Guided Tours of Hell by Francine Prose

brain. Slowly it eases the searing burn of what Jiri Krakauer said, and of what Landau said—and couldn’t say. What could he have answered? There was nothing to say.
    Only now does it start to sink in: what has—what may have—happened. The deadweight of sorrow and loss and dread presses on Landau’s stomach. The grief that overcomes him is so intense, so shocking—Landau hasn’t felt like this since his parents died! He longs to go back and pull Jiri out of his chair and gather him in an embrace. The urge is so strong Landau groans aloud. But what would he tell Jiri? He wants to say: I prayed for you. I prayed you wouldn’t die.
    What did Jiri do to Landau to deserve the coup de grâce that Hitler and all his armies weren’t able to deliver? What was Landau so angry at? Jiri’s lies, his exaggerations? Who appointed Landau to be the righteous avenger, safeguarding the fragile honor of the dead? Did he imagine for one second that all six million were saints?
    Unlike Landau, the world knows better than to believe that all six million were heroes, the world isn’t fooled, the world doesn’t care if Jiri was less than perfect. They’ll mourn him, mourn this hero’s death, and they’ll be especially moved by the bitter irony of his returning to die in the death camp. Every magazine, every newspaper will carry Jiri’s story, and not one of them—Landau is sure—will note that his final attack was precipitated by an obscure, pathetic playwright, a worm so small that he’s still competing with Jiri, even after he’s killed him!
    But maybe Landau’s being too hasty, too quick to bury Jiri, maybe Mr. Survivor will live through this, too….
    Landau lowers his head and keeps going. He runs out onto the drawbridge, thinking: Now it’s just like “The Judgment.” After his father’s tirade, the son, Georg Bendemann, runs from the house and over a bridge streaming with heavy traffic. He shouts, “Dear Parents, I always loved you!” and vaults over the rails and into the water.
    This is perfect! It couldn’t be better! The stage is set for Landau to leave the death camp via the wooden bridge and fling himself into the deep trench that the Nazis dug to be flooded in case they needed a moat. Landau would land with a sickening crunch amid the Coke cans and brown paper bags, his head at that rag-doll angle in a tangle of thorny weeds.
    Landau’s not going to jump, no way! He knows what he’s going to do:
    He’ll wait near the bus for the rest of the group. He won’t even leave Prague early. He’ll stay the last two days, grinning, eating shit, mourning Jiri—if he’s dead—or else pretending nothing happened, as if anyone cares what Landau pretends, not even Natalie now. Then he’ll board the plane and travel ten hours in a flying anchovy can with foul air, lousy food, someone’s screaming baby. He’ll take the bus from JFK to Grand Central and splurge on a ride home in some maniac’s taxi, and let himself into the apartment, where maybe Mimi will be asleep, or maybe she’ll be at the shelter. On his desk he’ll find stacks of bills, requests for letters of recommendation from students he can’t remember, notes from theater directors explaining why they can’t consider To Kafka from Felice for the upcoming season.
    Landau stops and stares into the chasm, at a grape-colored plastic bag turning ashen in the sun. The parking lot is before him, and just beyond, the cemetery with its silver cross gleaming over the orderly rows of the dead.
    Landau will join them soon enough, and none of this will matter, just as it no longer matters to those already there. But for now, it’s all that counts, and for now, Jiri is right: Landau would feel better, he would have been better off if something or someone had picked him up and thrown him into the abyss.

THREE PIGS IN FIVE DAYS
    E VERY TIME SHE TURNED on the TV, someone was killing a pig. Tonight it was an elderly Provençal couple, like Russian nesting dolls,