Now listen, Liebermann, you’re going a little bit overboard. More than two months ago you saw Erich Döring. For less than five minutes. So now you see a boy who’s the same type—with a strong resemblance, granted—and in your head you’re doing a little mixing and matching, and presto: identical twins, and Mengele at Auschwitz. The whole thing is that two men out of seventeen happened to have sons who look alike. So what’s so astounding?
But what if it’s more than two? What if it’s three?
You see. Overboard. Why not imagine quadruplets while you’re at it?
The widow in Trittau had given Klaus the eye, and offered him more. In her sixties? Maybe. But probably younger. Forty-one? Forty-two?
In Worcester he asked his hostess, a Mrs. Labowitz, if he could make an overseas call. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”
“Mr. Liebermann, please! You’re a guest in our home; it’s your telephone!”
He didn’t argue. The place was a mansion practically.
It was five-fifteen. Eleven-fifteen in Europe.
The operator reported no answer at Klaus’s number. Liebermann asked her to try again in half an hour, hung up; thought for a moment, and got her back. Turning the pages of his address book, he gave her Gabriel Piwowar’s number in Stockholm and Abe Goldschmidt’s in Odense.
A call came for him just as he was sitting down to dinner with four Labowitzes and five guests. He apologized and took it in the library.
Goldschmidt. They spoke in German.
“What is it? More men for me to check?”
“No, it’s the same two. Did they have sons about thirteen years old?”
“The one in Bramminge did. Horve. Okking in Copenhagen had two daughters in their thirties.”
“How old is Horve’s widow?”
“Young. I was surprised. Let me see. A little bit younger than Natalie. Forty-two, say.”
“Did you see the boy?”
“He was at school. Should I have spoken to him?”
“No, I just wanted to know what he looks like.”
“A boy, skinny. She had his picture on the piano, playing a violin. I said something, and she said it was old, when he was nine. Now he’s nearly fourteen.”
“Dark hair, blue eyes, sharp nose?”
“How can I remember? Dark hair, yes. The eyes I wouldn’t know anyway; it wasn’t colored. A skinny boy playing a violin, with dark hair. I thought you were satisfied.”
“So did I. Thank you, Abe. Good-by.”
He hung up; the phone rang in his hand.
Piwowar. They spoke in Yiddish.
“The two men you checked, did they have sons nearly fourteen years old?”
“Anders Runsten did. Not Persson.”
“Did you see him?”
“Runsten’s son? He drew my picture while I waited for his mother. I kidded him about taking him into my shop.”
“What does he look like?”
“Pale, thin, dark-haired, a sharp nose.”
“Blue eyes?”
“Yes.”
“And the mother is in her early forties?”
“I told you?”
“No.”
“So how do you know?”
“I can’t talk now. People are waiting for me. Good-by, Gabriel. Be well.”
The phone rang again; the operator reported that there was still no answer at Klaus’s number. Liebermann told her he would place the call later.
He went into the dining room, feeling light-headed and hollow, as if his working parts were somewhere else (in Auschwitz?) and only his clothes and skin and hair there in Worcester sitting down with those whole all-there people.
He asked and answered the usual questions, told the usual stories; ate enough not to distress Dolly Labowitz.
They drove to the temple in two cars. He gave the lecture, answered the questions, signed the books.
When they got back to the house he put the call in to Klaus. “It’s five A.M. there,” the operator reminded him.
“I know,” he said.
Klaus came on, groggy and confused. “What? Yes? Good evening! Where are you?”
“In Massachusetts in America. How old was the widow in Trittau?”
“What?”
“How old was the widow in Trittau? Frau Schreiber.”
“My God! I don’t know, it was hard to tell; she had a lot of make-up on. Much younger than he was, though. Late thirties or early forties.”
“With a son almost fourteen?”
“Around that age. Unfriendly to me, but you can’t blame him; she sent him off to her sister’s so we could ‘talk in private.’”
“Describe him.”
A moment passed. “Thin, about as high as my chin, blue eyes, dark-brown hair, a sharp nose. Pale. What’s going on?”
Liebermann fingered the phone’s square push buttons. Round ones would look better, he thought. Square didn’t make sense.
“Herr Liebermann?”
“It’s not wild geese,” he said. “I found the link.”
“My God! What is it?”
He took a breath, let it blow out. “They have the same son.”
“The same what?”
“Son! The same son! The exact same boy! I saw him here and in Gladbeck; you saw him there. And he’s in Göteborg, Sweden; and Bramminge, Denmark! The exact same boy! He plays a musical instrument, or else he draws. And his mother is always forty-one, forty-two. Five different mothers, five different sons; but the son is the same, in different places.”
“I…don’t understand.”
“Neither do I! The link was supposed to give us the reason, yes? And instead it’s crazier than what we started out with! Five boys exactly the same!”
“Herr Liebermann—I think it may be six. Frau Rausenberger in Freiburg is forty-one or -two. With a young son. I didn’t see him or ask his age—I didn’t imagine it was in any way relevant—but she said maybe he would go to Heidelberg too; not to study law, to study writing.”
“Six,” Liebermann said.
Silence stretched between them; stretched longer.
“Ninety-four?”
“Six is already impossible,” Liebermann said, “so why not? But even if it were possible, and it isn’t, why would they be killing the fathers? I honestly think I’ll go to sleep tonight and wake up in Vienna the night this all started. Do you know what Mengele’s main interest was at Auschwitz? Twins. He killed thousands of them, ‘studying,’ to learn how to breed perfect Aryans. Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course!”
“Go to Freiburg again and get a look at the boy there; see if he’s the same as the one in Trittau. Then tell me whether I’m crazy or not.”
“I’ll go today. Where can I reach you?”
“I’ll call you. Good night, Klaus.”
“Good morning. But good night.”
Liebermann put the phone down.
“Mr. Liebermann?” Dolly Labowitz smiled at him from the doorway. “Would you like to watch the news with us? And have a little nosh? Some cake or fruit?”
Hannah’s breasts were dry and Dena was crying, so naturally Hannah was upset. That was understandable. But was it any reason for changing Dena’s name? Hannah insisted on it. “Don’t argue with me,” she said. “From now on we’re calling her Frieda. It’s the perfect name for a baby, and then I’ll have milk again.”
“It doesn’t make sense, Hannah,” he said patiently, trudging along beside her through the snow. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
“Her name is Frieda,” Hannah said. “We’re changing it legally.” The snow opened in a deep canyon before her and she slid down into it, Dena wailing in her arms. Oh God! He looked at the snow, unbroken now, and lay on his back in darkness, in a bed in a room. Worcester. Labowitz. Six boys. Dena grown up, Hannah dead.