THIRTY-TWO
“Is that a gun in your hand, Leonard?” Herr Silverman says, and his voice sounds a little shakier than usual—like maybe he’s more freaked than he’s letting on.
“Nazi P-38,” I say, and my voice sounds hard.
“Your grandfather’s war trophy?”
I nod.
He’s still a few feet away from me, but I feel sort of boxed in a little, so I take a step back.
“You wanna give that to me?” he says, and takes a step toward me with his palm outstretched. I can tell he’s really freaked now, because his hand is shaking, although he’s trying hard to steady it.
“Did they teach you how to deal with an armed student when you attended teacher school?” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “Was there a class on this?”
“No, they certainly didn’t—and there definitely wasn’t,” he says. “Maybe there should have been. Is it loaded?”
“Yep. And the safety’s off,” I say, hearing the edge in my voice.
Herr Silverman lowers his hand and stiffens a bit.
I don’t really understand why I’m speaking to Herr Silverman this way.
I mean—he came to save me, right?
I called him on the phone because I wanted him to come.
But it’s like I can’t help myself.
It’s like I’m too fucked up to be nice and appreciative.
“Just give me the gun and everything will be okay.”
“No it won’t. That’s such a fucking lie! You don’t lie, Herr Silverman. You’re better than the rest. You’re the only adult I really trust and look up to. So tell me something else, okay? Try again.”
“Okay. Did you write the letters from the people in the future?” Herr Silverman asks.
His asking that kind of surprises me, and invokes all these intense feelings I don’t want to feel. “Yes. Yes, I did,” I say in this defiant, almost yelling voice.
“What did they tell you? What did they say?”
“They said a nuclear holocaust is coming. The future world is covered with water, like Al Gore predicted. People kill each other for the little land left. Millions die.”
“Interesting. But I’m sure they said other things too, because you’re not all gloom and doom, Leonard. I’ve seen the light in your eyes too many times. What else did they say?”
His saying that bit about there being light in my eyes makes my throat constrict even more and my eyes start to feel tight. “It doesn’t fucking matter, because those people don’t exist.”
“Yes, they do, Leonard,” he says, taking another cautious step toward me. “They really do. If you believe hard enough—and if you hold on. Okay—maybe you won’t find those exact people, but friends will arrive at some point. You’ll find others like you.”
“How do you know? How can you be so sure?”
“Because I used to write letters to myself from the future when I was your age and it helped me a great deal.”
“But did you meet the people you imagined in the future?”
“I did.”
I’m kind of caught off guard by this information, and suddenly I’m truly curious about Herr Silverman’s life.
Who are the people he wrote to?
“How did you find them?”
“Writing those letters helped me figure out who I was and what I wanted. Once I knew that, I could send out a clear message so that others could respond appropriately.”
I think about it and say, “In the future I man a lighthouse with my wife, daughter, and father-in-law. We send out a great beam of light every night even though no one ever sees it.”
“That’s beautiful,” he says. “You see?”
But I don’t see, so I say, “Writing those letters made me feel even more fucked up.”
“Why?”
“I got to thinking that I wanted to live in that fictional world now—that the better world in the letters made me want to exit this world. That’s probably what led to me being here with a gun in my hand.”
Herr Silverman winces almost unnoticeably, but I see it. Then he says, “You ever feel like you’re sending out a light but no one sees it?”
I look at the lights of the skyline reflected in the water and think about how they are always here—every night—whether people look or not.
And mostly, people don’t look.
It doesn’t matter what I do.
It really doesn’t.
Herr Silverman steps closer, and I don’t back away. He takes off his coat, puts it between his knees, and starts to roll up his right sleeve, which makes my heart pound again, because I’ve wanted to know what the hell is under his sleeves for so long now.
When he gets the cuff up around his elbow, he uses his cell phone to light his wrist. “Take a look.”
I don’t see scars or needle marks or an abundance of hair or an unsightly burn or anything like that.
It’s a tattoo of a pink triangle—what the Nazis used to label homosexuals in the concentration camps; I know because Herr Silverman taught us that.
“Who did that to you?” I ask, thinking that maybe he had his own version of Asher Beal.
“I did it to myself. Well, I hired a tattoo artist to do it.”
“Oh,” I say.
It takes a moment, but finally, I realize what he’s telling me.
“I don’t care that you’re gay. It doesn’t bother me,” I say, because I feel like I should.
I never really thought about Herr Silverman being gay before, but it sort of makes sense in retrospect. He never wore a wedding ring, nor did he ever talk about his wife—and he’s a good-looking, well-dressed, middle-aged, steadily employed man who would make someone a great husband.
He smiles at me. “Thanks.”
“Why did you tattoo your wrist like that?”
“I tried to be who I thought the world wanted me to be all through high school. Always trying to please everyone else—keeping my true self invisible. It took me nineteen years to figure out who I was and another twelve or so months to admit it. I didn’t want to ever forget again. I tattooed my wrist with a symbol. So the answer would always be there.”
“Why that symbol?” I say.
“I think you know why, Leonard. It’s probably the same reason you have a Nazi gun in your hand. I was trying to prove something to myself. I was trying to take control.”
“So why don’t you show your students your tattoo?”
“Because it might hinder my ability to get an important message to people who need it.”
“What’s the message?”
“It’s the message of my classes—especially my Holocaust class.”
“Yeah, but what is it?”
“What do you think it is?”
“That it’s okay to be different? We should be tolerant.”
“That’s part of it.”
“So why not be different and promote tolerance by showing everyone your pink triangle?”
“Because that might make it difficult for some of your classmates to take me and my message seriously. It’s sort of don’t ask, don’t tell for gay high school teachers—especially those of us who teach controversial Holocaust classes,” Herr Silverman says, and then starts rolling up his other sleeve almost all the way to his armpit. “Here—use my phone to read this.”
I transfer the P-38 to my left hand and take hold of his cell phone.
I run the light up the inside of his entire arm.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.