Boys from Brazil

8

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?”

“He dropped it. He wants to get it over with.”

“Oh my! I’m sorry to hear that. Yes, of course I’ll be there.”

She gave him the address: Smilkstein’s, a restaurant on Canal Street.

The Times had the story in a single column that he had missed, in by the fold. Rather than contest the new conspiracy charge, Gorin had decided to accept the judge’s decision revoking his probation. He would enter a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania on March 16th. “Mm.” Liebermann shook his head.

On Tuesday the 11th, at a little after noon, he caned himself slowly up the stairs at Smilkstein’s. A step at a time, hauling with his right hand at the banister. Murder.

At the top of the stairs, panting and sweating, he found one big room, a hall, with a greenery wedding canopy on a bandstand, lots of uncovered tables and gilt folding chairs, and in the center, on the dance floor, men at a table reading menus, a crooked-backed waiter writing. Gorin, at the head of the table, saw him, put down his menu and napkin, rose and came hurrying. As cheerful-looking as if he’d fought the decision and won. “Yakov! It’s good to see you!” He shook Liebermann’s hand, gripped his arm. “You look fine! Damn it, I forgot the stairs!”

“It’s all right,” Liebermann said, catching his breath.

“It’s not all right; it was stupid of me. I should have picked someplace else.” They walked toward the table, Gorin leading, Liebermann caning. “My chapter heads,” Gorin said. “And Phil and Paul. When are you leaving, Yakov?”

“The day after tomorrow. I’m sorry you—”

“Forget it, forget it, I’ll be in good company down there—Nixon’s whole brain trust. It’s the ‘in’ place for conspirators. Gentlemen, Yakov. This is Dan, Stig, Arnie…”

There were five or six of them, and Phil Greenspan, Paul Stern.

“You look a hundred percent better than last time I saw you,” Greenspan said, breaking a roll, smiling.

Liebermann, sitting down on the chair across from him, said, “Do you know, I don’t even remember seeing you that day.”

“I can believe it,” Greenspan said. “You were slate-gray.”

“Marvelous doctors down there,” Liebermann said. “I was really surprised.” He pulled his chair in, with a hand from the man on his right; leaned his cane against the table edge, picked up his menu.

Gorin, at his left, said, “The waiter says not the pot roast. Do you like duck? It’s terrific here.”

It was a gloomy farewell. While they ate, Gorin talked about lines of command, and arrangements he and Greenspan were making to maintain contact while he was in prison. Retaliatory actions were proposed; bitter jokes made. Liebermann tried to lighten the mood with a Kissinger story, supposedly true, that Marvin Farb had told him. It didn’t help much.

When the waiter had cleared the table and gone downstairs, leaving them with their cake and tea, Gorin leaned his forearms on the table, folded his hands, and looked at everyone gravely. “Our present problems are the least of our problems,” he said, and looked at Liebermann. “Right, Yakov?”

Liebermann, looking at him, nodded.

Gorin looked at Greenspan and Stern, at each of the five chapter heads. “There are ninety-four boys,” he said, “thirteen years old, some of them twelve and eleven, who have to be killed before they get much older. No,” he said, “I’m not kidding. I wish to God I were. Some of them are in England, Rafe; some in Scandinavia, Stig; some of them are here and in Canada; some in Germany. I don’t know how we’ll get them, but we will; we have to. Yakov’ll explain who they are and how they…came to be.” He sat back and gestured toward Liebermann. “In essence,” he said. “You don’t have to spell out all the details.” And to the others: “I vouch for every word he’s going to say, and Phil and Paul will vouch too; they’ve seen one of them. Go ahead, Yakov.”

Liebermann sat looking at the spoon in his tea.

“You’re on,” Gorin said.

Liebermann looked at him and said hoarsely, “Could we talk in private for a minute?” He cleared his throat.

Gorin looked questioningly at him, and then not questioningly. He took breath in his nostrils, smiled. “Sure,” he said, and stood up.

Liebermann took his cane, grasped the table edge, and got up from his chair. He caned a step, and Gorin put a hand on his back and walked with him, saying softly, “I know what you’re going to say.” They walked away together toward the bandstand with its wedding canopy.

“I know what you’re going to say, Yakov.”

“I don’t yet; I’m glad you do.”

“All right, I’ll say it for you. ‘We shouldn’t do it. We should give them a chance. Even the ones who lost their fathers could turn out to be ordinary people.’”

“Not ordinary, I don’t think, no. But not Hitlers.”

“‘So we should be nice warm-hearted old-fashioned Jews and respect their civil rights. And when some of them do become Hitlers, why, we’ll just let our children worry about it. On the way to the gas chambers.’”

Liebermann stopped at the bandstand, turned to Gorin. “Rabbi,” he said, “nobody knows what the chances are. Mengele thought they were good, but it was his project, his ambition. It could be that none will be Hitler, not even if there was a thousand of them. They’re boys. No matter what their genes are. Children. How can we kill them? This was Mengele’s business, killing children. Should it be ours? I don’t even—”

“You really astound me.”

“Let me finish, please. I don’t even think we should have them be watched by their governments, because this will leak out, you can bet your life it will, and bring attention to them, draw to them exactly the kind of meshuganahs who’ll make them be Hitlers, encourage them. Or even from inside a government the meshuganahs could come. The fewer who know, the better.”

“Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one—my God, you know what we’ve got!”

“No,” Liebermann said. “No. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that’s not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions…and the people to follow the Hitler.”

“And don’t you think he’d find them?”

“No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing…Some he’d find, yes; but no more, I think—I hope—than the pretend-Hitlers we have now, in Germany and South America.”

“Well, you’ve got a hell of a lot more faith in human nature than I do,” Gorin said. “Look, Yakov, you can stand here talking till you’re blue in the face, you’re not going to change my mind on this. We not only have the right to kill them, we have the duty. God didn’t make them, Mengele did.”

Liebermann stood looking at him, and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I thought I’d raise the question.”

“You raised it,” Gorin said, and gestured toward the table. “Will you explain to them now? We’ve got a lot of things to work out before we leave.”

“My voice is used up for today,” Liebermann said. “You better explain.”

They walked back together toward the table.

“While I’m up,” Liebermann said, “is there a men’s room?”

“Over there.”

Liebermann caned away toward the stairs. Gorin went on to the table and sat down.

Liebermann caned into the men’s room—a small one—and into the booth; swung down its doorbolt. He hung his cane on his right wrist, got out his passport case, and took the folded-small list from it. He put the case back in his jacket, unfolded the list to half sheets, and tore them across; put them together and tore again; put them together and—tore again. He dropped the thickness of small pieces into the toilet, and when the typed-on pieces had separated and settled onto the water, turned down the black handle on the tank. The paper and water swirled and funneled down, gurgling. Pieces of paper stuck to the side of the bowl, pieces came back in the rising water.

He waited for the tank to refill.

As long as he was there, unzipped.

When he came out, he caught the eye of one of the men at the far side of the table and pointed at Gorin. The man spoke to Gorin, and Gorin turned and looked at him. He beckoned. Gorin sat for a moment, and got up and came toward him, looking annoyed.

“What now?”

“You should brace yourself.”

“For what?”

“I flushed the list down the toilet.”

Gorin looked at him.

He nodded. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “Believe me.”

Gorin stared at him, white-faced.

“I feel funny telling a Rabbi what’s—”

“It wasn’t your list,” Gorin said. “It was…everybody’s! The Jewish People’s!”

Liebermann said, “Could I take a vote? It was only me in there.” He shook his head. “Killing children, any children—it’s wrong.”

Gorin’s face reddened; his nostrils flared, his brown eyes burned, dark-ringed. “Don’t you tell me what’s right and wrong,” he said. “You asshole. You stupid ignorant old fart!”

Liebermann stared at him.

“I ought to throw you down these stairs!”

“Touch me and I’ll break your neck,” Liebermann said.

Gorin pulled in breath; his fists clenched at his sides. “It’s Jews like you,” he said, “that let it happen last time.”

Liebermann looked at him. “Jews didn’t ‘let’ it happen,” he said. “Nazis made it happen. People who would even kill children to get what they wanted.”

Gorin’s reddened jaw clenched. “Get out of here,” he said. And wheeled and stalked away.

Liebermann watched him go, drew a breath, and turned to the stairs. He took hold of the banister and started caning himself slowly downward, a step at a time.

Through the cab window, coming into Kennedy Airport, he saw Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. Where Frieda Maloney had given the babies to the U.S. and Canadian couples. He watched it swing past, its ten or twelve stories floodlighted in the dusk…

After he had checked in at Pan Am, he called Mr. Goldwasser at the lecture bureau.

“Hello! How are you? Where are you?”

“At Kennedy, going home. And not so bad. I only have to take it easy a few months. Did you get my note?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks again. Beautiful flowers. That was some publicity, yes? Front page of the Times; CBS, the whole network…”

“I hope you never get such publicity again.”

“Still, it was publicity. Listen, if I give you my solemn word of honor I wouldn’t cancel out, would you want to try booking me in the late spring, early fall? My voice will be back to normal; the doctor swears.”

“Well…”

“Come on; so many flowers, you’re interested.”

“All right, I’ll sound out a few groups.”

“Good. And listen, Mr. Goldwasser—”

“Will you call me Ben, for God’s sake! How many years has it been already?”

“Ben—not the temples and Hadassahs. The colleges and kids. High schools even.”

“They don’t pay bupkes.”

“Colleges, then. Y.M.C.A’s. Wherever they’re young.”

“I’ll try to lay out a balanced tour, all right?”

“All right. Fill the holes with high schools. Let me hear. Be well.”

He hung up and put his finger in the coin-return; picked up his briefcase and caned himself toward the boarding gate.