“I’m going through a bad patch.”
“So what else is new? Is it Ophélie?”
“Not really.”
“What then? Is Monsieur having a crisis of conscience?”
I told him the whole story, about the April 24 massacre, about papa’s past. I gave it to him in bullet points like it was a corporate debriefing. I skipped over my crisis of conscience. He skipped over his shock and his questions.
“Let’s go to the café, we can talk there. But I’m warning you, the boss wants your hide — or my head. Your sales figures for the last six months are a disaster, and he’s obviously got someone keeping tabs on every day, every minute, you’re out of the office. Congratulations. You’ve set a new world record! I’ve put in a good word for you, but this is a company, not a church, so you’re going to turn this fucking thing around right now or three months from now you’ll be clearing your desk. Is that clear?”
It was clear. I was going to be fired. My stay of execution was complicated by other factors, the union wouldn’t get involved, there were too many human-resources hoops to jump through, too much red tape. The company was doing well, but per capita revenue is per capita revenue. It’s a principle we’ve been taught to carry around like a sick man carries a thermometer. The company philosophy is simple as a biblical exhortation: Better we throw out one bad apple rather than risk infecting the whole barrel. The “we” in that sentence is a formality — the rank and file swallow management decisions hook, line and sinker and parrot them as their own. It’s inevitable, given our profit-sharing system. How was I going to break the news to Ophélie? She wouldn’t believe it. Say nothing, tomorrow is another day, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. .
Monsieur Candela has a flair for understanding things without anyone needing to explain. Our conversation was brief; in his half-closed eyes I saw all the wisdom of the world. I also saw the swift hand that wise men raise to ward off evil.
Stirring his coffee, he said, “Listen to me, Rachel, I know about these things, in my family, we’ve seen it all, hardship, war, deportation, more war, exile, contempt, loneliness, you name it, so listen up: you have to draw a line through this whole thing right now or it’ll destroy you. First of all, you’re grieving for your parents, and feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to bring them back. You need to do what any good son would do — visit their graves once a year and pray for the repose of their souls. Thank them for the gift of life they’ve given you and let them know that you are making the most of that gift. As for the rest of it — the Holocaust and all the other atrocities in this world — pray to God they never happen again. That’s all you can do. Read if you have to, campaign if you have to, make what little difference you can. Anything more is the devil’s work, anything more means letting your hatred and your thirst for revenge get the better of you. If you let evil in, it will only breed evil, and without realising it, you’ll become a monster. Okay, now, let’s get back to the office. Work is therapy.”
Another favourite Americanism. You wipe the slate clean, spit on your hand, get back behind the wheel. His advice seemed to be to deal with evil by forgetting, which is the worst evil. I was disappointed, but not very. I had expected Monsieur Candela to enlighten me and he had. But was light enough?
Later that afternoon, he phoned and told me that if I needed him he was there for me, then abruptly hung up like a real boss who’s said what he has to say. I wanted to say thank you, but he caught me unawares. Besides, when it comes to expressing my feelings, I take the Buddhist approach: the less you say, the better.
After work, I went to a bookshop. There was a book I needed to pick up. This would be the last book. A man can’t live off welfare even with a couple of hundred share options. We have a lot in common, me and the guy who owns the bookshop. As he gave me book, there was a gleam in his eye. “This is the book you should have started with,” he said. It was true. It hadn’t occurred to me. Urged on by horror, I had started at the end, with the Nuremberg Trials, and slowly worked my way back to the beginning, the hunt for war criminals, the discovery of the camps, the Normandy landings, the war itself, the phony war, etc. All the way back to the source. And this book was the source. When I’d asked him to get me a copy a couple of weeks earlier, he shook his head. “It might be tough to get hold of. It used to be banned. I’ll do what I can, otherwise, you can try secondhand bookshops. . I’ll give you a few addresses.” In the end, he managed to track down a copy of the book which had unleashed the most terrible tragedy on the world. On me. Mein Kampf.
I don’t know how many times I read it. Angrily, compulsively at first, then more calmly, finally with an increasingly anxious serenity. I was looking for the key, the spell that had persuaded intelligent, able-bodied men like my father to shed their humanity and become killing machines. There is nothing in this book, nothing but dishwater, the ramblings of a hick from the sticks, the pretentious claptrap of tin-pot chiefs who dream of being immortal dictators, slogans for election posters in a slave republic. “God helps those who kill the Jews; An Aryan in the hand is worth all the Jews in the world; Preserve the bloodline, beware of contamination; Is your neighbour sick or handicapped? Kill him.” If this was all it took for evil to sway the Germans and turn them into Nazis, you had to hand it to Hitler. I had been expecting some irrefutable line of reasoning, an alchemy of complex arguments, devastating revelations about a worldwide conspiracy against the German people, a chain reaction linking one chapter to the next, extraordinary circumstances skillfully orchestrated, I had expected Satan to have penned certain passages supplying the ink and the details for the rest of it. But there was nothing. All it had taken for evil to triumph was a beardless, blustering soldier, a depressive, syphilitic housepainter, a few well-turned phrases, a muscular title—My Struggle—and a socioeconomic context that fostered grievances, condemnations, recriminations and hyperbole. There were, of course, other factors: the history of the country, its roots in centuries-old sects, in age-old myths filled with vague esoteric ideas, echoes of this or that, far-fetched theories, rediscovered mythology, new philosophies born in the heat of action, dreams of glory that might have come from an inmate at the local lunatic asylum or a drunk in the bar next door, and the lust for power that technical progress and scientific advancements inspire in a society desperate to reassert itself. You didn’t have to look too hard. What country doesn’t have demons locked up in its ancient cellars, what country doesn’t have warmongers, dreams of immortality, what people doesn’t have a few genes damaged by history, what people is not exposed to life’s slings and arrows, what religion hasn’t been rocked by scientific discoveries? There is but one humanity and evil lurks within us, in our very marrow.
I was sinking, I knew that. Worse still, I was gappling with trivial details when what I needed to do was cling to the simple facts. There was no reason for what had happened. To try to find a root cause for evil was absurd. Evil is. It has existed since the dawn of time. Looking for a means to analyse it or a ready-made explanation is pointless, and weighing every detail in the balance is self-defeating. I believe that evil is an endlessly recurring accident that sends good and bad drivers alike crashing into a wall. Good has meaning only at funerals, it is only at such moments that we see ourselves for what we truly are: dust which will be swept away with the next breath of wind. This, I firmly believe, is what goodness means. There is no better deterrent, there is no more salutary lesson. If this person has died, we too will die, there is nothing more to it. But there is no good, evil reigns supreme. What happened to my father happened to others in Germany and elsewhere, yesterday and the day before, and it will go on happening tomorrow and the day after. For as long as the earth revolves around the sun, for as long as life — this sweet madness — keeps company with its antidote mankind — this furious madness — there will be crimes and criminals and victims. And grief beyond measure. And accomplices. And bystanders. And despots who wash their hands of our suffering. And yet, this crime is not like other crimes, and it is this uniqueness I must face. Alone. More alone than anyone in the world.