by Ira Levin
The boy was a grandson, Liebermann supposed, or maybe—since Frau Döring was much younger than Döring had been—a son. Or maybe only a neighbor invited over so she wouldn’t be alone with an unknown male visitor.
Whoever he was, the boy held the door open all the way, and Liebermann went in—to a mirror-walled alcove busy with two or three himselves coming in, surprisingly seedy (“Get a haircut!” Hannah called. “Trim your mustache! Stand straight!”), and several boys in white shirts and dark trousers closing doors and hooking in chain-latches. Standing straight, Liebermann turned to the real boy. “Is Frau Döring in?”
“She’s on the phone.” The boy held a hand out for his hat.
Giving it to him, Liebermann smiled and asked, “Are you her grandson?”
“Her son.” The boy’s voice scorned the foolish question. He opened a mirror-doored closet.
Liebermann put his briefcase down and took his coat off, looking into a living room full of orange and chrome and glass, everything matching, store-like, unhuman.
He gave his coat to the boy, smiling, and the boy fitted a hanger into its sleeve, looking bored and dutiful. He was the height of Liebermann’s chest. A few coats hung in the closet, one of leopard skin. A bird, a stuffed raven or some such, peered out from behind hats and boxes on the shelf. “Is that a bird back there?” Liebermann asked.
“Yes,” the boy said. “It was my father’s.” He closed the door and stood looking at Liebermann with deep blue eyes.
Liebermann picked up his briefcase.
“Do you kill the Nazis when you catch them?” the boy asked.
“No,” Liebermann said.
“Why not?”
“It’s against the law. Besides, it’s better to put them on trial. That way more people learn about them.”
“Learn what?” The boy looked skeptical.
“Who they were, what they did.”
The boy turned toward the living room.
A woman stood there, small and blond, in a black skirt and jacket and pale-blue turtleneck sweater; a pretty woman in her early forties. She cocked her head and smiled, her hands clasped tensely before her.
“Frau Döring?” Liebermann went to her. She held a hand out and he shook its small coldness. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said. Her complexion was cosmetically smooth, with a few fine wrinkles at the outsides of her blue-green eyes. A pleasant perfume came from her.
“Please,” she said with embarrassment, “could I ask you to show me some identification?”
“Of course,” Liebermann said. “It’s smart of you to ask.” He shifted his briefcase to his other hand and reached into his inside jacket pocket.
“I’m sure you’re…who you say you are,” Frau Döring said, “but I…”
“His initials are in his hat,” the boy said behind Liebermann. “Y.S.L.”
Liebermann smiled at Frau Döring, handing his passport to her. “Your son’s a detective,” he said; and turning to the boy, “That’s very good! I didn’t even notice you looking.”
The boy, brushing aside his dark forelock, smiled complacently.
Frau Döring returned the passport. “Yes, he’s clever,” she said with a smile at the boy. “Only a little bit lazy. Right now, for instance, he’s supposed to be doing his practicing.”
“I can’t answer the door and be in my room at the same time,” the boy grumbled, stalking across the living room.
Frau Döring smoothed his unruly hair as he passed her. “I know, darling; I was only teasing.”
The boy stalked into a hallway.
Frau Döring smiled brightly at Liebermann, rubbing her hands as if to warm them. “Come sit down, Herr Liebermann,” she said, and backed toward the windowed end of the room. A door slammed. “Would you like some coffee?”
Liebermann said, “No, thank you, I just had a cup of tea across the street.”
“At the Bittner? That’s where I work. I’m the hostess there from eight to three.”
“That’s nice and convenient for you.”
“Yes, and I’m home when Erich gets here. I started Monday and so far it’s perfect. I enjoy it.”
Liebermann sat on an unyielding sofa, and Frau Döring sat on a chair adjacent to it. She sat erectly, her hands folded on her black skirt, her head tilted attentively.
“First of all,” Liebermann said, “I’d like to express my sympathy to you. Things must be very difficult for you right now.”
Looking at her folded hands, Frau Döring said, “Thank you.” A clarinet darted upscale and down, readying itself to play; Liebermann looked toward the hallway, from which the woody notes flowed, and back at Frau Döring. She smiled at him. “He’s very good,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I heard him on the phone yesterday. I thought it was an adult. Is he your only child?”
“Yes,” she said, and proudly: “He plans to make his career in music.”
“I hope his father left him well provided for.” Liebermann smiled. “Did he?” he asked. “Did your husband leave his money to Erich and you?”
Surprised, Frau Döring nodded. “And to a sister of his. A third each. Erich’s is in trust. Why do you ask that?”
“I’m looking,” Liebermann said, “for a reason why Nazis in South America might have wanted to kill him.”
“To kill Emil?”
He nodded, watching Frau Döring. “And the others too.”
She frowned at him. “What others?”
“The group he belonged to. In different countries.”
Her frown grew more puzzled. “Emil didn’t belong to any group. What are you saying, that he was a Communist? You couldn’t be more wrong, Herr Liebermann.”
“He didn’t get mail or phone calls from outside Germany?”
“Never. Not here, anyway. Ask at his office; maybe they know about a group; I certainly don’t.”
“I asked there this morning; they don’t know either.”
“Once,” Frau Döring said, “three or four years ago, maybe even more, his sister called him from America, where she was visiting. That’s the only foreign phone call I remember. Oh, and once, even longer ago, his first wife’s brother called from somewhere in Italy, to try to get him to invest in—I don’t remember, something to do with silver. Or platinum.”
“Did he do it?”
“No. He was very careful with his money.”
The clarinet caught Liebermann’s ear, weaving the Mozart of the day before. The menuetto from the “Clarinet Quintet,” being played very nicely. He thought of himself at the boy’s age, putting in two and three hours a day at the old Pleyel. His mother, may she rest in peace, had also said, “He plans to make his career in music,” just as proudly. Who had known what was coming? And when had he last touched a piano?
“I don’t understand this,” Frau Döring said. “Emil wasn’t murdered.”
“He might have been,” Liebermann said. “A salesman got friendly with him the night before. They might have made an arrangement, to meet at the building if the salesman didn’t show up at the bar by ten o’clock. That would have brought him there just at the right time.”
Frau Döring shook her head. “He wouldn’t have met someone at a building like that one,” she said. “Not even someone he knew well. He was too suspicious of people. And why on earth would Nazis be interested in him?”
“Why was he carrying a gun that night?”
“He always did.”
“Always?”
“Always, as long as I’ve known him. He showed it to me on our first date. Can you imagine, bringing a gun on a date? And showing it? And what’s even worse, I was impressed!” She shook her head and sighed wonderingly.
“Who was he afraid of?” Liebermann asked.
“Everyone! People at the office, people who simply looked at him…” Frau Döring leaned forward confidingly. “He was a little bit—well, not crazy, but not normal either. I tried once to get him to see someone; you know, a doctor. There was a prog
ram on television about people like him, people who think they’re being…plotted against, and after it was over I suggested in a very roundabout way—Well! I was plotting, right? To get him declared insane? He almost shot me that night!” She sat back and drew a breath, shuddered; and frowned speculatively at Liebermann. “What did he do, write to you that Nazis were after him?”
“No, no.”
“Then what makes you think they were?”
“A rumor I heard.”
“It was wrong. Believe me, Nazis would have liked Emil. He was anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-freedom, anti-everything-and-everyone except Emil Döring himself.”
“Was he a Nazi?”
“He may have been. He said he wasn’t, but I didn’t meet him till 1952, so I couldn’t swear. Probably he wasn’t; he never joined anything if he could help it.”
“What did he do in the war?”
“He was in the Army; a corporal, I think. He bragged about the easy jobs he managed to wangle. The main one was in a supply depot or something like that. Someplace safe.”
“He was never in combat?”
“He was ‘too smart.’ The ‘dumb ones’ went.”
“Where was he born?”
“In Laupendahl, on the other side of Essen.”
“And lived in the area all his life?”
“Yes.”
“Was he ever in Günzburg, as far as you know?”
“Where?”
“Günzburg. Near Ulm.”
“I never heard him mention it.”
“The name Mengele? Did he ever mention that?”
She looked at him, eyebrows up, and shook her head.
“Just a few questions more,” he said. “You’re being very kind. I’m afraid I’m on a wild-goose chase.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said, and smiled.
“Was he related to anyone of importance? In the government, say?”
She thought for a moment. “No.”
“Friendly with anyone of importance?”
She shrugged. “A few Essen officials, if that’s your idea of importance. He shook hands with Krupp once; that was his big moment.”
“How long were you married to him?”
“Twenty-two years. Since the fourth of August, 1952.”
“And in all those years you never saw or heard anything about an international group he belonged to, of men his own age in similar positions?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Never, not a word.”
“No anti-Nazi activity of any kind?”
“None at all. He was pro-Nazi more than anti-. He voted National Democrat, but he didn’t join them either. He wasn’t a joiner.”
Liebermann sat back on the hard sofa and rubbed the back of his neck.
Frau Döring said, “Would you like me to tell you who really killed him?”
He looked at her.
She leaned forward and said, “God. To set free a stupid little farm girl after twenty-two years of unhappiness. And to give Erich a father who’ll help him and love him, instead of one who called him names—that’s right, called him fairy and imbecile—for wanting to be a musician and not a safe fat civil servant! Do Nazis answer prayers, Herr Liebermann?” She shook her head. “No, that’s God’s business, and I’ve thanked Him every night since He pushed that wall down on Emil. He could have done it sooner, but I thank Him anyway. ‘Better late than never.’” She sat back and crossed her legs—nice legs—and smiled prettily. “Well!” she said. “Doesn’t he play beautifully? Remember the name: Erich Döring. Some day you’ll see it on posters outside concert halls!”
When Liebermann left Frankenstrasse 12, dusk was beginning to gather. Cars and trolleys filled the street; hurrying walkers crowded the pavement. He walked among them slowly, his briefcase at his side.
Döring had been a nobody: vain, conniving, important to no one but himself. There was no conceivable reason why he should have been a target of Nazi plotters half the world away—not even in his own suspicious imaginings. The salesman in the bar? Simply a lonely salesman. The hurried exit on the night of the accident? There were a dozen reasons why a man might hurry from a bar.
Which meant that the October 16th victim had been either Chambon in France or Persson in Sweden.
Or someone else, whom Reuters had missed.
Or very possibly no one at all.
Ei, Barry, Barry! What did you have to call me for?
He walked a little faster, along the south side of crowded Frankenstrasse.
On the north side Mundt walked faster too, an unlighted cigar in his mouth, a folded newspaper under his arm.
Though the night was dry and clear, reception was poor, and what Mengele heard was, “Liebermann was crackle-crackle-squeal where Döring, our first man, lived. Liebercrackle-crackle about him, and he showed pictures of soldiers to crackle-crackle-SQUEAL-crackle Solingen, doing the same thing in connection with a crackle-crackle died in an explosion a few weeks ago. Over.”
Swallowing back the sourness that was churning up into his throat, Mengele pressed the mike button and said, “Would you repeat, please, Colonel? I didn’t get all that. Over.”
Eventually he got it.
“I won’t pretend I’m not concerned,” he said, mopping his icy forehead with his handkerchief, “but if he’s gone on to check on someone we had nothing to do with, then obviously he’s still in the dark. Over.”
“Crackle Döring’s apartment, and it wasn’t dark there. It was four in the afternoon and he was there for close to an hour. Over.”
“Oh God,” Mengele said, and pressed the button. “Then we’d better take care of him right away, just to be safe. You agree, don’t you? Over.”
“We’re crackle the possibility, very carefully. I’ll let you know as soon as there’s a decision. I have a little good news too. Mundt crackle-cracklecond customer, on the exact date. Ditto Hessen. And Farnbach called in, not with questions, thank God, just with some surprising inforcrackle-squeal seems that his second customer was his former commander, a captain who got himself a Swedish identity after the war. A funny twist, isn’t it? Farnbach wasn’t sure whether we knew or not. Over.”
“He didn’t let it stop him, did he? Over.”
“Oh no, he crackle-crackle days ahead of schedule. So that’s three more checks you can put on your chart. Over.”
“I think it’s imperative that we take care of Liebermann immediately,” Mengele said. “What if he doesn’t stop with this man in Solingen? If Mundt does it right, I’m sure it won’t cause any trouble, at least not any more than we’ve got already. Over.”
“If it’s done while he’s in Germany, I disagree. They’ll crackle-squeal-crackle country to show they’re being conscientious; they’ll have to. Over.”
“Then as soon as he’s out of Germany. Over.”
“We’ll certainly take your feelings into account, Josef. Without you, nothing; we know how crackle-crackle-squeal-crackle off now. Over and out.”
Mengele looked at the microphone, and put it down. He took the earphones off, put them down, and switched the radio off.
He went from the study into the bathroom, threw up his entire half-digested dinner, washed, and swished some Vademecum around in his mouth.
Then he went out onto the veranda, smiled and said “Sorry,” and sat down and played bridge with General Fariña and Franz and Margot Schiff.
When they left, he took a flashlight and walked down to the river to think. He said a few words to the man on duty and walked a ways downriver, where he sat on the side of a rusty oil drum—to hell with his trousers—and lit a cigarette. He thought of Yakov Liebermann going into the men’s homes; and of Seibert and the rest of the Organization brass facing a necessity and calling it a possibility; and of his decades-long devotion to the noblest ideals—the pursuit of knowledge and the elevation of the best of the human race—that might be robbed of its ultimate fruition by that one nosy Jew and that handful of weaseling Aryans. Who were worse than
the Jew, because Liebermann, if one was fair about it, was doing his duty according to his lights, while they were betraying theirs. Or thinking of betraying it.
He tossed his second cigarette into the river’s glistening blackness, and with a “Stay awake” to the guard, walked back toward the house.
On an impulse he turned aside and pushed his way into the overgrown path to the “factory,” that path down which he and the others—young Reiter, von Sweringen, Tina Zygorny; all of them dead now, alas—had trooped so cheerfully on those long-ago mornings. Bending over the probing flashlight, he warded off broad-leafed branches, stumbled over arching roots.
And there it was, the long low building, the trees nibbling at it. The paint had scaled from its frame walls, every window was broken (the servants’ children, damn them), and a whole section of corrugated roof had fallen or been pulled from the dormitory end.
The front door gaped open, hanging away by its lower hinge. Tina Zygorny laughed her masculine laugh; von Sweringen thundered, “Rise and shine! You’ve had your beauty sleep!”
Only silence. Insects twanging, chittering.
Shining the light before him, Mengele went up the step and through the doorway. Five years at least, since he’d last set foot…
Beautiful Bavaria. The poster clung to the wall, dusty and rippled: sky, mountain, flowered foreground.
He smiled at it, and moved the light beam.
Finding gouged wallboard where shelves and cabinets had been ripped out. Stems of plumbing standing at attention. The wall with the brown spots that Reiter had burned into it, starting a swastika with his microscope. Could have burned the place down, the idiot.
He walked carefully around broken glass. A rotting melonrind, ants feasting.
He looked into barren rooms, and remembered life and activity, gleaming equipment. The sterilizer keened, pipettes clinked. Over ten years ago.
Everything had been taken out, junked or perhaps given to a clinic somewhere, so that in case the Jew-gangs got in—they were strong in those days, “Commando Isaac” and the others—they’d have no clues, no inkling.
He walked down the central corridor. Native attendants spoke soothing words in primitive dialects, trying to make themselves understood.