Boys from Brazil (29 page)

“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.

DARKNESS RINGED THE ROOM.

A doorknob glinted, a mirror, tips of ski poles. Dark bed shape, dark chair shape. Metal rim of a cage; a treadmill inside it spinning, stopping, spinning. Rocket models. Wings of a small silver plane slowly turning.

At the room's center, flat whiteness lay tabled under a low-bent lamp. A hand dipped a brush, thinned it, black-inked over penciled lines. Making a stadium: vast, transparent-domed, circular.

The boy worked carefully, bending his sharp nose close to the paper. He began putting in some people, rows of little head-curves focused on the platform in the middle. He dipped the brush, thinned it, backhanded his forelock aside, brushed in more heads, more people.

A piano played: a Strauss waltz.

The boy looked up and listened. Smiled.

He bent to the drawing and made more heads, humming along with the melody.

Great with Dad gone. Just he and Mom. No fighting, no door thrown open and “Put that away and do your homework or so help me God—”

Well, not
great
, he hadn't meant
great;
just—easier, more comfortable. Even Grandma used to say Dad was a real dictator. Bossy, big-mouthed, prejudiced; always acting like the most important man in the world…So it was easier now. But that didn't mean he'd hated him, had
wanted
him dead. He'd loved Dad a lot really. Hadn't he cried at the funeral?

He got into the drawing, where everything was nicer. Gave himself to the platform, and the man standing on it. Small from so far away. Brush, brush, brush. Lift up his arms: brush, brush.

Who would he be, this man on the platform? Someone great, that's for sure, with all these people coming to see him. Not just a singer or comedian; someone fantastic, a
really good
person that they loved and respected. They paid fortunes to get in, and if they couldn't pay, he let them in free. Someone that nice…

He put a little television camera up at the top of the dome; aimed a few more spotlights at the man.

He thinned the brush to a real fine point and gave little dot-mouths to the nearer bigger people, so they were cheering, telling him—the man, that is—how good he was, how much they loved him.

He bent his sharp nose closer to the paper and gave dot-mouths to the smaller people. His forelock fell. He bit his lip, squinted his deep blue eyes. Dot, dot, dot. He could hear the people cheering, roaring; a beautiful growing love-thunder that built and built, and then pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded.

Sort of like in those old Hitler movies.