A Quiet Flame (50 page)

“Very. I was thinking of leaving anyway.”

“Don’t judge us too harshly. What happened at Dulce was regrettable, I agree. But that was several years ago. Directive Eleven was found to be necessary to stop the country from being swamped with Jews. But still they came. And the question soon arose as to what we should do with all those we had arrested and interned. Finally, it was decided that it might be easier just to get rid of them as quickly and quietly as possible.”

“So Kammler built Argentina its own death camp.”

“Yes, but on a very much smaller scale than anything he had built in Poland. There were no more than fifteen or twenty thousand Jews, at most. And since then things have changed for the better. An amnesty for all foreigners who entered the country illegally was granted last year. There are no illegal Jews held in camps like Dulce anymore. And the people who implemented Directives Eleven and Twelve have now been removed. So there is even less anti-Semitism than there was. Many Jews are now Perónists. Perón himself now believes that the Jews can actually help Argentina. That their money and enterprise can help our economy to grow. After all, what is it you Germans say? Why slaughter the chicken that lays the golden eggs? Jews are welcome in Argentina.”

The colonel pointed a salutary finger in the air. “All Jews except one. There is one Jew who ought to be on that boat with you perhaps. Anna Yagubsky.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Yes, it might be a good idea,” continued the colonel, ignoring me, “if she accompanied you tonight. Things might be difficult for her if she stayed here in Argentina.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Well, she can’t have disappeared, can she? If she had, I’d know about it, wouldn’t I? And if she hasn’t disappeared, she won’t be hard to find. Not for a detective like you, Gunther. For her sake, I hope not. And who knows? Maybe the two of you can find happiness somewhere. You’re a little old for her, perhaps. But I believe some women like the older man.”

“What if she won’t come with me? Her parents are here. They’re old. She won’t want to leave them.”

“That would be unfortunate. For you, of course. After all, she is very beautiful. But for her, especially.” The colonel stood up. “I hope you enjoy your trip to Uruguay. Its government is stable, democratic, and politically mature. There’s even a welfare state. Of course, the people are entirely European in origin. I believe they exterminated all the Indians. As a German, you should feel very much at home there.”

BUENOS AIRES, 1950

I
T TOOK ME three hours to find Anna. Her father was no help. I might just as well have asked where Martin Bormann was hiding. Eventually, I remembered that the person who lived upstairs from Isabel Pekerman and who had reported her “suicide” had also been a friend of Anna’s. All I knew was that her name was Hannah and that she lived in Once.

Bisected by Calle Corrientes and the Jewish Quarter, Once was an ugly area with an ugly railway station, an ugly plaza out front of it, and a rather ugly monument in the center of this ugly plaza. At an ugly police station known to locals as the Miserere, I showed my SIDE identification to an ugly desk sergeant and asked about the Pekerman case. He told me the address, and I went to an ugly building on Calle Paso. It was full of ugly smells and ugly music. There was no getting away from it: Argentina had lost some of its charm for me.

A dark and coarse-featured woman came to the door of the apartment above Isabel Pekerman’s. She had hair like the tail of a Noriker mare, much of it on her cheeks, and a complexion like the inside of a coffeepot.

“Is Anna here?” I asked.

The woman rubbed her Cro-Magnon chin with vaguely hominid fingers and smiled an uncertain smile that revealed gaps in her teeth as big as the keys on a typewriter. She seemed like the living proof not just of some improbable paleontological theory but, more important, Durkheim’s first law of sisterhood, which states that every beautiful woman shall have a really ugly best friend.

“Who wants to know?”

“It’s all right, Hannah,” said a voice.

Holding the door, the friend stepped back into the apartment to reveal Anna standing a few feet behind her. She was wearing a gabardine dress in a blue houndstooth print with a nipped-in waist. Her arms were folded defensively in front of her, the way women do when they’re aching to hit you with a rolling pin.

“How did you find me?” she asked as the friend went back to her stall.

“I’m a detective, remember? It’s what I do. Find people. Sometimes I can even find people who don’t want to be found.”

“Well, you got that part right, Gunther.”

I shut the door behind me and glanced around the ugly little hallway. There was a hat stand, a doormat, an empty dog basket that had seen many better days, the ubiquitous picture of Martel the tango singer, and the bag that had accompanied Anna to Tucumán.

“So, did you tell your friends in the secret police about your friends in the SS?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it. But yes, I did.”

“And?”

“I imagine they’re on their way there now. As I tried to explain on the train, Kammler’s wife and child are really someone else’s wife and child. And whatever domestic happiness they once enjoyed is now over.”

“And you think that’s punishment enough?”

I shrugged. “Punishment is a little like beauty, sometimes. Subjective. True, lasting punishment, at any rate.”

“I prefer the kind of punishment that everyone can understand.”

“Oh, you mean like a public execution.”

“Isn’t that what he really deserves?”

“Probably. But we both know that isn’t going to happen. In the long run, I suspect, he’ll get what’s coming to him. We all do, eventually.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Take it from someone who knows.”

“Hmm. I wonder.”

“You’re a hard woman, Anna.”

“It’s a hard world.”

“Isn’t it? That’s why I’m here. Now that the police know what I know, I’ve been told to leave the country. And just to make sure I got the message, they took me for a ride in a plane with the door open and showed me the River Plate from five thousand feet. The bottom line is that I can be on tonight’s boat to Montevideo, or I can be underneath it.”

“They actually threatened you?”

I laughed. “You make it sound so much nicer than it was, Anna. I was blindfolded, punched in the head, with my hands tied, and allowed a last cigarette. For good measure, they threw six people out of the plane ahead of me. For a moment, I thought one of them was you. Then it was my turn. If I hadn’t been able to trade the information about Kammler’s wife and daughter, I’d be tomorrow’s shark shit.” I sighed. “Look, can we sit down? I still get kind of wobbly thinking about it.”

“Yes, of course. Please. Come through.”

We went into an arty-farty sort of living room that was probably more farty than arty. Everything had been painted with an Italian filigree: the walls, the furniture, the doors, the electric fan, a piano, even a typewriter. There was an artist’s palette and some brushes on a filigreed table.

“Hannah’s an artist,” explained Anna.

I nodded and told myself I probably had about ten minutes before Hannah came and started painting a design on my forehead. Maybe it needed one, too. You can grow tired of seeing the same face in the mirror every day. That’s why people get married.

“So, what are you going to do?” she asked, sitting down.

“I’m not much of a swimmer,” I said. “Especially when my hands are tied behind my back. It’s been made clear to me that I can spend the rest of my life dead. Or I can go. So I’m going. To Montevideo. Tonight.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said, and kissed my hand. “Really I am.” Then she let out a sigh. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Most men who are good to me—and you have been good to me, Bernie, don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’ve done—most of them end up leaving. My father says it’s because I don’t know how to hang on to a man.”

“With respect to your father, it’s very simple, angel. Especially in this case. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just thread your arm through mine and come with me.”

“To Montevideo?”

“Why not? That’s where I’m going.”

“I can’t leave, Bernie. This is my home. My father and mother live here.”

“They left Russia because of persecution, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but that was different.”

“Somehow I don’t think your aunt and your uncle would agree.”

“You said you weren’t sure about that. You said we don’t know who those people were. That they could have been anyone.”

“We both know I only told you that to stop you from getting us both killed.”

“Yes. Only I do wish I’d listened to you in the first place. You were right. Sometimes it’s better not to know. I thought dead was dead and that was as bad as it could get. Well, now I know different. But maybe I want to forget about it now.”

“I’m not asking you to leave on my account,” I said. “But your own. The secret police told me that, given you know what I know, it would be advisable for you to leave the country, too. I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, Anna. But I worry about what will happen to you if you stay. It could easily be you that’s thrown out of the next plane over the River Plate.”

“Is this another lie? To make me come with you?” She pushed her long tangle of hair out of her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t leave. I won’t.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and shook her gently.

“Listen to me, Anna, I’d like you to come with me. But if you don’t want to, I can understand that. Only with or without me, you have to leave, tonight. It doesn’t have to be Uruguay. If you like, I’ll buy you an air ticket, to wherever you want to go. There’s a PLUNA office around the corner. We’ll go there now and I’ll get you a ticket to Asunción. La Paz. Wherever you want. I’ll even give you some money to get yourself started somewhere else. Ten thousand American dollars. Twenty. But you have to leave the country.”

“I can’t leave my parents,” she said. “They’re old.”

“Then I’ll pay for them, too. We can send for them when we get to Montevideo. It’s not so far. I’ll buy us a big house where we can all live. I promise you. It will be fine. We’ll manage. Only you do have to believe me. The police know about you. They know your name. Almost certainly they know where you live and where you work. This is serious, Anna. One morning, soon, you’ll be on your way to work and they’ll pick you up and take you to Caseros. They’ll strip you naked and abuse you. Torture you. And when they’re finished torturing you, they’ll put you on a plane and they’ll throw you out of the door. If you stay here, angel, there’s nothing left for you but prayer. I heard one on the plane, yesterday. Over and over again. And guess what? It didn’t work. They threw him out anyway. These people. They’re immune to prayer. They’ll listen to your prayers and they’ll laugh and then they’ll throw you out.”

“No.” There were tears in her eyes, but she was shaking her head with disbelief. “This is just another lie of convenience. Like telling me those people in the burial pits at Dulce were not Jews. You’re just saying all this because you can’t bear the idea of going away on your own. I can’t blame you for wanting me along. If I were you, I’d probably say the same thing. I like you a lot, Bernie. But I’ll get over it. We both will. Only I do wish you’d stop trying to scare me. That’s pretty low of you.”

“You can’t believe I’m making this up, surely?”

“Why not? Bernie, everything about you is made up. I really don’t know anything about you.”

“I told you everything there was to know, on the train.”

“How do I know that? All I know for sure is that you’re here on a false passport. Even the real name you’re supposed to have given to your old comrades—the ones who brought you here—even that’s not yours. That man at the ranch. Heinrich Grund. You told me he was a murderer. But you knew him. He greeted you like he was an old friend.”

“He was, once. Before the war. Before Hitler. I had lots of friends before Hitler.”

“For all I know, you’re one of them, too. How can I possibly trust you? How can I believe a word you say? I’m a Jew. And you’re an ex-SS officer. What kind of trust could there ever be between us?”

“You came to me for help,” I reminded her. “I helped you the best I could. I’m trying to help you now. I asked for nothing in return. Whatever you gave you gave because you wanted to. I saved your life once before. I’m trying to save it again. I put my own life in peril for you. I have to leave the country because of you. Maybe that doesn’t mean so much to you. But I’m still glad I did. I’d have done anything for you. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I love you, Anna. Well, what of it? There’s just this. If there’s any small part of you that feels the same way I do, then forget everything else. Forget everything your head tells you and listen to your heart. Because that’s all that matters between two people. I know I’m not much of a catch for a girl like you. You could do a lot better, I know. If you weren’t standing in an airplane doorway, I’d probably tell you to go and do a lot better, too. But you’re there. I can see the bruises on your face and the wind in your hair, angel.”

I pulled her toward me and kissed her hard, as if trying to breathe some sense into her body. She put her arms around me and kissed me back, so that for a minute or two I almost thought it might be working.

Then she said, “I suppose I do love you. But I won’t leave the country for you. I won’t. I can’t. Every time I see you, it reminds me. Of what happened to my aunt and uncle.”

I wanted to slap her hard on both cheeks, the way you’re supposed to when you’ve been in the SS. That might have worked, too. With anyone but Anna. Hitting her would have been like giving the Hitler salute. It would only have confirmed what she already suspected. That I was a Nazi.