Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (english novels for students txt) 📕

explorers, I hadn’t really understood how much fun the explorers had exploring. I’d imagined what you’ve probably been imagining: super-serious men with their impenetrable theories and secret documents and petty jealousies and fancy digging toys, hunting for treasure, plumbing mystery, unraveling conspiracies, and doing so with great gravity and solemnity. I’d had this image because this was the image that, when I’d met them one-on-one or in small groups, they’d done their best to project. But there in the forest I could see how it was softer, more social, more fun. I wondered if maybe on some level treasure hunting can be understood as an extremely elaborate excuse to hang out and get smashed with your friends in the forest.

The beer you were allowed to drink casually but the vodka had an enforced etiquette. It was called nominatzia and it was very simple and—​insofar as it made the activity of getting plastered a more social activity—​very effective. Whoever is nominated downs (along with everyone else) a shot, then nominates the next person, who downs (along with everyone else) a shot, then nominates the next person, and so on. So if you’re nominated you can’t say no, it messes everything up, everyone’s drinking stalls.

I was nominated with alarming frequency. The explorers were giddy that I was there. Abraham Kajzer’s grandson! “Manhattan, nominatzia!” (They called me “Manhattan.”) I’d down my shot, nominate someone else, he’d nominate someone else, and then that someone else would nominate me. Sometimes the person I nominated nominated me right back. Manhattan, nominatzia! The metal cup I’d been given—​Manhattan’s designated cup for the night—​kept getting refilled, I kept getting nominated, my half-polite, half-dire demurrals were laughed off, I kept drinking, it was not a sustainable situation. It was only a couple of hours in and already I was trouble having words. Manhattan, nominatzia! I developed a strategy. Once nominated, as I waited for the explorers to fill their cups, I’d sit and let my arm dangle nearly to the ground and surreptitiously pour out the vodka. Then I’d raise the metal cup and make the appropriate cheer and throw back the few drops that remained and mime the burn in my throat and the rush to my head. This strategy was at least partially effective, as I did not die that night, but still. . .

I vaguely remember at one point warning them that if they kept nominating me I’d forget to tell them about Abraham Kajzer’s unpublished diaries. Ha ha ha! went the treasure hunters. Manhattan, nominatzia!

I vaguely remember offering my own theories about Die Glocke. I’ve seen it, I said. It’s in Cleveland. Ha ha ha! went the treasure hunters. Manhattan, nominatzia!

I noticed something exceedingly interesting: a statistically significant number of these men were missing an incisor. What’s that about, I asked. Ha ha ha! went the treasure hunters. Manhattan, nominatzia!

They were generous hosts. (Getting me drunk was absolutely a form of generosity.) They worried I was too cold, offered me sweatshirts and a better spot near the fire, made sure I had a comfortable chair, worried about the smoke, worried about the bugs; Andrzej insisted on opening my bottles of beer with his rusty machete. Whenever one of them addressed the group, telling a story or joke or whatever, he’d slow down and pause frequently so that the monologue could be translated, for me, the only one there who didn’t speak Polish.

There was a little bit of serious treasure-hunting talk—​sites, documents, strategies—​but not much, as if that was work and right now they were off the clock. It was very chummy, the conversation of men who know one another very well getting very drunk together. They gossiped: which treasure hunter was up to what, what zany scheme this explorer had cooked up now, who was screwing whom over. One of the younger explorers, a fresh-faced shiny-haired twenty-something they called Kebab, told off-color jokes, which I see no need to repeat or comment on except to say that, at the titillating bits, like mentions of large penises or Vaseline (used for guess what activity), the explorers laughed so hard that I, as I waited blankly for the translation, kept wrongly assuming that the punch line had been reached.

They spoke of explorers’ exploits, or, really, misadventures—​somewhat loving, somewhat mocking, these stories were about other explorers, not present, whom this group considered more hapless, more amateur, more nebach. A number of the stories featured an explorer named Karol, apparently somewhat infamous for his ineptness and bad luck. Once, Karol broke into a strange, mysterious, seemingly abandoned house. (Why? I asked. To explore, obviously, someone said. But isn’t that breaking and entering? I asked. No, came the reply, he was exploring.) In the closet in the master bedroom, Karol found a well-preserved Prussian officer uniform. Naturally he put it on, and continued his exploring thus. He turned a corner and came face-to-face with an old woman sitting silently in a wheelchair; behind her was a large portrait of a man in the uniform Karol was now wearing. They stared at each other for a few moments and then she asked him, quite sensibly I think, if he was a ghost. Karol, quick thinker, said yes, he was a ghost. The woman, unconcerned, perhaps accustomed to ghosts or ghosts wearing this Prussian military uniform, told him that she was very sad and very lonely, that she was a prisoner in her own home—​her grandson, she said, had locked her in there, was giving her only the bare minimum needed to survive, while he, the grandson, cashed her social security checks. Karol said he would save her and, once he left the house, presumably still wearing the Prussian officer uniform, notified the authorities—​though no details were offered on what Karol said to explain how he’d obtained the information—​and was hailed as a hero.

The night went on, we drank, talked, laughed, it was a party in the forest, it was a party in the forest at the site of a Nazi underground structure where