The Survivors Read online

  They were together.

  There were still moments when he experienced flashes of what they could be. Early mornings in the kitchen, standing next to each other in their pajamas and squeezing chocolate syrup into their milk. And when Pierre spilled, Benjamin would imitate Dad and whisper in horror: “You’re clumsy!” And Pierre imitated Mom’s method of resolving conflicts: “I’m going to bed.” They tittered. There they stood with their morning hair, quiet again, stirring their chocolate milk; they were together.

  But then they went to school and Pierre was a different person there. The two boys might pass each other without so much as a greeting. During breaks, between classes, in the hall, Benjamin would suddenly hear a scuffle among the rows of lockers, and when he walked by he would see that Pierre had shoved a student up against the wall, saw him leaning over to press his forehead against the younger boy’s. He took only very brief note of this as he passed, didn’t want to look, but then he carried the image of his brother’s explosive nature inside him; he couldn’t forget it. He had seen it in the guys down at the youth center, and in the gangs that roved around the square and sometimes got on the subway and paralyzed an entire car. In them he saw a type of masculinity he couldn’t comprehend and wasn’t a part of. Now he was slowly beginning to understand that it was in his family too, in Pierre, in his increasingly irrational behavior, in how his bag clattered with throwing stars he’d made in woodshop class. And Benjamin had seen him smoking behind the gym in the afternoons, throwing stars at the wall with his friends. One day he bleached his hair, all on his own, without asking Mom. Something must have gone wrong, because it turned bright yellow, and he dyed it back the next day, so black it was almost purple. It was just hair, but it affected the way people perceived him. That inconceivably dark hair, which could be spotted from the other side of the schoolyard, and his guarded gaze, as if he were always about to walk into an ambush. And that constant sound in the halls, the clatter of throwing stars in his bag, and of younger kids being shoved up against lockers.

  He began to watch Pierre in secret on breaks, and only then, in studying his brother from a distance, did he see himself. It was midwinter, below freezing and dark by the two o’clock break. The students played four square on the icy asphalt and steam came from their mouths and when the kids tried to throw the tennis ball it stuck to their snow-matted mittens. Benjamin spotted Pierre on the fringes of the game, looking on in his very thin jacket, no hat, his red hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. And a sudden rage came over Benjamin: Why hadn’t Mom and Dad given him a warmer coat? Why didn’t he have a hat or mittens?

  Only on his way back to class did he notice that he was freezing too, and that his jacket was just as flimsy as his brother’s. He slowly put all the clues together, and he learned to know himself by looking around him. The filth at home, the flecks of urine on the floor around the toilet, making it crunch when Dad walked there in his slippers, the dust bunnies under the beds, swirling about gently in the breeze from the open window. The sheets slowly yellowing in the children’s beds until they were finally changed. All the dirty dishes in the sink; when you turned on the faucet the fruit flies flew up, roused from their hiding places between the plates. The rings of dirt in the bathtub like tidewater marks in the harbor, the garbage bags piling up one on top of another next to the shoe rack in the hall.

  Benjamin began to realize that not only was their home dirty, so were the people in it. He began to put the puzzle pieces together, comparing himself to others. During class he would clean the rind of dirt under his nails with the help of a mechanical pencil. It helped pass the time, and he liked that the task gave immediate results. He gently dragged the metal under each nail and the dark streaks disappeared without a trace, one after the next. He gathered the grime in a little pile on his desk. But when he happened to glance at the fingernails of his classmates, he never saw any dirt; someone took care of their hands, made sure they were clean, that their fingernails were clipped. The art teacher, who often leaned over him, smelled of the coffee on his breath, and some kind of apple-scented detergent that lingered in the knitted sweaters he wore. One time he asked Benjamin to stay behind after class. The teacher squatted down beside Benjamin’s desk and said that sometimes when he was helping him he noticed that Benjamin smelled like sweat, and he didn’t want to interfere but he knew how teenagers were, they took every opportunity to be cruel to each other, and one day they would tease him because of his body odor. Benjamin listened carefully to his art teacher. There are really just two things to remember, he said: Change your socks and your underwear every day. Shower every morning. That evening Benjamin took stock of his hygiene. When no one was looking, he stuck his hand inside his shirt, wiped his armpit, and smelled his fingers. For the first time, he smelled his own sweat. Suddenly he could see clearly.

  On the balcony outside, Pierre made one last gesture with his cigarette and flicked it away with his thumb and middle finger; it flew off like a firefly over the railing. He came in, quietly closing the balcony door behind him, took a few steps through the room, and then he was gone. The smell of vinegar lingered in Benjamin’s room after he left.

  Benjamin remained in bed. The lights in the parking lot flickered and came to life one by one, shining through the blinds and forming narrow spears of light on the wall. A small lamp on the windowsill emitted a faint glow that appeared as dots on the ceiling; they looked like the luminous jellyfish in a green sea he’d once seen on a nature show on TV.

  He listened to the sounds of the suburban night, two dogs barking hysterically at each other below. A few young guys ran across the square, trying to catch the subway; he heard them laughing. And, fainter but mightier, the distant roar of the big highway half a mile or so away. He should get up. The whole afternoon and evening had passed. He was tired, wanted to sleep, but there must be something wrong with someone who sleeps so much. He sat up in bed, slowly stood up, felt cold, went to the closet to get a sweater. On the other side of the door he heard Dad getting ready for bed. Dad always took his preparations with him into the hall, brushing his teeth there as if he didn’t want to miss anything that might happen. Then he went to the little lavatory next to the big bathroom, and only when he discovered that his visit to the toilet was making loud noises did he close the door, firmly and kind of irritated, as if someone else had left it open. He spat a few times into the sink, ran the tap, and then he was done. His heavy footfalls in the hall. Through his half-open door Benjamin saw him go by in his pajamas. Dad stopped and looked down at the floor.

  “Good night!” he called to the apartment.

  “Good night,” Mom replied from the living room.

  Dad lingered for a moment; it seemed like he was trying to find something in her tone, something to suggest that she wanted to stay up with him for a while after all, have a sandwich and a nip. But her response was curt and decisive, and he must have understood that it wasn’t going to happen this time. Benjamin heard him go into his bedroom. They’d been sleeping in separate rooms for a few years—Mom claimed it was because Dad snored so loudly. And Benjamin lay there in the dark, following along with the familiar, recurring sounds. He heard Mom turn down the volume of the TV immediately, saw the living room go dark as she turned out light after light. Mom always did this once Dad went to bed, because she knew that he might not be able to sleep and after half an hour he would get up and open the bedroom door and greedily peer out, on the hunt for company, and the instant that happened she turned off the TV, quick as a wink, so the living room was pitch black. Dad never went all the way to the living room; he stopped after a few steps into the hall. And then he went back to bed. Mom sat in the dark for a minute. Then she turned on the TV again.

  Benjamin woke up. He was in bed but didn’t remember returning to it. And he must have fallen asleep. He leaned over to look at the clock radio: 12:12. He heard the elevator come to life and pictured the lonely little
iron cube climbing through the darkness, hoisted through its shaft. He liked to lie here at night, listening to it work its way through the building; he knew all its sounds, the click when the locking mechanism secured the door and it began to move, the goofy chatter of the bell when someone accidentally hit the alarm, the little thud as the elevator arrived at a floor and finally stopped. He knew it was Nils coming home, and he was struck by the realization that this was the last time he would hear the familiar sound of Nils in the elevator, his quiet footfalls between the elevator and the apartment door, the jangle of his keys, which always started before he got out of the elevator, a typical manifestation of his rational nature: he wanted to be ready, didn’t want to waste any time standing outside the door and digging for his keys. The door opened and closed. Benjamin could see his brother in the yellow light beyond his door. He was glowing, shiny from the world outside, from the back of the truck on the gray June evening, chilly outdoor parties with lukewarm beer, from making out in bushes, echoey train platforms and crowded red buses streaming out into the suburbs. He stood there in his glow, unreachable, already gone, a legend who’d once lived in this house. Mom came to greet him and they went to the kitchen. Benjamin could hear only fuzzy bits of their conversation; he heard the fridge open and close, maybe someone got out the Emmentaler cheese? And the scrape of chairs being pulled out as they settled at the kitchen table, the dull murmur through three walls, hard to hear the words being exchanged but impossible to miss their tone, their gentle vowels, tolerant silences. Benjamin became calm, he became sad, he felt his heart beating, he knew he had to get out of bed before the chance passed him by, he had to rush to the kitchen and beg of Nils: Stay. He had to tell him there was no other choice, he had to stay, or else he honestly didn’t know what was going to happen. He knew that Nils’s departure meant something would be broken once and for all. Because how could he ever repair his family if one of its members disappeared? He also knew that Nils’s journey spelled danger for Benjamin himself. If Nils disappeared, that meant someone disappearing from reality, a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. Now there would be one less person to reassure Benjamin that this family existed and that he existed within it. Someone he could exchange glances with over the dinner table and who could silently affirm him: You exist. And this happened.

  He lay there. Felt his back pressing against the mattress. He thought about how far it was to the ground. Third floor. Thirty-five feet down, maybe forty. He wouldn’t survive that kind of fall, if the structure were to give way, if he happened to fall right through the concrete. He looked up at the ceiling, searching for something to hold on to, fumbling for sheets and pillows, otherwise he would tumble toward the ceiling, a free fall at sixty miles per hour, straight for the surface of the water, toward the luminous jellyfish.

  He had to get up, he had to run out. But how could he do that now, in the middle of a conversation that must not be interrupted under any circumstances? This was his duty, to fix things so his family would talk to each other just like Mom and Nils were doing out there, so that they loved each other and everything was okay. The friendly words came like a hum through the walls, an optimistic crooning, full of love that riveted him to the bed. He heard Nils say something and he heard Mom laugh. And then another sound, a door opening—Dad was up! On one of his tours through the apartment to see if anyone wanted to keep him company for a while. Mom hadn’t realized he was awake, because Benjamin still couldn’t hear any wrath, any shrill voices in the night; the conversation in the kitchen was still united, calm, intimate. He heard sounds he didn’t understand. He heard something rumbling across the parquet and saw the shape of Nils as he passed the crack in the door: he was rolling his suitcases out. Benjamin didn’t understand—he wasn’t supposed to leave until tomorrow. Weren’t they going to eat breakfast together and say good-bye? What was going on?

  He looked at the clock: 7:20.

  He had to get up!

  Dad walked by outside, no longer in pajamas, now fully dressed. “Do you have everything?” he heard Dad say.

  “Yeah,” said Nils.

  Struggling with suitcases, the door opening. Benjamin wanted to scream but couldn’t get a word out.

  “Good-bye, my boy,” said Dad. “Take care of yourself. And call when you can.”

  The door closed.

  | 16 |

  8:00 A.M.

  The sky opens and an insane downpour engulfs the car, and soon after the rain comes the wind. Benjamin can see the signs of it in the sudden darkness, in the pennants tugging at their poles above hotel façades, and in a pedestrian leaning into the storm as he walks down the sidewalk. This is the sort of wind that might blow a city away, a storm that should have a human name.

  And as fast as the storm arrived, it passes. The brothers climb out of the car, the air clear after the cloudburst. They cross the cemetery. Dirt has splashed onto the headstones; the water is still flowing away in the ditches. The path is narrow, the dead crowded close on either side of the gravel they’re walking on. Benjamin and Nils side by side, Pierre not far behind, reading aloud the names of those who have died. He sometimes informs his brothers of the details, reading the poems carved into the headstones. Those who died young especially capture his attention.

  “Twelve years old!” Pierre calls.

  He walks with his eyes cast down at the headstones, stops, Benjamin hears him cry out behind them: “Oh shit, here’s a seven-year-old!”

  Behind a low wall is a gray concrete building—the crematorium. Benjamin visited one like it a long time ago, on a class trip, and there are some things he’ll never be able to forget. He saw the refrigeration rooms and the freezer rooms where the coffins were stored before being burned. Dead people in rows, waiting to disappear. The industrial handling, the forklifts that ferried the coffins back and forth. The staff’s jargon, gibes and shouts as they transported the bodies, as if they were working at a fruit warehouse. Lined up in the heat, illuminated by the yellow glow of the oven, the children watched as a coffin was fed into the fire. Through a small glass pane they could observe the raging fire as wood, fabric, flesh melted into one, was destroyed. The crematorium operator took out a stainless steel container that looked like the pans they served food out of at school. He had a long shovel that he used to scoop out the human remains. There was a basket right next to the oven where the attendant placed things that the fire hadn’t destroyed. Amalgam fillings, nails from the coffin. The children were allowed to peer into the basket; the attendant held it out, shaking it like a bag of candy. Benjamin saw screws that had been in hips, prostheses, the remains of insulin pumps and pacemakers, the knickknacks of death, covered in ash. The man warned the children that it was time to look away if they wanted to, and some of the students turned to look at the wall, but Benjamin watched attentively as the operator raked what was left of the skeleton into a container. Some of the bones were so intact that you could see their shapes. The man used the shovel to separate the largest pieces. Then the container went into a crusher and then, as the fine powder was poured into an urn, it struck Benjamin that it wasn’t ash, as he’d always thought. It was crushed bone.

  The brothers step through the door of the crematorium; the small anteroom is like a lobby, with an unattended counter. Pierre presses an electronic doorbell and it rings somewhere far off. Benjamin looks around. This is like standing in the middle of a working life and a private life at the same time, it’s both an office and a break room, with open almanacs and chewed-on pencils on the counter, a photograph of a hockey team on the wall. A man comes out from the inner parts of the crematorium, and it’s obvious from the start that death is handled differently here than at the funeral homes, where slender people dressed in black serve coffee to widows. The man arrives with a jangle of keys, wearing jeans that have only a little color left down the sides.

  “We’re here for our mother’s urn,” Nils says, taking a folder from
his laptop bag, spreading the papers out on the counter, handing one of them to the man, who starts typing at his computer.

  Silence.

  “Right,” he says. “Yes, here she is. But isn’t she supposed to be interred today, this afternoon?”

  “No, there’s been a change,” Nils says. “I called earlier this morning to cancel the interment.”

  “That’s odd,” says the man. “I don’t have anything about that here.”

  “I got a confirmation.”

  The man types at his computer, leaning close to make out the information. A radio is on in the next room, and, farther off, an echoey clatter, like gunshots in a hangar, followed by intense voices. Benjamin imagines a unique problem happening to whoever’s back there, a coffin that turns out to be too large for the oven door.

  “Who did you speak with when you called?” the man asks. “It wasn’t me.”

  “I don’t recall. But it was only a little while ago.”

  “Really,” he says. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Nils flips through his documents again, taking out more of them and placing them side by side on the counter.

  “Here’s the notice to the county administrative board, saying that we intend to bury our mother on our own and that we want to pick up the urn. I filled it in and e-mailed it to them this morning.”

  The man behind the counter doesn’t touch the documents, just leans over to read them.

  “This isn’t a notice,” he says. “It’s an application. You have to have it approved by the county administrative board.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t just come and get an urn. You have to apply for a private ash-scattering approval. You tell them where you want to scatter the ashes and attach a map, or a nautical chart if you want to do it at sea. Then the board reads your application and they typically contact you with their decision after a week or so.”