The Storyteller Read online

  His words make me pause. “Are you sick?”

  “My doctor says I have the constitution of a much younger man. This is God’s joke on me. He makes me so strong that I cannot die even when I want to. I have had cancer, twice. I survived a car crash and a broken hip. I have even, God forgive me, swallowed a bottle of pills. But I was found by a Jehovah’s Witness who happened to be passing out leaflets and saw me through the window, lying on the floor.”

  “Why would you try to kill yourself?”

  “Because I should be dead, Sage. It’s what I deserve. And you can help me.” He hesitates. “You showed me your scars. I only ask you to let me show you mine.”

  It strikes me that I know nothing about this man, except for what he has chosen to share with me. And now, apparently, he’s picked me to help him carry out his assisted suicide. “Look, Josef,” I say gently. “You do need help, but not for the reason you think. I don’t go around committing murder.”

  “Perhaps not.” He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small photograph, its edges scalloped. He presses it into my palm.

  In the picture, I see a man, much younger than Josef—with the same widow’s peak, the same hooked nose, a ghosting of his features. He is dressed in the uniform of an SS guard, and he is smiling.

  “But I did,” he says.

  Damian held his hand high, as his soldiers laughed behind him. I tried to leap to reach the coins, but I couldn’t, and stumbled. Although it was only October, there was a hint of winter in the air, and my hands were numb with the cold. Damian’s arm snaked around me, a vise, pressing me along the length of his body. I could feel the silver buttons of his uniform cutting into my skin. “Let me go,” I said through my teeth.

  “Now, now,” he said, grinning. “Is that any way to speak to a paying customer?” It was the last baguette. Once I got his money, I could go back home to my father.

  I looked around at the other merchants. Old Sal was stirring the dregs of herring left in her barrel; Farouk was folding his silks, studiously avoiding the confrontation. They knew better than to make an enemy of the captain of the guard.

  “Where are your manners, Ania?” Damian chided.

  “Please!”

  He tossed a glance at his soldiers. “It sounds good when she begs for me, doesn’t it?”

  Other girls rhapsodized about his striking silver eyes, about whether his hair was as black as night or as black as the wing of a raven, about a smile so full of sorcery it could rob you of your thoughts and speech, but I did not see the attraction. Damian might have been one of the most eligible men in the village, but he reminded me of the pumpkins left too long on the porch after All Hallows’ Eve—lovely to look at, until you touched one and realized it was rotten to the core.

  Unfortunately, Damian liked a challenge. And since I was the only woman between ten years and a hundred who wasn’t swayed by his charm, he had targeted me.

  He brought down his hand, the one holding the coins, and curled it around my throat. I could feel the silver pressing into the pulse at my neck. He pinned me against the scrubwood of the vegetable seller’s cart, as if he wanted to remind me how easy it would be to kill me, how much stronger he was. But then he leaned forward. Marry me, he whispered, and you’ll never have to worry about taxes again. Still gripping me by the throat, he kissed me.

  I bit his lip so hard that he bled. As soon as he let go of me, I grabbed the empty basket I used to carry bread back and forth to the market, and I started to run.

  I would not tell my father, I decided. He had enough to worry about.

  The further I got into the woods, the more I could smell the peat burning in the fireplace of our cottage. In moments, I would be back home, and my father would hand me the special roll that he had baked for me. I would sit at the counter and tell him about the characters in the village: the mother who became frantic when her twins hid beneath Farouk’s bolts of silk; Fat Teddy, who insisted on sampling the cheese at each market stall, filled his belly in the process, and never bought a single item. I would tell him about the man I had never seen before, who had come to the market with a teenage boy who looked to be his brother. But the boy was feebleminded; he wore a leather helmet that covered his nose and mouth, leaving only holes for breathing, and a leather cuff around his wrist, so that his older brother could keep him close by holding tight to a leash. The man strode past my bread stand and the vegetable seller and the other sundries, intent on reaching the meat stall, where he asked for a rack of ribs. When he did not have enough coins to pay, he shrugged out of his woolen coat. Take this, he said. It’s all I have. As he shivered back across the square, his brother grabbed for the wrapped parcel of meat. You can have it soon, he promised, and then I lost sight of him.

  My father would make up a story for them: They jumped off a circus train and wound up here. They were assassins, scoping out Baruch Beiler’s mansion. I would laugh and eat my roll, warming myself in front of the fire while my father mixed the next batch of dough.

  There was a stream that separated the cottage from the house, and my father had placed a wide plank across it so that we could get from one side to the other. But today, when I reached it, I bent to drink, to wash away the bitter taste of Damian that was still on my lips.

  The water ran red.

  I set down the basket I was carrying and followed the bank upstream, my boots sinking into the spongy marsh. And then I saw it.

  The man was lying on his back, the bottom half of his body submerged in the water. His throat and his chest had been torn open. His veins were tributaries, his arteries mapped a place I never wanted to go. I started to scream.

  There was blood, so much blood that it painted his face and stained his hair.

  There was blood, so much blood that several moments passed before I recognized my father.

  SAGE

  In the picture, the soldier is laughing, as if someone has just told him a joke. His left leg is braced on a crate, and he is holding a pistol in his right hand. Behind him is a barracks. It reminds me of photos I have seen of soldiers on the eve of being shipped out, wearing too much bravado like a cloying aftershave. This is not the face of someone ambivalent about his role. This is someone who enjoyed what he was doing.

  There are no other people in the picture, but outside the white borders, they hover like ghosts: all the prisoners who knew better than to make themselves visible when a Nazi soldier was near.

  This man in the photo has pale hair and strong shoulders and an air of confidence. It is hard for me to reconcile this man with the one who told me once that he had lost too many people to count.

  Then again, why would he lie about something like this? You lie to convince people you are not a monster . . . not that you are one.

  For that matter, if Josef is telling the truth, why would he have made himself such a visible member of the community: teaching, coaching, walking around in broad daylight?

  “So you see,” Josef says, taking the picture from me again. “I was SS-Totenkopfverbände.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say.

  Josef looks at me, surprised. “Why would I confess to you that I did horrible things if it were not true?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “You tell me.”

  “Because you are a Jew.”

  I close my eyes, trying to wade through the whirlpool of wild thoughts in my head. I’m not a Jew; I haven’t considered myself one in years, even if Josef believes that to be a technicality. But if I’m not a Jew, why do I feel so viscerally and personally offended by this photograph of him in an SS uniform?

  And why does it make me sick to hear him label me; to think that, after all this time, Josef would still feel that one Jew is interchangeable for another?

  In that moment, a tide of disgust rises inside me. In that moment, I think I could kill him.

  “There is a reason God has kept me alive for this long. He wants me to feel what they felt. They prayed for their lives but had no co
ntrol over them; I pray for my death but have no control over it. This is why I want you to help me.”

  Did you ask any Jews what they wanted?

  An eye for an eye; one life for many.

  “I’m not going to kill you, Josef,” I say, pushing away from him, but his voice stops me.

  “Please. It’s a dying man’s wish,” he begs. “Or perhaps the wish of a man who wants to die. They are not so different.”

  He’s delusional. He thinks he’s some kind of vampire, like the king in his chess set, who is trapped here by his sins. He thinks that if I kill him biblical justice will be served and a karmic debt will be erased, a Jew taking the life of the man who took the life of other Jews. Logically, I know that’s not true. Emotionally, I don’t even want to give him the satisfaction of thinking I would consider it.

  But I can’t just walk away and pretend this conversation never happened. If a man came up to me on the street and confessed to a murder, I wouldn’t ignore it. I’d find someone who knew what to do.

  Just because that murder occurred nearly seventy years ago doesn’t make it any different.

  It is still a complete disconnect for me—looking at this photo of an SS officer and trying to figure out how he became the man standing in front of me. The one who has hidden, in plain sight, for more than half a century.

  I had laughed with Josef; I had confided in Josef; I had played chess with Josef. Behind him is Mary’s Monet garden, the one with dahlias and sweet peas and stem roses, hydrangea and delphinium and monkshood. I think about what she told me weeks ago, how sometimes the most beautiful things can be poisonous.

  Two years ago, the John Demjanjuk case was in the news. Although I hadn’t followed it, I remember the image of a very old man being removed from his home in a wheelchair. Clearly someone, somewhere, is still out there prosecuting former Nazis.

  But who?

  If Josef is lying, I need to know why. But if Josef is telling the truth, then I have unwittingly just become a part of history.

  I need time to think. And I need him to believe I’m on his side.

  I turn back and hand him the photograph. I think about young Josef in his uniform, lifting his gun and shooting at someone. I think about a picture in my high school history book, an emaciated Jewish man carrying the body of another. “Before I decide whether or not to help you . . . I have to know what you did,” I say slowly.

  Josef lets out a breath he has been holding. “So it is not a no,” he says cautiously. “This is good.”

  “This is not good,” I correct, and I run down the Holy Stairs, leaving him to fend for himself.

  • • •

  I walk. For hours. I know that Josef will come down from the shrine and try to find me in the bakery, and when he does, I don’t want to be there. By the time I get back to the shop, all heaven has broken loose. A trickle of the frail, the elderly, the wheelchair-bound snakes out the front door. A small knot of nuns kneeling in prayer have gathered by the oleander bush in the restroom hallway. Somehow, in the short time I’ve been gone, the word about the Jesus Loaf has gotten out.

  Mary stands beside Rocco, who has pulled his dreadlocks into a neat ponytail and who is holding the bread on a platter covered with a burgundy tea towel. In front of them is a mother pushing her twenty-something son in a complicated motorized wheelchair. “Look, Keith,” she says, lifting the loaf and holding it against his curled fist. “Can you touch Him?”

  Seeing me, Mary signals Rocco to take over. Then she slips her arm through mine and leads me into the kitchen. Her cheeks are glowing; her dark hair has been brushed to a high sheen—and holy cow, is she wearing makeup? “Where have you been?” she chides. “You’ve missed all the excitement!”

  That’s what she thinks. “Oh?”

  “Ten minutes after the midday news aired, they started coming. The old, the sick, anyone who wants to just touch the bread.”

  I think about the petri dish that the loaf must be now, if that many hands have been all over it.

  “Maybe this is a stupid question,” I say, “but why?”

  “To be healed,” Mary replies.

  “Right. Because all this time the CDC should have been looking for the cure for cancer in a slice of bread.”

  “Tell that to the scientists who discovered penicillin,” Mary says.

  “Mary, what if it has nothing to do with a miracle? What if it’s just the way the gluten happened to string together?”

  “I don’t believe that. But anyway, it would still be a miracle,” Mary says, “because it gives desperate people some hope.”

  My mind unravels back to Josef, to the Jews in the camp. When you are singled out for torture because of your faith, can religion still be a beacon? Did the woman whose son had profound disabilities believe in the God of this stupid loaf who could help him, or the God who had let him be born that way in the first place?

  “You should be thrilled. Everyone who’s come through here to see the loaf has taken away something else you’ve baked,” Mary says.

  “You’re right,” I mutter. “I’m just really tired.”

  “Then go home.” Mary looks at her watch. “Since I think tomorrow we’ll have twice as many customers.”

  But as I leave the bakery, passing someone who’s filming an encounter with the loaf on a Flip Video camera, I already know I’m going to find a sub to take over my shift.

  • • •

  Adam and I have an unwritten agreement to not show up at each other’s place of business. You never know who’s going to be passing by, who’s going to recognize your car. Plus, his boss happens to be Shannon’s father.

  As I park my car a block away from the funeral home, for this very reason, I think again about Josef. Had a new acquaintance ever waggled a finger at him, genially saying, “I know you from somewhere . . .” and made him break out in a sweat? Did he look in every window not to see his own reflection but to make sure no one was watching him?

  And, of course, it makes me wonder whether our connection was pure chance, or if he’d been hunting for someone like me. Not just a girl descended from a Jewish family in a town with precious few Jews, but one with the added bonus of a damaged face, too self-conscious to draw attention to herself by going public with his story. I had never told Josef about Adam, but had he still recognized in me a guilty conscience, like his own?

  Luckily, there isn’t a funeral going on. Adam’s business is a steady one—he’ll always have clients—but if he were in the middle of a service I wouldn’t be rude enough to disturb him. I text Adam when I am hovering outside the back of the building, near the recycling bins and the Dumpster. I’m out back. Need to talk.

  A moment later he appears, dressed like a surgeon. “What are you doing here, Sage?” he whispers, although we are alone. “Robert’s upstairs.”

  Robert, the father-in-law.

  “I’m having a really bad day,” I say, close to tears.

  “And I’m having a really long one. Can’t this wait?”

  “Please,” I beg. “Five minutes?”

  Before he can reply, a tall man with silver hair appears in the doorway beside him. “Maybe you’d like to tell me, Adam, why the embalming room door is wide open with a client on the table? I thought you kicked the cigarette habit—” Spying me, he registers the Picasso half of my face and forces a smile. “I’m sorry, may I help you?”

  “Dad,” Adam says, “this is Sage—”

  “McPhee,” I jump in, turning slightly so that my scar is better hidden. “I’m a reporter for the Maine Express.”

  I realize too late that sounds like a train, not a newspaper.

  “I’m doing a story about a day in the life of a mortician,” I say.

  Adam and I both watch Robert scrutinize me. I’m still wearing my baking outfit: loose T-shirt, baggy shorts, Crocs. I’m sure no self-respecting reporter would be caught dead at an interview looking like this.

  “She called me last week to arrange a time to shadow
me,” Adam lies.

  Robert nods. “Of course. Ms. McPhee, I’m happy to answer any questions that Adam can’t.”

  Adam visibly relaxes. “Why don’t you follow me?” He puts his hand on my arm, steering me into the facility. There is a shock as his hand touches my bare skin.

  When he leads me down the hall, I shiver. It’s cold in the basement of the funeral home. Adam enters a room on the right and closes the door behind us.

  On the table is an elderly woman, naked beneath a sheet.

  “Adam,” I say, swallowing. “Is she . . . ?”

  “Well, she’s not taking a nap,” he says, laughing. “Come on, Sage. You know what I do for a living.”

  “I didn’t plan on watching you do it.”

  “You’re the one who came up with the reporter angle. You could have told him you were a cop and that you needed to take me down to the station.”

  It smells like death in here, and frost, and antiseptic. I want to fold myself into Adam’s arms, but there is a window in the door and at any moment, Robert or someone else could walk by.

  He hesitates. “Maybe you could just look the other way? Because I sort of have to get to work, especially in this heat.”

  I nod, and stare at the wall. I hear Adam sorting through metallic instruments, and then something buzzes to life.

  I am holding Josef’s story like an acorn, tucked away. I don’t want to share it yet. But I don’t want it to take root, either.

  At first I think Adam must be using a saw, but then I peek from the corner of my eye and realize he is shaving the dead woman. “Why are you doing that?”

  The electric blade growls as he rounds her chin. “Everyone gets shaved. Even kids. Peach fuzz makes the makeup more noticeable, and you want that ‘memory picture’—the last image you have of a loved one—to be natural.”

  I am fascinated by his economy of movement, by his efficiency. This is a part of his life I know so little about, and I’m hungry for any tidbit of him I can take away. “When does the embalming happen?”