Chapter 31 Section 29

Babette and I each pushed a shiny shopping cart down the wide aisle.We walk past a family shopping in sign language.I kept seeing colored lights in front of my eyes. "How are you feeling?" she said. "Fine, I feel fine. How are you?" "Why don't you go for a medical checkup? Wouldn't you feel better if you found out that nothing happened?" "I've had two checks. Nothing." "What did Dr. Chakravarty say?" "What can he say?" "He speaks fantastic English. I love hearing him talk." "Not as much as he loves to talk."

"What do you mean he's talkative? You mean he talks at every possible opportunity? He's a doctor and has to talk. You're paying him to talk, in a practical sense. Yours Meaning, is he showing off his good English? Did his words bother you?" "We need some thicker glass." "Don't leave me here alone," she said. "I'm going to the fifth aisle." "I don't want to be alone, Jack. I'm sure you know that." "We'll get through this," I said, "maybe stronger than ever. We're determined to get better. Babette is not a neurotic. She's strong, healthy, cheerful, positive. Say yes. That's what Babette is."

We walked down the aisle together and waited together at the checkout.Babette bought three tabloids for old man Treadwell's next course.We read them together while we waited in line.Then we walked to the car together and loaded up the purchases.We sat next to each other as I drove home. "But there's something wrong with my eyes," I said. "What do you mean?" "Chakravarty thinks I should see an ophthalmologist." "Is it those colored light spots again?" "yes." "Stop wearing those sunglasses." "I can't teach a Hitler lesson without wearing it."

"Why can't you teach?" "I need it, that's all." "These sunglasses are stupid and useless." "I created a profession," I said, "maybe I don't understand everything about it, but that's one more reason not to mess around." The Illusionary Crisis Center was closed and its hotline quietly cut.People seem to be about to forget.Even if I feel somehow abandoned and taken for granted, I can hardly condemn them. I faithfully went to my German lessons.In order to welcome the delegates to the seminar on Hitler, I started to learn from my teacher what I might have to say.The workshop is still a few weeks away.All windows were blocked with furniture and debris.Howard Dunlop sat in the middle of the room, his oval face looming in the dim sixty-watt light.I began to wonder if I was the only one he talked to.I also began to wonder if he needed me more than I needed him.An embarrassing and terrifying thought.

On a broken table near the door was a book in German with the title Das Aegyptische Todtenbuch printed in ominous bold typeface. "What book is that?" I said. "The Egyptian Book of the Dead," he whispered. "A German bestseller." I used to wander into Denise's room when she wasn't home.I picked things up and put them down, stood behind the curtains and looked out, peeked into an empty drawer, put my feet under the bed to rummage around, and flipped through the books absently. Babette listens to the radio forum program. I start throwing things.Stuff in and out of closets, stuff in cardboard boxes in basements and attics.I threw out letters, old paperbacks, magazines I kept ready to read, pencils that needed sharpening.I threw away my tennis shoes, cotton socks, gloves with torn fingers, old belts and bow ties.I found stacks of student reports, a broken wooden pole from the director's chair.I threw these away.I threw away every spray can that wasn't covered.

The gas meter makes a peculiar noise. I saw a newsreel on TV that night that the Bakery Town police were carrying a bag of dead people out of someone's backyard.The reporter said two bodies had been found and it was believed that there were more bodies buried in the same compound.There might be many more bodies, maybe twenty, thirty—nobody knows for sure.He draws a circle over the area with his arm.It's a big backyard. The reporter was a middle-aged man, articulate and powerful, but with a touch of intimacy, conveying a sense of constant dealings with the audience, of shared fun and mutual trust.Excavations will continue overnight, he said, and television footage will cut back to the scene as soon as progress is confirmed.When he said it, it sounded like lovers swearing.

Three nights later, I wandered over to Heinrich's room, where a TV had been improvised.Wearing a jersey with a hood, he was sitting on the floor watching live coverage of the same scene above.The backyard was brightly lit, and men were digging in the mounds with picks and shovels.In the foreground of a light snowfall stands a reporter, bareheaded and wearing a sheepskin jacket, doing his latest report.The police said they had the exact circumstances; the diggers were skilled and methodical; the excavation had been going on for more than seventy-two hours, but no new bodies had been found.

A feeling of unfulfilled expectations.A sense of melancholy and emptiness enveloped the scene.Frustrated, regretful emotions.We ourselves—my son and I, quietly watching, felt it too.It's in the room, permeating the air from the pulsating stream of electrons.The reporter seemed at first to be merely apologetic, but as he went on to talk about the missing mass graves, he pointed at the diggers, shook his head, and grew more and more bleak, almost begging for our sympathy and understanding. I try not to be disappointed.