patches. I inspected these patches. They were shaped like stars of David, outlined in black or blue, a couple with the letter J at the center, a few with nothing at the center, a few others with "HZ" at the center, a couple with "Jood" at the center, about five or six with "Juif" at the center, and the rest with "Jude" at the center.
"What the hell is this?" I wanted to know. "Who the fuck are you?"
"What does it look like?" he said.
Pointing at those yellow patches, I said, "Where did you get those--?"
I was rudely interrupted. "Relax," he said.
"Those yellow patches," I said.
"Yes," he said. "The yellow patches."
"Well?" I said.
"Don't pretend you don't know," he said.
"Know what?" I said.
He didn't say anything. But by way of reply he pressed a button and a TV screen on the wall in the corner, above the heap of little skulls, turned on. It showed the party we had just left. The ironic Nazis were standing around, sipping wine, appreciating each other's SS outfits, having a lot of fun, it looked like. "See these people?" he said.
I said I did.
"What do you think of these people?" he said.
I said I didn't think anything. If they wanted to dress up as Nazis, who cared?
"Who cares?" he said. "I'll tell you who cares. These are bullshit World War Two reenactors," he said. "They don't know shit about the Third Reich. They don't care about the Third Reich. What do they know? What have they been through? What do they know about history? You think they know anything about genocide or social Darwinist theories? They're just a bunch of bobos."
"Where's Zelda?" I said. I wasn't interested in bobos or Darwin or whatever the hell he was driving at.
"Watch," he said.
"Where's Zelda?" I repeated.
"We'll get to your sister in due course," he said. "Watch." Just then, his cell phone rang. He answered, and said, "Go."
About five seconds later, there was chaos on the screen. A troop of goons dressed all in black, their heads wrapped in veils like ninjas, had burst in upon the party and proceeded to beat the ironic Nazis with baseball bats. The Nazis were so stunned that, though there were at least three of their kind for every ninja, they didn't even try to resist. It looked like they were being killed. However, it was a little suspicious. Too easy. It looked rehearsed in a way. I said, "What's going on? Is this a show?"
"This," said Joe, "is no show, I assure you."
I snorted. It was a show. There was no way it wasn't a show.
"Do you really think," he said, "that I would let these stupid hipsters get away with their phony charade while our people continue to be crucified like pigs? I know the Third Reich. I understand what our people went through back then, the insults, the slander, the horrible propaganda. I know what the war was really about. They're lying to us, don't you see? For one thing, Hitler's body was not confiscated by the Soviets. We all know he turned up in Argentina."
I wondered, first, if this rant was also part of the reenactors' charade, and second, if it wasn't, if there was any chance this guy was not an utter lunatic. His vague conspiracies were just too ridiculous. A cartoon character could have done a better job. "Very funny," I said.
"Very funny?" he said. "You find this funny?"
"I was being sarcastic," I said.
"Oh," he said, "so now you're joking."
I said I wasn't joking. I was sick of this stupid show and I wanted to know where I could find Zelda, if he knew.
As I was saying this, one of the ninjas appeared at close-up on the screen. He took off his veil and shook loose his hair, only it was not a he; it was a she, and not only was it a she but I knew her. It was Hannah, Dan's sister.
I was seriously stunned. "I know that girl," I said. "What's she doing there?"
She blew us a kiss. Did she know I was watching? I had held this girl's hand, I had squeezed this girl's hand. Yes, I had found her intensely, but intensely, attractive, not knowing what exactly it was, because on the face of things she was not very pretty, with her crooked nose and her big teeth and her bad skin and that hair trapped in that weird shawl and the rest of her wrapped in a plain brown dress that covered practically every inch of her body. She blew us a second kiss, then pulled out of her pocket what looked like a ring and showed it to us. No, it wasn't a ring. It was a tooth. It was a fucking tooth.
"What is that?" I said. "What the fuck is that?"
"Guess," said Joe.
"I have no fucking idea," I said.
"Please stop swearing," he said. "You swear like a sailor. Now guess."
"I really don't know," I said.
"Oh, so you're pretending not to know?" he said ironically.
I said I wasn't pretending not to know.
Obviously he thought I was pretending. But eventually he dropped the ironic intonation and said, "That tooth you see belonged to your sister. Happy?"
"What?" I cried.
"I'll tell you what," he said--but then he spent an infinity taking off his SS outfit, carefully folding it, putting it in the closet, locking the closet, and slipping into civilian clothes, brown trousers, brown socks, brown loafers, a brown dress shirt, a brown vest, a brown coat, and a brown tie. "I'll tell you what," he said finally. "I'll let you live."
"Huh?" I cried. I still wasn't sure if this was for real or just a stupid joke.
"I'll let you live," he said, "because I want the teeth. I need those teeth, and if I don't get those teeth, your sister can kiss goodbye to the rest of her own teeth."
"What teeth?" I said. "What teeth are you talking about?"
"Your sister knows," he said.
"Where is she?" I said. "I don't know where she is. I've been looking for her."
"I don't know where she is," he said, "and frankly, I don't care where she is. I just want those teeth, and if I don't get those teeth very soon, bad things are going to happen. Now go."
This is when I began to be seriously afraid. I backed out of that office, nice and quiet, not saying anything. He shut the door, and I was in the dark again, in the purplish dark corridor. I needed to get the hell out of there, and I didn't want to run into those ninjas, but I couldn't see a thing, so I stayed by the wall, tapping and groping at possible exits like a blind fool, and proceeded as fast as I could down the hall. There were no exit signs anywhere, in violation of fire safety codes. What if there was a fire? And even if not, how were you supposed to find your way out of this place in this utter darkness? I searched for a light switch, found none. I wondered what floor I was on. First floor? Second? I recalled going up a flight of stairs on our way to Joe's office, or was it two flights? Eventually I reached the end of the hall, and still no exit. I had either passed it or I had gone down the wrong hall. But what other hall was there? Well, I was going to turn around, try a different route, perhaps even go back and ask Joe how to get out of this building, when I tripped. I couldn't tell what it was exactly because I couldn't see anything, but it felt like flesh, that is to say, a corpse. I was so horrified by the thought of having tripped on a dead body that I continued tripping. I had not reached the end of the hall apparently. Oh but I had, I had now. I not only reached the end of the hall; I crashed right into it. It was a black-glazed window pane. Tripping as I was, I crashed right into the window pane, which shattered, and I went right through the window. And as I crashed, I suddenly heard Joe yelling. What exactly he was saying I couldn't tell, nor could I respond, since I was in the process of falling out the window, but it sounded like Cacophony! Cacophony! Cacophony!
