‘So Gerardo was involved in the politics back then?’
‘Gerardo was an artist,’ Miriam said. ‘But everything anybody did back then was seen as political even if it wasn’t. Just think… we’d had a military government since 1966 and young people were starting to organize into all these groups and factions: Marxists, Anarchists, left-wing Peronists, right-wing Peronists. Gerardo’s theater group was seen as group of revolutionaries because we were doing experimental theater; but we weren’t political in that way… so nobody liked us: the left or the right. Dieter was just a country boy who’d arrived in Buenos Aires.’
‘Where from?’
‘Bariloche.’
‘Bariloche?’
‘Dieter’s father worked in the Olympic Hotel,’ Miriam said.
‘You’re kidding me…’
‘What?’
‘He worked for Erich Priebke?’
‘Of course… You know about Priebke…’
‘Some,’ I said.
‘Priebke was the head of a whole nest of Nazis who were hiding out in Patagonia. The Olympic Hotel was a kind of haven for them. Priebke was the manager there. I don’t know who owned it. But the hotel gave them all employment and a plausible cover and everyone in town from the police chief to the city council clerks were happy to have these heroes of the Third Reich become part of the town society.’
‘So your husband’s father was a Nazi on the run from Europe?’
‘Dieter’s father escaped from Germany after the war,’ Miriam said. ‘He got out via Switzerland with a new name and a new passport provided by the Argentine embassy in 1945. Dieter knew that the hotel was full of ex-Nazis but they all had new names by then, new identities. Even if you lived in Bariloche, no one knew the real identities of the Germans.’
‘Was Dieter born in Argentina?’
‘Yes, of course. In 1949… His mother had fallen for one of these handsome Germans who’d come to Bariloche. It was her way of living out the fantasy… the glamorous woman in love with the strong military man: like Evita and Perón… Dieter was born a year after his parents were married. Even if his father had an Italian name, Renato Brescia, he gave Dieter a German one. Dieter grew up surrounded by the Olympic Hotel clique… every year they all celebrated Hitler’s birthday. They called it the Reich of the Andes. You almost want to believe it was some kind of a joke but then… Dieter was so ashamed, you see. The photographs… he showed me… when he was a child… Dieter loved his mother… she was a very… alluring woman. And to please his father… Dieter was six years old… his mother had him dressed up in a little uniform for an aunt’s wedding… I saw the pictures… Dieter liked to dress up… but… well… by the time he was fourteen, he started to find out what the Nazis had done in Europe. And that his own father had been in the SS.’
‘What was Dieter’s father’s connection with Priebke?’
‘Dieter’s father was in the same unit as Priebke. He was with him at the Fosse Ardeatine.’
‘The mass execution,’ I said, ‘at the caves in Rome?’
‘Over three hundred Italians,’ she said. ‘They were shot by the SS as a reprisal for a partisan ambush on a German police battalion in March 1944. The partisans exploded a bomb, which resulted in twenty-eight policemen’s deaths. The SS took a couple of hundred Italian prisoners, suspected partisans and fifty-seven Jews, drove them out the caves at Ardeatine, and executed them with a bullet to the back of the neck. It took all day to kill them. The Germans blew up the entrance to caves to seal the bodies inside. They were found a year later after the liberation of Italy.’
‘Your husband’s father was one of the executioners.’
‘Priebke used officers who had never killed anyone before. Some of them were horrified and testified later about the killings. But Priebke escaped along with others of his unit. The massacre was something Priebke, and the other SS men in Bariloche, were proud of. Dieter was devastated when he found out.’
‘How did he find out?’
‘They used to have a party on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday. A lot of them got drunk. They liked to boast about it among themselves. Dieter heard them just after he turned eighteen. He went straight to his father and asked him what he knew about it.’
‘And?’
‘His father told him that he had no idea what could happen in a war. He made no excuse for what he’d done, or Priebke or the others.’
‘Dieter rejected his father?’
Miriam laughed.
‘Dieter was beside himself. He didn’t know what to do. He left for Buenos Aires.’
‘Where he met you?’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I was an actor in Gerardo’s first theater company.’
‘And then Dieter met Gerardo Fischer through you?’
‘Yes. Dieter had always been interested in theater at school, which his father thought was effeminate, but… it’s funny… his mother encouraged him. After Bariloche, Dieter thought Buenos Aires was like heaven. At that time, in the late sixties, the company was a collective of around twenty people: you know, actors, designers, make-up artists, lighting technicians; but young as Gerardo was back then, in his early twenties, Gerardo was indisputable sole director. He was like a perpetual motion machine. He’d be developing a play in the morning with four people; another in the afternoon with six others; and rehearsing or performing a third piece in the night. But it all fell apart a few years later.’
‘During the Videla dictatorship?’
‘Before that… Just before you were born, I expect.’ Miriam gave me a maternal smile. ‘When I think back… just imagine what it was like to be in Buenos Aires back then… the Montoneros planning an armed insurrection to bring back Perón; the military in power and determined to save Argentina from the godless reds; and the USA didn’t want communists in Latin America either so they supported the military. It was all madness. And then one of the actresses in the group had connections to the Montoneros. Her name is Francesca Damiani. She was having an affair with Gerardo. The awful thing was, back then, everybody thought they had the right to kill whoever they saw as their enemies: class enemies, enemies of the Fatherland, police, soldiers, or sympathizers with the revolutionaries. We all fell into one category or the other. But you know… left or right, both sides hated us, Gerardo’s theater company. For the left, we were too bourgeois; for the right, we were dangerous subversives. And then there was Francesca, a Montonera… After Perón came back to Argentina in 1973, straight away they began killing the Montoneros who’d been bombing and killing to restore him to power. Francesca swore to us she had nothing to do with the Montoneros but she was lying. That could have been to protect us. When Perón died, and Isabelita and Lopez Rega got the power, Francesca was picked up. They gave her a terrible time in custody. But they released her. Maybe they made her talk. To be fair to her, she came back and told us it was dangerous for all of us to stay in Buenos Aires. Maybe she named names. Gerardo disbanded the company and advised us all to get out until it was all over. If ever it would be all over. The Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, the military and the police had started making all kinds of people disappear.’
‘Did you leave, too?’
‘No, Dieter and I stayed,’ Miriam said. ‘We weren’t picked up, but… for ten years… It was a nightmare. We went to live in Patagonia. We thought we’d be safer away from Buenos Aires. And we were, I suppose. Carlos was born a few years later.’
‘You went to Bariloche?’
‘No way.’ Miriam laughed. ‘I’m a Jew. Do you think I could stay with Dieter’s relatives?’
I wanted to ask Miriam, how come the son of a Nazi marries a Jewish woman in Buenos Aires, but I didn’t. But it was there in my head. I mean, what’s the psychology of that?
‘And Gerardo?’ I asked.
‘He went to Italy.’
‘What did he do there?’
‘What he did exactly… I don’t know. He worked with an Italian theater company. And he taught dr
ama in Rome.’
‘Did he already know about Dieter’s father and the massacre?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t he do anything about it, then?’
‘We had enough trouble surviving. The Nazis in Bariloche were under the protection of the police, the military, the government. What were we supposed to do?’
‘But then Gerardo came back to Argentina after the fall of the dictatorship,’ I said.
‘Not right away… he was in Rome for a while… and New York… Australia… maybe other places. He came back to Argentina in the mid-nineties. When Gerardo came back, Dieter went to pick him up at the airport. Gerardo stayed with us in our apartment near Plaza Once. Carlos was about twelve years old by then. I’d been thinking about getting back into theater. Gerardo had an idea to do an Argentine version of A Doll’s House.’
‘The Ibsen play?’
She looked surprised that I knew of it.
‘Yes, but he changed the Torvald character. Instead of being a doctor who tries to dominate his wife, Torvald becomes an army officer…’
‘So a strong woman divorces an army officer,’ I said.
‘You can see how it would go down well at the time,’ Miriam said.
‘And you played one of the characters?’
‘Nora, the wife. I was about the right age.’
‘How long were you with the new company?’
‘Five years.’
‘What made you leave the company?’
‘It was a bad time for Dieter.’
‘How so?’
‘Dieter decided that he needed to come out.’
‘Come out?’
‘Dieter was gay. That’s how come we finally decided to get divorced. He was in love with Gerardo.’
‘Is Gerardo Fischer gay?’ I asked her.
She laughed. It was wry, sardonic, but it didn’t answer my question.
‘I decided to get away from both Dieter and Gerardo,’ Miriam said. ‘Carlos and I moved to Córdoba. It’s a university town, it’s cultured, it has theater, even if it’s six hundred kilometers away from Buenos Aires. Then Carlos met Ramón and we moved up here, to get out of the city.’
‘But you kept your married name… Brescia?’
‘It was Carlos’s name, and the name on my driver’s license and the name on my credit cards and bank account. Why change? I didn’t hate Dieter.’
‘So how did Gerardo end up coming here, too?’
‘Because of Carlos and Ramón… and me, too, I suppose. The boys and I became friendly with Ana and her theater group at Temenos. Carlos went down to Buenos Aires to see his father; and Dieter took him to see Gerardo’s production of The Mercy Burlesques. The production location moved around the city: warehouses on the docks, basement car parks, storage facilities. Carlos raved about it to Ana. Ana went down to Buenos Aires to see it. And not long after, Gerardo showed up here.’
‘Small world,’ I said.
‘We’re all linked up in some way,’ Miriam said. ‘Some links are stronger than others.’
‘Do you have any idea why Gerardo might have disappeared?’ I said.
Miriam shook her head.
‘Gerardo’s been around a long time. He’s upset a lot of people. But I don’t know.’
‘Did you know that Pablo Arenas knew Priebke?’
She shook her head, held the mate gourd close to her heart, eyes wide, lips parted.
‘Arenas has a photograph on his wall: himself with Erich Priebke.’
‘I had no idea,’ Miriam said. ‘The first time I saw Arenas was on the day of the robbery up here.’
‘Do you think that Arenas coming here to rob you might have had anything to do with Bariloche, Dieter’s father?’
She shook her head again.
I’d frightened her. I wished I hadn’t.
‘Do you think that Gerardo Fischer’s disappearance might have had anything to do with Bariloche?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I’d like to talk to Carlos and Ramón,’ I said.
‘I’ll give you Carlos’s cell phone number.’ Miriam went over to the desk behind the red boxing bag. She wrote the number down on a yellow post-it paper and brought it back for me.
I stood up. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll do everything I can to find Gerardo.’
‘You’re going?’
‘Can and I come and talk to you again?’
‘Any time.’ She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’
‘Yes, do that,’ she said.
I walked back down the garden path and she stood on the veranda until I got into my car. I waved to her from behind the windshield. I drove back toward Temenos.
Arenas targets a woman for a robbery whose husband is the son of one of Erich Priebke’s SS unit. I nail Arenas for the robbery. Not the end of the story. Did Arenas follow her here? Did Arenas target Fischer because he was connected with Miriam and the boys, or because Fischer had something to do with Priebke being discovered in Bariloche? Or maybe Arenas had nothing to do with it? Could someone else from Bariloche want Fischer out of the way? Why now?
I wanted to talk to Miriam’s boys.
What had they been talking to Gerardo about? I pulled over. I tried the number that Miriam had given me and my call was diverted to Carlos’s voicemail. I left a message: ‘My name is Juan Manuel Pérez. I was the investigating officer on the robbery a few years back. I got your number from your mother, Miriam. It’s urgent that I speak with you about Gerardo Fischer. Please call me as soon as possible.’
As soon as I hung up, my cell phone rang.
It was Ana.
‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’d like to talk to you.’
My breath caught in my chest.
‘I’ll be right over,’ I said. ‘I’m about five minutes away.’
‘I’ll meet you in the parking lot,’ she said.
She hung up.
Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez
January 11th 2006
Hours: 18:45 to 21:00
I drove onto the colony’s parking lot, got out of the air-conditioned cool of the car to affront the suffocating evening air. I locked the door. Even the wind was hot. No sign of Ana. The arms of the hillside pines lifted and dropped as each gust wafted by and the grass drifted. Shadows on the dark branches: vultures squatting in a flock, feathers ruffled by the wind. I walked to the edge of the parking lot, looked down into the dip of the valley. Ribbons of red earth wound among the rocks and pine trees of the property down towards the big meeting house.
Ana was alone on the far hillside, unmistakable, dreadlocks that crowned the tiny head, the small body. A tall male with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail limped his way up the slope below her. Dressed in denim, like a crocked and aged biker, he kept his balance with the aid of a black cane. A dark-haired woman, a lot younger than the longhair, followed behind him at a distance of about fifteen meters. I had the feeling that those two had had an argument. I guess I was disappointed that Ana wasn’t alone.
I followed the path from the car park down through the pines toward Ana. I raised a hand in greeting and she waved back. The longhair was close to the top of the hill and the dark-haired woman had almost caught up with him. Ana, her arms folded across her belly, waited for me where she was. The longhair and the dark-haired woman disappeared over the ridge and I felt a sense of relief.
I’m no longhair. I’m an ex-cop trying to earn a living helping these people out. I’m from a family of cops. My father is a cop: his father before him was a cop, the whole family is either cop or military. Here I am trying to find a guy who went on the run thirty years ago not long after I was born. Knowing what I know of my father who was a cop back then, his job was to track down subversives. And Gerardo Fischer back then would have been a subversive. When I thought back to those bad times, I felt shame: shame at my father, and shame on us all for letting happe
n what happened. Maybe some people just feel some kind of righteous anger because it was people like them who were the victims of those years.
Ana stood on the hillside waiting for me. I stopped for a moment to light a cigarette, to look at her up there.
I wasn’t just an ex-cop to her, was I? Or was that just my fantasy? Was she hiding some kind of hate for me and my kind? I was the guy who was helping her find this person she loved. Was I jealous? In what way did she love this Fischer? All of these artist people seemed to revere him in some way. I wanted to know the how and why.
Ana was like some kind of Medusa up there on the hillside. The thick cords of her hair drifted and lifted in the wind.
I lifted the cigarette to my mouth, took a drag.
Ana approached me down the path.
‘Hey,’ she said.
I bent down as Ana lifted her head to kiss me on the cheek.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to my cabin.’
Ana took me by the arm. I intertwined my fingers with hers. She didn’t object.
Dry thunder rumbled. It would pour with rain soon. Ana held on to me. The first of the rain began to fall. We hurried along the path to her cabin. It had a trellis over the veranda. Raindrops splattered on the vine leaves. She struggled to get the locks open and then we were safe inside. She pressed against me and lifted her head, eyes open, lips parted and I bent down to kiss her. This is what I hoped was going to happen. It wasn’t going to find Fischer any quicker, but wherever he was, he would have to wait.
Witness Deposition:
Ana Valenzuela (Extract 2)
… you want to know how I met Gerardo? The first time was five years ago… I didn’t find him to be so endearing, to be honest. Gerardo likes to play games. Carlos and Ramón had gone down to Buenos Aires to see our friend Mariela in a play called The Mercy Burlesques. This great director, Gerardo Fischer, had written it, Mariela said, and he was directing it himself. Mariela played the part of Tamara, the lead, in as much as there was one. The play is set on Plaza Miserere in front of the Once railway station. It’s the story of a Russian immigrant woman, who comes to Argentina and escapes from poverty by setting up a bordello that attracts the rich and powerful. She’s on the run from a domestic nightmare back in Saint Petersburg that’s only revealed in the last act… so I’m not going to tell you what it is in case you go to see the play some time. I guess it’s a kind of equivalent to Gogol’s Nevsky Prospect. Carlos and Ramón called me up from Buenos Aires and insisted that I go down to see the play at once. I could catch the second week’s performances. It was being staged in a warehouse on the docks. To get there, the audience was brought in on coaches through some really scary parts of the city.
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