“So there’s not much chance of a pogrom here, then?” observed Eichmann.
“Lord, no,” said Fuldner.
“Thank goodness,” said Kuhlmann. “I’ve had enough of all that nonsense.”
“We haven’t had anything like that since what’s called Tragic Week. And even that was mostly political. Anarchists, you know. Back in 1919.”
“Anarchists, Bolsheviks, Jews, they’re all the same animal,” said Eichmann, who had become unusually talkative.
“Of course, during the last war, the government issued an order forbidding all Jewish immigration to Argentina. But more recently things have changed. The Americans have put pressure on Peron to soften our Jewish policy. To let them come and settle here. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more Jews on that boat than anyone else.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” said Eichmann.
“It’s all right,” insisted Fuldner. “You’re quite safe here. Portenos don’t give a damn about what happened in Europe. Least of all to the Jews. Besides, nobody believes half of what’s been in the English-language papers and on the newsreels.”
“Half would be quite bad enough,” I murmured. It was enough to push a stick through the spokes of a conversation I was starting to dislike. But mostly it was just Eichmann I disliked. I much preferred the other Eichmann. The one who had spent the last four weeks saying almost nothing, and keeping his loathsome opinions to himself. It was too soon to have much of an opinion about Carlos Fuldner.
From the back of his well-oiled head I judged Fuldner to be around forty. His German was fluent but with a little soft color on the edges of the tones. To speak the language of Goethe and Schiller, you have to stick your vowels in a pencil sharpener. He liked to talk, that much was evident. He wasn’t tall and he wasn’t good-looking, but then he wasn’t short or ugly either, just ordinary, in a good suit, with good manners, and a nice manicure. I got another look at him when he pulled up at a level crossing and turned around to offer us some cigarettes. His mouth was wide and sensuous, his eyes were lazy but intelligent, and his forehead was as high as a church cupola. If you’d been casting a movie, you’d have picked him to play a priest, or a lawyer, or maybe a hotel manager. He snapped his thumb on a Dunhill, lit his cigarette, then began telling us about himself. That was fine by me. Now that we were no longer talking about Jews, Eichmann stared out of the window and looked bored. But I’m the kind who listens politely to stories about my redeemer. After all, that’s why my mother sent me to Sunday school.
“I was born here, in Buenos Aires, to German immigrants,” said Fuldner. “But for a while, we went back to live in Germany, in Kassel, where I went to school. After school I worked in Hamburg. Then, in 1932, I joined the SS and was a captain before being seconded to the SD to run an intelligence operation back here in Argentina. Since the war I and a few others have been running Vianord-a travel agency dedicated to helping our old comrades to escape from Europe. Of course, none of it would be possible without the help of the president and his wife, Eva. It was during Evita’s trip to Rome, in 1947, to meet the pope, that she began to see the necessity of giving men such as you a fresh start in life.”
“So there’s still some anti-Semitism in the country, after all,” I remarked.
Kuhlmann laughed, and so did Fuldner. But Eichmann remained silent.
“It’s good to be with Germans again,” said Fuldner. “Humor is not a national characteristic of the Argentines. They’re much too concerned with their dignity to laugh at very much, least of all themselves.”
“They sound a lot like fascists,” I said.
“That’s another thing. Fascism here is only skin-deep. The Argentines don’t have the will or the inclination to be proper fascists.”
“Maybe I’m going to like it here more than I thought,” I said.
“Really,” exclaimed Eichmann.
“Don’t mind me, Herr Fuldner,” I said. “I’m not quite as rabid as our friend here wearing the bow tie and glasses, that’s all. He’s still in denial. To do with all kinds of things. For all I know, he still holds fast to the idea that the Third Reich is going to last for a thousand years.”
“You mean it isn’t?”
Kuhlmann chuckled.
“Must you make a joke about everything, Hausner?” Eichmann’s tone was testy and impatient.
“I only make jokes about the things that strike me as funny,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of making a joke about something really important. Not and risk upsetting you, Ricardo.”
I felt Eichmann’s eyes burning into my cheek, and when I turned to face him, his mouth went thin and puritanical. For a moment he continued staring at me with the air of one who wished it was down the sights of a rifle.
“What are you doing here, Herr Doktor Hausner?”
“The same thing as you, Ricardo. I’m getting away from it all.”
“Yes, but why? Why? You don’t seem like much of a Nazi.”
“I’m the beefsteak kind. Brown on the outside only. Inside I’m really quite red.”
Eichmann stared out the window as if he couldn’t bear to look at me for a minute longer.
“I could use a good steak,” murmured Kuhlmann.
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” said Fuldner. “In Germany a steak is a steak, but here it’s a patriotic duty.”
We were still driving through the dockyards. Most of the names on the bonded warehouses and oil tanks were British or American: Oakley Watling, Glasgow Wire, Wainwright Brothers, Ingham Clark, English Electric, Crompton Parkinson, and Western Telegraph. In front of a big, open warehouse a dozen rolls of newsprint the size of hayricks were turning to pulp in the early-morning rain. Laughing, Fuldner pointed them out.
“There,” he said, almost triumphantly. “That’s Peronism in action. Peron doesn’t close down opposition newspapers or arrest their editors. He doesn’t even stop them from having newsprint. He just makes sure that by the time it reaches them the newsprint isn’t fit to use. You see, Peron has all the major labor unions in his pocket. That’s your Argentine brand of fascism, right there.”
2
BUENOS AIRES LOOKED and smelled like any European capital city before the war. As we drove through the busy streets, I wound down the window and took a deep, euphoric breath of exhaust fumes, cigar smoke, coffee, expensive cologne, cooked meat, fresh fruit, flowers, and money. It was like returning to earth after a journey into space. Germany, with its rationing and war damage and guilt and Allied tribunals, seemed a million miles away. In Buenos Aires there was lots of traffic because there was lots of petrol. The carefree people were well dressed and well fed, because the shops were full of clothes and food. Far from being a remote backwater, Buenos Aires was almost a Belle Epoque throwback. Almost.
The safe house was at Calle Monasterio 1429 in the Florida district. Fuldner said Florida was the smartest part of Buenos Aires, but you wouldn’t have known it from the inside of the safe house. The outside was shielded by a carapace of overgrown pine trees, and it was called a safe house probably because, from the street, you wouldn’t have known it was there at all. Inside, you knew it was there but wished it weren’t. The kitchen was rustic. The ceiling fans were just rusty. The wallpaper in all the rooms was yellow, although not by design, and the furniture looked as if it was trying to return to nature. Poisonous, half decayed, vaguely fungal, it was the kind of house that belonged in a bottle of formaldehyde.