by Joseph Kanon
“Max. It’s a way of holding on to them, that’s all.”
“I see the other ones too. The ones you don’t love. Even some of the guards. Not fuzzy, clear, the way they looked. Why would I want to hold on to them? Murderers.”
“Maybe we don’t get to pick. You remember things or you don’t. All of it.”
“But that time—”
“Max,” Aaron said, his voice soft. “It’s always going to be there if you keep it alive, the way you do. This work.”
“You think I should forget it?”
“No.”
“Even if I wanted to—”
“I know.”
“You think I could let Daniel go? My own son?”
“No.”
Max turned away, disturbed, then sat up straighter, gathering himself. “You just think I should let the rest of it go. Close the files. Let them get away with—”
“I’m just saying let someone else do it. It’s time.”
“So for once we agree,” Max said, looking at him.
Aaron shook his head. “I can’t be you.”
“Who else, then? Elena? She’s a typist.”
“You’ll kill yourself if you keep—”
“Digging my grave. Confucius says. I wish I’d never mentioned it. You know he never says how long it takes. Maybe I have time we don’t know about.”
“I hope so.”
Max met his eyes, then looked away. “We should go. I’m freezing out here. I won’t have to dig anything. Where’s the waiter?” He turned, shading his eyes against the sun. “Fritz.”
Not a waiter, a man with a newspaper under his arm coming down the steps from the street, his bulky form now throwing a shadow across the table.
“Max, it’s you? I thought you never went out.”
Young, somewhere in his thirties, not fat but thick, his clothes slightly disheveled, as if he had thrown them on without looking.
“It’s for him,” Max said, pointing to Aaron. “My nephew. From America. He’s come to work with me. My new partner. Aaron, Fritz Gruber.”
Fritz extended his hand. “Partner? For the Einzelgänger? What’s the English? Lone wolf. Now he runs with a pack?” he said, enjoying his own wordplay.
“Just one,” Aaron said easily, going with it.
“Join us,” Max said, starting to pull out a chair.
“Can’t. Work,” Fritz said, touching the newspaper.
“The man of letters,” Max said.
“You’re a writer?” Aaron said.
“Only this kind,” Fritz said, holding out the newspaper now. “Journalist.”
“A real journalist,” Max said. “Someone gets the facts straight.”
“I spelled his name right once,” Fritz said pleasantly. “He never got over it. So, you have anything for me?” he said to Max.
“If I did, you’d already have it.”
“I’m glad I ran into you. I was going to call. You know how to reach Pidulski’s son?”
“What, on the phone?”
Gruber nodded.
“Somewhere. Why?”
“I want to talk to him. I had an idea. A series, Sons of the Reich. Growing up Nazi. What’s it like for the children now? What did they know? What do they remember? Here, take a look. I started with Horcher’s son.”
“He’ll never talk to you. Pidulski.”
“You’d be surprised. Anyway, I can try. You tell them one of the others talked and that makes it all right. It’s in the air now.” He turned to Aaron. “You picked a good time for this work. Since Eichmann, people are interested. Before, nobody wanted to know.”
“And what does Horcher’s son say?” Max said.
“What they all say at first. The good father. Always kind. Every Nazi, it turns out, had a child on his knee at home. What did they do at the office? No one knew. Desk work. But now, since Eichmann, we know what work. Schreibtischtäter. Desk murderers,” he translated for Aaron. “All the good fathers. So it’s difficult for them. To know what to feel now. You know how I got the idea? Eichmann’s son. He never changed his name. Eichmann did, but none of the children. They must have felt safe enough not to bother. And then the son starts dating a young woman and her father—so the rest you know. One thing leads to another and then to Eichmann. Because the son never changed his name. So what did he know?”
“And what did he?” Max said, curious.
“I don’t know. He’s in Argentina. I can only talk to the children here. The paper’s not so rich. So Pidulski’s number, yes? You won’t forget?”
“It’s still working,” Max said, tapping a finger against his temple.
“Yes? And how’s the rest? I heard you were in the hospital,” he said, playful but concerned.
“A checkup. Don’t get excited.”
“He does too much,” Fritz said to Aaron.
“And you with the coffee all day, all night?” Max said. “Let’s see who goes first. I’m writing the eulogy now.”
“You won’t be asked,” Fritz said, having fun with it. “Ilse thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“Huh,” Max said. “On such a blameless life.”
He started to get up to say good-bye and stopped halfway, an old man’s crouch, then froze. Aaron looked up. Max was blinking now, the blink a kind of windshield wiper, trying to see more clearly, his face white, staring past Fritz down the promenade. Aaron followed his glance—nothing, people at tables, a man in a coat walking past—then looked back at Max, alarmed now, feeling a rush of dread. It was happening. A sound in Max’s throat, indistinct, a stroke victim struggling to talk.
“Max,” he said, getting up, taking Max’s elbow.
But now Max rose a little, not paralyzed, lifting his arm, as if he were starting to point.
“It’s him.” Barely a whisper, his voice an odd croak, so that Fritz looked alarmed now too.
“Max, sit,” he said, moving to help Aaron.
“It’s him.” His face twisting, an involuntary tic.
“Who?”
“Stop him,” Max said, another hoarse whisper. “It’s him.” Lifting his hand higher and then suddenly clutching it to his chest, his body in spasm, falling.
Aaron grabbed his arm to break the fall, but Max pitched forward, knocking the coffee cups off the table, then the table itself, Fritz grabbing his other side as he went down, the table falling, a crash, people around them turning, too startled to respond, then getting up, moving back, a first instinct. He was down now, Aaron leaning over him.
“Max.” He looked up at the small crowd. “Somebody get a doctor.”
But Max was moving his head, a “no no” gesture. “It’s him. Otto. Go after—”
“Otto?”
“Schramm.” Seeing the dead now, maybe all the other visions a getting-ready exercise.
“What did he say?” Fritz said.
“Nothing,” Aaron said quickly, covering. “A doctor?”
But now Max had rolled over onto his side, pointing arm still outstretched, looking again past Fritz down the terrace. A gasping sound, which only Aaron heard as “stop him.” Then a scraping of chairs as people cleared a space around him. Aaron looked up, following Max’s gaze. The man in a coat still walking.
“Please. Please.” Max’s voice still faint, but frantic now.
“He’s having an attack.” A voice behind them. “Somebody do something.”
“Stop him,” Max grunted.
The man passed a few more tables, then turned for a second, hearing the commotion. A winter coat, a hat, the face almost hidden by the brim, features blurred, as if the camera catching them had been shaking. He looked down the promenade, a quick scan, then turned to them, his face still for an instant, a snapshot, just one, and then turned again, walking on, everyone else now coming toward Max, only one walking away, beginning to hurry, late for something.
“See. See,” Max said to Aaron.
But what had he seen? An ordinary face, already forgotten. And now Max was
clutching at his chest again, clearly in trouble.
“My god,” Fritz said, for something to say. “Should we move him—”
“No, don’t move him.” Someone in the crowd. “Let the ambulance people do it. That’s the first thing.”
Max had grabbed Aaron’s lapel. “Aaron. Don’t lose him.”
“Shh. Nobody’s losing anything. Be quiet. The ambulance is coming.”
He looked up, past the crowd. Maybe the man would turn again, another look at his face. But he was gone, through the doors of the Nivea Building or swallowed up by the crowds in the Gänsemarkt.
Another clutch at his lapel. “I can’t die. Not now.”
“Nobody’s dying.” His stomach falling as he said it. The only one left, the last part of him, and suddenly he felt a helpless panic. Do something.
“Can you breathe?” He loosened Max’s tie. What else? “Where’s your medicine?” he said, starting to go through Max’s pockets.
A half smile. “At home.”
“At home. You’re supposed to carry it.” Don’t scold. Not now. What was the point? “Is there pain?” Nodding to the heart, just filling time until a stretcher arrived, someone who knew what to do. Was that a siren coming from the Jungfernstieg?
“You saw?” Max said. “You saw?”
Aaron nodded, brushing it aside.
“What’s he saying?” Fritz said.
Aaron looked up. How to explain? Maybe what it would be like now, seeing people for real, not just in a confused mind’s eye.
“He’s agitated, that’s all.”
“Did you see the look on his face? I’ve never seen him like that.”
“A heart attack. They say it grabs you like a fist. The shock of it. Oh, here—”
Some waiters had come to clear away the tables for the emergency unit, sweep up the shards of broken water glasses, the other customers forming a ring around them. Aaron thought of an operating theater, people staring down at the body. And then two men in uniforms were putting Max onto a stretcher, lifting him. He grabbed Aaron’s hand.
“I can’t die now. After.”
“After—”
“After we get him.”
“Shh. You’ll be fine. We’re going to the hospital.”
A paramedic placed an oxygen mask over Max’s face.
“Get him? Get who?” Fritz said.
“It’s nothing. He thought he saw somebody.”
“And he has an attack? Who, the devil?”
“Schramm,” Aaron said, preoccupied, feeling Max’s hand.
Fritz looked at him. “Schramm? Somebody dead? He’s seeing a dead man?”
“He’s—having an attack. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“To think, if that’s the last person he sees. To end like that.”
“He’s not ending,” Aaron said, starting to follow the men to the ambulance.
“I didn’t mean— I’ll come with you,” Fritz said. Then, before Aaron could object, “You may need the German. Anyway, I’m fond of him.”
“Yes,” Aaron said, looking at Max, small even on the narrow stretcher. The only one left.
2
THEY TOOK HIM TO the big hospital in St. Georg, tearing along the Aussenalster in the cramped ambulance, the attendants talking to each other, everyone busy with Max. Fritz had been right: Aaron was grateful for his German. His own was good enough to get around, but not to grasp the medical terms flying past him like darts as he sat half-numb, staring at Max’s oxygen mask.
“They want to know who his doctor is,” Fritz said.
“Bachmann. I don’t know his first name. In the Neustadt.”
A salvo of rapid-fire German, back and forth, an IV, a drip bag being hung.
“They know him. Jakob, by the way. Does Max take nitroglycerine?”
“Something. I don’t know what. Pills. He left them at home.”
A paramedic glanced at him, trying not to look impatient.
“History,” he said abruptly. “Has this happened before?”
Aaron nodded. “This summer. I don’t know how severe. Bachmann would know.”
The paramedic looked up. “So soon.”
“Don’t worry,” Fritz said to Aaron. “He survived Auschwitz. He’s an ox.”
Aaron looked at Max, somehow even smaller in the ambulance, as if he had shrunk on the stretcher, birdlike under the IVs, only his beak nose sticking up. “Thank god you got Herschel’s nose,” he used to say, “not Groucho’s,” pointing to his own, a family joke. Blood.
Now he was moving, gesturing with his free hand.
“He’s trying to say something.”
Aaron heard a sound through the oxygen mask, then noticed the tear, just one, running down to his ear. The paramedic moved the mask, holding it, a second only.
“I let him go. Daniel. Like this,” he said, opening his hand.
Aaron looked at him, dismayed.
“Gone.” Max moved his head. “I let him go.”
Then the medic put the oxygen back, hearing the screech of tires, bracing the stretcher to stop it from shooting forward. The back doors were flung open and attendants swarmed around the stretcher, moving it out, as precise as a military drill, everyone hurrying, Aaron and Fritz just observers now, in the way.
“Wait in there, please,” the medic said. “It’s not allowed here. I’ll be back.”
And then he was gone too, the rest of the hospital staff still going about their work, nurses in white with clipboards, aides moving wheelchairs, pieces of machinery, indifferent. Beyond the other doors, Max was being poked with needles, refusing to die, not now, not before— His life hanging, Aaron thought, on something he hadn’t really seen.
The waiting room was empty, just a few faux leather chairs and standing ashtrays, some nature watercolors on the walls and a coffee machine. Fritz brought two cups over and settled into one of the chairs.
“Der Alte,” he said, nodding to the picture of Adenauer by the coffee. “Do you think it’s for praying? Maybe to remind us how old. Cheer up, you can be as old as me.” He paused, sipping the coffee. “Who’s Daniel?”
“His son.”
“Who died at Auschwitz? So, ‘I let him go.’ He can’t blame himself for that, for Auschwitz. It’s like that sometimes, with the survivors.”
“I don’t think it’s that.”
“Does he talk to you about it? That time.”
“No. Not about himself.”
“No. I used to ask him sometimes and he’d say, ‘Read the stories, they’re all true, read the transcripts, from the trials, it’s all there.’ But not his. That he kept private. So what happened, I wondered. A doctor and then not a doctor. So why? He never says. How often does that happen, a doctor stops?”
“Maybe he lost the stomach for it, after so much—”
Fritz nodded. “Maybe the son is the clue. Maybe after that, he lost interest. In life, even. Just the hunt. Now it’s just the hunt.”
Aaron looked over at him. “Is that what you’re going to say in the obit?”
Fritz held up his hand. “Thinking out loud. I don’t write the obituaries. They have a man for that. Maybe it’s already done. Max Weill. You want something on hand.”
“Well, let’s hope he’s early.” He glanced toward the door. “You don’t have to stay. I know you have things—”
“Let’s hear what they have to say. Then I’ll go.”
“It’s nice of you to do this.”
“No, I owe him something. He’s a friend.” He looked up. “And a good source. So, it’s true? You’re going to work with him?”
“He seems to think so. I think he should stop. Maybe after today he’ll—”
“He’ll never stop. Feet first. Only then.”
“He may have to. Seeing dead people. Then what?”
Fritz lit a cigarette, buying a minute. “Maybe it’s somebody who looked—” He stopped. “I don’t like to think that. That he’s losing his mind. Have you noticed any—?”
“No, nothing. He’s the same. Except he says he’s been thinking about it, the camps. They say that happens, near the end.”
“That’s when you’re drowning,” Fritz said, waving this off. “It’s more likely there’s a resemblance, with this man today.”
“But he knows Schramm’s dead. Everybody does. There was never any question, was there?”
Fritz shook his head. “They had the dental records. The body was identified. I know, I wrote the story. Even in Argentina, when you’re dead, you’re dead. People have to sign off on it. Even the insurance paid.”
“He had insurance, a man in hiding?”
“He wasn’t hiding there. Only from us. From Max. But nobody was looking. He had a life there. A new name. And then the accident. So maybe a disappointing end, a car crash—hanging would have been better—but what’s the difference if you’re dead?”
They were on the second cup of coffee when the doctor came in.
“He’s stable.”
“So he’ll live?”
“There’s no cure for this, you know,” he said, seeing Aaron’s face. “All these years and all we can say is ‘rest.’ The nitroglycerine opens the arteries, keeps the blood moving. Aspirin is good—no one knows why. But all we really can do is keep him calm, let it pass.”
“Can I see him?”
“You’re Aaron? He asked for you.” He nodded. “Yes, it’s good, someone with them. It keeps them peaceful. But wait a little. We’re moving him to a room. We’ll have to keep him for a few days, to be safe. I’ll be back after we move him.” He raised a finger. “If he’s sleeping, don’t wake him.”
“But he’ll live,” Fritz said to the doctor, a reporter confirming a story.