Boys from Brazil (26 page)

Liebermann flicked his eyes to the window at the right of the settee and looked back at Mengele attentively.

Mengele sighed and shook his head. “If I want to look out the window,” he said, “I'll kill you and then look. But I don't
want
to look out the window. If someone were coming, the dogs out in back would be barking, yes? Yes?”

“Yes,” Liebermann said, sitting with his hands on his head.

Mengele smiled. “You see? Everything goes my way. God is with me. Do you know what I saw on television at one o'clock this morning? Films of Hitler.” He nodded. “At a moment when I was severely depressed, virtually suicidal. If that wasn't a sign from heaven, there's never been one. So don't waste your time looking at windows; look at me, and listen. He's alive. This album”—he pointed with his free hand, not taking his eyes or his gun off Liebermann—“is full of pictures of him, ages one through thirteen. The boys are exact genetic duplicates of him. I'm not going to take the time to explain to you how I achieved this—I doubt whether you'd have the capacity to understand it if I did—but take my word for it, I did achieve it.
Exact genetic duplicates
. They were conceived in my laboratory, and carried to term by women of the Auiti tribe; healthy, docile creatures with a businesslike chieftain. The boys bear no taint of them; they're pure Hitler, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs—we were in a Biblical frame of mind—on the sixth of January, 1943, at Wolf's Lair. He had denied himself children”—the phone rang; Mengele kept his eyes and his gun on Liebermann—“because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of so”—the phone rang—“godlike a father; so when he heard what was theoretically possible, that I could”—the phone rang—“create some day not his son but another himself, not even a carbon copy but”—the phone rang—“another original, he was as thrilled by the idea as I was. It was then that he gave me the position and facilities I required to begin my pursuit of the goal. Did you really think my work at Auschwitz was aimless insanity? How simple-minded you people are! He commemorated the occasion, the giving of the blood and skin, with a beautifully inscribed cigarette case. ‘To my friend of many years Josef Mengele, who has served me better than most men and may serve me some day better than all. Adolf Hitler.' My most cherished possession, naturally; too risky to take through customs, so it sits in my lawyer's safe in Asunción, waiting for me to come home from my travels. You see? I'm giving you more than a minute”—he looked at the clock—

Liebermann got up and—a gunshot roared—stepped around the sofa end, reaching. A gunshot roared, a gunshot roared; pain flung him against hard wall, pain in his chest, pain farther down. Dogs barked loud in his wall-pressing ear. The brown wood door thumped and quivered; he reached across it for its glass-diamond knob. A gunshot roared; the knob burst apart as he caught it, a small hole in the back of his hand filling with blood. He clutched a sharp part of knob—a gunshot roared; the dogs barked wildly—and wincing in pain, eyes shut tight, he twisted the part-knob, pulled. The door threw itself open against his arm and shoulder, dog-howling; gunshots roared, a thundering salvo. Barks, a cry, clicks of an empty gun; a thud and clatter, snarls, a cry. He let go the cutting part-knob, turned himself back gasping against the wall; let himself slide downward, opened his eyes…

Black dogs drove Mengele into a spread-legged side-sprawl on the settee; big Dobermans, teeth bared, eyes wild, sharp ears back. Mengele's cheek slammed against the settee arm. His eye stared at a Doberman before him, shifting amid the legs of the overturned table, jaw-grappling his wrist; the gun fell from his fingers. His eye rolled to stare at Dobermans snarling close against his cheek and underjaw. The Doberman at his cheek stood between his back and the settee's back, its forepaws treading for purchase at his shoulder. The Doberman at his underjaw stood hind-legged on the floor between his spread legs, leaning in over his updrawn thigh, body down low against his chest. Mengele raised his cheek higher against the settee arm, eye staring down, lips trembling.

A fourth Doberman lay big on the floor between the settee and Liebermann, on its side, black ribs heaving, its nose on hooked rug. A light-reflecting flatness spread out from beneath it; a puddle of urine.

Liebermann slid all the way down the wall, and wincing, sat on the floor. He straightened his legs out slowly before him, watching the Dobermans threatening Mengele.

Threatening, not killing. Mengele's wrist had been let go; the Doberman that had held it stood snarling at him almost nose to nose.

“Kill!” Liebermann commanded, but only a whisper came out. Pain lancing his chest enlarged and sharpened.

“
Kill!
” he shouted against the pain. A hoarse command came out.

The Dobermans snarled, not moving.

Mengele's eye clenched tight; his teeth bit his lower lip.

“
KILL!
” Liebermann bellowed—and the pain ripped his chest, tore it apart.

The Dobermans snarled, not moving.

A high-pitched squealing came from Mengele's bitten-closed mouth.

Liebermann threw his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, gasping. He tugged his tie knot down, unbuttoned his shirt collar. Undid another button under the tie and put his fingers to the pain; found wetness on his chest at the edge of his undershirt. Brought the fingers out, opened his eyes; looked at blood on his fingertips. The bullet had gone right through him. Hitting what? The left lung? Whatever it had hit, every breath swelled the pain. He reached down for the handkerchief in his trouser pocket, rolled leftward to get at it; worse pain exploded below, in his hip. He winced as it gored him. Ei!

He got the handkerchief out, brought it up, pressed it against the chest wound and held it there.

Raised his left hand. Blood leaked from both sides of it, more from the ragged break in the palm than from the smaller puncture in the back. The bullet had gone through below the first and second fingers. They were numb and he couldn't move them. Two scratches bled across the palm.

He wanted to keep the hand up to slow the bleeding but couldn't; let it fall down. No strength was in him. Only pain. And tiredness…The door beside him drifted slowly toward closing.

He looked at Mengele.

Mengele's eye watched him.

He closed his eyes, breathing shallowly against the pain burning in his chest.

 

“Away…”

He opened his eyes and looked across the room at Mengele lying side-sprawled on the settee among the close-snarling Dobermans.

“Away,” Mengele said, softly and warily. His eye moved from the Doberman before him to the Doberman at his underjaw, the Doberman at his cheek. “Off. No more gun. No gun. Away. Off. Good dogs.”

The blue-black Dobermans snarled, not moving.

“Nice dogs,” Mengele said. “Samson? Good Samson. Off. Go away.” He turned his head slowly against the settee arm; the Dobermans withdrew their heads a little, snarling. Mengele made a shaky smile at them. “Major?” he asked. “Are you Major? Good Major, good Samson. Good dogs. Friend. No more gun.” His hand, red-wristed, caught the front of the settee arm; his other hand held the frame of the settee's back. He began turning himself up slowly from his side. “Good dogs. Off. Away.”

The Doberman in the middle of the room lay motionless, its black ribs still. The urine puddle around it had fragmented into a scatter of small puddles glinting on wide floorboards.

“Good dogs, nice dogs…”

Lying on his back, Mengele began pulling himself up slowly into the corner of the settee. The Dobermans snarled but stayed where they were, finding new paw-holds as he moved himself higher, away from their teeth. “Away,” he said. “I'm your
friend
. Do I hurt you now? No, no, I
like
you.”

Liebermann closed his eyes, breathed shallowly. He was sitting in blood that leaked down behind him.

“Good Samson, good Major. Beppo? Zarko? Good dogs. Away. Away.”

 

Dena and Gary were having some kind of trouble between them. He had kept his mouth shut when he was there in November, but maybe he shouldn't have; maybe he—

“Are you alive, Jew-bastard?”

He opened his eyes.

Mengele sat looking at him, erect in the corner of the settee, one leg up, one foot on the floor. Holding the settee's arm and back; scornful, in command. Except for the three Dobermans leaning at him, softly snarling.

“Too bad,” Mengele said. “But you won't be for long. I can see it from here. You're gray as ashes. These dogs will lose interest in me if I sit calmly and talk nicely to them. They'll want to go pee or get a drink of water.” To the Dobermans he said in English, “Water? Drink? Don't you want water? Good dogs. Go get a drink of water.”

The Dobermans snarled, not moving.

“Sons of bitches,” Mengele said pleasantly in German. And to Liebermann: “So you've accomplished nothing, Jew-bastard, except to die slowly instead of quickly, and to scratch my wrist a little. In fifteen minutes I'll walk out of here. Every man on the list will die at his time. The Fourth Reich is coming: not just a German Reich but a pan-Aryan one. I'll live to see it, and to stand beside its leaders. Can you imagine the awe they'll inspire? The mystical authority they'll wield? The trembling of the Russians and Chinese? Not to mention the Jews.” The phone rang.

Liebermann tried to move from the wall—to crawl if he could to the wire hanging down from the table by the doorway—but the pain in his hip spiked him and held him, impossible to move against. He settled back into the stickiness of his blood. Closed his eyes, gasping.

“Good. Die a minute sooner. And think while you die of your grandchildren going into ovens.”

The phone kept ringing.

Greenspan and Stern, maybe. Calling to see what was happening, why
he
hadn't called. Getting no answer, wouldn't they worry and come, get directions in the town? If only the Dobermans would hold Mengele…

He opened his eyes.

Mengele sat smiling at the Dobermans—a relaxed, steady, friendly smile. They weren't snarling now.

He let his eyes close.

Tried not to think of ovens and armies, of heiling masses. Wondered if Max and Lili and Esther would manage to keep the Center going. Contributions might come in. Memorials.

 

Barking, snarling. He opened his eyes.

“No, no!” Mengele said, sitting back down on the settee, clutching the arm and back of it while the Dobermans pushed and snarled at him. “No, no! Good dogs! Good dogs! No, no, I'm not going! No, no. See how still I sit? Good dogs. Good dogs.”

Liebermann smiled, closed his eyes.

Good dogs.

Greenspan? Stern? Come on…

 

“Jew-bastard?”

The handkerchief would stick to the wound by itself, so he kept his eyes closed, not breathing—let him
think
—and then he got his right hand up and gave the middle finger.

 

Faraway barking. The dogs out in back.

He opened his eyes.

Mengele glared at him. The same hatred that had come at him over the telephone that night so long ago.

“Whatever happens,” Mengele said, “I win. Wheelock was the eighteenth one to die.
Eighteen of them
have lost their fathers when he lost his, and at least
one
of the eighteen will grow to manhood as
he
grew, become who he became. You won't leave this room alive to stop him.
I
may not leave it either, but
you
won't; I swear it.”

Footsteps on the porch.

The Dobermans snarled, leaning at Mengele.

Liebermann and Mengele stared across the room at each other.

The front door opened.

Closed.

They looked at the doorway.

A weight dropped in the hallway. Metal clinked.

Footsteps.

The boy came and stood in the doorway—gaunt and sharp-nosed, dark-haired, a wide red stripe across the chest of his blue zipper jacket.

He looked at Liebermann.

Looked at Mengele and the Dobermans.

Looked at the dead Doberman.

Looked back and forth, deep blue eyes wide.

Pushed his dark forelock aside with a blue plastic mitten.

“Sh
eee
sh!” he said.

 

“
Mein
—dear boy,” Mengele said, looking adoringly at him, “my dear, dear, dear, dear boy, you can not
possibly
imagine how happy I am, how
joyous
I am, to see you standing there so fine and strong and handsome! Will you call off these dogs? These most loyal and admirable dogs? They've kept me motionless here for
hours
, under the mistaken impression that
I
, not that vicious Jew over there, am the one who came here to do you harm. Will you call them off, please? I'll explain everything.” He smiled lovingly, sitting among the snarling Dobermans.

The boy stared at him, and turned his head slowly toward Liebermann.

Liebermann shook his head.

“Don't be deceived by him,” Mengele warned. “He's a criminal, a killer, a terrible man who came here to hurt you and your family. Call off these dogs, Bobby. You see, I know your name. I know all about you—that you visited Cape Cod last summer, that you have a movie camera, that you have two pretty girl cousins named…I'm an old friend of your parents. In fact I'm the doctor who delivered you, just back from abroad! Dr. Breitenbach. Have they mentioned me? I left long ago.”

The boy looked uncertainly at him. “Where's my father?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Mengele said. “I suspect, since that person had a gun that I succeeded in taking away from him—and the dogs saw us fighting and reached their wrong conclusion—I suspect that he may have”—he nodded gravely—“done away with your father. I came to call, having just come back from abroad, as I said, and he let me in, pretending to be a friend. When he drew his gun I was able to overpower him and get it, but then he opened that door and let the dogs out. Call them off and we'll look for your father. Perhaps he's only tied up. Poor Henry! Let's hope for the best. It's a good thing your mother wasn't here. Does she still teach school in Lancaster?”