A Death in Vienna (19 page)

T
HE RECEPTIONIST AT
the
Barilocher Tageblatt
eyed Gabriel with more than a passing interest as he stepped through the door and strode toward her desk. She had short dark hair and bright blue eyes set off by an attractive suntanned face. “May I help you?” she said in German, hardly surprising, since the
Tageblatt
, as the name implies, is a German-language newspaper.

Gabriel replied in the same language, though he adroitly concealed the fact that, like the woman, he spoke it fluently. He said he had come to Bariloche to conduct genealogical research. He was looking, he claimed, for a man he believed was his mother’s brother, a man named Otto Krebs. He had reason to believe Herr Krebs died in Bariloche in October 1982. Would it be possible for him to search the archives of the newspaper for a death notice or an obituary?

The receptionist smiled at him, revealing two rows of bright, even teeth, then picked up her telephone and dialed a three-digit extension. Gabriel’s request was put to a superior in rapid German. The woman was silent for a few seconds, then she hung up the phone and stood.

“Follow me.”

She led him across a small newsroom, her heels clicking loudly over the faded linoleum floor. A half dozen employees were lounging in their shirtsleeves in various states of relaxation, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. No one seemed to take notice of the visitor. The door to the archives room was ajar. The receptionist switched on the lights.

“We’re computerized now, so all the articles are stored automatically in a searchable database. I’m afraid that goes back only as far as 1998. When did you say this man died?”

“I believe it was 1982.”

“You’re lucky. The obituaries are all indexed—by hand, of course, the old-fashioned way.”

She walked over to a table and lifted the cover of a thick, leather-bound ledger book. The ruled pages were filled with tiny handwritten notations.

“What did you say his name was?”

“Otto Krebs.”

“Krebs, Otto,” she said, flipping forward to the
K
s. “Krebs, Otto…Ah, here it is. According to this, it was November 1983. Still interested in seeing the obituary?”

Gabriel nodded. The woman wrote down a reference number and walked over to a stack of cardboard boxes. She ran a forefinger along the labels and stopped when she arrived at the one she was looking for, then asked Gabriel to remove the boxes stacked on top of it. She lifted the lid, and the smell of dust and decaying paper rose from the contents. The clips were contained in brittle, yellowing file folders. The obituary for Otto Krebs had been torn. She repaired the image with a strip of transparent tape and showed it to Gabriel.

“Is that the man you’re looking for?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

She took the clip back from Gabriel and read it quickly. “It says here that he was an only child.” She looked at Gabriel. “That doesn’t mean much. A lot of them had to erase their pasts to protect their families who were still in Europe. My grandfather was lucky. At least he got to keep his own name.”

She looked at Gabriel, searching his eyes. “He was from Croatia,” she said. There was an air of complicity in her tone. “After the war, the Communists wanted to put him on trial and hang him. Fortunately, Perón was willing to let him come here.”

She carried the clip over to a photocopier and made three duplicates. Then she returned the original to its file and the file to its proper box. She gave the copies to Gabriel. He read while they walked.

“According to the obituary, he was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Puerto Blest.”

The receptionist nodded. “It’s just on the other side of the lake, a few miles from the Chilean border. He managed a large
estancia
up there. That’s in the obituary, too.”

“How do I get there?”

“Follow the highway west out of Bariloche. It won’t stay a highway for long. I hope you have a good car. Follow the road along the lakeshore, then head north. You’ll go straight into Puerto Blest. If you leave now, you can get there before dark.”

They shook hands in the lobby. She wished him luck.

“I hope he’s the man you’re looking for,” she said. “Or maybe not. I suppose one never knows in situations like these.”

A
FTER THE VISITOR
was gone, the receptionist picked up her telephone and dialed.

“He just left.”

“How did you handle it?”

“I did what you told me to do. I was very friendly. I showed him what he wanted to see.”

“And what was that?”

She told him.

“How did he react?”

“He asked for directions to Puerto Blest.”

The line went dead. The receptionist slowly replaced the receiver. She felt a sudden hollowness in her stomach. She had no doubt what awaited the man in Puerto Blest. It was the same fate that had befallen others who had come to this corner of northern Patagonia in search of men who did not want to be found. She did not feel sorry for him; indeed, she thought him something of a fool. Did he really think he would fool anyone with that clumsy story about genealogical research? Who did he think he was? It was his own fault. But then, it was always that way with the Jews. Always bringing trouble down on their own heads.

Just then the front door opened and a woman in a sundress entered the lobby. The receptionist looked up and smiled.

“May I help you?”

T
HEY WALKED BACK
to the hotel beneath a razor-edged sun. Gabriel translated the obituary for Chiara.

“It says he was born in Upper Austria in 1913, that he was a police officer, and that he enlisted in the Wehrmacht in 1938 and took part in the campaigns against Poland and the Soviet Union. It also says he was decorated twice for bravery, once by the Führer himself. I guess that’s something to brag about in Bariloche.”

“And after the war?”

“Nothing until his arrival in Argentina in 1963. He worked for two years at a hotel in Bariloche, then took a job on an
estancia
near Puerto Blest. In 1972, he purchased the property from the owners and ran it until his death.”

“Any family left in the area?”

“According to this, he was never married and had no surviving relatives.”

They arrived back at the Hotel Edelweiss. It was a Swiss-style chalet with a sloping roof, located two streets up from the lakeshore on the Avenida San Martín. Gabriel had rented a car at the airport earlier that morning, a Toyota four-wheel drive. He asked the parking attendant to bring it up from the garage, then ducked into the lobby to find a road map of the surrounding countryside. Puerto Blest was exactly where the woman from the newspaper had said, on the opposite side of the lake, near the Chilean border.

They set out along the lakeshore. The road deteriorated by degrees as they moved farther from Bariloche. Much of the time, the water was hidden by dense forest. Then Gabriel would round a bend, or the trees would suddenly thin, and the lake would appear briefly below them, a flash of blue, only to disappear behind a wall of timber once more.

Gabriel rounded the southernmost tip of the lake and slowed briefly to watch a squadron of giant condors circling the looming peak of the Cerro López. Then he followed a one-lane dirt track across an exposed plateau covered with gray-green thorn scrub and stands of
arrayán
trees. On the high meadows, flocks of hardy Patagonian sheep grazed on the summer grasses. In the distance, toward the Chilean border, lightning flickered over the Andean peaks.

By the time they arrived in Puerto Blest, the sun was gone and the village was shadowed and quiet. Gabriel went into a café to ask directions. The bartender, a short man with a florid face, stepped into the street and, with a series of points and gestures, showed him the way.

J
UST INSIDE THE CAFÉ
,
at
a table near the door, the Clockmaker drank beer from a bottle and watched the exchange taking place in the street. The slender man with short black hair and gray temples he recognized. Seated in the passenger seat of the Toyota four-wheel drive was a woman with long dark hair. Was it possible she was the one who had put the bullet in his shoulder in Rome? It didn’t much matter. Even if she wasn’t, she would soon be dead.

The Israeli climbed behind the wheel of the Toyota and sped off. The bartender came back inside.

The Clockmaker, in German, asked, “Where are those two headed?”

The bartender answered him in the same language.

The Clockmaker finished the last of his beer and left money on the table. Even the smallest movement, such as fishing a few bills from his coat pocket, made his shoulder pulsate with fire. He went into the street and stood for a moment in the cool evening air, then turned and walked slowly toward the church.

T
HE
C
HURCH OF
Our Lady of the Mountains stood at the western edge of the village, a small whitewashed colonial church with a bell tower to the left side of the portico. At the front of the church was a stone courtyard, shaded by a pair of broad plane trees and enclosed by an iron fence. Gabriel walked to the back of the church. The cemetery stretched down the gentle slope of a hill, toward a coppice of dense pine. A thousand headstones and memorial monuments teetered among the overgrown weeds like a ragged army in retreat. Gabriel stood there a moment, hands on hips, depressed by the prospect of wandering the graveyard in the gathering darkness looking for a marker bearing the name of Otto Krebs.

He walked back to the front of the church. Chiara was waiting for him in the shadows of the courtyard. He pulled on the heavy oaken door of the church and found it was unlocked. Chiara followed him inside. Cool air settled over his face, as did a fragrance he had not smelled since leaving Venice: the mixture of candle wax, incense, wood polish, and mildew, the unmistakable scent of a Catholic church. How different this was from the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Cannaregio. No gilded altar, no marble columns or soaring apses or glorious altarpieces. A severe wooden crucifix hung over the unadorned altar, and a bank of memorial candles flickered softly before a statue of the Virgin. The stained-glass windows along the side of the nave had lost their color in the dying twilight.

Gabriel walked hesitantly up the center aisle. Just then, a dark figure emerged from the vestry and strode across the altar. He paused before the crucifix, genuflected, then turned to face Gabriel. He was small and thin, dressed in black trousers, a black short-sleeved shirt, and a Roman collar. His hair was neatly trimmed and gray at the temples, his face handsome and dark, with a hint of red across the cheeks. He did not seem surprised by the presence of two strangers in his church. Gabriel approached him slowly. The priest held out his hand and identified himself as Father Ruben Morales.

“My name is René Duran,” Gabriel said. “I’m from Montreal.”

At this the priest nodded, as though used to visitors from abroad.

“What can I do for you, Monsieur Duran?”

Gabriel offered the same explanation he had given to the woman at the
Barilocher Tageblatt
earlier that morning—that he had come to Patagonia looking for a man he believed was his mother’s brother, a man named Otto Krebs. While Gabriel spoke, the priest folded his hands and watched him with a pair of warm and gentle eyes. How different this pastoral man seemed from Monsignor Donati, the professional Church bureaucrat, or Bishop Drexler, the acid rector of the Anima. Gabriel felt badly about misleading him.

“I knew Otto Krebs very well,” Father Morales said. “And I’m sorry to say that he could not possibly be the man you’re searching for. You see, Herr Krebs had no brothers or sisters. He had no family of any kind. By the time he managed to work himself into a position to support a wife and children, he was…” The priest’s voice trailed off. “How shall I put this delicately? He was no longer such a fine catch. The years had taken their toll on him.”

“Did he ever talk to you about his family?” Gabriel paused, then added, “Or the war?”

The priest raised his eyebrows. “I was his confessor and his friend, Monsieur Duran. We discussed a great many things in the years before his death. Herr Krebs, like many men of his era, had seen much death and destruction. He had also committed acts for which he was deeply ashamed and in need of absolution.”

“And you granted that absolution?”

“I granted him peace of mind, Monsieur Duran. I heard his confessions, I ordered penance. Within the confines of Catholic belief, I prepared his soul to meet Christ. But do I, a simple priest from a rural parish, really possess the power to absolve such sins? Even I’m not sure about that.”

“May I ask you about some of the things you discussed?” Gabriel asked tentatively. He knew he was on shaky theological ground, and the answer was what he expected.

“Many of my discussions with Herr Krebs were conducted under the seal of confession. The rest were conducted under the seal of friendship. It would not be proper for me to relate the nature of those conversations to you now.”

“But he’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Even the dead have a right to privacy.”

Gabriel heard the voice of his mother, the opening line of her testimony:
I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead.

“It might help me determine whether this man is my uncle.”

Father Morales gave a disarming smile. “I’m a simple country priest, Monsieur Duran, but I’m not a complete fool. I also know my parishioners very well. Do you really believe you’re the first person to come here pretending to be looking for a lost relative? I’m quite certain that Otto Krebs could not possibly be your uncle. I’m less certain that you’re really René Duran from Montreal. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He turned to leave. Gabriel touched his arm.

“Will you at least show me his grave?”

The priest sighed, then looked up at the stained-glass windows. They had turned to black.

“It’s dark,” he said. “Give me a moment.”