A Quiet Flame

by Philip Kerr

  “Very impressive,” I said, jerking my head at the door behind me.

  She sighed and shook her head. “It is nothing. Not nearly enough. We try, but the poor are always with us.”

  I’d heard this somewhere before.

  “All the same, your work must give you a lot of satisfaction.”

  “Some, but I take no pride in it. I am nothing. A grasa. A common person. The work is its own reward. Besides, none of what I give is from me. It all belongs to Perón. He is the true saint, not me. You see, I don’t regard this as charity. Charity humiliates. What happens out there is social aid. A welfare state. Nothing more, nothing less. I handle its dispensation personally because I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of bureaucracy in this country. And I don’t trust anyone else to do it. There is too much corruption in our public institutions.” She tried to stifle a yawn. “So I come here, every night, and I do it myself. Especially important to me are the unmarried mothers of Argentina. Can you imagine why, Señor Gunther?”

  I could easily imagine one reason why, but I hardly wanted to risk my new benefactor’s displeasure by mentioning her own husband’s efforts to procure abortions for all the underage girls he was having sex with. So I smiled patiently and shook my head.

  “Because I was one myself. Before I met Perón. I was an actress then. I was not the putita my enemies like to paint me as. But, in 1936, when I was plain Eva Duarte and working in radio soap opera, I met a man and gave birth to his child. That man’s name was Kurt von Bader. That’s right, señor. Fabienne von Bader is my daughter.”

  I glanced the colonel’s way. He nodded back at me by way of corroboration.

  “When Fabienne was born, Kurt, who was married, agreed to bring her up. His wife could not have a child of her own. And at the time, I thought I would have more children myself. Sadly, for the president and myself both love children, that has not proved to be possible. Fabienne is my only child. And, as such, very precious to me.

  “At first, Kurt and his wife were very generous and allowed me to see Fabienne whenever I wanted to, on condition that she was never told I was her real mother. More recently, however, all of that changed. Kurt von Bader is one of the custodians of a large sum of money deposited in Switzerland by the former government of Germany. It is my desire to use some of that money to help lift the poor out of their poverty. Not just here, in Argentina, but throughout the Roman Catholic world. Von Bader, who still entertains some hope of restoring a Nazi government in Germany, disagreed. He and I quarreled, violently. Much was said. Too much. Fabienne must have heard some of it and learned the truth about her origins. Soon after that, she ran away from home.”

  Evita sighed and sat back in her chair, as if the effort of telling me all of this had been a strain. “There,” she said. “I have told you everything. Are you shocked, Herr Gunther?”

  “No, ma’am. Not shocked. A little surprised, perhaps. And maybe a bit puzzled as to why you should choose to confide in me.”

  “I want you to find her, of course. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “No, not at all. But when you have a whole police force at your disposal, ma’am, it’s a little hard to understand why you should expect me to succeed where they have—”

  “Failed,” she said, hearing me hesitate to complete the sentence. “Isn’t that right, Colonel? Your men have failed me, have they not?”

  “So far we are without success, señora,” said the colonel.

  “You hear that?” said Evita. She puffed out her cheeks in a scornful laugh. “He can’t even bring himself to say the word ‘failure.’ But that is what it amounts to. You, on the other hand. You are someone who has experience looking for missing persons, yes?”

  “Some experience, yes. But in my own country.”

  “Yes, you are a German. Like my daughter, who has been brought up as a German-Argentine. Castellano is her second language. Already you move easily among these people. And I am convinced that is where you will find her. Find her. Find my daughter. If you succeed, I will pay you fifty thousand dollars in cash.” She nodded with a smile. “Yes, I thought that would make your ears move.” Evita lifted her hand, as if taking an oath. “I’m no chupacirios, but I solemnly swear by the Holy Virgin that if you find her, the money is yours.”

  The door opened briefly to admit one of her dogs. Evita greeted her as “Canela,” picked her up, and kissed her like a favorite child. “Well?” she asked me. “What do you say, German?”

  “I’ll do my best, ma’am,” I said. “But I can’t promise anything. Not even for fifty thousand dollars. But I will do my best.”

  “Yes. Yes, that is a good answer.” Once again, she looked accusingly at Colonel Montalbán. “You hear? He doesn’t say he will find her. He says he will try his best.” She nodded at me. “It’s said throughout the world that I am a selfish and ambitious woman. But this isn’t the case.”

  She put down the dog and took my hand in hers. Her hands were cold, like those of a corpse. Her red fingernails were long and beautifully manicured, like the petals from some petrified flower. They were small hands but, oddly, full of power, as if in her veins was some strange electricity. It was the same with her eyes, which held me for a moment in their watery gaze. The effect was remarkable, and I was reminded of how people had once described the experience of meeting Hitler and how they had said there was something about his eyes, too. Then, without warning, she opened the front of her dress and placed my hand between her breasts, so that my palm was directly over her heart.

  “I want you to feel this,” she said urgently. “I want you to feel the heart of an ordinary Argentine woman. And to know that everything I do, I do for the highest motives. Do you feel it, German? Do you feel Evita’s heart? Do you feel the truth of what I’m telling you?”

  I wasn’t sure I felt anything very much other than the swell of her breasts on either side of my fingers and the cool silkiness of her perfumed flesh. I knew I had to move my hand only an inch or two to cup the whole bosom and to feel the nipple rubbing against the heel of my thumb. But of her heartbeat there was no sign. Instinctively, she pressed my hand harder against her breastbone.

  “Do you feel it?” she asked insistently.

  Her gaze was tearful now. And it was easy to see how she had once been such a success as an actress on the radio. The woman was the personification of high emotion and melodrama. If she’d been the Duport cello, she couldn’t have been more highly strung. It was a risk letting her go on. She might have burst into flames, levitated, or turned into a saucerful of ghee. I was getting a little excited myself. It’s not every day that the president’s wife forces your hand inside her brassiere. I decided to tell her what she wanted to hear. I was good at that. I’d had a lot of other women to practice on.

  “Yes, Señora Perón, I can feel it,” I said, trying to keep the erection out of my voice.

  She let go of my hand and, to my relief, she seemed to relax a little. Then she smiled and said, “Whenever you are ready, you can take your hand off my bosom, German.”

  For a split second, I let it stay there. Long enough to meet her eye and let her know I liked my hand being just where it was. And then I took it away. I considered kissing my fingers, or maybe just smelling the perfume that was on them now, only that would have made me as melodramatic as she. So I put the hand in my pocket, saving it for later, like a choice cigar or a dirty postcard.

  She adjusted her dress and then opened a drawer, from which she took out a photograph and handed it to me. It was the same photograph Kurt von Bader had given me. The reward he had mentioned was the same amount. I wondered whether, if I did manage to find Fabienne, each would pay or just one. Or neither. Neither seemed more likely. Usually when you found a missing child, the parents got angry, first with the child and then with you. Not that any of this seemed particularly relevant. They were asking me to look for her because they’d tried everything else. Since that had already failed, I figured I had next to no chance of
turning up a lead on the kid. To succeed, I would have to think of something that hadn’t been thought of, which wasn’t a good bet on anyone’s quinella. Probably the kid was in Uruguay, or dead, and if she wasn’t, then there had to be an adult who was helping her stay below the radar.

  “Do you think you can find her?” asked Evita.

  “I was kind of wondering that myself,” I said. “Perhaps I might, if I had all the facts.”

  “Forgive me, but isn’t that a detective’s job? To work without all the facts. I mean, if we had all the facts, then we could probably find her ourselves. We wouldn’t need you, German. And we certainly wouldn’t be offering a reward of fifty thousand dollars.”

  She had a point, of course. Melodramatic she might have been. Stupid she wasn’t.

  “What makes you think she’s still in the country?” I asked. “Could be she just got on the riverboat to Montevideo. Twenty-nine dollars. End of story.”

  “For one thing,” said Evita, “I’m married to the president of Argentina. So, I know that she doesn’t have a passport. And even if she did have a passport, she doesn’t have a visa. We know because my husband asked Luis Berres. He’s the president of Uruguay. And before you ask, he also asked Presidents Videla, Chaves, and Odría.”

  “Perhaps if I spoke to her parents again,” I said. Correcting myself, I added, “I mean to her father and her stepmother.”

  “If you think it would do any good,” said Montalbán.

  I didn’t. But I hardly knew what else to suggest. All of it was a dead end. I’d known that the first time I’d met von Bader. From everything I’d heard, his daughter and whomever she was with didn’t want to be found. For a detective, when people don’t want to be found, it’s like looking for the meaning of life. You’re not even sure that it exists. I hated taking on a job that promised so little chance of success. And normally, I might have turned it down. But normal didn’t even get to peek through the spy hole of this particular situation. Eva Perón wasn’t the kind of president’s wife you refused. Especially not soon after my trip to Caseros.

  “Well?” she asked. “How will you go about it?”

  I put a cigarette in my face and lit it. I didn’t want a cigarette, but it gave me time to think of something to say. Colonel Montalbán cleared his throat. It sounded like a lifebelt hitting the water above my head.

  “As soon as we have something to report, we’ll be in touch, ma’am.”

  When we were on the stairs outside the antechamber, I thanked him.

  “For what?”

  “For coming to my aid back there. That question she asked.”

  “ ‘How will you go about it?’ ”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how will you go about it?” He grinned amiably and took a light off my cigarette.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll go and look for inspiration, probably. Stick a gun in its face. Slap it around a bit. See what happens. The forensic, judicial approach. On the other hand, I might just have to hope that I get lucky. That usually works for me. I may not look like it, Colonel, but I’m quite a lucky guy. This morning I was in prison. Five minutes ago, I had my hand inside the cleavage of the wife of the president of Argentina. Believe me, for a German that’s as lucky as luck can buy you these days.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Evita didn’t seem ill.”

  “Nor do you.”

  “Not now, maybe. But I was.”

  “Pack’s a good doctor,” said the colonel. “The best there is. You were both lucky to have someone like him treating you.”

  “I expect so.”

  “I’ll call the von Baders and say that you want to speak to them again. Perhaps there was something we missed before.”

  “There’s always something that gets missed. On account of the fact that detectives are human and humans make mistakes.”

  “Shall we say at midday tomorrow?”

  I nodded.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks, Colonel. I’ll walk, if you don’t mind. The landlady sees me arriving in that white Jaguar of yours, she’s liable to put my room rate up.”

  18

  BUENOS AIRES, 1950

  THEY WERE PLEASED to see me at the Hotel San Martín. Of course, a lot of that was to do with the fact that the secret police had turned over my room—although not so as you would have noticed. There wasn’t much to turn over. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd greeted me like they hadn’t expected ever to see me again.

  “One hears stories about the secret police and that kind of thing,” Mr. Lloyd told me over a welcome-back glass of whiskey in the hotel bar. “But, well, it’s not something we’ve encountered before.”

  “There was a misunderstanding about my cédula, that’s all,” I said. “I don’t suppose it will happen again.”

  All the same, I went ahead and paid my monthly bill, just in case it did. It helped to put the Lloyds at ease. Losing a guest was one thing. Losing a guest who hadn’t paid was quite another. They were nice people, but they were in it for the money, after all. Who isn’t?

  I went up to my room. There was a bed, a table and chair, an armchair, a three-bar electric fire, a radio, a telephone, and a bathroom. Naturally, I’d added a few personal touches of my own. A bottle, a couple of glasses, a chess set, a Spanish dictionary, a Weimar edition of Goethe I’d bought in a secondhand bookshop, a suitcase and some clothes. All my worldly possessions. I’d like to have seen young Werther cope with Gunther’s sorrows. I poured myself a drink, set out the chess set, switched on the radio, and then sat in the armchair. There were some telephone messages in an envelope. All but one of these was from Anna Yagubsky. The one that wasn’t was from Isabel Pekerman. I didn’t know anyone called Isabel Pekerman.

  Agustín Magaldi came on Radio El Mundo, singing “Vagabundo.” This had been a huge hit for him in the thirties. I turned off the radio and ran a bath. I thought about going out to get something to eat, and had another drink instead. I was just thinking about going to bed when the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Lloyd.

  “A Señora Pekerman calling.”

  “Who?”

  “She rang before. She says you know her.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Lloyd. You’d better put her through.”

  I heard a couple of clicks and the tail end of another woman saying “Thank you.”

  “Señora Pekerman? This is Carlos Hausner. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Oh, yes, we have.”

  “Then you have the advantage of me, Señora Pekerman. I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

  “Are you alone, Señor Hausner?”

  I glanced around the four bare, silent walls at my half-empty bottle and my hopeless game of chess. I was alone, all right. Outside my window, people were walking up and down the street. But they might as well have been on Saturn, for all the good it did me. Sometimes the profound silence of that room scared me, because it seemed to echo something silent within myself. Across the street, at the church of Saint Catherine of Siena, a bell began to toll.

  “Yes, I’m alone, Señora Pekerman. What can I do for you?”

  “They asked me to come in tomorrow afternoon, Señor Hausner,” she said. “But I just got offered a small part in a play on Corrientes. It’s a small part. But it’s a good part. In a good play. Besides, things have moved on since last we met. Anna’s told me all about you. About how you’re helping her to look for her aunt and uncle.”

  I winced, wondering how many other people she’d told.

  “When exactly did we meet, Señora Pekerman?”

  “At Señor von Bader’s house. I was the woman who pretended to be his wife.”

  She paused. So did I. Or rather, so did my heart.

  “Remember me now?”

  “Yes, I remember you. The dog wouldn’t stay with you. It came with me and von Bader.”

  “Well, it’s not my dog, Señor Hausner,” she
said, as if I still didn’t quite get what she was talking about. “To be honest, I don’t think I really expected you to dig up anything about Anna’s aunt and uncle. But of course, you did. I mean it’s not much but it’s something. Some proof that they did at least enter this country. You see, I’m in the same boat as Anna. I’m Jewish, too. And I also had some relatives who entered the country illegally and then disappeared.”

  “I don’t think you should say anything else on the telephone, Señora Pekerman. Perhaps we could meet and talk this over.”

  IN THE EVENINGS, when she wasn’t acting, Isabel Pekerman worked at a milonga, which was a kind of tango club, on Corrientes. I didn’t know much about the tango, except that it had originated in Argentine brothels. That was certainly the impression I had from the Club Seguro. It was down some steps, underneath a small neon sign, and at the far end of a yard lit by a single naked flame. Out of the flickering shadows a large man approached. The vigilante guarding the door. He had a whistle around his neck to summon the police in the event of a dispute he couldn’t handle.

  “Are you carrying a knife?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He seemed surprised at this admission. “All the same, I have to search you.”

  “So why ask the question?”

  “Because if you’re lying, then I’d figure you might be out to cause trouble,” he said, patting me down. “And then I’ll have to keep an eye on you.” When he had satisfied himself I wasn’t armed, he waved me to the door. Music, which was mostly an accordion and some violins, was edging its way into the yard.