Winter Men Page 2

  He awoke with a start to the sound of a car careening down Bahnhofstrasse, its tires squealing. He sat up abruptly, uncertain where he was. The car came to a halt, and from the window he saw four police officers rushing into the hotel. Though he was in nothing more than his underwear, the sweat began pouring from him, as if it wanted to expose him to the police as a guilty man. The officers thundered up the stairs. Then suddenly everything went silent. He held his breath. His escape had reached its end. Maybe Dubak had gone straight to the police and told them of his whereabouts, the money thrust deep in his pocket. The dirty bastard. Then again, maybe getting caught and enduring his punishment was for the best? Several minutes passed. They felt like hours. If the police were searching for him, why weren’t they here yet? He put his ear to the door. Maybe they were on the other side, a breath away, their weapons loaded, ready to kick the door off its hinges. Time was measured in degrees of fear now. He returned to the window and pulled the curtain slightly to one side. The car was still there, idling. Still nothing. Someone shouted in the hallway, and he went rigid. Several more minutes passed before the policemen exited the hotel, dragging a man who clearly didn’t want to go with them. The car spun around and raced at breakneck speed back down Bahnhofstrasse. For the rest of the night, he tossed and turned on the otherwise comfortable mattress, startling at the slightest sound. The next day Dubak moved him to another hotel.

  Ten days later he crossed into Italy through a quiet border post. The bribe in the border guard’s pocket made the trip easier. He crossed Brenner Pass on foot and was on the verge of collapse when he finally spied the Tower of the Twelve in Sterzing. By the time he strolled into the town, he’d walked eighteen miles. Dubak had told him to go to the Goldene Kreuz, where they were expecting him. He wasn’t the first German to hide there, and he wouldn’t be the last.

  He remained at the hotel until his new passport and identification card were processed. Normally he would’ve enjoyed his stay—bought grappa on the main street, gone shopping in the boutiques, and dined at the town’s many restaurants—but he kept to his room. After fourteen days, Dubak knocked on his door.

  “Everything’s ready.” Dubak handed him his false papers.

  The two men shook hands and parted ways, knowing their paths would never cross again.

  He stared at his identity papers for some time. He knew he was the man in the photo, and yet the man staring back at him seemed a stranger. His eyes were distant, there but unseeing. His cheeks were hollow, and his mouth was nothing more than a narrow slit in his face. Next to the image was his new name.

  In Genoa, his new papers were stamped with a permit allowing him entry into Argentina, and on May 15, 1947, he stood on the pier taking the measure of the steamship Carmen Polz. The harbor air was thick with petroleum, and the smell brought back memories—again of Hamburg.

  He gathered his courage and boarded. A uniformed man studied his travel documents. Like the hands on a broken clock, time stopped, and every hair on his body stood on end. Blooms of sweat formed on his armpits, revealing his unease. The man looked up and smiled.

  “Welcome aboard, Mr. Bock.”

  The journey across the Atlantic was uneventful. One month later he stood at the harbor in Buenos Aires and beheld the wide La Plata River. Someone—he didn’t know who, just that it was one of his countrymen—had arranged a residence for him in the Florida district. With a suitcase in each hand, he headed toward his new home, noting with a slight smile that his house was on a street named Libertad, the Spanish word for freedom. Since most everyone spoke German in the Florida district, he had no need to learn the local language. He found a position in a German export firm. It was a mindless job, but that was just what he wanted.

  In this German colony in the center of Argentina’s capital, Reinhold Bock longed to find peace, but after many years spent repressing his past, he was suddenly wrenched out of his quiet life. In 1960 the Israeli secret service kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in plain sight on a Buenos Aires street, and Reinhold Bock and many others felt the ground suddenly shift under their feet. He left Argentina in haste, his rudderless journey not yet concluded, and moved on to Uruguay. His journey then brought him to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, his last stop before Coroico.

  PART ONE

  Hamburg, Germany, November 10, 1938

  Gerhard glanced around the empty assembly hall. The lecture had gone as planned, but he wasn’t as elated as he normally was. He retrieved his coat from his office, then biked slowly through the streets of Hamburg. From the university he headed toward the botanical garden, where the remains of the city’s old ramparts were still visible; Bastion Casparus had been unable to keep the French out of the city and was now converted into parks and gardens. The botanical garden was abandoned, and the huge, bare weeping willow leaned threateningly across the moat—as if, in all its loneliness, it considered throwing itself into the ice-cold water. He continued past the grand justice buildings and Laeiszhalle, a neobaroque concert hall that had made its mark in music history thanks to visits from Strauss, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. As he rode past the building, he hummed a piece from Arabella and thought of Emma.

  Although he didn’t view the city with the gaze of a visitor, he nonetheless studied it with a critical eye. Of course he could see that Hamburg lacked architectural beauty—in spite of singular pearls like Laeiszhalle—but new buildings here were constructed for practical reasons; and in this there was, perhaps, an aesthetic quality, a practical beauty. The city lacked the towering cathedrals, ostentatious castles, and fortresses so common in other large German cities. Widespread fires had destroyed the city’s center several times, so all the history contained in the old houses was gone, and, as if to spite the people who’d chosen to live in this inhospitable lowland region, the Elbe often overflowed its banks. But Hamburg’s residents were proud of their city, and Gerhard loved Hamburg’s tenacious character just like everyone else.

  In Alter Elbpark, a woman pushing a baby stroller stood on the gravel path, studying the enormous Otto von Bismarck monument, which cast long shadows in the afternoon sunlight. He slowed his pace to steal a glance at the stroller. A small, round-headed girl, swaddled in a wool blanket, smiled up at him. All at once he felt a surge of sadness flood him like the Elbe, a heartrending feeling he’d never come to terms with. He’d had a child once, but he was thirty-eight now, and he knew that he would never have another.

  He parked his bike near St. Pauli Piers, where only the tall clock towers could compete with the two impressive ocean liners docked in the quay. Magnificent ships like the Cap Arcona, Monte Rosa, and New York ensured that North and South America, Africa, and the Orient were no longer inaccessible points on a map. A cacophony of sound suddenly filled the emptiness inside him as he watched the small, industrious tugboats putter off with one of the many oceangoing steamships that would soon set sail for some exotic destination. Tugboats with spluttering motors chugged up and down the Elbe pulling barges, and ships large and small were loaded and unloaded. The odor of diesel fumes hung like an invisible cloud between the jumble of cranes towering above the shipyard; on the harbor’s edge, freight trains shrouded in smoke clattered back and forth, whistles shrieking as they set off with coffee from Brazil, spices from the Far East, and wood and cotton from North America. The harbor was like a beating heart, pumping products through the blue veins of the globe. It was the heart of Germany.

  Gerhard sat on a bench watching his breath steam in the air. The temperature was below freezing, despite the few rays of sunlight. Feeling Bismarck’s eyes on his back, he turned around. As he studied the iron chancellor gazing out over the city from his high vantage point, he thought about all that had transpired since Bismarck united the country. Germany was a ticking bomb, and he wondered when it would detonate. Gerhard’s black horn-rimmed glasses steamed up. He removed them and polished them with his handkerchief. Shivering with cold, he considered his day.

  His lectures in the assembly hall had begun to sound inc
reasingly hollow as fewer and fewer students attended. Some had enlisted in the army, others had left the city, and Jews had been forced out of the university altogether. It was a lamentable sight to look out over all the empty seats in a place that represented the cradle of wisdom.

  Everyone seemed to just accept what was happening. The eradication of the individual, the reduction of the people to a faceless gray mass shouting “heil” on command. It was as though everyone in Germany had become paralyzed. They’d screamed for change until their voices were hoarse, and they’d gotten the change they’d clamored for. But what happened when that change wasn’t for the better? He no longer recognized his country. And how could they change anything now—now that they were up against forces like Goebbels, the master of agitation? With his plainspoken manner, the man had a rare talent for working his way into people’s brains and hearts, circumventing their reason, and homing in on their emotions. First people were seduced by the marches, parades, and flag waving; once they were thus hypnotized, the speeches followed, and the words became gospel. By nature, Gerhard wasn’t a man consumed by hatred, and yet he felt nothing but contempt for Goebbels. Of course, he never voiced his feelings aloud.

  A voice startled him out of his reverie. “They’ve got that figured out!”

  “Sorry?” Gerhard hadn’t noticed the old man who’d sat down on the bench.

  “Marching. They certainly know how to do that. They’re everywhere you go.”

  The man nodded at a regiment of Hitler Youth marching past in their black winter uniforms and laced boots.

  Unsure how to respond, Gerhard simply smiled. The man sliced an apple into wedges with his pocketknife so that his few remaining teeth could masticate the fruit.

  “I always expect to see a bear riding a unicycle when I see their goose-stepping—it’s all a ridiculous circus act.” The man cackled with delight.

  Gerhard kept silent and thought about his fifteen-year-old nephew. He’d noticed how indifferently August wore his Hitler Youth uniform, with its sand-colored shirt, leather cross strap, and long white knee-high socks. He wore it because he had to, because a 1936 law forced him to. On the streets, uniforms were everywhere: SS, SA, Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, Hitler Youth, and so on. Everyone was part of the same club now, except Gerhard.

  “The Nazis are a bunch of idiots, if you ask me,” the old man said suddenly.

  “It’s dangerous to say that kind of thing to strangers.”

  “At my age a fellow has nothing to lose.” He spat an apple seed onto the ground. “At my age a fellow has already lost.” Another seed flew from his mouth. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Theodore Weinhardt.”

  The old man offered Gerhard a gnarled hand, and Gerhard squeezed it cautiously so that he wouldn’t crush the man’s brittle bones.

  “Gerhard Strangl,” he said, looking the man in the eye for the first time. He had a friendly face. Two bushy gray eyebrows jutted in every direction. His nose reminded Gerhard, both in form and color, of a clown’s nose, and his eyes were nearly impossible to see through his thick eyeglasses. In his lap lay a soft felt hat, one of those types of fedoras people wore in Tyrol.

  “If only I were younger. Why don’t you young people do anything?”

  The sentence sounded more like a reproach than a question, and Gerhard shrugged. He knew he had to consider his words carefully. Though it was hard to imagine, Theodore Weinhardt could be an informant. They came in all shapes and sizes, so why not an old, hunchbacked man? And why such brazen questions?

  “Hmm,” he said neutrally.

  “Then I’ll answer the question myself: no one dares. Everyone’s so damn cowardly now. The communists weren’t afraid to fight,” said the old man. Maybe this Weinhardt was a communist himself, Gerhard thought. Then the man continued. “I’d have gladly gone to war for that man up there. He was worth fighting for.” He jerked his finger over his shoulder at Bismarck without turning around. “Not like Hitler. He’s no statesman. He’s just some bumpkin with a silly mustache. Don’t you agree?”

  The old man folded his knife and returned it to his pocket. From the opposite pocket he pulled out a pouch of tobacco and a pipe, which he carefully began to plug with almost ritualistic precision.

  I agree completely, Gerhard thought, but I won’t admit that to a stranger. “I’m not really sure,” he mumbled.

  The old man lit his pipe, took a satisfied puff, then blew the smoke out of one corner of his mouth. “You don’t look like one of them. What do you do, Mr. Strangl, if I may inquire?” The old man leaned toward him, and Gerhard smelled a strange mixture of bad aftershave and pipe tobacco.

  “I teach at the University of Hamburg. I’m a mathematics professor.”

  “Don’t you mean Hanseatic University?”

  “I’ll never get used to the fact that the Nazis have renamed it,” Gerhard said following his intentional slip of the tongue.

  “Aren’t you rather young to be a professor?” Weinhardt asked, scrutinizing him.

  “I’m thirty-eight.”

  The old man studied him. “Now that you mention it, I can see that you’ve got a little gray on your temples.” He gave a dry, chuckling laugh that caused his bushy eyebrows to flutter. There was something infectious about it, and Gerhard soon found himself laughing, too.

  “Be careful! The Nazis are afraid of bright people like you.” He pointed at him with the stem of his pipe. “If the citizenry is too intelligent, they’ll just burn their books.”

  Again Gerhard laughed along with the old man, whom he’d begun to like.

  Like a wave, laborers began flooding the harborside by the hundreds. The whistles had sounded; it was quitting time. Numerous small boats carried the longshoremen back to the residential districts along the Elbe’s many tributaries. Workers in overalls and wool sweaters, dockhands in boiler suits, office workers wearing fedoras and suits, and secretaries in skirts and high heels were all rushing home after another workday. Only Gerhard and the old man were not part of the hustle and bustle.

  Gerhard and the old man remained seated, silently watching the throng. Gerhard pulled a cigarette from his green pack of Ecksteins.

  “I feel bad for the Jews. But it’s all about finding a scapegoat who can’t fight back,” said the old man. “Consider this: an entire family disappeared from my building last night, and this morning all of their possessions were strewn about the street. Even the cemetery in Altona has been vandalized. And this is happening all over Germany.”

  “It’s terrible.” Gerhard studied the old man, who was now cleaning his pipe with the point of the pocketknife he’d used to slice his apple. He enjoyed speaking with Mr. Weinhardt, and Gerhard was convinced he was no informant. Nowadays, one felt safe only among family and good friends. His experience was that people were divided into six groups, and everyone belonged to one of them, whether they realized it or not. There were the fanatics, the supporters, the opportunists, the fearful, the doubters, and the resisters. The final two categories were thinning in number, unfortunately. More and more of them would soon be categorized among the fearful or the detained resisters. He thought of a seventh group: the dead.

  “Are you married, Mr. Strangl?”

  Gerhard shook his head, discreetly covering up his wedding ring. He didn’t have the energy to talk about Emma.

  “I am. A pleasure it is. Sometimes.” The old man chuckled again. “That’s why I come down here to the harbor so often. To get out of the house for a while.”

  Gerhard smiled. “Yes, Goethe was right: ‘He is happy, be he king or farmer, who finds peace in his home,’” he said.

  The old man considered a moment. “Or Socrates: ‘Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior,’” he said. “There’s no doubt a kernel or two of truth in those words.”

  “Wasn’t it Nietzsche who said, ‘Woman was God’s second mistake’?”

  “That’s correct. Listen to us,” Weinhardt said.

  “You seem like a very
well-read man,” Gerhard said, almost quizzically.

  Weinhardt answered in a tired voice: “I was a schoolteacher in my younger days. I’m glad I’m no longer teaching, because nowadays the teachers are told what they must teach the children. All that rubbish about race. I’m sure you’ll agree.”

  “Very much so.” Gerhard briefly considered what he could allow himself to say, then continued. “We were told to remove everything written by Jews from our syllabi, and all the Jewish professors were asked to leave the university. Two-thirds of the students are gone, either because they’re Jews or because they’ve joined the army.” Gerhard stamped out his cigarette. “All discussion between students and professors has become completely meaningless, since no one dares to state their opinion anymore. People hardly dare describe what they have in their lunch box.”

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Whole branches of research had been removed, and new branches had arisen in their place. The curriculum was now thick with subjects like the biology of race and national socialistic ideologies. History had become military history, just as law now dealt with the military penal code. And the transformation wasn’t evident just in the curriculum. In 1933, the Nazis had taken control of the university, and the few who had risked speaking out against them were gone. Now the flags that fluttered from the buildings were adorned with swastikas.

  “So you come down here to relax like I do?” Mr. Weinhardt asked.

  “You could say that the harbor has become my window onto the world.”

  The old man smiled. He offered Gerhard his hand. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Strangl.”

  “Likewise, Mr. Weinhardt.”

  Gerhard watched as the old man rose, stiff backed, clutching his cane. With his other hand he briefly lifted his hat, then staggered off down the pier.