As soon as Lynx saw her, I could swear his forelock got less droopy and edged further down, below his right eyebrow. Maybe that’s the way he greeted the milkmaids when he was a boy growing up in Transylvania. “Permit me to present Miss Alison Hamilton. She’s in charge of research and…”
Right away, I felt that familiar aching in my calves, same as when you’re looking down from the top of a tall building. Rapture of the heights. Along with the urgent need to swallow this woman whole, breathe her in, talk to her for forty-eight hours straight. I knew the symptoms well; I’d had similar attacks in the past. Same response – must be a reflex, because it’s too quick for an intellectual decision – just as soon as we met. Same lack of response also.
In most other situations, my penis is on the same wavelength as the rest of me. For sure with the social workers. That means it signs on for the duration. But for the type I’m talking about, like Alison Hamilton, nothing doing from the get-go. Like a traffic light stuck on red. My Penile Paradox. The more you want, the less you get. The more you ache, the less you quake. The more you yearn, the less you burn. Worse yet, it’s not like your spleen or your pancreas isn’t coming on board. Here is a crucial part of you that couldn’t care less. Not just once or twice, but every time.
The heartache. Pushing and pulling, stretching and twirling. A tactful silence from the participant turned spectator across the bed. Let’s face it – the penis is the fall guy for decisions that come from on high. If the brain says no, it helps like a toiten bonkes (trans.: a dead leech) to try to reason with, apply warm or cold compresses to, or shake some sense into it.
Believe me, I’ve tried to figure out why it’s yes with some, no with others. Maybe it has to do with the overwhelming desire I feel right from the start. Everybody knows about sexual politics. Show weakness at the very beginning, you may never recoup. What better way to give up early than giving yourself the coup de grâce in the hard-on department?
My ongoing problem makes me yearn for a Republican penis. No interference accepted from big government, AKA the brain. All decisions made at the grassroots level on a case-by-case basis. That way, no dissension in the lower ranks when it’s love at first sight. But regardless of what I wish for, my penis is a Democrat. Which means it’s spooked every time by orders from higher up.
Lucky I have my social workers. With them, no anguish, no conflict.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE ST MARTON FIVE
May 1984
Alison Hamilton was no lightweight. Lynx made sure to tell me about her PhD from Princeton, and her thesis on Austrian concentration camp guards published by Knopf. I’d gotten into the CFDC by the back door, pretending I was there to do research on the role of Nazi neurosurgeons in the death camps. I’d have to watch my step. This girl was going to be tough to fool.
I don’t even remember saying goodbye to Lynx. Next thing I know, I’m following her out of his office. The stairwell was narrow, like a closet, so I got an undiluted whiff of her as we walked down the steps to the main floor. Mostly soap, shampoo, and the odor of toes wrapped in lotion meeting expensive leather. Good enough to bottle, like those sprays to make your car smell new. Only thing missing: a hint of the fragrance situation under her skirt. The Underskirt Factor.
She explained the layout to me as we walked along. The larger room with the floor-to-ceiling files held the records for the inmates of all the camps. Where they were deported from, approximate date of death, or when they got released. That was the main function of the center. To let people know – one way or the other – what happened to their friends or relatives. The perps’ section was in an alcove almost as big as the main area. Everybody cross-indexed. By name, camp where they worked, profession (“J” for judges, “M” for medical doctors, etc.), where they came from. Some of them stayed close to home, made a cottage industry out of killing and torturing. The info on the victims was written down on little cards, but each of these guys had a whole folder. That’s where you could find their pictures, court records, and current whereabouts.
Getting the records on the St Marton boys was a snap. I had to watch my step at the Chalfin outfit by keeping up the bullshit that I was doing research about human experiments done by Nazi neurosurgeons. Until the very last minute, I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find. There were times when I wanted them all already dead, their lives cut off around the same time as my father’s. But most often, I wanted to do them in myself. Those fantasies I had as a kid – of punishing the people who had taken him away from me – were now pushing for, pardon the expression, a final solution.
From what I found out, five of the seven were still around. Wagner, the jailkeeper, had died of cancer in the late Forties. And Czemenecz, Weissensteiner’s brother-in-law, was killed on the Russian front. Weissensteiner was the only one arrested after the war because of a complaint against him by the French occupation authorities. Something about atrocities against civilians while he was a captain in the Wehrmacht serving in France. But he didn’t do any time at all. The records got lost, not enough evidence – the usual. After the war he went right back to managing his tavern. Now he was retired and living with his daughter in Wiener Neustadt (address supplied), a town near St Marton. The picture attached to his file didn’t look anything like Tommy Byrnes or the Joker. Cropped white hair, thin face, pissed-off look. I would have blown my cover if I’d asked to have the picture copied, so I just filched it. I also did the same with the photos of the others. No use shooting the beam at the wrong people because of mistaken ID.
I studied the files and took notes, like in school. I didn’t speak much German, so the fewer questions I had to ask when I was actually there, the better. Strobl, Baumgartner, Kleinert, and Hochberger still lived in St Marton or just outside. At least I wouldn’t have to wander all over Austria looking for them.
Strobl, the game warden, spent the war training attack dogs. For all I knew, some of his graduates might have been stationed in Auschwitz, at the end of the railroad line. He came home in 1945, and went back to his old job. Now he was retired and living in Forchtenstein, where he was a volunteer tour guide at the ancient Esterhazy fortress.
Baumgartner was still managing his sawmill. Deferred from army service because of “essential work,” he spent the war making money and attending weekly drills of the Home Guard. Kleinert, the Gendarmerie chief, was in the military police, stationed in Romania. No record of having been involved in war crimes there. By now he was a lay brother in the local church. Hochberger, the butcher, was a cook in the Luftwaffe, stationed at an airfield in southern Germany. He now spent most of his days with his daughter, Anny, who ran the store. The rest of the time he hung around Weissensteiner’s tavern.
Those were my five, sentenced to death in absentia. No long-winded legal process à la Nuremberg. No last-minute begging for mercy. No mitigating circumstances, “We were drunk, we thought the bullets were blanks, we never intended to kill your Papa. It was all a big mistake!” None of that. And the beauty of it? They were going to carry out the sentence of the court themselves. Who knows better than you what you’ve done and why you did it? To be liquidated by the one who understands you best: yourself?
At times, while I was cooking up this scheme, I’d ask myself if I wasn’t just a big coward, killing these murderers on the sly. Instead of executing them outright, man-to-man and at the very last minute, giving them the word: “This is for Brenner, you miserable piece of shit.” Their pupils getting wide as they realize the jig is up. You know, the John Wayne school of Jewish revenge. A school with a very poor attendance record over the centuries.
But at the end of the day, Machiavelli’s Prince won out over the Duke. The heroic gesture was less likely to succeed than my subtle method of directing them to self-destruct. That kind of elegance is hard to beat. I was all for revenge, but I couldn’t see myself doing the shooting or the stabbing. To do that, you have to at least accept the possibility of being stabbed or shot in return. Or getting caught
, and becoming another jailbird, like my father.
The St Marton Five were just small-time hoods, content with daylight robbery and the occasional murder. Not even close to the grand vision of a mass killing mogul like Eichmann. They mostly faded back into the woodwork after the war. Paid their taxes, helped old ladies across the street. There were too many like them to punish; there would have been more people in jail than out. But now Weissensteiner & Co. had ended up out of luck. Knocked off somebody whose son figured out a new way to get even. They weren’t going to die in their sleep.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering, what’s with these guys? Pull all that terrible stuff, and right away afterwards go back to being solid citizens. The average man on the street. Nothing to suggest the serial pervert or professional sadist about him. Doesn’t even realize he’s done anything wrong. Hannah Arendt called it the “banality of evil.”
It’s scary to have people who don’t seem all that different from the rest of us go off the deep end. No black hats to tell us who’s who. No telling when they’re going to do it again, or what’s going to set them off. No special qualifications needed. The anonymous sticking it to the no-matter-who.
A while ago, on one of my weekly visits to the Strand book store, I picked up a book from the Forties. It had an intriguing title: The Anality of Evil. A few words about the author, Sister Rivka Magdalena, on the flyleaf. Birth name: Sidonie Kohn. Converted to Catholicism as a teenager and later took vows as a Carmelite nun. She died tragically, after choking on a Communion wafer, at Easter-Passover 1951.
Was it just a coincidence? In 1963, Arendt adds one lousy letter, a “b,” and she comes up with a whole new catchy theory about what made them do what they did. People reciting it like a Hail Mary ever since.
For Sister Rivka, the anus is a symbol, the receptacle for what’s happened in the past. It’s also the last stop, everybody out. Evil doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere like a jack-in-the box. There’s always a smoking gun somewhere, with a long story leading up to it. Bismarck, the Hanseatic League, the Weimar Republic. You name it, she throws it in there to make her point. I’m with her all the way so far, except for the fancy German history bit; that’s where we part company. I’m for a simpler explanation. Go back a few hundred years. Start telling little kids there are some strange looking people around – many of them nasally disadvantaged – who, first chance they get, will drink their blood. Worse yet, when these kids grow up, the same people are going to screw them out of their money, and make them look stupid besides. Multiply that by a few generations, the story snowballs. The descendants of the kids, they end up not knowing what to think. If these bad guys are so subhuman, why do they come off superhuman at the same time? Then, just at the right moment, somebody comes along who gets rid of their doubts for them. “These nose people are subhuman,” he screams, “and besides, they’re a pain in the ass. Get rid of them, and they’ll never play with your head again.” So that’s what happened. End of story.
By the time I’d taken notes on the files and snagged the snapshots of the St Marton Five, I went to Alison’s office on the main floor of the CFDC to say goodbye. Same odor situation as in the stairway to Lynx’s office, plus a hint of a perfume that must have cost $100 an ounce. I waved my arms around a bit, hoping some of it would settle on me. The aching in my calves wasn’t about to subside. That, and the fragrance, was sure to give me a restless night.
She didn’t have much to say. Not even “see you later,” which is 99% of the time dishonest, but better than the “bye” – not even “goodbye” – with which she dismissed me. But, like I’ve been telling myself ever since, it wasn’t “see you never” either. My dilemma was this: how could I keep what I was doing secret and still show off to her? She was the expert on the Nazi diaspora, so it was going to take her about two minutes to find out about the wave of suicides. But figuring out what’s going on is a whole other story. Besides, why should she suspect me? Nobody in that office had seen me look up “St Marton” instead of “Neurosurgeons.” On the other hand, I wanted her to suspect me, even just a little bit. Not a bad pretext for seeing her again. That way I could at least get her attention. Which is the Penile Paradox talking. But when you’re not playing with a full deck, shouldn’t you just take anything you can get?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ÖSTERREICH
June 1984
With any other experiment, I would have gone on to monkeys, then baboons, to make sure that larger animals, closer to man, reacted the same as my rats. But why have some chirpy monkeys or a few pleasant baboons kill themselves if it wasn’t absolutely necessary? The up-against-the-wall jailhouse boys were not only available, but expendable. And, if for some reason it didn’t work out now, no hurry. I could always try later.
I didn’t tell anybody about what I was about to do. Nobody. And when the job was done, I’d keep it to myself too. Not that I was afraid of getting caught. At least not in New York City. Try to extradite a Jewish guy, a doctor yet, who’s knocked off some Nazis. You’d have three or four million out there, spread all over the runways at Kennedy. On the contrary – if it did ever get out – I’d be a big hero. With a wall full of plaques, like Lynx. The Judah Maccabee Award for Jewish Avenger of the Century. Also, the Pope John XXIII Medal for Jews Who Do Away With Gentiles Who Really Deserve It. But there’s always a downside: sooner or later, people would figure out how I did it. Then, watch out! A whole revolution in the way people murder each other. The gun industry in a major swoon. Maybe even a hiccough or major belch in the legal system. Are you guilty of homicide if you just induce somebody to commit suicide? Defendants with arguments like, “I was idly playing around with my laser. Next thing you know, my rich uncle, who was threatening to cut me out of his will, killed himself.” All the way to the Supreme Court. Besides, I got to like the idea of being the Lone Ranger. Not good old Max; smart all right, but what a nerd! Instead, the new, unaccountable, mysterious me.
My victims are sure to keep in touch. If they don’t know where it’s all coming from, this wave of suicides, that’s got to add an extra dimension of worry to their nights and days.
But anybody who cuts people’s heads open for a living will tell you the same: no way you can figure out everything up front. It happens all the time: you pull a long face, tell the patient’s relatives you’re sure to find a tumor when you get in there. Come out of the OR, so happy to be wrong. It’s a cyst, everything’s going to be fine. It goes the other way too. Tell them it looks like a little blood pocket on the x-ray. When you find out it’s really a cancer chock-full of blood vessels, you drag around as long as possible after the surgery, just so you don’t have to tell them the bad news. Regardless of whether you spend six hours or six days getting ready, once in a while you’ll get faked out, regardless.
When I got off the plane in Vienna, I’d spent so much time on the suicide project and on the logistics of how to knock off the St Marton Five, that I never realized how I would feel about setting foot in Austria. I was in the mindset of Max, the cold-blooded killer. Taking my cue from the likes of Alan Ladd. Did he check out the emotional temperature of a place he got sent to, to put his stamp on a contract? No way. But the minute I hit the line at passport control, any notion I might have had about modeling myself on that worthy flew out the window. The men checking the passports were still wearing those grey helmets with shiny black visors front and back, like in the old days. Also, the stamps coming down hard on the documents sounded to me like cell doors clanking shut. That made me remember how terrified my folks were when they hit the final checkpoint at the Swiss border. Erich checking his pockets every thirty seconds, making sure he still had those priceless exit permits. What if the Nazi authorities changed the rules and the permits weren’t valid anymore? They’d be marched over to the next train heading back to Vienna. That was why I kept reaching into my pocket for my own passport, with “United States of America” stamped all over it.
Meeting up with the guy at the counte
r turned out to be a breeze. He stamped what he had to stamp, gave me a big smile, wished me a pleasant day; didn’t ask me to produce my yellow star, or drop my pants. I came out of the main terminal feeling flat. I’d been in Austria for maybe an hour. I’d even met up with an official with vaguely Nazi headgear. Still, nobody had called me a dirty Jew yet. Not that I considered it a prerequisite, but it would have been helpful. An epicure comes to Paris and finds the restaurants closed. A cigar lover walks around Havana all day long and nobody’s smoking. It was discouraging.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TROPIC OF CANCER
June 1984
Thought I’d attract too much attention if I spent a few days at a time in St Marton or one of the other towns nearby in Burgenland, the easternmost province of Austria. The locals might wonder what a foreigner was doing there. Or maybe not.
Q: How many Burgenland electricians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to test the socket; the other to notify his family. Seemed to me it was safer to show up now and then, carrying what looked like a couple of fancy cameras. One, the real thing, meant to snap some of the sights around town. The other, a decoy containing the laser. Nothing lifelike about what it was designed to shoot.
That’s how I ended up at Aunt Florence’s. Not my real aunt. She and her husband, Uncle Emil, weren’t relations, just old friends of the family. He’d come to the US in 1938. The Nazis had taken away his factories, and he didn’t go back to running them until after the war. I must have been around fourteen when my parents took me along for a visit to their house in Greenwich Village. Aunt Florence turned out to be a bombshell in her late twenties. Tall, with a peek-a-boo, Lauren-Bacall-type hairdo. Kind of a long face, like you sometimes see on Jewish females. Black skirt down to her ankles, and a man-style white button down shirt. A string of pearls meandered down from her neck, then disappeared through a trapdoor in the shirt. I have no recollection of what she smelled like. Sniffing women, to get an inside tipoff to what they’re all about, comes later.
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