Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, Collaborations With Artists, and Interviews (6 page)

I only ask that your father should never learn of this knowledge that I am passing on to you—I would not want him to have any more grief than he already has suffered …

I hope that this will shed some light on your Father’s actions over the past years.

Our fondest regards to you both—

  Ken & Fran

The newspaper articles are sitting on my desk. Now that the moment has come to write about them, I am surprised to find myself doing everything I can to put it off. All morning I have procrastinated. I have taken the trash to the dump. I have played with Daniel in the yard for almost an hour. I have read the entire newspaper—right down to the line scores of the spring training baseball games. Even now, as I write about my reluctance to write, I find myself impossibly restless: after every few words I pop up from my chair, pace the floor, listen to the wind outside as it bangs the loose gutters against the house. The least thing is able to distract me.

It is not that I am afraid of the truth. I am not even afraid to say it. My grandmother murdered my grandfather. On January 23, 1919, precisely sixty years before my father died, his mother shot and killed his father in the kitchen of their house on Fremont Avenue in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The facts themselves do not disturb me any more than might be expected. The difficult thing is to see them in print—unburied, so to speak, from the realm of secrets and turned into a public event. There are more than twenty articles, most of them long, all of them from the
Kenosha Evening News
. Even in this barely legible state, almost totally obscured by age and the hazards of photocopying, they still have the ability to shock. I assume they are typical of the journalism of the time, but that does not make them any less sensational. They are a mixture of scandalmongering and sentimentality, heightened by the fact that the people involved were Jews—and therefore strange, almost by definition—which gives the whole account a leering, condescending tone. And yet, granted the flaws in style, the facts seem to be there. I do not think they explain everything, but there is no question that they explain a great deal. A boy cannot live through this kind of thing without being affected by it as a man.

*

In the margins of these articles, I can just manage to decipher some of the smaller news stories of that time, events that were relegated to near insignificance in comparison to the murder. For example: the recovery of Rosa Luxemburg’s body from the Landwehr Canal. For example: the Versailles peace conference. And on and on, day after day, through the following: the Eugene Debs case; a note on Caruso’s first film (“The situations … are said to be highly dramatic and filled with stirring heart appeal”); battle reports from the Russian Civil War; the funerals of Karl Liebnecht and thirty-one other Spartacists (“More than fifty thousand persons marched in the procession which was five miles long. Fully twenty percent of these bore wreaths. There was no shouting or cheering”); the ratification of the national prohibition amendment (“William Jennings Bryan—the man who made grape juice famous—was there with a broad smile”); the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led by the Wobblies; the death of Emiliano Zapata, “bandit leader in southern Mexico”; Winston Churchill; Bela Kun; Premier Lenine (sic); Woodrow Wilson; Dempsey versus Willard.

I have read through the articles about the murder a dozen times. Still, I find it hard to believe that I did not dream them. They loom up at me with all the force of a trick of the unconscious, distorting reality in the same way dreams do. Because the huge headlines announcing the murder dwarf everything else that happened in the world that day, they give the event the same egocentric importance we give to the things that happen in our private lives. It is almost like the drawing a child makes when he is troubled by some inexpressible fear: the most important thing is always the biggest thing. Perspective is lost in favor of proportion—which is dictated not by the eye but by the demands of the mind.

I read these articles as history. But also as a cave drawing discovered on the inner walls of my own skull.

The headlines on the first day, January 24, cover more than a third of the front page.

HARRY AUSTER KILLED
WIFE HELD BY POLICE

Former Prominent Real Estate Operator is Shot to Death in the Kitchen of the Home of His Wife On Thursday Night Following a Family Wrangle Over Money—and a Woman.

WIFE SAYS HUSBAND WAS A SUICIDE

Dead Man Had Bullet Wound in His Neck and in the Left Hip and Wife Admits That Revolver With Which the Shooting Was Done Was Her Property—Nine-Year-Old Son, Witness of the Tragedy, May Hold Solution to the Mystery.

According to the newspaper, “Auster and his wife had separated some time ago and an action for divorce was pending in the Circuit Court for Kenosha county. They had had trouble on several occasions over money. They had also quarreled over the fact that Auster [illegible] friendly with a young woman known to the wife as ‘Fanny.’ It is believed that ‘Fanny’ figured in the trouble between Auster and his wife immediately preceding the shooting….”

Because my grandmother did not confess until the twenty-eighth, there was some confusion about what really happened. My grandfather (who was thirty-six years old) arrived at the house at six o’clock in the evening with “suits of clothing” for his two oldest sons “while it was stated by witnesses Mrs. Auster was in the bedroom putting Sam, the youngest boy, into bed. Sam [my father] declared that he did not see his mother take a revolver from under the mattress as he was tucked into bed for the night.”

It seems that my grandfather had then gone into the kitchen to repair an electric switch and that one of my uncles (the second youngest son) had held a candle for him to see by. “The boy declared that he became panic stricken when he heard the shot and saw a flash of a revolver and fled the room.” According to my grandmother, her husband had shot himself. She admitted they had been arguing about money, and “then he said, she continued, ‘there is going to be an end for you or me,’ and he threatened me. I did not know he had the revolver. I had kept it under the mattress of my bed and he knew it.”

Since my grandmother spoke almost no English, I assume that this statement, and all others attributed to her, was invented by the reporter. Whatever it was she said, the police did not believe her. “Mrs. Auster repeated her story to the various police officers without making any decided change in it and she professed great surprise when she was told that she was to be held by the police. With a great deal of tenderness she kissed little Sam good night and then went off to the county jail.

“The two Auster boys were guests of the police department last night sleeping in the squad room and this morning the boys were apparently entirely recovered from any fright they had suffered as a result of the tragedy at their home.”

Toward the end of the article, this information is given about my grandfather. “Harry Auster was a native of Austria. He came to this country a number of years ago and had resided in Chicago, in Canada, and in Kenosha. He and his wife, according to the story told the police, later returned to Austria but she rejoined her husband in this country about the time they came to Kenosha. Auster bought a number of homes in the second ward and for some time his operations were on a large scale. He built the big triple flat building on South Park avenue and another one known as the Auster flats on South Exchange street. Six or eight months ago he met with financial reverses….

“Some time ago Mrs. Auster appealed to the police to aid her in watching Mr. Auster as she alleged that he had relations with a young woman which she believed should be investigated. It was in this way that the police first learned of the woman ‘Fanny’….

“Many people had seen and talked with Auster on Thursday afternoon and these people all declared that he appeared to be normal and that he showed no signs of desiring to take his own life….”

*

The next day was the coroner’s inquest. My uncle, as the only witness to the incident, was called on to testify. “A sad-eyed little boy, nervously twirling his stocking cap, wrote the second chapter in the Auster murder mystery Friday afternoon…. His attempts to save the family name were tragically pathetic. Again and again when asked if his parents were quarrelling he would answer ‘They were just talking’ until at last, apparently remembering his oath, he added ‘and maybe quarrelling—well just a little bit.’ “The article describes the jurors as “weirdly stirred by the boy’s efforts to shield both his father and his mother.”

The idea of suicide was clearly not going to wash. In the last paragraph the reporter writes that “developments of a startling nature have been hinted by officials.”

*

Then came the funeral. It gave the anonymous reporter an opportunity to emulate some of the choicest diction of Victorian melodrama. By now the murder was no longer merely a scandal. It had been turned into a stirring entertainment.

WIDOW TEARLESS AT AUSTER GRAVE