Mother Night

44: 'Kahm-boo...'

It is a common experience among jailbirds to wake up and wonder why they are in jail. A theory I propose to myself on such occasions is that I am in jail because I could not bring myself to walk through or leap over another man's vomit. I am referring to the vomit of Bernard B. O'Hare on the foyer floor at the foot of the stairwell.

I left my attic shortly after O'Hare did. There was nothing to keep me there. I took a memento with me, quite by accident. As I left my attic, I kicked something over the threshold and onto the landing. I picked it up. It was a pawn from the chess set I had carved from a broom handle.

I put it in my pocket. I have it still. As I slipped it into my pocket, the stench of the public nuisance O'Hare had created reached me.

As I descended the stairs, the stench grew worse.

When I reached the landing outside the door of young Dr. Abraham Epstein, a man who had spent his childhood in Auschwitz, the stench stopped me.

The next thing I knew, I was knocking on Dr. Epstein's door.

The Doctor came to the door in bathrobe and pajamas. His feet were bare. He was startled to see me.

'Yes?' he said.

'Could I come in?' I said.

'This is a medical matter?' he said. There was a chain across the door.

'No,' I said. 'Personal-political.'

'It can't wait?' he said.

'I'd rather it didn't,' I said.

'Give me an idea of what this is all about,' he said.

'I want to go to Israel to stand trial,' I said.

'You what?' he said.

'I want to be tried for my crimes against humanity,' I said. 'I'm willing to go.'

'Why come to me?' he said.

'I thought you might know somebody — somebody who'd like to be notified,' I said.

'I'm not a representative of Israel,' he said. 'I'm an American. Tomorrow you can find all the Israelis you want.'

'I'd like to surrender to an Auschwitzer,' I said.

This made him mad. 'Then find one who thinks about Auschwitz all the time he said. 'There are plenty who think about nothing else. I never think about it!'

And he slammed the door.

I froze again, frustrated in the one purpose I'd been able to imagine for myself. What Epstein had said about Israelis being available in the morning was surely true —

But there was still the night to get through, and I could not move.

Epstein talked to his mother inside. They talked in German.

I heard only bits of what they said. Epstein was telling his mother what had just happened.

One thing I did hear that impressed me was their use of my last name, the sound of my last name.

'Kahm-boo,' they said again and again. That was Campbell to them.

That was the undiluted evil in me, the evil that had had its effect on millions, the disgusting creature good people wanted dead and underground —

'Kahm-boo.'

Epstein's mother got so excited about Kahm-boo and what he was up to now, that she came to the door. I'm sure that she did not expect to see Kahm-boo himself. She wanted only to loathe and wonder at the air he had lately displaced.

She opened the door, her son right behind her, telling her not to do it. She almost fainted at the sight of Kahm-boo himself, Kahm-boo in a state of catalepsis.

Epstein pushed her aside, came out as though to attack me.

'What do you think you're doing?' he said. 'Get the hell away from here!'

When I did not move, did not reply, did not even blink, did not even seem to breathe, he began to understand that I was a medical problem after all.

'Oh, for Christ's sake!' he lamented.

Like a friendly robot, I let him lead me inside. He took me back into the kitchen area of his flat, sat me down at a white table there.

'Can you hear me?' he said.

'Yes,' I said.

'Do you know who I am — where you are?' he said.

'Yes,' I said.

'Have you ever been like this before?' he said.

'No,' I said.

'You need a psychiatrist,' he said. 'I'm no psychiatrist.'

'I told you what I need,' I said. 'Call up somebody — not a psychiatrist Call up somebody who wants to give me a trial.'

Epstein and his mother, a very old woman, argued back and forth about what to do with me. His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.

'This is not the first time you've seen eyes like that,' she said to her son in German, 'not the first man you've seen who could not move unless someone told Him where to move, who longed for someone to tell him what to do next, who would do anything anyone told him to do next. You saw thousands of them at Auschwitz.'

'I don't remember,' said Epstein tautly.

'All right — ' said his mother, 'then let me remember. I can remember. Every minute I can remember.'

'And, as one who remembers,' said his mother, 'let me say that what he asks for he should have. Call someone.'

'Who will I call?' said Epstein. 'I'm not a Zionist I'm an anti-Zionist. I'm not even that. I never think about it. I'm a physician. I don't know anybody who's still looking for revenge. I have nothing but contempt for them. Go away. You've come to the wrong place.'

'Call somebody,' said his mother.

'You still want revenge?' he asked her.

'Yes,' she said.

He put his face close to mine. 'And you really want to be punished?' he said.

'I want to be tried,' I said.

'It's all play acting,' he said, exasperated with both of us. 'It proves nothing!'

'Call somebody,' said his mother.

Epstein threw up his hands. 'All right! All right! I will call Sam. I will tell him he can be a great Zionist hero. He always wanted to be a great Zionist hero.'

What Sam's last name was I never found out Dr. Epstein called him from the front room of the flat while I remained in the kitchen with Epstein's old mother.

His mother sat down at the table, faced me, rested her arms on the table, studied my face with melancholy curiosity and satisfaction.

'They took all the light bulbs,' she said in German.

'What?' I said.

'The people who broke into your apartment — they took all the light bulbs from the stairway,' she said.

'Um,' I said.

'In Germany, too,' she said.

'Pardon me?' I said.

'That was one of the things — when the S.S. or the Gestapo came and took somebody away — ' she said.

'I don't understand,' I said.

'Other people would come into the building, wanting to do something patriotic,' she said. 'And that was one of the things they always did. Somebody always took the light bulbs.' She shook her head. 'Such a strange thing for somebody always to do.'

Dr. Epstein came back into the kitchen dusting his hands. 'All right — ' he said, 'three heroes will be here shortly — a tailor, a watchmaker, and pediatrician — all delighted to play the part of Israeli parachutists.'

Thank you,' I said.

The three came for me in about twenty minutes. They had no weapons, and no status as agents of Israel or as agents of anything but themselves. The only status they had was what my infamy and my anxiousness to surrender to somebody, to almost anybody, gave them.

What my arrest amounted to was a bed for the rest of the night — in the tailor's apartment, as it happened. The next morning, the three surrendered me, with my permission, to Israeli officials.

When the three came for me at Dr. Epstein's apartment, they banged on the front door loudly.

The instant they did that, I felt enormously relieved. I felt happy.

'You're all right now?' said Epstein, before he let them in.

'Yes, thank you, Doctor,' I said.

'You still want to go?' he said.

'Yes,' I said.

'He has to go,' said his mother. And then she leaned closer to me, across the kitchen table. She crooned something in German, made it sound like a fragment of a ditty remembered from a happy childhood.

What she crooned was this, a command she had heard over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz — had heard many times a day for years.

'Leichentr?ger zu Wache,' she crooned.

A beautiful language, isn't it?

Translation?

'Corpse-carriers to the guardhouse.'

That's what that old woman crooned to me.