I could not say no. Already Mr. Sandman was wrapping a yellow tape measure about my head — “Nineteen point six inches, dear. Petite.”
The length of my spine — “Twenty-nine point four inches, dear. Well within the range of normal for your age.”
Height — “Five feet three point five inches. A good height.”
Weight — “Ninety-four pounds, eleven ounces. A good weight.”
Waist — “Twenty-one inches. Good!”
Hips — “Twenty-eight inches. Very good!”
As Mr. Sandman looped the tape measure about my chest, brushing against my breasts, I flinched from him, involuntarily.
He laughed, annoyed. But did not persist.
“Another time, perhaps, dear Violet, you will not be so skittish.”
So many books! I stared in wonderment. I had never seen so many books outside a library.
Proudly Mr. Sandman switched on lights. Bookcases of elegant dark wood lifting from the floor to the ceiling.
Many of the books were old, matched sets. On the lowermost shelf were Encyclopedia Britannica, Collected Works of Shakespeare, Collected Works of Dickens, Great British Romantic Poets. There was an entire bookcase filled with books on military history with such titles as A History of Humankind at War, Great Military Campaigns of Europe, The Great Armies of History, Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier 1936–1945, Is War Obsolete? In an adjacent bookcase, The Coming Struggle, Free Will and Destiny, The Passing of the Great Race, Racial Hygiene, A History of Biometry, The Aryan Bible, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf: A New Reading, The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler, Origins of the Caucasian Race, Is the White Race Doomed? Eugenics: A Primer.
On a special shelf were oversized books of photographs. More military history: US, Germany. Tanks, bomber planes. Fiery cities. Marching men in Nazi uniforms, swastika armbands. Saluting stiff-armed as Mr. Sandman saluted the flag in our classroom.
On the shelves of other bookcases were boxes of old, photocopied records, documents. Mr. Sandman gestured toward these with an air of casual pride — “Transcripts of meetings of the Race Betterment Society, 1929–1943. A photocopy of the original manuscript of The Bible of Practical Ethics and the ‘Final Solution.’ And other rare materials I’ve acquired through antiquarian dealers.”
On a table were unframed photographs of local landscapes, skies of sculpted clouds, the mist-shrouded Niagara Falls, which Mr. Sandman had taken himself. And one, apart from the others, that had begun to slightly curl, depicting a girl of about my age lying on a four-poster bed, partly clothed, hands clasped over her thin chest. Long straight pale hair had been spread about her head like a fan. Her eyes were open and yet unseeing.
A girl I’d never seen before, I was sure. I felt a pang of alarm. Jealousy.
Mr. Sandman saw me staring at the photograph and quickly pushed it aside.
“No one you know, dear. An inferior Snow White.”
I would not recall the part-unclothed girl afterward. I don’t think so. Though I am recalling her now, this now is an indeterminate time.
Against the windows of Mr. Sandman’s cobblestone house, a faint ping of icy rain, hail. An endless winter.
“It is a fact kept generally secret in the United States that Adolf Hitler acquired his ‘controversial’ ideas on race and on the problems posed by race from us — the United States. Our history of slavery, and post-slavery, as well as our ‘population management’ of Indians — on reservations in remote parts of the country. How to establish a proper scientific census. How to determine who is ‘white’ and who is ‘colored’ — and how to proceed from there.”
Mr. Sandman spoke casually yet you could hear an undercurrent of excitement in his voice.
Adolf Hitler was a name out of a comic book. A name to provoke smirks. And yet, in Mr. Sandman’s reverent voice Adolf Hitler had another sound altogether.
I’d left my mug of apple cider in the kitchen, half-empty. I had not wanted to drink more of the hot sweet liquid that was making me feel queasy. But Mr. Sandman brought both our mugs into the library, and was handing mine to me.
“Finish your apple cider, Violet! It has become lukewarm.”
Helplessly I took the mug from him. Shut my eyes, lifted the mug to my lips, to drink.
Sweet, sugary apple juice. A taste of something fermented, rotted.
They would ask — But why would you drink anything that man gave you? Why, after what happened the first time?
There’d been no first time. All times were identical. There was not a most recent time, and there was not a present time.
“Some of us understand that we must archive crucial documents and publications before it’s too late. One day, the welfare state may appropriate all of our records. The liberal welfare state.” Mr. Sandman spoke with withering contempt.
Entire populations were falling behind others, Mr. Sandman said. The birthrates of those who should reproduce are declining while the birthrates of those who should not be allowed to reproduce are increasing — “Mongrel races breed like animals.”
When I stared blankly at him Mr. Sandman said, “Violet, you’re a smart girl. By Port Oriskany standards, a very smart girl. You understand that the Caucasian race must preserve itself against mongrelization before it’s too late?”
I had heard that a mongrel dog is healthier and likely to live longer than a pedigree dog. But I did not often reply to Mr. Sandman’s questions for I understood that he preferred silence.
“‘Mongrelization’ is the natural consequence of the slack, liberal illogic — ‘all men are created equal.’ For the obvious fact is, in human nature as in nature itself, all men are created unequal.”
This seemed reasonable to me. I did not feel equal to anyone and certainly not to any adult.
My legs were growing weak. Mr. Sandman took the mug from me, and seated me on a sofa. In his kindly lecturing voice, which was very different from his classroom lecturing voice, he told me that there are hierarchies of Homo sapiens, the product of many thousands of years of evolution.
At the top were Aryans, the purest Caucasians — the “white race.” Northern Europe, UK, Germany, Austria. The crème of the crème. Beneath these were Middle Europeans, and Eastern Europeans, and beneath these Southern Europeans. By the time you got to Sicily you were in another, lower level of evolution — “Though some of the people are very physically attractive, paradoxically.”
There were the Eastern civilizations — Asian, Indian. Here too the lighter-skinned had reigned supreme for many thousands of years though in continuous danger of being infected, polluted by the darker-skinned who resided in the south.
In Africa, Egypt was the exception. A great ancient civilization, and (relatively) white-skinned. The remainder of the continent was dark-skinned — “Indeed, a ‘heart of darkness.’”
Earnestly and gravely Mr. Sandman spoke, facing me. His words were incantatory, numbing.
“Black Africans were brought to America as slaves, which would prove a disaster to our civilization. For the enslaved Africans would not remain enslaved through the meddlesome efforts of Abolitionists and radicals like Abraham Lincoln, and so it was to be inevitable that black Africans were granted freedom, and seized freedom, and wreaked havoc upon the white civilization that had hitherto given them shelter and employment and nurtured them... First, the military was ‘integrated.’ Then, public schools. Then, the Boy Scouts of America!” Mr. Sandman shook his head, disgusted.