“Anyway, I was so nervous. The waitress brought over the tea in these two very attractive small pots, and what did I do? I spilled the whole pot in my lap. All over my yellow shoes, all over my jeans, so it looked like — excuse me — like I went to the bathroom.” Otto hiccuped from the beer and apologized.
“I think it is taking all of my father’s power not to shake his head. I excused myself and went to the bathroom to wash up. And in that time the waitress had brought a new pot of tea — for free, I would like to add, Mr. Bartender, ha-ha! No, I am joking, it is okay. And what happened then, Mr. Gelman? Can you guess?” Otto’s eyes sparkled with anticipation.
“You spilled the tea all over again,” Slava said grimly.
“That is correct!” Otto shouted. “That is so very sadly correct. You see? You are a storyteller. You know how it ends. But also it doesn’t end that way!” He wagged his finger. “My father rose from the table, and I thought, He is going to walk away in disgust. I could see the waitress laughing behind the bar. But he took me by the shoulders. And he said: Ich bin fertig aber dir gehört die Welt. Sei dir selbst treu.” Otto gleamed at Slava as if they spoke the same language. Finally, he relented and translated: “‘I am a finished man, but you have the world. Be true to your own strange kind.’ It was lines from literature. Did I think my father read a single page of literature in his life? No!” Otto looked off and recited: “‘I am a finished man… But you are quite a different matter: God has prepared a life for you… Become a sun and everyone will see you. The sun must be the sun first of all.’”
He turned back to Slava. With bewilderment, Slava realized Otto was waiting for an assessment of his performance. Slava mumbled a compliment. Otto nodded demurely.
“Mr. Gelman, my position is, how do you say”—Otto made the motion of cuffed wrists—“but at sixty-five, you are free. With a nice state pension. I will not say this even to my wife, but I will say it to you: There is a book inside me. Maybe there is some advice, even, you can give me. Isn’t this the biggest task of them all? To organize these thoughts running around inside us, to stop the river of time just one second?” He shook his head tragically.
“I can hardly help you if I have no idea what’s going on,” Slava said, trying to sound casual as he delivered the line he had practiced so many times. What he really wanted to know was why he was sitting there if he wasn’t the accused, and how Otto knew so much about him, but that he couldn’t ask. He counseled himself patience.
“Pathetic,” Otto said, shaking his head. “I would much rather speak with you about life and the books we can write than… Maybe it’s because I am nervous? I’m telling you, this is not exactly what I do every day.” He held up his hands. “This”—he moved his finger between them—“was not in my job description. Do you want to see the job description? It says: ‘Boring, boring, boring. Paper, paper, paper.’” He laughed. “So, when this arrived on my desk, I confess to you, I was quite excited. I hope you understand I am not playing light with the subject, it’s just exciting sometimes to step outside your skin and play Sherlock Holmes.”
“And what do you do?” Slava said. From another table, a chorus of cheers marked the downing of a whole liter in one go.
“Me?” Otto’s expression became serious and sad. “I try to make it so the money comes more quickly for the old people. Sometimes this one paper becomes lost in the channels, or this office is on vacation, and for no very good reason, the old Russian Jewish person here in America is waiting for money and thinking the worst things about the Germans — again. So in this small way…” Otto trailed off. He had a broad, kind face, almost square, the jaws pressing out of the skin, academic in the thin owlish glasses perched atop a broad ex-boxer’s nose. In surface area, it bested a Jewish nose, but the shape was non-Semitic. Jewish noses amplified vertically, while Aryan noses metastasized sideways.
“Here is the complication, Mr. Gelman,” Otto said almost apologetically. “Germany is a democratic country. Sometimes too much so. But it is all a reaction to — to what was. Regardless, it is a democratic country, with some parliament members positioned against this law. Not because they are anti-Semitic, Mr. Gelman, don’t rush to conclusions. Simply, they say that because of all the documents destroyed by the Nazi soldiers, and all the documents that the Russian authorities will never share, proof is impossible. So, the restitution program, it is almost asking for fraud. There is a way to give reparations, but this is not it.”
“And what is?” Slava said.
Otto spread his hands. “I don’t know, Mr. Gelman. I am not in the law-making mechanism. But I would like to do my part to prevent Herr Schuler from Niedersachsen from saying, ‘I told you so.’”
“And this—” Slava said.
“This equals ‘I told you so,’ yes,” Otto nodded. “Because I have this report. My professional obligation is to investigate the report. If I come to zero, I have no choice but to make a declaration to Herr Schuler, who runs the committee in parliament. And then Herr Schuler has a press conference in front of the Reichstag, and then there is no telling what will be the result. You can probably say kaput to this new proposal for expanded eligibility, that’s what. Not to mention some legal consequences for the guilty person. But if I can find the results by myself”—Otto poked himself in the chest—“well, it couldn’t be more simple. We take them out. ‘Internally handled’ is the phrase. It never happened. If the person who is doing this gives up the fake ones, he can save the ones who are real. Or she, or she,” he hastened to add. “In this time, we must be politically correct about identities of criminals also, ha-ha.” He leaned forward with coppery breath. “But you know what, Mr. Gelman? I don’t care who’s doing this. Herr Schuler is a rigid donkey. And what Herr Schuler doesn’t know isn’t going to murder Herr Schuler in his sleep.”
Slava laughed. “So you are going to commit your own fraud to prevent the original fraud?”
“Fraud?” Otto sprang back. “Who said the original issue is fraud?”
Slava’s face fell. “I thought you said…” He felt his face color.
“Ha!” Otto broke into laughter and slapped the bar with his hand. “I got you! I am pulling your leg, ha-ha!” He buried his face in the crook of his arm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gelman,” he said, emerging. “I am truly unprofessional. This investigation business is overexciting sometimes. No, you are right — it is a smaller sin for the sake of a big justice, that’s right.”
“Why can’t you just pay them?” Slava said. “Just pay them all. So what if they’re false? What if a thousand of them are false? What if you pay every — all the people who want expanded eligibility now, the soldiers, the evacuees. What if you pay every one of them? It wouldn’t break Germany, and it still wouldn’t be enough. It will never be enough.”
Otto looked at him chidingly, as if at a petulant child. “Mr. Gelman, do you know who my father was? He was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. And my mother was a nurse for the wounded soldiers. But that is not why I am sitting here. I do not believe in the sin of collection. The war was over six years when I was born. I will not deny anything about my father — not what he did during the war but also not that he was a wonderful father. But those Red Army soldiers did not rape woman after woman in Berlin?” He held up his hand. “Mr. Gelman, we can go on and on like this. This is why there is a law. If I was born six years after the war, you were not even a shine in the eyes of your parents. Even your parents did not exist yet. The suffering of your grandparents belongs to you not any more than I belong to the crimes of my father.” He held up both hands. “I know what you say next in this dictation: ‘My parents almost did not exist because of people like your father.’ I know. The dictation is well practiced. Let us go beyond the dictation. Let’s take this down from the sky. I understand there cannot be justice. So all there can be, then, is the law. This is about people who deserve help. Let’s help them.”