The Storyteller (25 page)

Within moments of meeting Sage Singer I know this: she isn’t trying to frame this Josef Weber guy; she has nothing to gain from turning him in.

She’s incredibly sensitive because she has a scar that ripples from her left eyebrow down her cheek.

Also: because of said scar, she has no idea that she’s incredibly hot.

I get it, really I do. When I was thirteen I had the worst case of acne—I swear my pimples gave birth to smaller pimples. I got called “Pepperoni Face,” or Luigi, because that was the name of the guy who owned the pizzeria in my hometown. On school picture day I was so nervous about having my image captured for eternity that I actually willed myself into throwing up so I could stay home. My mother told me that when I was older, I’d teach people to never judge a book by its cover, and that’s pretty much exactly what my job entails. But sometimes, when I glance in the mirror, even now, I feel like I’m still staring at that kid.

I bet whatever Sage is picturing, when she looks at her reflection, is a lot worse than what the rest of us actually see.

Genevra is the one who is dispatched to vet most of the cold callers who reach our department; I’ve only met two or three. They were all in their eighties, Jews who still saw the faces of their captors superimposed on everyone they happened to meet. In none of those cases did the allegation pan out to be correct.

Sage Singer is not eighty years old. And she’s not lying, either.

“Your grandmother,” I repeat. “She’s a survivor?”

Sage nods.

“And somehow, in the past four conversations I’ve had with you . . .
that never came up?”

I am still trying to figure out if this is a very good thing, or a very bad thing. If Sage’s grandmother is willing and able to identify Reiner Hartmann as an officer at Auschwitz-Birkenau, that would be a direct link between the file Genevra’s amassed and the information Sage has culled from the suspect. But if Sage has predisposed her grandmother in any way to the suspect—by saying for example that she has been talking to him—then any eyewitness testimony given is prejudicial.

“I didn’t want you to think that was why I called you. It had nothing to do with my grandmother. She never talks about her experience, ever.”

I lean forward, clasping my hands. “So you haven’t told her about your meetings with Josef Weber?”

“No,” Sage says. “She doesn’t even know he exists.”

“And she’s never discussed her time at Auschwitz with you?”

Sage shakes her head. “Even when I’ve asked her, specifically, she won’t talk about it.” She looks up at me. “Is that normal?”

“I don’t know that there’s anything normal about being a survivor,” I say. “Some feel that because they lived, it’s their responsibility to tell the world what happened, so it won’t happen again, and so people won’t forget. Others believe that the only way to go on with the rest of their lives is to act as if it never happened.” I sweep my crumbs into my napkin and carry my plate to the sink. “Well,” I say, thinking out loud. “I can give my historian a call. She can get a photo array cobbled together in a few hours and then . . .”

“She won’t talk to
you,
either,” Sage says.

I smile. “Grandmothers find me especially charming.”

She folds her arms. “If you hurt her I’ll—”

“Note to self: don’t threaten a federal agent. And second note to self: don’t worry. I give you my word, I won’t push her if she isn’t able to open up about it.”

“And if she does? Then what? You arrest Josef?”

I shake my head. “We don’t have any criminal jurisdiction over Nazis,” I explain. “We can’t incarcerate your man, or set him free. The crimes took place outside the United States long before we had extraterritorial jurisdiction statutes. It wasn’t until 2007 that the U.S. Genocide Statute was amended to cover more than genocides perpetrated by non-Americans outside the United States. Prior to that, it basically covered U.S. citizens other than General Custer’s actions against the Native Americans. All we can do is try to catch him on immigration charges, and get him deported. And even then, I’ve been trying for years to get Europeans to develop a moral backbone and take Nazis back and prosecute, and it hardly ever happens.”

“So we’re doing all this for nothing?” Sage asks.

“We’re doing all this because your grandmother made her home in the United States, and we owe her peace of mind.”

Sage looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll take you to her condo.”

 • • • 

There are things in Reiner Hartmann’s file that Sage Singer doesn’t know about.

It’s my job to tell her as little as possible, to instead coax out of her what she can tell me. And even then, I cannot be sure that a court will be able to connect the dots and prosecute him. I cannot be sure that Hartmann will survive long enough to receive his comeuppance.

So far, what Sage has relayed to me is information that could be gleaned from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, or from poring through a book. Military actions and dates; company units, career trajectories. Even the blood group tattoos are something you’d know about, if you study Third Reich history. As untenable as it seems that someone is making up a false guilty identity, stranger things have happened.

But in this file, there are specifics about Reiner Hartmann that only Reiner Hartmann—and his superiors, and maybe his closest
confidants
—should know.

None of which Sage Singer has said yet.

Which could mean that Josef Weber hasn’t gotten around to telling her those stories. Or that Josef Weber isn’t Reiner Hartmann.

At any rate, getting an ID from Sage’s grandmother Minka is just one more piece of the puzzle. Which is how I find myself driving back toward Boston—on the exact same route I just traveled from Logan Airport to New Hampshire—with Sage sitting beside me in the car.

“That’s a new one,” I say. “No one in my department has ever been so upset by a testimony that they went out and hit a deer with their car.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Sage mutters.

“A bi gezunt.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I turn to her. “It means ‘so long as you’re healthy.’ You don’t speak Yiddish, I guess.”

“I’m not Jewish. I told you that.”

Actually, she had asked me if it mattered. “Oh,” I say. “I just assumed . . .”

“Morality has nothing to do with religion,” she says. “You can do the right thing and not believe in God at all.”

“So you’re an atheist?”

“I don’t like labels.”

“I imagine you wouldn’t, growing up here. Doesn’t exactly look like a diverse religious community.”

“That’s probably why it took Josef so long to find someone from a Jewish family,” Sage says.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter, since you’re not going to forgive him.”

She is silent.

“You’re
not
,” I repeat, my jaw dropping. “
Are
you?”

“I don’t want to. But there’s a part of me that says he’s just an old, frail man.”

“One who possibly committed crimes against humanity,” I reply. “And even becoming Mother Teresa wouldn’t erase that. He waited over half a century to confess? That’s not inherent goodness. It’s procrastination.”

“So you believe people can’t change? That once you do a bad thing, you’re a bad person?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I do think some stains never wash out.” I glance at her. “Other people in town, they knew your family was Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“And Josef picked you to confess to. You aren’t an individual to him any more now than a Jew was over sixty-five years ago.”

“Or maybe he picked me because he thinks of me as his friend.”

“Do you really believe that?” I ask, and Sage doesn’t reply. “To be forgiven, the person has to be sorry. In Judaism, that’s called
teshuvah.
It means ‘turning away from evil.’ It’s not a one-time deal, either. It’s a course of action. A single act of repentance is something that makes the person who committed the evil feel better, but not the person against whom evil was committed.” I shrug. “That’s why Jews don’t just go to Confession, and say the rosary.”

“Josef says he’s already made his peace with God.”

I shake my head. “You don’t make peace only with God. You make it with people. Sin isn’t global. It’s personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him. Which is why murder, to a Jew, is unforgivable.”

She is quiet for a moment. “Have you ever had someone walk into your office and confess to you?”

“No.”

“Then maybe Josef is different,” Sage says.

“Did he come to you because he wants to make himself feel better? Or because he wants to make his victims feel better?”

“Obviously that’s not possible,” she replies.

“And that makes you feel badly for him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

I focus my attention on the road. “The German people have paid billions of dollars of reparations. To individuals. To Israel. But you know what? It’s been nearly seventy years and they’ve never held a public forum to apologize to Jews for the crimes of the Holocaust. It’s happened elsewhere—South Africa, for example. But the Germans? They had to be dragged by the Allies into the Nuremberg Trials. Officials who had helped build the Third Reich stayed on in government after the war, just by denying they were ever Nazis, and the German people accepted it. Young people today in Germany who are taught about the Holocaust brush it off, saying it’s ancient history. So, no, I don’t think you can forgive Josef Weber. I don’t think you can forgive anyone who was involved. I think you can only hold them accountable, and try to look their children and grandchildren in the eye without blaming them for what their ancestors did.”

Sage shakes her head. “Surely there were some Germans who were better than others, some who didn’t want to go along with what Hitler said. If you can’t see them as individuals—if you can’t forgive the ones who ask for it—doesn’t that make you just as bad as any Nazi?”

“No,” I admit. “It makes me human.”

 • • • 

Minka Singer is a tiny woman with the same snapping blue eyes as her granddaughter. She lives in a small assisted-living condo and has a part-time caretaker who moves like a shadow around her employer, handing her reading glasses and her cane and a sweater before she can seemingly even think to ask for them. Contrary to what Sage indicated, she is absolutely
thrilled
to be introduced to me.

“So tell me again,” she says, as we settle on the couch in her living room. “Where did you meet my granddaughter?”

“Through work,” I answer carefully.

“Then you know how she bakes, yes? A person could get used to that kind of food all the time.”

“You’d have to have a lifetime deal with Jenny Craig,” I reply, and then I realize why Minka has been so happy to meet me. She wants me to date her granddaughter.

I’m not gonna lie: the thought of that makes me feel like I’ve been zapped by a bolt of electricity.

“Grandma,” Sage interrupts. “Leo didn’t come all this way to talk about my bread.”

“You know what my father used to say? True love is like bread. It needs the right ingredients, a little heat, and some magic to rise.”

Sage turns beet red. I cough into my hand. “Ms. Singer, I’ve come here today because I’m hoping you’ll tell me your story.”

“Ach, Sage, that was meant for your eyes only! The silly fairy tale of a young girl, that’s all.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“I work for the United States government, ma’am. I track down perpetrators of war crimes.”

The light goes out of Minka Singer’s eyes. “I have nothing to say. Daisy?” she calls out. “Daisy, I’m very tired. I’d like to lie down—”

“I told you so,” Sage murmurs.

From the corner of my eye, I see the caretaker approaching.

“Sage is lucky,” I say. “My grandparents aren’t alive anymore. My grandpa, he came here from Austria. Every year he held a big backyard party on July twenty-second. He’d have beer for the grown-ups and an inflatable pool for us kids, and the biggest cake my grandmother could make. I always assumed it was his birthday. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I learned he had been born in December. July twenty-second, that was the day he became a U.S. citizen.”

By now Daisy has reached Minka’s side and has her hand beneath the woman’s frail arm to help her stand. Minka rises and takes two shuffling steps away from me.

“My grandfather fought in World War Two,” I continue, getting to my feet. “Like you, he never talked about anything he’d seen. But when I graduated from high school, he took me to Europe as a graduation gift. We visited the Colosseum in Rome, and the Louvre in Paris, and we hiked in the Swiss Alps. The last country we visited was Germany. He took me to Dachau. We saw the barracks, and the crematoria, where the bodies of prisoners who had died were burned. I remember a wall with a ditch below it, angled away, to catch the blood of prisoners who were shot. My grandfather told me that immediately after visiting the concentration camp, we would be leaving the country. Because I was going to want to kill the first German I saw.”