Over the holiday break we got a pet Nazi. This was a little unexpected. My mother says it is not really a pet. She’s very particular that, beneath the costume, the Nazi is in fact a man, a very sad and troubled man who needs our love and sympathy and forgiveness, and under no circumstances should we tell the other children or their parents we have a pet, especially not a pet Nazi. I’m not sure I believe her. The Nazi answers when I call him, is waiting for me when I come home from school, watches me fall asleep, and eats whatever I feed him. That sounds like a pet to me.
The Nazi is in fact Mr. Karl Schmidt. He’s lived in town fifty-three years. Before being a Nazi he was a German. Not too long ago I brought the Nazi in for Show-and-Tell. All the children straightened in their seats to get a better view of the Nazi at the front of the class. It is easy not to notice Mr. Karl in a crowd. His hair is silver and his face plain, a little pinkish around the cheeks. He could be anybody’s grandfather. That day he wore a tweed jacket. His pants were finely ironed and pleated down the front.
Mr. Karl did not say much about the war. He worked as a pastry chef in one of the camps. Nazis, he said, had voracious sweet tooths. If the Allies had bombed the sugar factories, he said, the war would have ended much sooner. He held out his hands. Everyone smacked their lips as they got to touch the Nazi’s hands.
Mr. Karl explained how after the war he tried to have himself punished. He dressed in his full SS uniform and waited at his house for the Allies to kick down the door. Nothing happened. He surrendered at the courthouse. They searched the archives. Karl Schmidt was not on the register of crimes against humanity. The lawyers questioned him. Mr. Karl confessed he was a monster. He wept. No, the lawyers told him. You don’t act like a Nazi. You must have been one of the good ones. The magistrate dismissed his case. They declared him a reformed Nazi.
The other children were restless. They paid attention in social studies. They knew about Nazis. They wanted details. When you dream of the dead are they naked or clothed? What do Nazis eat for breakfast? Do bodies make noises after they’re dead? Did you make a necklace from Jew teeth? Mr. Karl could not answer any of these questions. Someone said maybe Mr. Karl was not a real Nazi. Someone else said he was just pretending. Mr. Karl said, We cannot pretend to be what we already are.
Mr. Karl shuffled awkwardly on the playground, his chin pressed to his chest, his mouth twisted. He sat on the bench and watched the children play.
Look at his sneakers! someone joked. Would a Nazi actually wear sneakers rather than loafers? Mr. Karl sat there, staring at his sneakers until someone threw the kickball at his face.
I received an A- for my Show-and-Tell report. Ms. Stanley wrote one comment in red ink: QUESTIONABLE HISTORY. This led to the incident and why I am now in detention. I am supposed to be writing what I have learned from the incident and why pretending is inappropriate, but when you put a boy like me in detention with a ream of paper you’re asking for trouble.
I am not a troublemaker. My father says it is not every day a fifth-grader like me leapfrogs into the seventh grade and I am at the age when one must learn about the bread and butter of history and not that liberal feel-good shit on the news. I know about Nazis. My father once showed me a pair of socks he keeps wrapped in tissue paper. These were special socks. Project Angora, he said. That’s when the Nazis made socks from the fur of genetically-modified rabbits for pilots and U-boat captains. I touched the socks. They were very soft. I brought the socks to class. I could shoot torpedoes at an enemy ship if I was wearing socks like these. I told Ms. Stanley it’s easy to kill people when you’re comfortable and at a distance. She started to say something then stopped and here I am in detention. It is an odd thing to be a child. It is even stranger to be an adult and not know how to finish a sentence.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m in detention because of what happened with my pet Nazi.
News of a Nazi at the seventh grade Show-and-Tell gets around. Mr. Karl and his wife were invited to dinner parties. Nobody in town had ever seen a reformed Nazi. Others were not so enthused. One morning Mr. Karl went to fetch the newspaper and found a mangled rabbit carcass on his lawn. Someone had written in blood on the door: BUTCHER. One afternoon a rock came through the window with a note wrapped to it with a rubber band: GO HOME, NAZI SCUM.
Mr. Karl met with the local rabbi and explained he wanted to make restitution for his crimes and wondered if an apology would end the animal butchery on his lawn. The rabbi told Mr. Karl Jews have been wondering that same thing for five thousand years.
Not many people showed up at the synagogue for Mr. Karl’s official apology. Most were old like Mr. Karl and wore etherized expressions. Mr. Karl talked for hours. He apologized. He confessed guilt. Mr. Karl told them he could no longer pretend this never happened. He held up his hands and told them these were the hands of a poor soap-maker, not a butcher. Nobody was interested in Mr. Karl’s remorse. They appreciated his shame and expressed admiration for the eloquence of his guilt, but after fifty-three years it was time to move forward. Let the dead make sense of the dead, the rabbi told Mr. Karl.
It was all too much for Mr. Karl’s wife. She left him. She had not known about the good Nazi Karl Schmidt. She had only known Karl who worked forty-two years at the R&R Soap Factory. Karl who kept his lawn neatly trimmed. Karl who sang Christmas carols. Mr. Karl who loved Christmas. Nazis are very enthusiastic about decorations, you know.
It was my mother’s idea to have Mr. Karl come live with us. Every week we go to the pet shelter and rescue an animal. That’s my mother’s gift—she finds homes for strays. We were at the shelter wandering the back rooms when who should we see inside one of the kennels but Mr. Karl Schmidt. My mother wanted to know how a man ended up in an animal cage but the people at the shelter shrugged and said there were too many strays to keep track of.
Mr. Karl had let himself go. He sat in the corner in his own feces stroking a maniacal beard and polishing the medals on his old SS uniform. Detention is cruel and ridiculous, but it’s not easy being a reformed Nazi.
So we rescued Mr. Karl.
Before leaving the shelter he had a consultation with the veterinarian. My mother said it was ridiculous but this was the policy for strays.
Mr. Karl refused to take off the uniform. The Nazi hunters will be looking for me, he said, slumping against the wall, weary and frustrated with a shame nobody else wanted to acknowledge. He insisted his name was on the list.
Mr. Karl had seen a program on the television about the men and women dedicated to searching out and punishing former Nazis. Like this one episode, where a ninety-five-year-old blind grandfather was extradited from Singapore. The Nazi hunters had testimony from witnesses claiming the grandfather had been a butler to a commander at the labor camp in Frohburg which may or may not have made the grandfather an accessory to the murder of a gypsy. During his trial for crimes against humanity, the grandfather was only allowed to wear his pajamas. Then he died in his sleep in a prison cell and everyone said they were glad the monster was dead.
This is all true. Believe me, you can’t make up history.
The veterinarian checked Mr. Karl’s heart rate and listened to him breathe. Turns out Mr. Karl did not have fleas. When the veterinarian suggested we find a clinic that specialized in psychological disorders, Mr. Karl tapped the center of his chest and said the pain was here. No, the veterinarian corrected, tapping the side of Mr. Karl’s head: all pain is here.
My father was not pleased with our new pet. After a few weeks I asked him why Karl wanted to be a Nazi so bad and he said it was no different than me and baseball. Last year I tried out for the baseball team. I practiced every day. I wanted to be a baseball player more than anything. After tryouts the coach told me I can’t hit, can’t throw, and round the bases like a fruit fly that has lost one of its wings. My father said we’re all really good trying to be the thing we are not, but we’re miserable at being what we are.
This explains why Mr. Karl decided to become a Jew. Oh, yes. This really happened. Let me explain.
Mr. Karl slept on the floor in my room. He was my pet, after all. He stayed up late worrying about the Nazi hunters. What if they don’t find me? What if they don’t recognize me? What if they’ve forgotten about me after all these years?
I told Mr. Karl maybe he should look to God for his answers. I don’t know much about religion but I’ve heard my father say more than once that people who believe in God may be miserable but at least they’re being miserable with a purpose. That’s what Mr. Karl needed—a purpose for his misery. There are too many religions, Mr. Karl said. Not a problem, I said. I told Mr. Karl he should become a Jew. I had given a report last year on the five-thousand-year history of the Jews and they are the religion to beat. Mr. Karl said it was sweet of me to be so encouraging but there was probably a quota for the number of Jews at any time. Besides, he said, what about the Nazi hunters? How will they find me if I become a Jew? It took me a few days to think about that. Then I came up with the answer: when the Nazi hunters put his name on the list all those years ago they must have known that someday he would become a Jew. I told him they’re not looking for Karl Schmidt, but Kalev Schmeichel.
We agreed this was only logical.
The next morning at breakfast we announced to my father that Karl the Nazi would become Kalev the Jew.
My mother dropped the eggs. My father chewed his toast and pushed his spoon around in the oatmeal. Then he shrugged, resigned to this new development in human evolution. He said that if God can make pomegranates grow in the desert then it’s possible to turn old Nazis into Jews.
Mr. Karl went to synagogue like a zealot and pretty soon it was time for his circumcision ceremony. The rabbi explained to Mr. Karl and Mr. Karl explained it to me.
It was a sacred event. This is how HaShem gathers his elect. The rabbi quoted the prophets who taught to remove the foreskins of thy heart and let thy flesh be not a stranger to mine eye. He told Mr. Karl that which is shameful must be circumcised and so long as he had that unseemly thing between his legs he would forever be a Nazi. It is written, the rabbi told him, that one cannot be cleansed if he is not first soiled. How can God heal us if he first does not make us bleed?
Well, Mr. Karl had a few concerns. He was concerned about a God who requires men to drop their pants to get into heaven. He said that if God wants to look at his cock he has to pay for that privilege like anybody else.
I apologize for using inappropriate language, but Ms. Stanley always criticizes us when our themes are not authentic.
I knew all about circumcision. I got an A+ on my World Religions report. I told Mr. Karl what really happens with a circumcision. You see, when Abraham was circumcised all those years ago a weird thing happened. On the eighth day the foreskin grew back. So, Abraham had it removed a second time. Every eighth day until the harvest moon Abraham removed his foreskin only to see it magically return. Mr. Karl wondered what God could possibly want with so much foreskin. That’s simple. I told him it was for the Messiah. You see, after each circumcision the rabbi speaks a few magic words, then once it’s finished he sends the foreskin with a courier to Jerusalem where it’s carefully stored in a vault with all the other Jewish foreskins across the globe. It’s been that way since the beginning of the Jews. At the appointed hour, a council of rabbis will fashion the millions of foreskins into the Messiah who will then drown the world with his piss and leave behind only the sanctified. This is all in the Midrash, by the way. Look it up. Well, except the last part. I made that up. But I told Karl everything else was true. Mr. Karl said my story was disgusting. I told him it was just good religion.
The circumcision took place at our house. There was a nice turnout. People arrived early, eager to find a good seat.
The men formed a circle around Mr. Karl. The rabbi whispered a prayer. Mr. Karl glanced around the room. Many of our friends and neighbors had come out of curiosity. Their faces were nice and they were nasty. When the rabbi said amen the other Jews said amen and a few of the neighbors made the sign of the cross.
It was time to remove the SS uniform. The knife steadied in the rabbi’s hand. Mr. Karl struggled, suddenly unsure what was happening. He shouted they were hurting him. Someone in the crowd yelled to take off the uniform. Mr. Karl was begging for them to stop. They pushed me out of the way. I screamed for the men to stop. I screamed they were hurting my pet. Nobody listened. The rabbi started mumbling another prayer. He looked possessed.
In a few minutes the circumcision had become a dismemberment. There were scraps of Nazi uniform and medals scattered all over the carpet. There were fluffy angora socks. The rabbi sorted through the pieces but nobody saw Mr. Karl. Someone pointed out the window and said there was a naked man hiding in the bushes. When we looked we found nobody.
People nibbled on crackers. They spoke in hushed voices. Someone said it was a pity because Mr. Karl would have made a nice Jew. Someone else said he was an impostor. The rabbi said that since the days of Abraham the birth of a Jew has been a mess and a mystery.
When I shared all this for my theme on WHAT DID YOU DO OVER THE HOLIDAY BREAK? there was an incident. I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t pretending, and even if it was it wouldn’t be inappropriate. I got a pet Nazi. I lost my pet Nazi. These things happened. I cried. Of course I cried. I wanted to go look for Mr. Karl who would be cold and hungry and might not know the way home. I wanted to be with my friend who was now just another stray. My parents wouldn’t let me. They said I should stop reading so much history and stick to science where things make sense.