The Edit Page 2

  On Saturdays, Father never raised an eyebrow at the food, for we were to spend the rest of the day ensemble; to begin it with a transgression that would irritate Mother would make the hours before us unbearably long and tedious.

  After “dinner,” as Mother called this heavy lunch, we would sometimes take a walk to a nearby park; but if the weather was inclement, or if Father felt weary—which was as often the case as not—then we three would simply lean up against one of the windows and partake of the passing scene in the street below, commenting to one another on the peculiarities of the pedestrians we would see. These windows were double, the space in between the two frames being plugged up for air leaks by tiny bolsters. Our bolsters, as was typical on that block, were covered in damask of surprisingly fine quality. But of course they had to be, for they were all that passersby could see of our life, and Mother always insisted that we put our best foot forward for the outside world. It was the only way to get ahead, she would say.

  Well, we would open the inner panes and lean our elbows against these bolsters and discover a new connection between one another as we surveyed the Saturday streets. There was a private sort of publicness to these afternoons. We grew closer as a family unit from such activity. The roles between us, normally so strictly defined, broke down imperceptibly as we stood at the window commenting on Frau Frank’s new coat. Mother would make some catty remark to which Father and I would wink at each other. Or I would notice Herr Wachman, the butcher, closing his shop later than usual—the 12:30 closing hour on Saturday was a legal statute—and Father would joke that he was going to have a fine joint of meat off the man to keep this little infraction quiet.

  This was our practice, at any rate, until Mother started showing—Maria would come along shortly and make our happy threesome a foursome. I remember being amazed at seeing Mother have to stand farther and farther back from the window as her stomach swelled with the growth of the baby.

  Our favorite spectacle was Herr Braunstein, who ran a frame shop in the inner city and thought himself very fine. He was an immaculate man for a Jew, always wearing smart tweeds and a fine starched shirt. He had a dachshund that was his only friend. He and the little dog were inseparable, and, like clockwork on Saturday afternoons at 1:30, they would go out for a constitutional. The dog, of course, was meant to do his business on such occasions, likely as not directly below our window. What a recalcitrant animal it was. I am a dog lover, but this little vermin was really insufferable. It strutted along on its clothespin legs as if it was the most beautiful thing in the world, and when it decided to do its business, it simply did so straightaway in the middle of the sidewalk, to the constant mortification of the tidy Herr Braunstein. The dog would not be curbed. Led there, it simply looked up aggressively at its purported master and waited to continue the walk, whereupon it would leave its filth smack in the middle of the sidewalk.

  Inevitably, Herr Braunstein would have to soil his fresh spats scooting the pile off the sidewalk into the gutter. This we three found unbearably funny. What a show Herr Braunstein in his fancy suit and carrying an ivory-handled cane provided us, hastily scraping at the leavings, looking around nervously that nobody should witness this degradation. While all the time, directly above him, we watched and sniggered to ourselves.

  Imagine my surprise when, almost twenty years later and after the Anschluss, I recognized the natty form of Herr Braunstein—thicker by some pounds but no less expensively dressed—stooped over a wooden washing bucket with a slew of other Jews, cleaning the cobbles of Annagasse near his frame shop with a jeering crowd surrounding him! Such are the ironies of this world we live in. It was as if his fate had been foretold on those Saturdays on the Hubertusgasse, scooting his dog’s leavings into the gutter.

  What became of his dog, I do not know.

  I dearly loved those hours spent together at our window. When such Saturdays coincided with my parents’ monthly night out, then my happiness would be complete, for that meant that Frau Wotruba would come to me.

  Well, I have made a good start on my memoirs, for a novice. From the books I have read on writing books, I know that this is a typical phenomenon: The first pages come fever hot and alive onto the page, then comes the plodding hard work. Then comes the structure. Then comes the guts of the book. And at last one arrives at that saddest of salutations: “The End.” My green metal wastebasket under the trestle writing table attests to the false starts I have made in the last couple of days. Perhaps my problem is that I am trying too hard. It is said that Mark Twain wrote in bed; he swore that words that needed to be sweated over were no good. I am no great fan of that North American humorist, but it sounds as if there might be something in this idea. Perhaps it is worth trying.

  Writing in bed is a messy business, I must admit, especially when one uses such an old-fashioned writing instrument as a fountain pen. I now have a set of badly stained damask sheets—dear enough material in this part of the world, I can assure you—for the entire bottle of black ink tipped over in bed as I was filling my Montblanc pen. And another wastebasket full of false starts.

  I think I know what is troubling me, why I cannot push ahead from this excellent start I have on my memoirs. I am limited. I limit myself. My “rough draft of history” has floundered because I strive for too much organization. Actually, writing one’s life is less like picking from neat alphabetical and chronological file cards in a pine file box than it is like dipping one’s hand into the frothing sea and not knowing whether one will come up with kelp or cod.

  But there is a larger reason for this writer’s block: namely, my long-kept secret. It holds me back, making me prevaricate here, tell a half-truth there, and all in all drop absurd hints of some dreaded past from which I am escaping.

  I had intended to work up to this point rather more gradually, to show rather than tell. I had intended to let the reader discover things for himself, but this one thing, this primary thing in these memoirs, is keeping me from telling the whole story, inhibiting me at the outset. And the whole purpose of writing these remembrances is to free me from that past, to exorcise that inhibiting influence on my life, for it is strangling me after so many decades of prevarication.

  It is the world of the victors that judged me guilty; in my conscience, I am guiltless.

  See! It is just such dubious remarks and foreshadowings that I wish to avoid. Surely any intelligent reader has by now done the mathematics requisite to place me, as any other man of my generation, squarely in the eligible warrior category for the Second World War. I describe a childhood growing up in Vienna; unless there was later a major resettlement for my family, I presumably was on the side of the Reich during that conflict. Any intelligent reader has therefore most likely already asked himself this question: What did our protagonist do during said war?

  My number was 323498. It is still tattooed under my left arm. I was not an especially early member of the elite Schutzstaffel, what others like to call the SS. However, only foreigners and historians call it the SS; I shall from here on refer to the corps as the Staffel or the Black Corps, or even sometimes, as Himmler preferred, the Clan.

  Though my number was not low, I was fervent until the end. Those ignoramuses at Nuremberg called me a war criminal. Perhaps not in a league with Eichmann—under whom I served for a time—but high enough on their rosters for there to be no statute of limitations on my conviction in absentia. I was branded a war criminal in 1946; a war criminal I remain today and till the day I die. That is my admission, and these memoirs are being written in part to set the historical record straight about just what it was like to be a member of the Staffel.

  I also prevaricate about the tiny bay upon which I live: somewhere “on the western coast of the Americas” I have written. This vagueness makes it sound as though I fear the searching eye of Herr Wiesenthal or the Israelis who might storm my residence, capture me, and return me to Jerusalem for more of their “justice” as the
y did with Eichmann. But such is not the case. I have lived so long with the threat of capture that it no longer fills me with fear. All this subterfuge on my part is merely habit. I wish to rid myself of such deathly custom!

  So, baldly put:

  I live in one of those Central American states derisively labeled a banana republic. The language spoken here is Spanish, the climate is warm, almost tropical. Palm trees and curiously named and scented foliage abound. I was made welcome with open hands here in part because I did not come empty-handed—though I have labored long and hard to make it appear to the locals that the charter fishing service I operate here is my sole means of support. Another reason for my welcome was the political proclivities of certain powerful men in this country. And I have proved helpful to these men: In fact, I make a bit of a side income (not that I need it) in arms and insurgency. When called upon, I run guns and sometimes unmarked parcels wrapped in hemp that tend to leave powdery traces on my deck boards.

  The irony is that this is hardly an occupation with which I had any experience before coming to this country. For my current “employers,” my Staffel past is my cachet: any former member of that elite corps is assumed to be some sort of military superhuman—cold as ice, calculating as a computer, stealthy as a jungle cat, and ruthless as a Jerusalem greengrocer. I have not told them of my lowly bureaucratic past. I let them believe what they want, for it is a form of insurance for me.

  So, that is the lay of the land, gentle reader: a Schutzstaffel man and Nuremberg war criminal hiding out in Central America, augmenting his income and position with a very specialized import-export trade.

  A strange call and a strange woman interrupted my work today. I was just settling down with the next installment on Frau Wotruba when the ringing of the phone intervened. I answered it reluctantly and was greeted by a woman’s voice speaking English and some very bad Spanish with a strange, lilting accent. She excused herself for calling on a Sunday; she had heard of my skill with boats—a reputation deservedly earned, I might add. Coming from landlocked central Europe, I am entranced by the sea. I have come to know this bay as well as any local skipper: every shoal and reef; where to go for bottom fish when the surface feeders are inactive; and where to go for the big ones when the warm currents bring them in to feed. I know by a sixth sense when a fish is going to strike the line.

  It seemed that this woman had been talking with people at the harbor and now she wanted to come by to speak with me about hiring my boat for an extended period of time. Her lilt over the phone inhibited my understanding at first. I tried to place the accent. My silence made her wonder if I were still there. When she said my name, I finally placed the singsong intonation as an Irish accent. She repeated the small speech and I told her to come at one in the afternoon.

  “It won’t disturb your siesta?” she asked, suddenly solicitous.

  “No,” I told her.

  It would not disturb my siesta, for I have never gotten in the habit of sleeping away half of the best part of the day. Such practices are only for drunkards and sloths.

  “So, come at one,” I repeated.

  I had my suspicions about this caller immediately: It is not often that a woman alone finds her way to our bay and then determines to set about a course of sportfishing. Suspicions and paranoia—they have grown boring in my long life of hiding. Yet they have also kept me safe and I could not shake mine now.

  But to out and out refuse the fare would itself draw suspicion back on myself; turning down a prospective hire at this time of year, just as everything is dying down toward winter and one would naturally want to tuck something away for the slow months, would draw unwanted attention from the locals. I would have to be more inventive than that, so I invited her over to tell her face to face, thereby winning some time to conjure up a good reason to refuse her offer.

  She arrived punctually at one by Cordoba’s taxi. He has the monopoly in our village: the only car, apart from my Land Rover, that regularly runs. His is a 1956 Ford for which he could, by now, earn a vintage price. He has overhauled the engine so often that it is like an old lover to him. Cordoba sometimes joins me for a drink and an evening of cards at my home. A sentimentalist like myself, he is generally a welcome guest.

  I could hear his car approach from a great distance, for my house sits on the edge of a mango grove abutting a ravine at the end of a half-mile drive. The jarring of a car in the ruts of my simple drive always alerts me to the arrival of visitors. Cordoba finally pulled to a stop, and we saluted each other as I came out to greet the lady. I wanted Cordoba to stay, to be there to drive the woman back to the village after I had politely refused her offer. For I now had an excuse at hand: a busted drive shaft on the propeller for which our poor village had neither a welder nor parts.

  But the woman paid Cordoba off immediately, sending him on his way before I could invite him in for a drink. He is a polite man: for him, business is business. He had brought a fare to the house and it would be wrong for him to turn it into a social call once he had received remuneration for his services. She seemed to intuit such things. It aroused my interest, if not curiosity, in her.

  I spoke of Frau Wotruba earlier. Well, this Irish had something in her manner, a way of cocking her head questioningly at one with amusement in her eyes that immediately reminded me of my old friend. Physically, she was nothing like Frau Wotruba but for the light brown hair worn up in a bun as my occasional chaperone was also wont to do. On the cusp of her forties, she was tall and angular. Rather more like a robust Virginia Woolf, the mad Englishwoman, than the buxom, full-bodied Austrian woman who initiated me into the ways of physical love. Yet it was the curious cocking of her head and her defiant, playful eyes that captivated me.

  Introductions were made as Cordoba sped off in his taxi. Miss O’Brien, her name was. Miss Kate O’Brien. I realized that the only polite thing to do was invite her in for a cup of tea while I explained the impossibility of accepting her offer. She responded to this invitation with a rather startling comment: She would give her second virginity for a cup of tea.

  I believe I pulled up physically and abruptly at this statement. I am isolated here with only the weekly paper to inform me of events in the great outside world, plus my shortwave radio on which I listen to broadcasts of news and culture from Berlin once a week. I disallow myself more than a once-weekly dose of such programs; any more and I should grow homesick and maudlin. Our village is a place out of time where the Internet has not yet intruded. Thus, somewhat cut off from current trends, I have little experience with so-called modern women. Hers was a humorous comment, apparently; one hardly meant to be bawdy. Still, the remark shocked me.

  “I’ll see what I can brew up for you,” I said in my best English. “If successful, I will not extract the reward, however.”

  She laughed at this, and again I was reminded of Frau Wotruba. As we entered the front door of my home, I found myself surreptitiously examining the woman’s breasts, neatly rounded appendages under the blue chambray blouse she wore. Old habits in an old man. A dangerous combination.

  At this point, I should explain one particular of these memoirs. There will be sections—and the following is one of them—that will be the faithful transcription of recordings of actual conversations, and of the silences intervening. Indeed, while transcribing my tapes, I am always amazed at the amount of time given over to silence. When I am actually with the person in question, I hardly notice such cumbersome halts in conversation. But in the tapes, there are long patches of time when all there is to be heard is the ticking of the mantel clock, the clink of ice cubes in glasses as I mix drinks, the rustle of magazine pages, or the squeak and groan of springs as someone sits down or rises. Sometimes a cough, a clearing of a throat, a sneeze. Then my polite “Gesundheit”—I have created the fiction of Swiss extraction to explain my occasional lapses into German.

  Yet these sounds and nuances will be largely missing fr
om my transcriptions. What I will present instead is simply the dialogue as it was spoken. Some geographical names, as well as my own, have, understandably, been deleted altogether from these transcripts. I shall not try to make interpretations upon these spoken parts of the memoirs, or attempt in any way to describe them, the people in question while speaking, or the settings.

  These sections are taped mainly in my home, or perhaps even aboard my boat, the Clan. This habit of mine is a matter of personal security, of insurance, rather than a sign of paranoia. I often go over phone conversations and personal visits afterward to assure myself of their true meaning. In the middle of a conversation, I can hardly be expected to evaluate every statement made for hidden meanings or subtle blending of intent. A wanted man, with a price on his head as I have, cannot be too careful, even after all these years.

  “My God! It looks like a wee cottage from the outside.”

  “It’s built over a ravine. There are three stories.”

  “Hardly a bachelor pad. Those windows!”

  “I’m happy you approve.”

  “Like having a Rousseau painting come alive.”

  “The builder thought I was insane, I can tell you. ‘Floor-to-ceiling windows. Whatever for?’”

  “Marvelous. Open-beam ceiling, tile floors. You could play basketball in here, Señor ____.”