Boys from Brazil (28 page)

“There's a list,” he said.

“What?” The boy leaned his ear close.

“There's a list,” he said as loud as he could.

“A list?”

“See if you can find it. In his coat maybe. A list of names.”

He watched the boy go into the hallway.

My helper Hitler.

He kept his eyes open.

Looked at Mengele in front of the settee. White and red where his face was. Bone and blood.

Good.

After a while the boy came back looking at papers.

He reached.

“My father's on it,” the boy said.

He reached.

The boy looked uneasily at him, put the papers down into his hand. “I forgot. I better go look for him.”

Five or six typed sheets. Names, addresses, dates. Hard to read without his glasses. Döring, crossed out. Horve, crossed out. Other pages, no crossings.

He folded the papers against the floor, got them into his jacket pocket.

Closed his eyes.

Stay alive. Not finished yet.

Faraway barking.

“I found him.”

 

Blond-bearded Greenspan glared at him. Whispered, “He's
dead!
We can't question him!”

“It's all right. I have the list.”

“What?”

Crinkly blond hair, pinned-in embroidered skullcap. As loud as he could: “It's all right. I have the list. All the fathers.”

He was lifted—ei!—and put down.

On a stretcher. Being carried. Dog's-head knocker, daylight, blue sky.

A shiny lens looking at him, keeping up, humming. Sharp nose next to it.

THEY HAD GOOD DOCTORS

there, it turned out; good enough, anyway, for him to find himself with a cast on his hand, a tube in his arm, and bandages all over him—in front and in back, above and below.

In the intensive care unit of the Lancaster General Hospital. Saturday. Friday was lost.

He would be fine, a pudgy Indian doctor told him. A bullet had passed through his “mediastinum”—the doctor touched his own white-smocked chest. It had fractured a rib, injured both the left lung and something called “the recurrent laryn-geal nerve,” and missed his aorta by only
so much
. Another bullet had fractured his pelvic girdle and lodged in muscle. Another had damaged bones and muscles in his left hand. Another had grazed a rib on his right side.

The lodged bullet had been removed and all the damage repaired. He should be talking in a week or ten days, walking on crutches in two weeks. The Austrian Embassy had been notified, although—the doctor smiled—it probably hadn't been necessary. Because of the newspapers and television. A detective wanted to speak to him but would have to wait of course.

Dena bent and kissed him; stood squeezing his right hand and smiling. What day? Rings under her eyes, but beautiful. “Couldn't you have arranged to do this in Britain?” she asked.

He was moved to an intermediate care unit, and could sit up and write notes.
Where are my belongings?

“You'll get everything when you're in your room,” the nurse said with a smile.

When?

“Thursday or Friday, most likely.”

Dena read him the newspaper accounts. Mengele was identified as Ramón Aschheim y Negrín, a Paraguayan. He had killed Wheelock, wounded Liebermann, and been killed by Wheelock's dogs. Wheelock's son, Robert, thirteen, had summoned the police on his return from school. Five men who had arrived immediately after the police had identified themselves as members of the Young Jewish Defenders and friends of Liebermann; they had intended to meet him there, they said, and accompany him on a trip to Washington. They expressed the opinion that Aschheim y Negrín was a Nazi, but could offer no explanation of his or Liebermann's presence at Wheelock's home, or of Wheelock's murder. The police hoped that Liebermann, if and when he recovered, would be able to shed light on the matter.

“Can you?” Dena asked.

He tilted his head, made a “maybe” mouth.

“When did you become friendly with the Y.J.D.?”

Last week
.

A nurse told Dena someone wanted to see her.

Dr. Chavan came by, studied Liebermann's chart, held his chin and looked closely at him, and told him that the worst thing wrong with him was that he needed a shave.

Dena came back, leaning against the weight of Liebermann's suitcase. “Speak of the devil,” she said, setting it down by the partition. Greenspan had dropped it off. He had come down to get his car, which the police hadn't let him take on Thursday. He had given Dena a message for Liebermann: “One, get well; and two, Rabbi Gorin will call you as soon as he can. He has problems of his own. Watch the newspapers.”

He hurt all over. Slept a lot.

He was moved into a nice room with striped curtains and a television set up on the wall, his briefcase on a chair. As soon as he was settled in the bed, he opened the night-table drawer. The list was there, along with his other things. He put his glasses on and looked at it. Numbers one through seventeen crossed out. Cross out Wheelock too. Wheelock's date had been February 19th.

A barber came and shaved him.

He could talk, hoarsely, but wasn't supposed to. It was just as well; it gave him time to think.

Dena wrote letters. He read the
Philadelphia Inquirer
and
The New York Times
, watched the news on the push-button television. Nothing on Gorin. Kissinger in Jerusalem, meeting with Rabin. Crime, unemployment.

“What's wrong, Pa?”

“Nothing.”

“Don't talk.”

“You asked.”

“Don't talk! Write! That's what you've got the pad for!”

NOTHING'S WRONG!

She could be a pest sometimes.

Cards and flowers came: from friends, contributors, the lecture bureau, the Sisterhood of the local temple. A letter from Klaus, who had got the hospital address from Max:
Please write as soon as you're able. Needless to say, Lena and I, and Nürnberger too, are most anxious to learn more than was in the newspapers
.

The day after he was allowed to talk, a detective named Barnhart came to see him, a big redheaded young man, polite and soft-spoken. Liebermann didn't have much light to shed; he had never met Ramón Aschheim y Negrín before the day the man shot him. He hadn't even heard the name. Yes, Mrs. Wheelock was right; he had called Wheelock the day before and told him a Nazi
might
be coming to kill him. That was in response to a tip he had got from a not-too-reliable source in South America. He had come to see Wheelock to try to find out if there could really be anything in it; Aschheim had let him in, fired at him. He had let the dogs in. The dogs killed Aschheim.

“The Paraguay government says his passport's a fake. They don't know who he is either.”

“They have no record of his prints?”

“No, sir, they don't. But whoever he was, it looks like you're the one he was after, not Wheelock. You see, he died only a little while before we got there. You must have come around two-thirty, right?”

Liebermann considered, nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“But Wheelock died between eleven and noon. So ‘Aschheim' waited over two hours for you. That tip of yours looks mighty like a trap, sir. Wheelock had nothing at all to do with the kind of people you go after, we're sure of that. You'd better be leery of future tips, if you don't mind my saying so.”

“I don't mind at all. It's good advice. Thank you. To be ‘leery.' Yes.”

Gorin was in the news that evening. He had been on probation since 1973, when he had been given a three-year suspended sentence on a bombing-conspiracy charge to which he had pleaded guilty; now the federal government was trying to have his probation revoked on the grounds that he had conspired again, this time to kidnap a Russian diplomat. A judge had scheduled a hearing for February 26th. Revocation would mean Gorin would have to go to prison for the balance of his sentence, a year. Yes, he had problems, all right.

Liebermann did too. He studied the list when he was alone. Five thin pages, neatly typed. Ninety-four names. He sat looking at the wall; shook his head and sighed; folded the list up small and slid it into his passport case.

He wrote letters to Max and Klaus, not saying much. Began taking and making phone calls, though he was still hoarse and couldn't talk at normal volume.

Dena had to go home. She had arranged about the hospital bill. Marvin Farb and some others were going to take care of it, and when Liebermann got back to Austria and collected on his insurance, he would pay them back. “Don't forget the copy of the bill,” she warned him. “And don't try to walk too soon. And don't leave until they
say
you should leave.”

“I won't, I won't, I won't.”

After she left he realized that he hadn't brought up the business about her and Gary; felt bad about it. Some father.

He crutched himself up and down the corridor, hard work with the cast still on his hand. Got to know some of the other patients, griped about the food.

Gorin called. “Yakov? How are you?”

“All right, thanks. I'll be out in a week. How are you?”

“Not so hot. You see what they're doing to me?”

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

“We're trying to get a postponement but it doesn't look good. They're really out to get me. And
I'm
supposed to be the conspirator! Oh man. Listen, what's doing? Can you talk? I'm in a booth, so it's all right here.”

In Yiddish he said, “We'd better speak in Yiddish. There aren't going to be any more killings. The men were called home.”

“They were?”

“And the one who shot me, the one the dogs got, it was…the Angel. You understand who I mean?”

Silence. “You're
sure?
”

“Positive. We talked.”

“Oh my God!
Thank
God!
Thank
God! Dogs were too good for him! And you're sitting on it? I would call the biggest press conference in history!”

“And what do I say when they ask me what he was doing there? A blank from Paraguay is no problem, but him? And if I
don't
explain, the F.B.I. comes in to find out. Should they? I don't know yet.”

“No, no, of course you're right. But to
know
and not be able to tell! Are you coming to New York?”

“Yes.”

“Where will you be? I'll get in touch.”

He gave him the Farbs' number.

“Phil says you have a list.”

Liebermann blinked. “How does he know?”

“You told him.”

“I
did?
When?”

“At the house there. Do you?”

“Yes. I sit and stare at it. It's a problem, Rabbi.”

“You're telling
me
. Just hold on to it. I'll see you soon. Shalom.”

“Shalom.”

He talked with a few reporters and high-school kids. Crutched himself up and down the corridor, getting the hang of it.

One afternoon a stout brown-haired woman in a red coat, with a briefcase, came up to him and said, “Mr. Liebermann?”

“Yes?”

She smiled at him: dimples, fine white teeth. “May I speak to you for a minute, please? I'm Mrs. Wheelock. Mrs. Hank Wheelock.”

He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly.”

They went into his room. She sat in one of the chairs with her briefcase on her lap, and he leaned the crutches against the bed and lowered himself into the other chair.

“I'm so sorry,” he said.

She nodded, looking at her briefcase, rubbing at it with a red-nailed thumb. She looked at him. “The police told me,” she said, “that that man came to trap
you
, not to kill Hank. He had no interest in Hank, or in us; he was only interested in you.”

Liebermann nodded.

“But while he waited,” she said, “he looked at our picture album. It was on the floor there, where he—” She stirred a shoulder, looked at Liebermann.

“Maybe,” he said, “your husband was looking at it. Before the man came.”

She shook her head; the corners of her mouth turned down. “
He
never looked at it,” she said. “
I
took those pictures.
I'm
the one that mounted them in there and composed the inscriptions. It was the man looking.”

Liebermann said, “Maybe he just wanted to pass the time.”

Mrs. Wheelock sat silently, looking about the room, her hands folded on her briefcase. “Our son is adopted,” she said. “
My
son. He doesn't know it. It was in the agreement that we weren't to tell him. The night before last he asked me if he was. The first time he ever mentioned the subject.” She looked at Liebermann. “Did you say anything to him that day that could have put the idea into his head?”

“Me?” Liebermann shook his head. “No. How could I know about it?”

“I thought there might be a connection,” Mrs. Wheelock said. “The woman who arranged the adoption was German. ‘Aschheim' is a German name. A man with a German accent called and asked about Bobby. And I know you're…against Germans.”

“Against Nazis,” Liebermann said. “No, Mrs. Wheelock, I had no idea he was adopted, and I wasn't talking at all when he came in. I'm not talking so good now; you can hear. Maybe because he lost his father he thinks this way.”

She sighed, and nodded. “Maybe,” she said. She made a smile at him. “I'm sorry I disturbed you. It was worrying me that…it might involve
him
somehow.”

“That's all right,” he said. “I'm glad we met. I was going to call you before I left and express my sympathy.”

“Did you see the film?” she asked. “No, I suppose you couldn't. It's funny the way things work out, isn't it? Good coming out of bad? All that misery: Hank dead, you hurt so badly, that man—and the dogs too. We had to put them to sleep, you know. And Bobby gets his break out of it.”

Liebermann said, “His break?”

Mrs. Wheelock nodded. “WGAL bought the film he took that day, and showed some of it—you being carried into the ambulance, the dogs with blood on them, that man and Hank when they were carried out—and CBS, that's the network, all the different stations over the whole country, they picked it up and showed it on ‘The Morning News with Hughes Rudd' the next morning. Just you being carried into the ambulance. A break like that can be tremendously important for a boy Bobby's age. Not just for the contacts, but for his own self-confidence. He wants to be a movie director.”

Liebermann looked at her, and said, “I hope he makes it.”

“I think he stands a good chance,” she said, getting up with a faint proud smile. “He's very talented.”

The Farbs came down on Friday, February 28th, and packed Liebermann and his crutches and his suitcase and briefcase into their dazzling new Lincoln. Marvin Farb gave him a copy of the hospital bill.

He looked at it, stared at Farb.

“And this is cheap,” Farb said. “In New York it would have been twice this.”

“Gott im Himmel!”

 

Sandy, the girl from the Y.J.D. office, called with a lunch invitation for Tuesday the 11th, at noon. “It's a farewell.”

He was leaving on the 13th. For him? “For who?” he asked.

“For the Rabbi. Didn't you hear?”

“The appeal was turned down?”