The Sins of the Father Page 12

  “So you see, Franz, you are caught up in an authentic tragedy.”

  He pushed the brandy bottle towards him and licked his lips. A drop of spittle escaped the corner of his mouth; it was stained brown by tobacco juice.

  “Your father made the mistake of trying to live independently of the group, of believing that he could in this way escape the past. But the past has caught up with him and arrested him.”

  “How can you know all this?”

  “My dear boy, we have our friends.” He gestured towards Calthorpe Binns. “The company he works for plays both sides of the street.”

  “The Indianapolis Monitor?”

  “If you like, sonny.”

  “And it is thanks to Mr Binns that we know there has been a hitch in their plans, that your father is still in Argentina. Unfortunately we do not know exactly where, but we are certain he has not yet left the country. Which, dear boy, is where you come in. You have an affection for your father?”

  Franz blushed: “Of course.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” said the man with the duelling scar. “We got rid of that ridiculous bourgeois nonsense. Family affection! An idea for Jews and the sort of idiots who read novels by Thomas Mann!”

  “It survives,” said the fourth card-player, a thin, wizened man with a yellow complexion. “It is that which has destroyed poor Kestner after all.”

  “Precisely,” Klaus said. “It is, as you say, bourgeois, Jewish, liberal, everything we rightly despise and detest. We shall turn the enemy’s weapon on the enemy. The situation is not yet altogether lost, as long as Kestner remains in Argentina. Do you know, young man, what they will do with him if they can?”

  Franz looked away. Then he lowered his eyes and fixed them on the table. The Formica was peeling away at the corner where he sat, and he got his thumb under it and worked it. If they were right, if what they said was true. He remembered pictures of Eichmann in his bullet-proof glass cage, defending what could not be defended, except on terms which were no longer admissible. He had no idea what his father would be charged with, but that was what would happen. He would be put on display. Come and view the Monster, but with none of the bitter humour of a Freak Show. And Ilse too would be confronted with brutal facts which in her own heart she would always deny – since such denial was necessary to the way she lived her life – but which her friends would believe. And she would know they did. And as for him – he couldn’t bring himself to think of how his friends would feel, or Becky. He pulled at the Formica. The whole family, all of them, would be like Bastini, reduced to objects of contempt, thrown down on dirty sacks. He remembered how José-María had tossed the key of the torture-chamber on to the boy’s gleaming and trembling body, saying “Lock up behind you and return the key to its keeper.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know what will be done to him.”

  Klaus smiled. “It can be prevented,” he said, “as long as he is held in Argentina.”

  “Do you mean you plan to rescue him?”

  “That would be a possibility – if we knew where he was. But there is no need for heroics. There are other methods.”

  “Dr Czinner has a daughter.” Klaus smiled. It was a silly schoolmaster’s smile, intended to convey effortless superiority, and it irritated Franz; yet he also felt the first rustle of fear. He had thought that these old Nazis, ham actors though they seemed to be, were at least on his side.

  “That’s absurd,” he said. “I understand the implications of what you say, but you can’t do that, you can’t threaten her.”

  “Can’t?” The man with the duelling scar laughed. “He says ‘can’t’ to us, the child.”

  “My father,” Franz said, “my father would never allow… he would never let you use Becky in any way… as a counter in a bargain, it’s obscene.”

  “Our experience,” Klaus said, “is that people make all sorts of bargains when they consider their interests at stake. Ask Dr Czinner. He knows.”

  And as he spoke, Franz recalled that only the other evening Becky’s father had murmured, “I too have played Faust in my time.” He had disliked the remark, which showed in his view an unbecoming vanity.

  “So you will speak to Dr Czinner. The bargain is simple. Your fiancée for your father. She will be released when he is.”

  Franz felt a glass being thrust into his hand. For a moment he held it there, as horrified by its suggestion of conviviality, conspiracy, concern for his condition, as by the words he had heard, words the significance of which he was unable immediately to grasp. It is not true that bad news hits you like a blow; it forces itself on you like the suspicion turning to certainty of cancer. The mind struggles against acceptance. With a short arm jerk Franz threw the brandy at the face that loomed over him. But the head turned away. Some liquor splashed on Klaus’s shoulder, the rest fell short even of the wall behind.

  “She is quite safe. No harm will come to her. You will tell Dr Czinner that.”

  “You can trust him, sonny,” the American voice intervened. “Believe me, I possess a comprehensive experience and I would be reluctant to so asseverate without evidence that would stand up.”

  “Mr Binns’s company is our guarantor,” Klaus said. “Come, Franz, you must be ready to help us. It is the only way to save your father.”

  Franz felt a hand fall on his shoulder. He looked up. His gaze was filled with the man’s smiling face.

  “No,” he said, “no.”

  “You are naturally disturbed. You have never encountered reality before. Believe me, you will come to value it. To escape from a dream world, that is the important thing.”

  The hand squeezed his shoulder.

  Calthorpe Binns drove him back into the city. They did not speak. Binns drove with one hand on the wheel. When he finished a cigarette, he took another from the packet in the breast pocket of his shirt and lit it from the stub of the first. For a moment he had both cigarettes, butt and replacement, in his mouth at the same time. Then he threw the first one out of the window without extinguishing it. Occasionally he hummed: “It happened in Monterey … in Old Mexico-o …”

  He eased the car into the kerb.

  “You should go to Czinner straightaway,” he said. “Your car’s fine, you owe Ramón a tip. Just remember. It’s a simple operation. A means of exchange. Czinner’s an economist, he understands the market.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh yes, you do, sonny.”

  “What’s your role in this?”

  “I’m a middleman. I keep an eye on things. See the boat doesn’t ship too much water. Don’t waste time. It’s got a limit.”

  But the meaning was there. It’s always been there. Iphigenia knew that. Sacrifice either of oneself or of others is a temptation. Eli would offer himself in place of his daughter. They wouldn’t be interested. And Franz saw Becky’s face set white and frightened against a future she had not made; and then his father … his father’s face would reveal nothing, neither fear nor hope nor anger. He would read the situation differently. Life which he had both made and known had caught up with him. But Becky… Franz did not dare to drive his car. He stood on the sidewalk isolated from the crowd that thronged round him, by what he had learned of man’s capacity. Anyone seeing him would have observed only a handsome boy who looked as if he might have forgotten something, or have lost his way.

  The cat purred, and thrust its head into Eli’s face, rubbing his chin, rasping with pleasure, clawing at his chest. His hand moved over its back in gentle strokes. He had not spoken since Franz without apology or introduction, making no effort to break the news gently, had told him what had happened. He had spoken in German, in a few frank brutal sentences.

  Eli put his hand under the cat and turned her round and she settled herself along the line of his thigh, facing away. He lit a cheroot, using the old petrol lighter.

  “You blame me,” he said.

  Franz didn’t reply.

  “Of course you do,�
� Eli said. “Furthermore you must think me treacherous. I suppose you are right.”

  “None of that matters,” Franz said. He got up and went to the window. It was now late afternoon and the street was deserted, except for three or four children dancing their way home from school. “It’s Becky that matters.”

  “She left for the University as usual this morning.”

  “Where is Frau Czinner?”

  Eli knew that she had asked the boy to call her Nell, but he respected his formality now. What had happened had made them irretrievably enemies, whatever eventually worked out for Becky and the boy.

  He said, “It’s important that you understand, Franz.”

  “Nothing is important except Becky, just at this moment.”

  “She will be all right. Nothing will happen to her.”

  That wasn’t of course true, or rather any truth it might have depended on his grammatical expression, that use of the future tense. Things had happened to her already. In the moment of arrest – which was the word he used to himself – she would all at once have grown up. She would have learned what had previously only been words to her; just as he had himself, and her Aunt Miriam and her Aunt Sarah and her Uncle Mark, and her grandfather and those cousins whose names he couldn’t even recall: that the world cannot be controlled. But still he repeated: “Nothing will happen to her.”

  He sensed Franz turn, approach him, standing over him. “What do you mean? That my father will be set free? That you will arrange for the exchange to take place?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t mean that.”

  “But you must. Becky is all that matters.”

  “She will be all right. As for your father, I must tell you that I had word he left Argentina this morning. He will be in Israel tomorrow. It will be in all the papers, on the wireless and the television. So now do you understand? He cannot be set free.”

  There was silence. Then the sound of sobbing. Eli smoked and caressed the cat. He said, “Talk to your American friend. You’ll see, he won’t allow them to go too far. And they depend on him. These clowns depend on the CIA as much as on the Argentinian police. Kidnapping, holding to ransom, that’s one thing … beyond that, no. Becky will be all right.”

  Franz said, “And if she isn’t, will it have been worth it?”

  Eli drew on his cheroot. The boy’s question led into a desert where he no longer wished to travel. Once he had thought of himself as an explorer, prepared to endure hardship, the heat of the day, the night cold that entered the bones, and to think himself rewarded not, as easier spirits were, by the occasional moments at an oasis, but simply by the experience itself, and the knowledge, the consciousness, of that experience. To be able to say, “I have been there and lived.” That was the significant thing in existence. Without that, all was merely palliative, like that soft green English countryside without horizons, which he had learned to loathe. It was in the wilderness that you found yourself. But in recent years, in his blindness which might – he would smile – be thought wilderness enough, he had been content to retreat, to dismiss the idea of value from his mind, relapse into mere existence, getting through the day, living as almost everybody did. But the past wouldn’t release him: it had forced him into the desert again, and now the boy’s question danced before him like a will-o’-the-wisp.

  “Will it have been worth it?” Franz said again.

  Getting no answer, he continued – and this time his voice, though challenging, seemed to come to Eli from a long way distant: “How could you do this to us?”

  The easy answer was denial: “I have done nothing to you. What people do they do to themselves.”

  But he couldn’t make it. There was casuistry there, for it was a perversion of the truth to pretend that he hadn’t known, when he made those calls to Tel Aviv and Vienna, that his words would explode in his daughter’s life. Wasn’t that after all why he hadn’t mentioned it to Nell?

  So he said, “There are imperatives. Your own father would tell you that. It is how he has acted himself.”

  “I don’t understand. Is it revenge? Do you hate me too?”

  “Revenge is an imperative. The English philosopher Bacon called it ‘a sort of wild justice’.”

  “But why?”

  “Why do you love my daughter?”

  “Because … because … you can’t answer that question.”

  “But you have. Motivation is beyond comprehension. That is the answer.”

  “But if that is true…”

  The boy paused.

  “This is crazy, this sort of talk.”

  With a cry that contained a sob, he fled from the room. Eli listened to his footsteps descend, faster and faster at the turning of the stair, until they died away.

  SEVEN

  Franz was in a bar where he had never been before. He had ordered whisky and a handful of tokens for the telephone. The late afternoon sun slanted in at the doorway, and there were still prettily dressed girls with men in business suits sitting at the tables on the pavement. He could hear laughter and happiness. He took out the card Calthorpe Binns had given him, and called the first of the two numbers listed, which was that of his office. He listened to the ringing in a room that he knew from the first ring was empty. Then he tried the other number; there was no reply there either. And when he replaced the receiver, he wondered whether he would have dared to tell the American that his father had already been spirited from Argentina. He couldn’t share Dr Czinner’s confidence that Becky’s captors would throw in their hand at that point. Why wouldn’t they seek to put pressure on Tel Aviv?

  He knew that he should call his mother. But it was impossible. He ordered another whisky.

  Then he searched in his address book, found the number of the flat where he and Becky had made love, and, when a crisp voice answered, asked if he might speak to Alexis. He told her he must see her. Would she agree to meet? Of course, she said, as if this was the most natural request in the world.

  “Yeah, I know where you are. I’ll be right over.”

  It was as if she had some idea of what had happened.

  But when he saw her enter, the swing of her blonde hair and the relaxed confident stride causing male heads to turn, and provoking a wolf whistle from a gang of youths who hung around the news-stand, he knew that this was nonsense. Nobody burdened by knowledge could move that easily.

  He told her the story from the beginning.

  “That’s rough,” she said. “I appreciate your confidence.”

  “The curious thing is that I am not horrified to find out what my father was. I suppose I have always had a suspicion. Do you know this Calthorpe Binns?”

  “Everyone knows Cal. He’s a standing joke.”

  “He didn’t seem like a joke to me.”

  “No, but he’s a prick.”

  “Is he CIA?”

  “I guess he might be.”

  “That business of knowing that Becky and I had … in your fiat. How could he know that? And is it US government property?”

  “They pay the rent. ’Cos of Katie, one of my flatmates.”

  “Is she CIA too?”

  “Lord, no, she works at the Embassy… But look, what are we going to do?”

  She put her hand on his knee.

  “I’m with you,” she said, “body and soul. Poor Becky.”

  “Her father thinks they’ll release her when they find out there’s no chance of a bargain. Or that’s what he says. I wish I could believe him. I hoped you might be able to help me locate Calthorpe Binns. He’s my only link, but he’s not at either of the numbers on the card he gave me. I was desperate. So I called you. I hope you don’t mind being involved.”

  “Let’s go look,” she said. “We could try the Press Club.”

  But he wasn’t there. Alexis cashed a cheque at the bar.

  “We may need a lot of money,” she said.

  They took a taxi and headed on a tour of the bars, and then later of the nightspots. Alexis seemed
to be known in most of them. She was greeted with a smile and a “Hi Alexis,” or “Hi honey” by doormen, waiters, army officers, the stout Negress who kept a bar favoured by transvestites, two policemen, and a crippled seller of lottery tickets.

  “Do you know everyone in this city?”

  “I don’t know that man with no nose over there, I’m relieved to state.”

  Her energy and exuberance were remarkable. He almost resented the enthusiasm with which she threw herself into their quest. It was as if she had forgotten the reason behind it. But he knew she hadn’t. “I can’t bear to think of Becky frightened,” she said. “And it’s no good hoping she may not be frightened. Anybody would be in her shoes. It’s the not knowing that does it.”

  Calthorpe Binns had been seen early that evening in two or three of the bars. Then the trail seemed to run cold. Alexis asked Franz if he thought he could find his way again to the warehouse where he had met the Nazis. “She might be there, you know,” she said.

  “You mean she might have been there all the time, while I was there?”

  “Seems likely.”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t believe I could.”

  And he burst into tears, his whole body trembling. He felt her arm around him, her hair brushing against his cheek.

  “You must think me an idiot.”

  “No, why should I?”

  “It’s all so hopeless.”

  “Look, Franz,” she said, holding him close to her and speaking low, “you’ve got it in your head that you must find Cal Binns, but it’s going to come to the same thing whether you find him or not. They’re going to know their plan has bellyflopped when they hear the news bulletin. You’ve got another priority, it seems to me, to break the news to your mother. You can’t let her find out from the news bulletins.”