Ettinger walked up three shallow steps to the door of Agüero 1585, found the doorbell, and pressed it. He could not hear a sound from inside, and had just about decided that no one was home, when the door opened. A girl of about twelve or thirteen, her blond hair—Inge Klausner had been blond!—done up in rolled braids. She smiled a bit nervously and asked, “¿Señor?”
“Guten Tag, Fräulein,” Ettinger began, and saw relief in the girl’s eyes that she did not have to cope with Spanish. “My name is Ettinger. Is your mother or father at home?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“I’m looking for Herr Ernst Klausner, formerly of Berlin. Have I the right home?”
Concern came back in her eyes.
“My father will be here at six,” the girl said. “Perhaps it would be better, mein Herr, if you came back then.”
“The Frau Klausner I am looking for is named Inge,” Ettinger said.
From her eyes, Ettinger could see that he had hit home, but the concern in her eyes did not go away, and she didn’t respond directly.
“It would be better, mein Herr, if you came back when my father is here. At six, or a little after.”
“And if this is the home of Ernst and Inge Klausner, then you would be Sarah,” Ettinger said. “Who I last saw as a small child.”
She looked intently into his eyes. They were frightened, and he was sorry he had said what he had.
“Please,” the girl said. “Come in. I will telephone to my father.”
“¿Hola?”
“Ernst?”
“Who is this?”
“An old friend from Berlin, Ernst. David Ettinger.”
“Ach du lieber Gott!”
“Wie geht’s, Ernst?”
“You got out!”
“Obviously.”
“And your father and mother?”
“Mother is in New York. The others…”
There was a long silence.
“How did you find me?”
“Your daughter was kind enough to call you for me.”
“You are at my home?”
“Yes.”
There was another perceptible pause.
He doesn’t like me being here.
“I can’t leave here now, David. Could you come back to the house tonight? After six?”
“I have nothing else to do. I could wait for you.”
“Of course,” Ernst said. “Have you money, David? There is some in the house. I will tell Sarah to get you something to eat…”
“I have money, thank you. And I had an enormous Argentinean lunch before I came here.”
He thinks I am a refugee. I am, but not the way he thinks.
“I can’t leave here now. I will come, we will come, as soon as we can. Would you put Sarah on the telephone?”
Inge sobbed and dabbed at her eyes when she embraced him, but quickly recovered and announced, “We will have a coffee, David. Like old times.”
She motioned with her head for Sarah to come with her, and went into the kitchen, leaving Klausner and Ettinger alone.
“So, David,” Klausner said. “You are really all right? You need nothing?”
“Nothing, but I thank you for the thought.”
Klausner smiled. “You look prosperous. Can I ask? Did you bring anything out?”
“My Spanish cousins have been more than generous; and so far, I understand, they have kept the business from being sold to some deserving National Socialist.” He paused, then decided he could, should, tell Klausner everything. “I sold my interest in the German businesses to them. Technically, they are now owned by Spaniards. Germany has yet to expropriate Spanish-held property.”
“And you’re now living in Spain?”
“No. In the United States. Ernst, not for Inge’s ears, I am in the American Army.” He paused and chuckled. “I am a staff sergeant in the United States Army.”
Ettinger expected surprise at that announcement, but not the look of total bafflement that came to Klausner’s face.
“I was working in New York City,” Ettinger went on. “When I went to America, I took the examination for radio engineer, and I was working for RCA, the Radio Corporation of America…you know the name Sarnoff, Ernst, David Sarnoff? A Russian, a Jew, one of the great geniuses of radio…?”
“Why did you leave Spain?” Klausner interrupted.
The question surprised Ettinger.
“I didn’t, I don’t, trust Franco,” he said. “It is only a matter of time before he joins the Axis. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. What happened in Germany will happen in Spain.”
Klausner closed his eyes and shook his head, as if shocked and saddened by Ettinger’s stupidity.
“Franco is not as bad as you think, David,” he said.
What the hell is that all about? Franco is El Caudillo only because of the Germans, their Condor Legion, and all their other military support. He is as much a fascist as Mussolini and Hitler. But this is not the time to debate that.
“I was working for RCA, and I registered for the draft…”
“The what?”
“Military service, conscription,” Ettinger explained. “And Mr. Sarnoff—Ernst, you must know who he is. He worked with Marconi…”
Klausner was obviously wholly uninterested in a Russian Jew named Sarnoff, radio pioneer and genius or not. And Ettinger realized his attitude annoyed him.
“Mr. Sarnoff called me to his office. He said my work was essential to the war effort, and I did not have to go into the Army; all I had to say was that I did not wish to go, and he would arrange it.”
“So why are you in the American Army?” Klausner asked.
“I told Mr. Sarnoff that I wished to be an American citizen, and that I felt it my duty to serve.”
There he goes, shaking his head again. Or has his head ever stopped shaking, as if he is dealing with a pitiful idiot?
“And Mr. Sarnoff said to me, I know how you feel. I myself am going in the Army. And he told me when the war is over, I will not only have my job back, but that while I am in the Army, RCA will pay the difference between my Army pay and what I was making at RCA.”
“If the Americans win the war,” Klausner said.
“There is no ‘if,’ Ernst,” Ettinger said. “The Americans will win.”
Klausner shrugged.
Why am I growing so angry?
“When I was in an Army school in Baltimore,” Ettinger said, “I was taken, Ernst, to a shipyard in Kearny, New Jersey, which is right across the river from New York City. They are building one ship a day in that shipyard, Ernst. It takes them three weeks to build a ship. Every day, seven days a week, they launch a ship. And they told us they were not up to speed.”
“What?”
“Up to speed. It means that soon they will be making two ships a day, or three, or even four. And that is not their only shipyard. They have—I don’t know, ten, twenty shipyards, maybe more. Germany cannot make enough torpedoes to sink that many ships.”
Klausner shrugged again.
“On the way to Kearny, we passed the airport in Newark. It is bigger—three or four times the size of Tempelhof—and as far as I could see, enormous bombers were about to be flown to England. Not shipped, Ernst, flown.”
Klausner held up his hand to silence him. Ettinger followed his eyes. Inge was coming into the room with a tray.
“They are worse than the Viennese here,” she said, putting the tráy down in front of him. It held an assortment of pastries. “They take a Viennese recipe. If it says ‘six eggs,’ they use twelve. If it says ‘one cup of sugar,’ they use two. And the meat!”
“The meat is incredible,” Klausner agreed. “Cheap. Marvelous.”
Sarah put a coffee service on a low table. Inge poured coffee, handed cups to Ettinger and her husband, then started to pour a cup for herself.
“Liebchen,” Klausner said. “Why don’t you take Sarah for a little walk?”
It was said softly, but it wa
s an order. She put the pot down and smiled.
“We will talk later, David,” she said. “You’ll stay for supper, of course.”
“We will talk,” Ettinger agreed.
“I am so happy that you are here,” Inge said.
“I am so happy to see you all,” Ettinger said.
Klausner waited until his wife and daughter had left the house.
“If you are in the American Army,” he challenged, “what are you doing in Buenos Aires, not in a uniform?”
“That, Ernst, I cannot talk about.”
“You are a spy.”
Ettinger laughed. “No. A spy? No.”
“I don’t believe you,” Klausner said. “I understand why you feel you must lie to me, David, but I don’t believe you.”
“I am sure we—we Americans—have spies here, but I am not one of them.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“A spy by another name. You are playing word games.”
“I am here to harm the Germans, Ernst.”
“Yes, of course you are. Thank you for your honesty.”
“Not the Germans. The Nazis.”
“Word games again. There is no difference between them. You should know that. You do know that.”
This time Ettinger shrugged.
“Let me tell you about the Argentineans, David. We Argentineans. I am not a German anymore. I speak the language. I read Goethe and Schiller, I eat apfelstrudel. But I am no longer a German. I am an Argentinean.”
“You are also a Jew.”
“I am an Argentinean who happens to be a Jew.”
“You are a German Jew who has lost his life and his family to the Nazis.”
“I am an Argentinean whose family, Inge and Sarah, has been saved by the Argentineans. I am an Argentinean. I became an Argentinean. I swore to defend this country, David, to obey its laws. Argentina is neutral. I want nothing to do with a spy from the United States of America or anywhere else.”
“They killed our people. They are killing our people.”
“I think it would be best if you left, David, before Inge and Sarah come home,” Klausner said.
Ettinger stood up, then looked down at Klausner.
“Because we were friends together in Germany,” Klausner said, “I will not report you to Internal Security. But please, please, do not come back, and do not tell anyone that you knew me in Berlin.”
“As you wish, Ernst,” Ettinger said.
“Auf Wiedersehen, mein alt Freund. May God be with you,” Ernst said.
[TWO]
4730 Avenida Libertador
Buenos Aires
0900 29 November 1942
Clete was wakened by Señora Pellano, who set a tray-on-legs with orange juice and coffee on his bed.
“Buenos días, Señor Cletus.”
“’Días, muchas gracias,” he said, smiling at her, carefully trying to sit up without upsetting the tray.
“Would you like me to bring you something to eat?”
“Let me come downstairs,” he said, smiling at her. “Give me thirty minutes to shower and shave.”
“I would be happy to serve it here.”
“Downstairs, please.”
“Sí, Señor Cletus,” she said, and went to the wardrobe and took out a dressing gown and laid it on the bed before leaving.
Even in the house on St. Charles Avenue, he thought, I was never treated this well, like an English nobleman in the movies.
There were two maids, so that no matter what hour of the day, his needs would not go unattended. There was also a cook and a houseman, a dignified old man named Ernesto. The staff was run with an iron hand by Señora Pellano, who, his father had told him, came from a fine family who had been in service to the Frades for three generations. One of the maids was a Porteño, the other from a family who lived on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Both were young and attractive, which made him somewhat uncomfortable. He would have preferred maids twice their age.
Despite the physical comforts, he had spent an uncomfortable night at the house on Libertador—his second night there—primarily because he was bored. Exploring Granduncle Guillermo’s playroom, which is what he finally did after everything else failed, didn’t really help to cure his boredom.
At ten of the morning after their meeting, his father called to ask if he was comfortable, and to apologize: He had to leave town and would be in touch in a couple of days, after he returned; if Clete needed anything in the meantime, Señora Pellano would provide it. He did not mention how they parted the day before.
When Clete tried to call Mr. Nestor at the Bank of Boston to tell him where he was living, he was told that Nestor, too, was out of town.
“And is there a message, Señor?”
“No, thank you. I’ll call again.”
And Pelosi was unavailable. Mallín had arranged a tour of the tank farm for him, and he would be gone all day.
Clete took a stroll around the neighborhood, including a walk through the stables of the Hipódromo. The horses were magnificent, and he liked their smell. It was comforting.
But with that out of the way, he couldn’t find much else to do. Except explore Granduncle Guillermo’s playroom. It was still relatively early in the evening when he searched through an absolutely gorgeous, heavily carved desk, made from some kind of wood he didn’t recognize, and came across a locked compartment at the rear of one of the large drawers.
Feeling childishly mischievous, he looked for keys. None of the two dozen he could find fit the simple lock. So, telling himself that he knew better than what he was doing—but his father did tell him the place was his—he went downstairs and asked Señora Pellano were he could find tools.
“If anything needs fixing,” she told him patiently but firmly, “I will fix it myself; or else the houseman will do it.”
“All I need is a screwdriver,” he said. “A small one. And maybe a small knife. I’ll take care of it myself.”
She led him to a toolbox in the basement. The box held both a penknife and a screwdriver.
The locked drawer quickly yielded to the removal of the brass screws of the lock.
It contained more evidence of Granduncle Guillermo’s preoccupation with the distinguishing characteristics of the opposite gender. The drawer contained two leather-covered boxes, each containing fifty or sixty lewd and obscene photographs.
Clete had never seen anything like them (even at stag movies at his fraternity house at Tulane). They were glass transparencies, about four by five inches. Not negatives, positives. He suspected that there was probably some kind of a projector, to project them on a screen.
To judge by the appearance of the women, they had been taken a long time ago, certainly before the First World War, possibly even before the turn of the century. The women were far plumper—plusher—than currently fashionable, and wore their hair either swept up or braided, while all the men had mustaches and were pretty skinny.
Holding them up to the light, he examined every last one of them, concluding that they knew the same positions then that he was used to. The women far outnumbered the men, and it was possible to suspect that the women were more interested in other women than in the scrawny men in their drooping mustaches.
After carefully replacing the glass plates in their boxes and relocking the drawer, Clete realized that he was going to have to commit the sin of Onan. Somewhat humiliated by the process, he did so.
At least I won’t stain the sheets tonight, he thought afterward.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. He woke up from a painfully realistic dream—Princess Dorothea the Virgin was exposing her breasts to him—to find that he had soiled the sheets after all.
He took a shower, hoping that by morning the sheets would be dry and the maid would not notice, and tittering, report her finding to Señora Pellano.
Clete drank the orange juice and half the coffee, took another shower, put on a shor
t-sleeve shirt and a pair of khaki pants, and rode the elevator down to the main floor. The twelve-seat dining-room table had been set for one and laid out with enough food to feed six hungry people.
Halfway through his scrambled eggs, he heard the telephone ring, and a minute later, Señora Pellano set a telephone beside him. It looked as if it had been built by Alexander Graham Bell himself.
“It is a Señor Nestor. Are you at home, Señor Clete?”
He picked up the telephone.
“Good morning, Sir.”
Shit, I’m not supposed to call him “Sir.”
“Good morning, Clete,” Nestor said. “Jasper Nestor of the Bank of Boston here.”
“I tried to call you yesterday to tell…”
“I called the Mallín place, and they told me where to find you.”
“My father offered me this pla—”
“The reason I’m calling, Clete,” Nestor interrupted, “and I know this is damned short notice. The thing is, there’s a small party at the Belgrano Athletic Club this evening. We sponsor, the bank, one of the cricket teams. Nothing very elaborate—no black tie, in other words. Just drinks and dinner. There’s a chap I want you to meet. I introduced you at the bank, if you’ll remember. Mr. Ettinger?”
“Yes, I remember meeting Mr. Ettinger.”
“Well, you have things in common—being newcomers and bachelors. Why don’t we put you two together and see what happens? Or do you have other plans?”
“No. Thank you very much.”
“Perhaps we’ll have a few minutes for a little chat ourselves. Right about seven? Would that be convenient? Do you know where it is, can you find it all right?”
“Yes. I have a guest card. I’ve played tennis there.”
“Good. Look forward to seeing you about seven.”
[THREE]
The Belgrano Athletic Club
Buenos Aires
1925 29 November 1942
I wonder what the rules of that game are, Clete thought as he looked out the window of the bar at a cricket game being played under field lights.
He held a scotch and water—he had told the barman to give him a very light one—and was munching on potato chips, waiting for Nestor to show up.
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