by PJ Skinner
Sam threw her eyes to heaven, rolling them in a droll way and making Gloria laugh.
‘I’m more interested in Alfredo. Have you found out what happened yet? How long has he been missing?’
‘Two weeks or more. I’m worried about him,’ said Gloria.
‘Has he been drinking?’
‘No more than usual and less than before. I’m pretty sure his disappearance is related to something a lot more sinister than drink.’
‘You’d better start at the beginning.’
‘Well, it started when a journalist from New York rang Alfredo and asked him if he could do some research on Nazi fugitives in Sierramar.’
‘Nazi’s in Sierramar? Didn’t they go to Argentina or Brazil or something?’
‘That’s what we thought, but Alfredo discovered that there may be a group of them here in Calderon. He didn’t find any information in the National Archive but he found evidence there that his friend Ramon had been researching the same thing. So, he went to Ramon’s house and it turned out that Ramon was finishing a report which showed that the national government were complicit in welcoming the fugitive officers to Sierramar and helping them start new lives. Ramon had planned to go to Miami to publish his research but his house burned down that night, and he died in the fire.’
‘Oh my God, that’s awful. Was all the research lost?’
‘No, luckily, he had lent the report to Alfredo to photocopy.’
‘Was the fire deliberate?’
‘The newspapers said it was an accident but police told me that it was arson. They haven’t found the culprits yet. Alfredo was nervous because he thought that someone had seen him visiting Ramon.’
‘Why did he think that?’
‘Someone tried to burgle his house not long afterwards while Alfredo was picking Saul, that’s the journalist, up from the airport.’
‘Did the burglar get the report?’
‘No, luckily Alfredo didn’t leave it in the house.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘It’s hidden in my father’s house, but he doesn’t know that. I hid it in a drawer when he wasn’t looking. It is safer that way.’
‘When did you last see Alfredo?’
‘He and Saul left to look for the fugitives in the mountains more than two weeks ago, and I haven’t heard anything since.’
‘Have you been to the police?’
‘Sam, don’t be so English! That’s the last place I’d go.’
‘Don’t exaggerate. I’m sure they’re not that bad. Do you know where Alfredo and Saul were going?’
‘That’s the problem. I’ve no idea. They left quite suddenly and I didn’t get a chance to ask him. He left a message with my maid saying that he would be back in a couple of days but I haven’t heard from him since. We will have to start from scratch.’
‘What do we know so far?’
‘Well, we know that they were looking for German men who came to Sierramar after the end of World War II. Those men must be at least sixty-five years old if they came here about forty-five years ago.’
‘How did they get here?’
‘There were no flights in those days so they came in by boat to Guayama and then travelled to Calderon along the old road.’
‘Don’t all foreigners have to register with the migration office when they arrive in Sierramar? I know I do. Perhaps they had to do that then also?’
‘That’s not a bad idea. There might be a record of their arrival in the archives. If we know who came here, we can use their names to try to locate them. Someone in migration might be able to check the records for us. I think my father knows someone who works there. I will ask him.’
‘Okay, but tell him that I am looking for a relative or something. We don’t want him getting suspicious.’
***
Sam woke up with a start during the night. She glanced in alarm at her surroundings struggling to work out where she was and what was going on. The Viteri painting with its multicoloured balloons told her that she was in Gloria’s flat. The glass in the windows was rattling and her bed was trying to throw her off. She realised that it was a tremor. They were part of life in Calderon, which was built on the slopes of a volcano that periodically came to life and dusted the city with several inches of volcanic ash, but she had never experienced one before. Not sure if she should be terrified or fascinated, she sat up in bed and watched the lampshade swinging from the flex on the ceiling. She felt as if she were inside a Christmas present being rattled by a diffident child. Gloria appeared at the door to her bedroom.
‘Don’t be afraid. It was a minor tremor. We don’t need to leave the building. It’s safer indoors anyway, as a piece of concrete can land on your head in the street.’
‘Hmmm, I don’t fancy that. It did give me a fright though. I don’t think I can go to sleep again right away. My heart is thundering in my rib cage. Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Good plan. I’ll put on some water. See you in the kitchen.’
Sam shuffled into the kitchen in a pair of tiny slippers provided by Gloria who seemed unaware that her friend had penguin-sized feet. Sam’s large feet were a source of chagrin due to her inheriting a shoe fetish from her mother that rivalled Imelda Marcos; one that went unrequited due to the lack of women’s shoes in her size. Gloria was pouring water into a bright yellow teapot and humming. It was typical of her to be so unaffected by what seemed like disturbing events. She had a sangfroid about her that was unusual.
‘Can you get the milk from the fridge, please?’ asked Gloria. ‘Or should I say milkshake?’
‘Very funny. It wasn’t that strong.’
‘So, are you going to tell me about Simon or not?’
Straight to the point as usual, Gloria had no sympathy for Sam’s barriers. She did not distinguish between what was private and what was to be discussed in technicolour detail. There was nothing sacred for Gloria’s inquiring mind. Sam had known that sooner or later they would have to talk about him. No time like the present, as the latest episode had the potential to produce a bit of an earthquake in Sam’s existence if the clues were pointing in the right direction.
‘What about him?’
‘Come on. I’m not stupid. You’ve got that face on, as if someone killed your cat. I know something’s wrong. Have you broken up with him again?’
‘No, I haven’t, as it happens. We are ecstatically happy.’
Gloria raised an eyebrow so high that it was in danger of disappearing into her highlights.
‘Really?’
Sam blushed. She felt Gloria’s disbelief through her pores.
‘Well, um, you know how it is. Relationships and all that.’
‘Is he sleeping around again?’
‘No, well, I don’t think so, although it’s not easy to tell. That’s not the problem.’
There was a pause as she sipped her tea and took a deep breath.
‘It’s like pulling teeth, gringa. Out with it.’
‘I think I might be pregnant.’
A teaspoon fell on the floor as Gloria’s hand flew to her mouth. They both jumped. The neon light in the kitchen flickered making them both look even more shocked.
‘Holy shit and all the saints,’ said Gloria. She felt in her dressing gown pocket for her cigarettes. Withdrawing one from the packet with shaking fingers, she clicked the lighter without success. Sam leaned across the table and grabbed the lighter. It worked first time and soon Gloria was sucking on the cigarette as she regained her composure.
‘What will you do, Sam?’
‘Do? What do you mean?’
‘If you are pregnant? Will you keep it?’
Good question and one that Sam had asked herself many times. What did anyone do when they were going out with a man who couldn’t keep his hands off other women and then they discovered that they were pregnant, or might be? She felt raw panic under her sternum and stared at her cup of tea.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ she mumbled, ‘it’s dif
ficult to know how I’ll feel if it’s true. My first instinct is to get an abortion before anyone finds out. I know it’s wicked in your religion, but I can’t do the whole baby thing right now.’
She looked up from her tea expecting to see Gloria glowering at her with disapproval. Instead her friend’s face had gone white and she held on to the edge of the table as if on a roller coaster.
‘I’m still not sure, you know. I may not even be pregnant. Ignore me.’
But Gloria did not respond. She shut her eyes as if visualising something far away and Sam wondered what on earth she had triggered with her premature panic attack. She waited for Gloria to speak. After what seemed an age, her friend opened her eyes again and spoke so softly that Sam struggled to hear her.
‘I had an abortion once,’ said Gloria, ‘after getting pregnant when I was nineteen. I was so innocent that when the nuns told me I couldn’t get pregnant before I was married, I took it literally.’
She laughed but Sam felt a knife in her heart at the painful sound.
‘I didn’t even realise I was pregnant until my mother noticed me putting on weight and took me to the doctor. I was shocked when they told me but not as horrified as my mother. It would have been such a scandal had anyone found out. Single mothers were beyond the pale. It was a disgrace that my parents were not prepared to go through.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was shut in my room for days, forbidden to see or talk to anyone, and then my mother announced that we were going to Miami. She said it was to buy baby clothes. I had no idea where we were going until we pulled into the doorway of the clinic. I had no choice.’
‘How awful for you. It must have been hard to forgive your mother.’
‘I was devastated that she had colluded with my father to get me an abortion but I did understand. She was already ill, dying, from cancer and she didn’t want to leave me alone with a baby.’
‘But why didn’t they discuss it with you? Surely you had a right to decide too?’
‘They were ashamed because in those days, nice girls didn’t get pregnant. They were trying to protect me, I guess. When I got back to Calderon, the father of the baby was gone, too.’
‘Did he run away?’
‘I don’t know. I never found out what happened to him. He may have gone back to Peru. I was afraid to ask my father but I suspected he had something to do with it.’
She faltered. Fat tears leaked from her eyes, splashing on the Formica table top and she started to wail. Sam was acquainted with Senor Sanchez and knew that he was not a man to be crossed. She could imagine his rage when he discovered that someone had deflowered his daughter and left her pregnant.
‘I’m so sorry, Gloria. I had no idea.’
‘That’s why I don’t have children. I can’t anymore. Something went wrong.’
Her bravado had evaporated. Sam knew now why Gloria wasn’t married in the land of teenage engagements. She had always presumed that it was a choice, like hers, but now she knew it wasn’t. Poor Gloria, there were no fairy tale weddings for the barren in Sierramar, no matter how rich you were. Speechless with sorrow for hidden pain that had been trapped for years behind Gloria’s glossy façade and was now leaking out in the form of bitter tears, Sam put her arms around her friend and held her as she mourned.
***
The contact provided by Hernan Sanchez was waiting at the door to the Migration building. He was short and plump with a bad wig resembling a random piece of cat skin perched at an angle on his head. He beamed at them winningly, a smile of such radiance that it almost made him handsome.
‘What did you tell your father?’ said Sam to Gloria as they approached him.
‘I said we were checking to see if one of your relatives had settled in Sierramar.’
‘We could do that, too.’
‘No, we couldn’t. This is urgent. Senor Salazar?’
‘Yes, Senorita Sanchez, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And your friend?
‘I’m Sam. Hello, Senor Salazar, nice to meet you, too.’
‘So, how can I help you ladies?’
‘We need to look in the archives. My friend is German and she is trying to find out if any relatives came to Sierramar after 1938.’
‘You mean because of the war in Europe?’
‘Yes, it would have been around that time,’ said Sam.
‘Follow me.’
They registered at the security desk leaving their ID cards with the guard and got into a rusty lift which plummeted deep into the earth in a disconcerting manner. The doors slid open at level B4 and they stepped into a gloomy basement with some old-fashioned microfiche viewers on a bench.
‘Wait here, please,’ said Senor Salazar. Apart from the bench running down one side of the room, the space was taken up by parallel rows of shelving containing boxes with numbered labels on them. He walked past the entrances to several rows of shelving before disappearing into one. After about five minutes he re-emerged pushing a trolley which had boxes on both the bottom and top trays.
‘Here we are. If you can’t find them in here, they don’t exist. These are the records for residential immigrants into Sierramar from Germany for 1938 to 1946.’
‘Thank you. This is fantastic.’
Senor Salazar beamed again and stood there waiting. Sam opened one of the boxes. It contained sheets of see-through plastic that had tiny writing on them. She had no idea what to do.
‘Um, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to read these.’
‘Ah, but you need to use the screens.’
‘Please can you show me how to do it?’
‘It would be my pleasure, Miss Sam.’
Mr Salazar selected a box and took the first sheet out of it. He went over to one of the screens and switched it on. A glass plate on the bench under the screen was illuminated. He lifted up the plate and put the plastic sheet upside down on another plate below it. Sam was about to point this out but Gloria stopped her. He lowered the top plate onto the plastic sheet. The image appeared on the screen in a magnified form and they could see that the record was for one Frau Magda Glaub from Cologne.
‘Wow, that’s great,’ said Sam.
‘I recommend you do this in order,’ said Senor Salazar, ‘work through the box from back to front and you shouldn’t miss any records. Good luck in your search. When you are finished, can you please put the boxes back on the trolley and log out at the security desk?’
‘We will. Thank you,’ said Sam. ‘Gloria, we need to avoid repetition here to save time. I’ll do the boxes on the top tray if you take those on the bottom. Let’s pile the boxes that have been revised over here on the bench and then we can load up the trolley again when we are finished. I think we should make notes about any German men from twenty to forty-five years old who arrived from 1938 to 1946.’
Gloria, who hated being organised or given orders to, rolled her eyes to heaven at Sam’s British obsession with efficiency. However, even she could see that this was not going to be a quick task and she hated basements.
‘Good idea,’ she said.
They sat down at the microfiche screens, side by side at first, but then Sam moved down one machine to give herself more room. It was pretty simple work from them on. The forms were identical and gave the same information; name, date of birth, profession, origin. As they worked, Gloria gave out the odd exclamation and waved a microfiche in the air.
‘I know him,’ she said, ‘he lives in the valley.’
After a couple of hours, Sam finished the last box and she had a list of about twenty names.
‘Well, I’m finished. What about you?’
‘I’m on the last box. Give me a minute. I think these are women but I want to be sure.’
Sam made a table in her notebook with crude columns with the same headings as the report cards. She transferred the information from her list and started to copy it from Gloria’s as well. When they had finished, there were thirty-six names in the table.
‘So?�
� she asked Gloria, ‘do you recognise anyone?’
‘Most of them. I’m pretty shocked. You should choose one to be your long-lost-relative.’
‘There’s a doctor here, Dr Kurt Becker. I shall pretend that his sister is my grandmother. That will make it less obvious than using a real person.’
‘Good idea. We should contact some of these people and pretend we are looking for her, or her brother.’
‘Is there anyone that stands out?’
‘Boris Klein. His daughters went to school with me. He made them dye their hair blonde so that they would be more Aryan.’
‘Holy crap! Do you know where they live?’
‘I have their phone number.’
CHAPTER 8
August 1988
Saul Rosen wasted no time in getting a flight to Calderon and travelled south within the week. He had not slept or bathed and only eaten scraps from the fridge before catching his flight. The apartment he left behind bore an air of neglect that suggested a deep depression or worse. He had forced himself to pack a bag with items suitable for hiking and general tourist activities but he had none of the usual essentials like a camera or sun screen. He packed the Glock and bullets in his suitcase wrapped in his underwear. Some old photographs of men in uniform were packed into his carry-on bag along with his single ticket and passport. He was feeling oddly light-headed and struggled to behave normally. His neighbours were concerned but in true big city style they left him alone.
‘Poor man. I heard he was in a concentration camp. He’ll never recover you know.’
***
Alfredo drove to the airport to collect him, feeling rejuvenated by the expectation of adventure and history generated by Saul’s quest to find the fugitive Nazis. He was determined to get revenge for his friend Ramon, whatever it took. Leaving the car in the official carpark, he strode across to the arrivals hall to find that the flight had been delayed by thirty minutes and that the passengers were still queueing at immigration. He bought himself a bitter coffee and a super sweet biscuit at a stall in the foyer. The muscles in his face tightened as he forced the coffee down his throat. Large groups of excited people were jostling to get to the barriers forcing him backwards. Some of them were holding helium balloons and other party paraphernalia. It was traditional for the whole extended family to welcome someone home from a trip abroad.