Deadly Pedigree

1



New Orleans dances to its own addictive music, Nick Herald mused, as he angled the latest issue of the New Orleans phone book to catch the light from the windows along the east wall of his office. The Yellow Pages ad he’d placed was supposed to perk up his business. It wasn’t working.

There was an article somewhere under the debris on his desk, where his feet were propped, that said genealogy was fast becoming America’s favorite hobby, rivaling stamp collecting.

Not here, buddy! New Orleans–another world, another reality.

Clients were not exactly getting busy signals from his office phone, or lining up at his door, here in the Central Business District of the enigmatic city he had considered his home for the last fifteen years.

The ad had been a foolish waste of money, he now realized–more proof of his lack of commercial smarts. Despite the hyena pack of resentment that ate at his soul, he wished he were back in a familiar classroom at Freret University, preaching to uninterested undergrads the gospel of English literature. The paycheck had been regular.

“Can’t even see the damn thing,” he grumbled, squinting at the ad. Louisiana mosquitoes were bigger than the phone number and address. What a rip-off.

NEW ORLEANS GENEALOGICAL

SERVICES WORLDWIDE, INC.

J. N. Herald, Certified Genealogist, Ph.D.

He looked up. One of these days, he would get around to changing those blown light bulbs. He refused to admit he was succumbing to failing eyesight, yet another symptom of encroaching middle age.

Sure, it was the bad light. He shifted the dozens of folders on his messy desk and found his drugstore reading glasses.

The ad, in better focus now, seemed to strike the proper dignified tone he’d wanted, even if it was too small. Lawyerly, doctorish. So what if it strained the nature of his set-up here? He ran a one-man operation, yes; but he could call on genealogical stringers all over the country, all over the world. At least those lucky few he’d paid on time and in full; the others wouldn’t give him the local time of day. And so what if he wasn’t really incorporated? On the battlefield of business, as in the ivory tower of a college English department, Machiavellianism ruled supreme. In his former career, he’d learned that lesson too late.

Was his minor deception ethical? he asked himself, as he stood up and walked over to the windowsill for the dregs of the coffee. Hey, it was an imperfect world. Nobody had elected him to fix it? Next question, please.

The tooting of a big ocean-going ship on the river, the faint roar of a streetcar and other traffic clamor, and ephemeral brass-band notes from deep within the French Quarter merged with the asthmatic drone of the window air-conditioner. If it rained later, as the white anvil clouds rising above the humid city seemed to promise, he could jog down St. Charles Avenue without risking a heat stroke. That would be better than sitting in his office, breathing stale memories, wasting electricity.

Nick still dressed with the indifference to taste of a college English professor; but because he seemed younger than his actual age, he looked more like a dissolute graduate student at the end of his monthly stipend. Today, as usual, he wore baggy khakis, a wrinkled once-white Oxford shirt, and a pair of Clark’s sand-suede desert boots that had seen better days. When he needed a touch of formality, he donned a coat and tie hanging in a closet of the outer office. Too much thinking, too much drinking, and twenty-or-so years of recreational jogging had left him a bit too lean for his 5’10” frame. His hair was dark brown with only a few irascible gray ones; he wore it a bit longer than was wise for a professional genealogist, who, as a rule, dealt with people of a more conservative bent, especially here in the South. But haircuts were expensive.

That morning, in the office bathroom, he’d scraped his morose face with a dull razor; already he had an early five-o’clock shadow to go with the dried blood of nicks. His thick eyebrows extended in a nearly continuous bar above his brown eyes, which now surveyed the dusty still life that was his office.

Stacks and stacks of books, manuscripts, documents, and letters leaned precariously against the office walls and crowded every inch of shelf space. His apartment was full, too. He collected indiscriminately, compulsively. It had all started after his ejection from the faculty of Freret University.

Why did he impoverish himself gathering this material, traveling wherever in the area there was a likely repository of irreplaceable genealogical material about to be consigned to the dump? He saw his collection as a kind of witness-protection program. These yellowed and crumbling products of human interaction were those witnesses. Someday, they would reveal a lost connection, rescue a reputation, or resolve a mystery. His own career might have been salvaged by just such testimony.

As a genealogist, though, he’d learned never to trust any written record without question; false records, like mindless machines, repeat the lies of their creators. Doubt everything was his credo, as it had been for Descartes. He kept a small bust of the seventeenth-century French philosopher in a place of honor, high atop a section of shelves. It was a souvenir of a happier time, the summer he directed a study group in France and England. The bust had become something of a household god for him, a constant reminder that we can know only part of any story.

Nick’s humble office occupied two rooms on the fourth floor of a 1920s building, on an easily missed oblique street of downtown New Orleans, across Canal from the French Quarter. He had chosen the neighborhood precisely because it was off the beaten track. His address allowed him the solitude that, more and more, he had come to treasure, while still keeping him somewhat accessible to intrepid clients. If he lacked the acquisitive drive to be a genealogical tycoon, at least he could enjoy his marginality.

The neighborhood was a perennial casualty of the boom-and-bust cycles of the Louisiana economy. Empty lots, with tile floors of the buildings that had once occupied them, spoke of surgical arson. Nick had a relatively good view of the river through one such gap. New Deal-Art Deco government buildings and neo-Doric banks hulked over the modest, short block–symbols of power and success Nick envied and at the same time despised.

Lately, this section of downtown had become a mecca of affordable addresses for small businesses. The buildings now wore “For Sale or Lease” signs for only weeks instead of years before they were snapped up. It was a seller’s market. Somebody was making a mint where yesterday tourists were advised not to walk.

Between “Gemstones” and “General Merchandise,” his ad was nearly lost in the clutter. Nick now admitted to himself that he had bought the ad in the hope of striking up a friendship with the young saleswoman. A date would have been cheaper, he thought now, looking at the bill that had arrived at his post-office box that morning.

He sighed and opened a drawer in his desk. It wasn’t the first time he’d done something stupid in the name of love–or lust. And it wouldn’t be the last bill he swore he never received, when the dunning began. He crammed the bill into the drawer, among the many others, and slammed it shut.

Then he turned to his typewriter and got back to work.

His research was finished on this project. A thousand dollars waited for him–if he could justify the inflated bill. That feat was going to be trickier than the project had proved to be. It was big money, for him. Yet he hated to see the job come to an end, since it was the only one he had at the moment, phone-book ad notwithstanding.

He had been commissioned to do an extensive family tree for a woman who believed, based on family lore, that she was descended from the royalty of Sweden. Nick had found that this certainly was not the case. The truth was that her forefathers had been blacksmiths and shepherds since the dawn of history in Ireland.

There was no disgrace in the lack of royal ancestors; most of the world’s population was in the same boat, not to mention the fact that once every royal family was non-royal. But Nick knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. He could do more if she wished, follow other limbs, twigs, and roots by mail and fax and phone, but it would be even more expensive, and of course, this extended research wouldn’t change his findings. The facts of genealogy, he’d learned from his studies, can’t be forced, though force might make genealogy.

But genealogy could be delayed, through a bit of fudging by a creative, needy researcher. All he had to do was carefully withhold certain information, and then maybe he could milk this project–

A noise interrupted his ruminations.

Was that his office door? Maybe his old typewriter had a new complaint. He certainly wasn’t expecting anyone. It was two-fifteen. He could use some lunch, he suddenly realized, as he continued to listen.

There was definitely someone in the office now, Nick was sure. Maybe the janitorial crew, back for something forgotten that morning. Hell, it used to be all they did was empty the trash can, and that rarely. A new vitality had energized the neighborhood, which probably explained this annoying, unusual zealousness of the cleaning guys.

The wooden floor in the small anteroom gave a few initial creaks, and then there was silence.

“Is someone there? Can I help you?” Nick said, at once irritated, curious, and a bit apprehensive.

“Where…where are you?” replied a quavering voice.

Before Nick could reach the doorway that separated the two rooms, an elderly, unsteady man stumbled around the corner, taking mincing steps in the shackles of age and pain.

“Oh my! Such a nice office you have here,” the old man wheezed. “So many books…everywhere! That’s good. You are a smart fellow. And it is so cool in here! Thank God! Just give me a minute, just a minute, to get my breath.” He leaned against a section of the tall bookcases opposite the windows and wiped his forehead with an extraordinarily fine handkerchief. Nick saw the initials in ornate letters: M C.

He wondered briefly if the old guy was a member of his reading classes at the public library, or an escapee from one of the nursing homes where he sometimes gave genealogy lectures. He certainly wasn’t a janitor. From the old school, one of those who still dressed up, in their own sad way, to go downtown. A dandy once, probably, judging from the handkerchief; but he’d lost the knack.

No, Nick couldn’t place the old fellow. It was obvious to him, however, that his visitor was in serious respiratory distress. He must be feeble of mind, too, if he thought the office was blissfully cool, with that one pitiful air-conditioner.

“This is where they do the research, the research on the family?” the man asked finally.

“Yes, that’s correct. I’m Jonathan Nicholas Herald, and my business is genealogical research. People call me Nick, though I’ve been called worse–mostly by my ex-wife’s mother.”

The old man apparently didn’t catch the humor in Nick’s efforts to put him at ease. Maybe he couldn’t spare the breath to laugh.

“I do all the work myself,” Nick explained, trying to polish his image a bit. “I find it’s more efficient that way…would you like to sit down?” He cleared papers and books from a chair in front of his desk. “How about some coffee? It’s no trouble, really.”

The old man might very well be in the early stages of a heart attack. Great! Just what I need: OLD MAN FOUND DEAD IN GENEALOGIST’S OFFICE, SUSPICIOUS CIRCUSTANCES…another scandal to bust me out of another career.

“Thank you, no, no coffee. Just the chair. It is so hot on the stairs. You know, it is bad for my cough.” Having sunk with exhaustion into the offered chair, the old man coughed and made use of the silver flask from his coat for a few medicinal sips.

Nick was amused, but didn’t want to insult the old fellow by showing it. He remembered a great-uncle who had the same trick: a chronic, probably fake, cough to sneak in nips of whiskey.

“Maximilian Corban. Max. That’s me,” he began. “I am an old, sick man, alone in the world. I want that you should find someone who has my blood on–who has my blood in their veins. I am getting close to the end, and I want to go to my rest knowing there is someone who might say Kaddish for me.”

Not the way most people refer to their relations these days, Nick thought, this macabre emphasis on blood. But the old man’s native language was obviously not English. Relieved his visitor seemed to be recovering, Nick sat down at his desk. He didn’t have to ask what the Kaddish was; he had inexpertly stumbled through Judaism’s sacred prayer for the dead over a few departed family members and friends. Nick’s father was Jewish; and once, in those sunny days of youthful optimism before he had reached his present exalted level of skepticism, he had considered himself a believer in the undemanding Reform variety. But that time was as distant to him as a two-hundred-year-old census. Now, he no longer believed in very much that didn’t pay the rent.

“Well, Max, my services and fees are all laid out here on this sheet, along with the accrediting organizations I belong to, and a little bit about my academic qualifications. I’d be happy to work for you, if you find my terms acceptable.”

And I’d make a perfect heir, if you’re looking for someone to leave your estate to, Nick thought but did not say.

“This seems very high,” Corban complained. “What is this, brain surgery?”

“Genealogical research isn’t brain surgery, but it is a specialized field. I assure you, my work is worth it. You’ll notice that I’m a published genealogical author.”

This guy’s no dummy. He disarms you with pity, then pounces. Careful, don’t scare him off; you need this old fellow. Nick glanced at the drawer of bills as a reminder to remain civil. He concentrated on the businessman’s mantra: The customer is always right. The customer is always right…

Corban shook his head, fidgeted, seemed on the verge of leaving–if he even remembered where he was, which Nick doubted. He coughed, put up a shaking hand to beg a moment’s pause, and then brought the flask to his mouth. Apparently refreshed, he leaned forward with startling intenseness on his face.

Where had that come from? Nick felt irresistibly drawn forward, too, for he suddenly sensed that this old fellow had led an interesting life.

Nick was curious by nature, and he’d been in this business long enough to understand that oral history often revealed facts that written history missed. He unobtrusively foraged for a pencil and pad to take notes.

“Very well, young man,” Corban said. “We work something out, yes? But first, I will tell you how they bled my family tree dry. Hah! and they call us blood-suckers, even today.”

“I’m sorry, Max, but I don’t follow–”

“Listen; you will. My father and mother owned a nice little hotel on the Bodensee–you may know it as Lake Constance–on the German side. The wrong side.”

“You mean, because your family was Jewish?” Nick asked.

“Yes. Oh, but we were Germans, too! Jewish Germans, weren’t we? So we thought. I was a youngster at the time, working at the hotel, of course. And going to school, dreaming about the rich lives of the guests who came to fish and swim and sail on the lake. Chasing the good-looking girls of our village. Expecting to go to university.” Corban gave a wistful sigh.

“Do not think we were blind to the signs of what was coming. Everybody knew. They approved of what was going on, most of them. At first, it was gradual, but a secret? No, no.” He waved his hands as if refusing a second helping of something.

“We were so sure that they considered us Germans first, not simply Jews who happened to be unlucky enough to be living in the Reich. We loved German culture, thought we shared it with the Gentiles. We worshiped the culture, just like we loved the Fatherland. To tell the truth, we were Jewish only in memory; my father and mother had nothing to do with the old ways. Oh yes, we were very modern, very modern. God help us!

“A little cut here, a little cut there. That’s how it was. First came the pamphlets and posters with the Jews as vermin. Then we heard of the state propaganda films and the rumors against Jews, no longer just whispered, either. They had become bolder with their successes. We listened to the madman Hitler on the radio. We were shocked but still we did not see what was to come. How could anyone believe such craziness?

“Soon, our loyal guests started to treat us like we were dirty, less than human. Then came the boycott, the Anschluss, the swastikas painted everywhere on our property. My father kept saying if it got too bad, we’d cross over into Switzerland. If it got too bad…it was bad enough already! When, when? He told us he knew some people who would get us through. I remember Kristallnacht like it was yesterday; I can hear the glass shattering, I can feel it crunching under my shoes. It got worse. There was blood in the streets, in the synagogues. When, when are we to leave, Papa? Already it was too late.”

Corban raised his sleeve to reveal the blurred number. “You know about concentration camps?”

“I, uh…yes, I know something about them,” Nick said, feeling suddenly like a student who hadn’t finished studying for that day’s big test. “My father served in the Army in Europe. He saw some of the liberated concentration camps as they marched into Germany in 1945. And he made sure I read pretty widely on the subject.”

Corban shook his head. “You cannot know what it was like, what any of the camps were like, unless you were there. I never saw my parents or my two brothers or my three sisters again. All my aunts and uncles and cousins disappeared. Up in smoke.” He made a swirling gesture in the air. “You know, at the end, it happened so fast. We had no time to question, we didn’t know what to ask. Overnight we had become cattle led to slaughter.

“The rest is like a dream to me, a nightmare that will not leave me. Why was I allowed to live? I do not know. Sometimes I wonder if I am not dead.” He looked around the room, as if he didn’t recognize matter and form anymore.

“I worked in factories at first, because I was strong then, like you are when you are young, you know, a hard worker, determined to stay alive. I became ill, of course, but I managed to hide it for a time. They moved us as the fronts shifted. East, east I went, into the rising sun. It was cold, colder than I thought possible. Even the summers were without warmth and life. Don’t ask how long I was in this camp or that; I do not know. Time stopped for me. Somehow, God kept me alive, though there was less of me than you see now, thin and sick man that I am. I buried and burned the corpses and sorted the gold teeth and the hair for the Nazis as long as I could stand.”

Corban had a feverish look in his pale eyes, though the rest of him seemed exhausted. Nick moved his hand nearer the phone, ready to call for an ambulance.

But the old man continued his story, his fervor hardly abated.

“And then it was my turn. The war was going bad, very bad for the Nazis. They could not kill us fast enough, but they did not want the Allies to see what they were doing to us. Trains were scarce, so they marched us on the snowy roads. You see, they hoped we would drop dead and save them a bullet. I think we were going to Chelmno death camp. That was the rumor, anyway. One day, when there was nothing left of me except bones, a rag or two, and a weak pulse, I looked up–it was a sunny, cold, sparkling spring day, I remember–and there, there were horrified Russian soldiers in place of the Nazi guards.”

He blew his nose with startling, loud vigor.

“Acch, the things I could tell you.”

The trance broken, Nick took a deep breath and shifted in the chair, making it squeak loudly in the sudden quiet of the room.

Nick was strongly moved by Corban’s narrative. A hundred questions formed in his mind, the foremost being, If all of his relatives are dead, what the hell am I supposed to find?

“Look, Max,” Nick said, “I know this is painful for you. You don’t have to tell me anymore. Let’s just move on to the specifics of the project you want me to–”

“It helps, sometimes, to talk. No one wants to hear about it anymore.”

“I understand. Well, if that’s what you want. What happened after the war? What did you do? How did you get yourself back together?”

“After a few years in the displaced-persons camps, learning how to live like a human being again, for a while I cried, and a while after that I screamed in rage at the Nazis, all Germans, mankind, my parents for being so stupid–even at God. I got married to another survivor; she was French. God rest her soul, she is gone now. We came here, to New Orleans. You see, I liked the music and the river and the warmth; she liked the food and the street names.” He smiled sadly. “That is what we told ourselves. But really we both hoped that a few thousand miles would help us forget. It did not.” He paused for a minute, looked down, his eyes filling with tears.

“She could have no children. The Nazi devils–‘doctors’ they called themselves–they did…experiments on her. For many years she worked at a nice place on Royal, selling lace things and gifts for the tourists. This handkerchief, she gave me, for our forty-fifth wedding anniversary…I was a traveling dental-supplies salesman.” Corban wiped his eyes and looked up, a trace of an ironic snicker shining through the tears. “It was the one trade I learned in the camps. I had to do something,” he said, shrugging.

“I’m sorry, Max. That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard. You’re right, I can’t know what it was like. But–and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way–as a genealogist, I’m fascinated. There are few more difficult tasks in modern genealogy than tracing families torn apart or destroyed by the Holocaust. I’ve never actually worked on such a case, but truthfully, I’ve always wanted to. And more than that, since my father is Jewish, I understand your anguish on a more personal level.”

“Mazel-tov. Welcome to the club. Wait until you see the dues. Oy, they’re murder!”

“Well, I’m not a religious person. Currently, I mean.”

“When you shed your first real tear, you’ll come crawling back, young man, back to God, whatever you call Him. Like me. Mark my words.”

Nick felt sorry for the guy. How had he survived with those memories and remained sane? Was he sane? Well, clearly, he was eccentric, to put it charitably. Despite his compassion for him, Nick felt compromised, tricked into revealing such personal things to a stranger. He also believed he’d shed a sufficiency of genuine tears himself, thank you very much.

Nick was a private person by nature; his humiliation at Freret University had made him even more so. Though he rooted around, sometimes literally, in the basements and attics of other people’s lives, he didn’t want anyone doing the same in his.

“Max, if we could talk genealogy for a few minutes. From what you’ve told me, I think the best place to start is with your parents, and with whatever European records may have survived. It’s possible some line of your family escaped. There are several excellent archives in Europe and Israel which–”

Corban suddenly lost his temper.

“No! I have had enough of eating the dust of my past in Europe! I know what you will find there: a dead vine, uprooted and burned and scattered to the four winds. You must find the new shoot, the graft that may have been saved from the fire. No, forget Europe, I tell you! I have seen the death of more genealogy than you can know. The Nazis–may they rot in Hell!–made us carry a card–”

“The ahnenpass,” Nick said. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Yes, that’s it. It had the names of ancestors, so that even they became informers on you. ‘Look, he’s a Jew!’ the Nazis made them shout. They wanted it all written down, so there would be no trouble in a German mind when it came to denying us freedom, travel, property, love, livelihood, life. It’s the law, you see, and the law must be followed. Cut, cut, cut, until our lifeblood flowed from us. Oh, it was all very properly done, stamped and signed and filed. They were rounding us up, drawing in our history to the ovens.

“My every waking and sleeping moment is a vision of what they did to those I loved. What they are still doing to me. You will find nothing of me and mine in Europe, young man, or in Israel. Take my word. But there was a story among my family that a cousin of my grandmother came to Louisiana from Alsace and made good.”

“When was this?” Nick asked, glad finally to have something to write down.

“In the 1840s or ’50s. I remember only his last name: Balazar. It is all that is left, except me. This man’s name is the last prayer in an empty boxcar.”

Damn! Nick thought. There went his chance for some outrageously overpriced overseas research.

“Okay, Max, I’m on the case–that is, if you want me. But I can’t promise any definite timetable. For one thing, I’m extremely busy with current projects”–a slight exaggeration bordering on a lie; Nick had already missed one utility bill. “For another, this is likely to be a bit complicated–and, I might add, worth more than I’m going to charge you. In your case, there are special problems. Usually I begin a pedigree search with fairly specific information on identity or locale. One line is involved, and you work backward from the client himself. Another thing–most of my clients don’t especially want to meet their newfound relations. They’re just curious, or looking for something in their family history that makes them feel important in their otherwise ordinary lives. Say, descent from an early distinguished colonist or from a soldier of the Revolutionary War. Your search may involve several lines, hundreds of people. But I think I can keep within a budget of”–he took a quick look at Corban to gauge the effectiveness of the sales pitch, and doubled his original idea for the fee–“fifteen hundred dollars. A turnkey job.”

“You really should make it $750, young man.”

“Let’s say a thousand, then, plus expenses.” Might as well throw that in, too. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m offering a professional service, not a piece of furniture at auction. It’s not too late for either of us to change his mind.”

His words had come out more harshly than he’d intended. It was the old imperiousness he once used so effectively on students who mistook his kindness and willingness to help as weakness or a sign that he’d do their work for them. He’d always hated himself for a few minutes after crushing a student’s fragile blossom of self-confidence.

With a sour expression on his face, the old man capitulated: “Yes, yes, all right!”

“You can pay me when I finish. I’ll keep you informed of any expenses, which I expect to be minor, anyway.” Damn, too honest. “If you would write down for me the spelling of the ancestor’s name, as well as your phone number.” Nick handed him the pencil and the pad, turned to a fresh page.

“Who? What ancestor?”

Great, the old guy’s got Alzheimer’s, on top of everything else.

“The ancestor you mentioned, the one who might have immigrated to Louisiana. Remember?” The one who sounds suspiciously like the well-known fictional Cajun, Belizaire, Nick almost said, wondering if Corban’s ancestor was a fiction, too.

“Oh, that ancestor! Why didn’t you say so.”

Corban hesitated, then wrote the information.

Still terrorized, watching over his shoulder, after all these years, Nick was thinking. A strange little man. He’d be a bit addled, too, after such horrors.

He decided he’d better accompany Corban on his trip down the stairs, and to the streetcar stop, which was his stated destination. But Corban waved him off.

“Young man,” said Corban, “I survived the Nazis. New Orleans I can handle.”

“Well, okay, if you’re sure–oh, one more thing. Where did you hear about me?”

“A retired dentist who used to be my best customer told me you were good at whatever it is you do.” Corban mentioned the name. Nick remembered the job. “Also he said you were reasonable. Ha! What does he know? These dentists and their fast cars.” He left, shaking his head.

So the Yellow Pages ad still had not produced.

Standing at the open door of his office, Nick listened for a few minutes to make sure his new client made it down the stairs safely. He heard Corban’s not quite convincing hack echoing up the stairwell, and regretted not having asked for half of the money in advance.





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